A Freelancer Gone Corporate, Episode 69

Episode Transcript

Carrie: Hello everybody! Welcome to officehours.fm. I am your host Carrie Dils.

You are about to hear episode #69 with Ben Furfie who hails from the other side of the pond. Ben? How you doing today?

 

Ben: I’m pretty good. It’s the end of the day and it’s nearly the end of the week so I can’t complain.

 

Carrie: Excellent and I saw that you’re enjoying a tasty beer? Which one?

Ben: Tiger. I just figured drinking beer. Mike Hemberger did it so it’s a good way to walk on the show so…

 

Carrie: You know what? If Mike does it, it’s totally legit. Since I’m having a British guest on, I’m having tea for this episode.

 

Ben: I’m just ribbing you. I could have refilled my tea, but nah. Beer.
Carrie: Nah. At that time of night now. Go grab yourself a cold one. Ok. So we’ll get started here in a second but first I would like to thank this episode sponsors. We have got DesktopServer brought to you by the folks over server press. That is the easiest way to develop with WordPress locally. You can check them out over @serverpress.com. Their free product is actually excellent. But if you bump over to the premium then you can get some extra features like live deployment. And then we also have DreamHost. Our friends over there make a product called DreamPress which is a managed WordPress host. Lot’s of actually cool things that I’ll tell you about in a little at a great price. You can check them out over @dreamhost.com/officehours. I said this was episode 69 and you may be wondering what happened to episode 68. Ben, you know what happened to episode 68 because it happened over the weekend. Genesis Camp for those of you who are fans of the Genesis framework, they hosted their first ever live learning event; 24 hours of learning. It was pretty cool. Anyhow, I did a special edition of the podcast on there with Jeni Elliott and Shay Bocks. So you can head over to officehours.fm and catch the replay on that. Or even if you don’t listen to it, just go and look at my…the snapshot or whatever Google snapped as the preview for the video. I’m making the stupidest face ever. It’s pretty awesome. All right. With all that said, welcome to everybody who’s tuning in live. I’m very glad to have you here. If you want to ask Ben some questions you can just simply tag them with #officefm and we’ll take care of those. Or if you’re listening over on Google+ you can use the Q&A app and we will answer there. Ben for folks that haven’t seen you over on the UK Genesis podcast or haven’t gotten a chance to meet you yet, why don’t you introduce yourself?

 

Ben: So for those of you who live under a rock, I’m always on the Facebook group, I’m always on the Twitter and always on Slack. I do work. I promise you I do work.
Carrie: As you’re sitting there drinking a beer…
Ben: Yeah. Exactly. It’s 7 o’clock here so I’ve got to stop working sometime. I am predominantly a front-end developer but I also dabble in design as some people have hired me do. I actually started my career as a journalist and that’s how I got into this. I was a technology journalist and started dabbling with code in my spare time because I am actually that sad. Yeah. I ended up falling in love with it…falling in love with the Genesis framework. From there, that’s how I got to where I am now.

 

Carrie: One of the things that we’re going to deep dive into today; you recently shuttered the doors of your freelance agency and have gone to work for “the man”. I know a lot of the folks that listen to this show are either currently freelancing or aspire to make their living with freelancing so I’m really curious to hear some of the reasons that you made that decision to move over…and what you’re…I know that there’s been some tremendous pros. So I look forward to hearing those as well. So yeah. So what were you doing with your freelance? Can you describe a little bit kind of the average project you would work on that sort of thing?

Ben: Yeah sure. I tried to work mainly with small and medium-sized businesses. I guess it would fall into the small category in the US. You guys classify 500 people as small. Which is a big company over here. I basically tried to stay clear of eCommerce, just really focused on lead generation websites. So building sites that had a lot of information; lead capture, the ability to create blog content. I worked with all kinds of clients from tea companies to air wing installers for universities and hotels…Princes. I did tend to stick more to the technology side. I did do some stuff for people like creators. I did some outsourcing work for some agencies where I got to work on some pretty cool kid focused consumer brand stuff which was a little bit different than what I normally worked on. It was an interesting challenge. That’s pretty much why I worked on custom Genesis based stuff and Genesis based web sites.

 

Carrie: Do you feel like you had your grove where business was steady and business was good? Or was it more of kind of a feast and famine.

Ben: It could be feast and famine a lot of the time. There was a point where I really seriously injured my knee last year during a soccer accident. I couldn’t walk for 4 months so I couldn’t actually get out to networking meetings and that type of thing. That really put me back in terms of my business, so I couldn’t follow up on various leads. Small businesses tend to prefer dealing with people that they can meet face-to-face to build that trust up. I found that it really had quite a bit of an impact. There were other times where it was through…me not having the processes in place…I’d be holding my hands up and being honest. Projects dragged out way too long. One project which I’m wrapping up this week has been going on now for just over a year.
Carrie: Holly Cow!

Ben: Yeah. It kills your workflow when you sort of have various things…there’s been projects in the last couple of months that have suffered as a direct result of projects that I have not managed the workflow on. I’ve had to apologize to people because it’s impacted their work. That’s unfair. That’s down to me not the actual clients. It’s one of those amazing things. You go to work in a company. Obviously I’ve worked in media before in a corporate environment. I’ve never worked in web design in a corporate environment. It’s one of those things. You go into somewhere else and you see what the processes is…what the processes are. I’m just a journalist and keep getting the grammar wrong. It’s like a light bulb coming on. You just go, why didn’t I do that? Oh no! I can’t believe I didn’t…that’s such a simple thing to do. Obviously not working in that environment you sometimes don’t find out about those things. It’s been one of those situations where I wished I could go back and maybe change a couple of things…but…you know…that’s how it’s done.
Carrie: Interesting. Thanks for the honesty and what you just shared. It’s hard to…we’re not perfect and freelancing is definitely…there’s a learning curve on all aspects from project management to the finances to the whole ball of wax. So thank you for sharing your experience there. I wanted to back up to the part where you had said…your “alleged” soccer injury.

Ben: Ok. Yeah.

Carrie: I think it was probably you were drinking beer and slipped…or I don’t know.

Ben: No, no. (laughing) Some people have seen the state of what my knee was like. We were playing indoors on a wooden surface and it was the middle of summer. It’s actually coming up to year ago in less than a month. We had been playing for over an hour. If you fell over you left a really big sweat patch on the floor. I won’t say what was leaving the sweat patches. I will let people’s imaginations work out that bit. I went in for the ball. Basically I had my right leg out. My left leg was in the air. My other friend came into to challenge me. He eighteen stone, slipped on the sweat…completely lost all traction on the floor. He hit me. I heard a pop and went to the floor. Banged my head. That’s what is going to be hurt if anything. So I sat there for minute, got my composure, went to have one of my friends try to help me up and as I got up it literally felt like my knee was going like that (demonstrates fist against fist). That was when it was like…nope…this isn’t good. Nope, not good at all. I went to the hospital. After waiting for probably 8 weeks of waiting for the swelling in my knee to go down, they found out that I had completely torn my ACL and partially tore my MCL. Quite a serious injury…so…great isn’t it? People say exercise if good for you.

Carrie: Not in your case. Steer clear of…yeah. You mentioned that kept you out from getting out and doing networking which is interesting. Were most of your clients then locally-based or was that important to you…for getting work to do that in-person networking?

Ben: Yeah. It wasn’t the first time I freelanced. I had freelanced as a journalist/copywriter back in 2009. Right at the height of the recession. I hadn’t done the networking and I found it very difficult to even within the existing network of people that I had…there really wasn’t that much business going around but there was still quite a bit of business around the copywriting space. Because I didn’t make those connections and get out there and introduce myself…it was very much a case of people didn’t know me, people didn’t trust me. And because people were so cautious with their money…understandably at the time…they weren’t really willing to take a chance betting on unknown quantities. When I came back, it was very much a case of I’m going to go freelance. I’m going to go join the local Chamber of Commerce. I’m going to go to their networking events, meet local businesspeople…and I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to say hey I went there and the first time I went there, I got business. I didn’t. It took about 8 months before…as people will say…people buy from people. People don’t buy from businesses. So you need to build up that trust. Once you get that trust and you start getting referrals being passed around, you’re not just going to get business from the people in the room. They’re going to refer the people that they know to you. That was where a lot of my business came from. They really liked the fact that I wasn’t this developer thousands of miles away who they could only reach by phone. Heaven forebid that something happened. They could come down the road and beat me up. It wasn’t that far of a drive.

Carrie: (laughing) They could break your other knee.

Ben: Yeah. Exactly. But they really did like that. I know that a lot of people said that it was one of the crucial things that I not only understood what their requirements were…I just wasn’t saying do you want a website? You’re existing website…for example a recruiter that I worked with. It was a technical recruiter. They did a lot of oil and gas engineering recruitments. Their existing website was very heavy. It wasn’t mobile responsive. Basically the site I designed for them was very light on graphics. It was very much vector and SVG. It looked professional but it meant that somebody on an oil rig in the North Sea on a really crappy edge connection could load the site quickly. Obviously if somebody’s looking for a job you know…you’re not meant to be looking for a job on an oilrig. It’s that type of thing. They can quickly look and not have to worry about getting caught. I know it sounds silly but it was that simple. It was like you know you were really the only person that dove deep into what the issues were. Obviously not every client can be justified in terms of taking that much time to deep dive. That was a probably about $3000 dollars for their website. If I was working on a client that was $500 pounds…about $750 dollars…there is no way that I would spend that much time on the proposal. It would be what are you looking for? Why is your current website not up to scratch. Why are you after a new website? Go from there rather than deep diving.

 

Carrie: Did you ever want to not do those small projects then so that you could focus on those larger ones where you got to utilize your skill as a consultant?

 

Ben: I would have quite happily worked on any size project on the condition that I knew the client would get the bloody content in on time and not drag their feet. I will work on any project. That’s what I really like about the place I’m working now.  Just so you’ve got your head in the conversation. They have very clear process where they have a deadline to turn around the mockups and turn around websites. The thing that triggers that deadline isn’t triggered until the client sends the content over. So there are clients that I’ve been working on this week who have been customers with this company for over a year, but because they haven’t gotten the content over to them, nothing’s happened. They’ve got no recourse to complain. It’s one of those things. I think…I don’t really want to be freelancing. I’m going to appreciate the time I have. The one thing that I know that I would really love to do is…there’s a million and one blogs out there that talk about developer workflows; Designer workflows. And they’re all about the tools. One of the only blogs out there that I’ve really seen that really dives into the part that’s important and that’s how you make money is…you’ve got Curtis McHale…you’ve got Chris Lema and they’re rare. I think that those types of blogs are focused on the business aspect but then also focused very much with a technical web teach. Incredibly valuable too. People here like me that have never worked in an agency so don’t actually know how things work.

 

Carrie: Yes. +1 for both those gentlemen’s blogs. They have excellent content on the business side of things. We’re getting some great questions in. I’m going to go a little bit of out of order so forgive me for those who are tuning in. Ben asked so going back when you’re talking about this client that you got to spend the additional time with or do the deep dive…he asked how do you know whether the client was worth the deep dive or not? Was that purely based on budget they had to spend?

Ben: It was a couple of things. Got was one part. You can just tell. Some people brought a business because they couldn’t be employed elsewhere. Those are the type of people you want to avoid doing too much for. I’m happy to take their money and deliver them something that would essentially deliver them a return on investment. I didn’t really want to develop a long-term relationship with them because they’re the archetypal clients from hell. Another thing was…I don’t know if there’s a similar type of thing in the US…but in the UK because I work predominately with private limited companies…I think it’s just a limited company in the US…you have to file your accounts with Company’s House which is the government’s sort of…department that handles limited or registered companies. Within that you can actually see what their assets are and what their liabilities are…what their balance sheet is essentially. Looking at that and sort working out this is a company that is struggling…or this is a company that is cash rich. It sort of makes you think…I think that they potentially got wiggle room for longer term relationships in terms of these are guys who will be able to afford you know a content strategy package or a blogging package…or an SEO package…so that type of thing. It’s really just looking at that and trying to work out can they afford it or if they can’t, I’ll build them a website but I’m not going to spend too much time digging in other areas.

Carrie: Gotcha. Well thank you for elaborating on that. Jackie asked a great question. She says if you could change one thing that you did while freelancing for your business what would it be?

Ben: That’s a very good question. I would probably be much more strict with what I actually offered to clients. I think there were too many times where I was relatively new. I knew that portfolios are crucial to sort of getting more business in a sense. I would end up spending far too much time on small websites trying to make these things portfolio pieces. It would slow down my workflow. It would slow down the number of referrals that would come back in. It’s one of these things. If somebody’s only paying a couple of hundred bucks for a website you know it should literally be a case of taking something like the enterprise feed, dropping in a couple of images, dropping in some text and sending them over either a screen shot that you’ve done in the browser or a psd or sketch version of the template and sending it over for them to approve. If they come back and say oh I want to change this or can we move that, just say no. It’s not within the agreement of what you paid. If you want to do that we can look at it but it will cost you more. You really need to get a point where you are quite strict. In all honestly, I would’ve probably paid for a virtual assistant or customer service as well. Because I think as developers we’re not salespeople. We’re not that hardened and we’re going to the sale at any cost. We do this because we actually care about what we’re putting out. I think you need to have that separation where you can essentially say to somebody else can you call this customer and say it’s not within the agreement of what they paid for. So that you’re not potentially souring the relationship that you have. It’s essentially the person who’s calling that has the ability to not go yeah no problem. I’ll kowtow to what you want. They are literally repeating what they’ve been told and taking back the feedback from the client. So it’s one of those things…I think I’ve said to people I’m not really interested in freelancing but if I was going to, at the very least I would be looking to partner with somebody who can do the sales. Not go it alone next time. Actually have that clear separation in roles.

 

Carrie: That’s golden wisdom right there. To bring in other people… first to be able to recognize in yourself what it is you excel at and what it is that you could stand to pass off and then actually being willing to bring in something like a VA. I’ve kind of thought about that myself. No. So cool. Know thyself! I like it. We’ve got…let’s see…Davinder wants to know about your new job profile. So now you are…what’s the name of “the man” the company that you’re working with now?

Ben: It’s a company called EMS.

Carrie: EMS. Well if you were in the US that would be an ambulance service.

Ben: Yeah. I was going to say I was searching for their website and it kept coming back Emergency Medical Service. So was like yeah. It’s not going to find that.

Carrie: So. What is your role there?
Ben: So they have been around since 1999 I believe. So their job titles are still stuck very much in the mid-late 1990s. Although my job title is, official job title is Senior Web Designer; I’m actually more of a Senior Front End Developer. I don’t really do any design. We actually have graphic designers for that. Really what they brought me in for is to work on their large clients. They have clients like Reebok as well as a couple of large local sports teams. And a couple of big clients who…you know what? I can’t remember who they are. It’s one of those things where I have sort of been brought in partly to help them bring…they did a little of WordPress stuff in the past but they’ve never really sort of gone there. They’re very much a Drupal house. They’re keen to be able to offer people the options to have a WordPress website for companies that already got people who are experienced in WordPress and are not going to push back against being told that they need to retrain on a new system. Obviously, behind the scenes, Drupal and WordPress in terms of usability are pretty similar. In terms of code, they’re night and day. Not that people necessarily understand that.
Carrie: Ok. So Jo Walton tweeted how is learning Drupal? And I thought she was just being a troll. Apparently there is some Drupaling going on.
Ben: I will be learning how to Drupal pure and simply so that when there is more demand for that particular area, I can jump in. Like I said, I’m going to be senior so I’m not going to be working on many of the small projects from what I understand. But despite that there are going to be times where I need to jump in so I need to be to be able pull my weight. To be honest, I’m looking forward to learning it because although yeah…Drupal is maybe not as good as WordPress is at the moment…it shifts and twists. Once Drupal 8 comes out, who knows? There might be things out there that are a lot better than what WordPress can handle areas in. But you know it’s always good to expand your horizons and see how you decide to do things because it can make you go Oh you know what? That’s brilliant. I’ll develop a WordPress plugin that actually gives you that functionality. So yeah. I haven’t actually ended up doing much Drupal coding yet. I’ve got a list of recommendations of things to look at. But I did manage to get Drupal working on Desktop Server. Which took a little bit of twisting and doing things I don’t think Mark particularly designed the app to do. But it works. You can spin up…you can create Drupal blueprints so it’s not…you might have to go in and twist and twiddle a couple of things in the database if you can benefit from it. I haven’t tried deploying yet. That’s going to be the interesting bit. Obviously Drupal do offer a similar local host. Things like something like num. It doesn’t really have the Drupal deployment stuff. That’s obviously…the deployments and the blueprints are really where Desktop Server really sells. So I’ll be interested to see if the Drupal hack works essentially.
Carrie: Interesting. Ok. Mark, if you’re listening you’ll have to get together with Ben and figure out how he’s hacking Desktop Server for Drupal. So Drupal runs then on PHP and MySQL? Same as WordPress?

Ben: Yeah. It’s purely I think… a lot of getting it to work is just…obviously when spinning up a Desktop Server instance; it spins up with a wpconfig file. So you’ve just got to sort of copy out the database information and just pull it over. So I think when you spin up normally it doesn’t always quite work. I’ve had to create blueprints using the wpconfig file. It manages to pull it out. But I need do more testing to see whether there’s… a security or database issue with that. We’ll see what happens. It might work. It might not.

 

Carrie: Interesting. We’ll you’d think that would make an interesting blog post on the other side of things. I know WordPress folks. We like to jab Drupal and Joomla developers and I’m sure they probably like to jab us back but I think you’re right. There is definitely some value to be had in seeing how other people go about solving similar problems and get you thinking about things in a little bit different way. Since we’re already talking on Desktop Server I will take a moment to expound on it just a little bit. So earlier as Ben mentioned you can do these things called blueprints which is basically where you take all the things you do when you normally set up WordPress install. So you go the settings and you make sure that it’s searchable, indexable, change your permanent link structure, you might have a handful plug-ins that you always like to use…what not. So you set up your perfect WordPress install. And then you save it as a blueprint. The next time you go to create a site you can use that blueprint and you just saved yourself from having to build all those initial config items again. So pretty cool!

 

Ben: Billable hours.

 

Carrie: What’s that.
Ben: Cut down on all the billable hours.
Carrie: Yes. Or just no hours. We are getting away from billable hours. We’re charging based on our value.

 

Ben: Of course, yes. I’m talking about internal billable hours.

Carrie: Oh ok.

Ben: Never think that value pricing gets rid of the internal billable hours. You still have a price that you cost your company.

Carrie: True. I don’t know. I’m still kind of working out the value pricing in my head. Regardless I’ve been using them for a couple of years. They host a lot of WordCamps too. So if you ever get the change to meet Mark or Greg in person go bug and get them to demo DesktopServer 4.0 for you. It’s pretty cool. And while I’m talking about sponsors…I’m sorry Ben we’re just going to keep on going. We’re rolling with it.

Ben: I worked in media. It’s all about advertisers.

Carrie: Well you know, I really do appreciate the folks who generously sponsor the show and I don’t want to make these…I want to put products in front of you that are actually interesting to the listeners and not just…ah…Carrie’s doing a commercial break. I appreciate that people even tune in. So it’s important to me to get sponsors that are in line with things you like to hear about. So with that said, DreamPress 2…I’m going to actually read because I can’t memorize all of this. But with the account which $19.95 a month you get 30 gigs of SSD Storage, up to 2.1 million monthly visitors and holy cow! If you’re having that many visitors well I want to know what your secret is. Auto scaling, RAM, automatic WordPress install, unlimited email addresses and 24 x 7 WordPress support. They’ve got a control panel. It’s not a standard cpanel. It’s their own custom control panel and your hosted virtual private servers and isolated my SQL server. So do check them out if you’re looking for another hosting plan. If you’re like me you’ve got hosting plans…websites scattered all over the web. Scott’s…never mind. You know what? I’m just really glad that my brain…there’s no movie camera inside of it that projects the thoughts that go through my head on the wall. Anyway you can check them out @dreamhost.com/officehours. Thank you. Thank you for that. Ben? How are you doing over there?

Ben: I’m absolutely great.

Carrie: I like to hear it. Ok. So let’s get…we’ve got some more questions.
Ben: One from Jackie. Did your freelancing and podcasting help you run that job? No. Absolutely…to some extent…possibly yeah. In terms of actually getting discovered for the job, no. Not in the slightest. I was actually speaking to Ben earlier today about this. The way that I actually got discovered was with LinkedIn. I’ve gotten business through LinkedIn actually in the past. Just people looking for local WordPress developers. Yeah. Probably even now I get maybe two or three emails from recruiters every week asking if I’m available. Obviously the answer is now no. I had one I think last week…somebody I used to work with works for that company so they sort of vouched for me and said yep. Absolutely brilliant. They said the job’s yours. You’ve just got to pass the test. I think it was for an Angular JS job. Which I can do. It wasn’t just being offered randomly. This was a job in Berlin, Germany. My days of being an ex Pat are behind me so there was no question that I was going to take that one. So it is definitely…I think possibly public speaking made me very interesting to the company pure and simply because not many developers are particularly confident in front of a closed area or large group of people so being able to have a developer who is comfortable talking to large groups of clients and making something simple…there’s a little bit more trust than having a salesperson in front everyone talking about that type of thing. That aspect might have helped but it wasn’t the reason why I was hired.

Carrie: Interesting. Ok. So the moral of the story is keep that LinkedIn profile updated.
Ben: Just stick Front End Developer in your job title. That’s what they’re looking for.
Carrie: Ok. This is just a random aside. I have a pet peeve about LinkedIn. You know people follow you on Twitter. That’s fine. It’s impersonal. Some request you on Facebook and you look to see who your common friends are. You’re OK. Cool, cool, cool. I get random people trying to connect with me on LinkedIn and they just send out the default…Hey I’d like to connect with you…or what not. And I just immediately delete those. If you can’t be bothered to remind me how it is that I should know you or how we’re connected then…

 

Ben: A tip to recruiters. Don’t do that. I will add you if you are a recruiter, but just be honest. Just say Hey. I’m a recruiter. I’m interested in connecting with you pure and simply if there are any opportunities I have, I want to be able to reach out and get in touch. That’s fine. I will accept that. I’m quite happy to. But if you’re some randomer, I’m much more or less forgiving with random people than when I used to be a journalist. People who wanted to connect with me or could have interesting things to talk about. In that case, yeah. Not a problem. But these days I’m much more sort of strict with who I add. Obviously, if you’re in the Genesis community, feel free to add me.

Carrie: My request for you to add me has been hanging out there for months. I figured you’re rejecting me. No I’m just kidding. I don’t know. I don’t even know who I’m connected with on LinkedIn. But if we’re not, we can remedy that. All right. So you talked about or have alluded to some of the benefits of being employed versus self-employed. What’s kind of your number one? Like ah. This is a relief.

Ben: This is as much a relief to my other half Vickie as it is to me. I am…I really wish there was like a workaholics anonymous. I’m like my dad. I am a massive workaholic. Given the opportunity, I will work seven days a week from the minute I get out of bed until the minute I go to bed. I don’t necessarily get tired from it. I do absolutely love it. I’m the type of person while Vickie is watching something like the Good Wife or Private Lives on Netflix, I’ll be sitting there with my iPad or my MacBook Air hammering away at Treehouse courses. I’m enjoying it. I was the school kid who would get a Geography book at the beginning of the term and take it home and read it cover to cover and just absorb that information. And then annoy people when we got to the very end of the term. We’d have a multiple choice as part of our…your SAT is that your high school diploma? Yeah. Over here you’ve got the GSETs which happen at 16 and they’re A levels. My GSET in geography…yeah like a 60 in my geography stuff because I was absorbing it. Something like course wise wasn’t my strong point. Anyway. That’s a complete aside. It was very much a case of I would just sit there and work…well “learn” given any opportunity. Working in an environment like that where there is a 40 minute commute…it creates a separation between work and between rest. I actually need that because I will work until literally Vickie is like I’m going to bed now. I’m like all right. I’ll be there in a minute. To be honest as much as I can do that, it is unhealthy. It’s been unhealthy for my weight. My knee being injured didn’t help. I probably have put quiet a bit of weight on over the last year. That is largely being desk bound. It’s one of these things. Having those boundaries and being able to say that I start at half nine. There’s an enforced 15 minute break in the morning. There’s an enforced 15 minute break in the afternoon and 40 minutes for lunch. If you get caught coming back to your desk before that 40 minutes is up you get in trouble. It’s really good for me because it’s just a case of you know…there’s not that thing of sit and playing on my xbox and going I could be getting on with that. Why am wasting time doing this? There’s no wasting time because I don’t have to do it or I haven’t  anything to do so…that’s probably the best thing. Second, sort of related to being paid regularly which is a lovely thing. Just knowing that.

Carrie: Who doesn’t like to be paid regularly?

Ben: I know. Just knowing that the paycheck is going into my bank account at the end of the month and I don’t have to worry about it. It’s not having to chase clients. As everyone who’s worked freelance will attest to. Chasing clients is horrific. Chasing the Government for money is easier to get to be entirely honest. Especially when it’s grant funding. I just had 6000 pounds paid into my account in terms of money that was owed 3 months ago. If that had been the company that I am working for now that had that problem, my salary would have been paid in full. I’ve had to take a pay cut for these last couple of months while that money was outstanding. That’s a huge chunk of work. Not having to worry about that type of thing is…you know…I’m not that old but I’m getting gray hairs and it’s not a good sign. Two things.

Carrie: Awesome. Well the work life balance is hugely important. I think of a lot of freelancers struggle with being able to shut down the computer, step away and you know…sort of enjoy actual real-life. You mentioned chasing down clients and that made think. There is this girl on Twitter. She’s actually a real human being but she’s also on Twitter. Her name is Julie Elster. So if you look on Twitter @Julie_Elster and her profile is what do you do when a client hasn’t paid? Just tell Julie. I will make polite calls on your behalf using the thermonuclear niceness and you get paid.

Ben: Pay, or would you like a broken leg? (both laughing)

Carrie: Yeah. She calls and she is the bad cop. And you get your money. I thought that was interesting.

Ben: Well worth the money. It goes back to what I said before. Sometimes we don’t like chasing people because we don’t want to sour that relationship in case things you know…they don’t end up giving us a referral. Get around that by making somebody else…get around that by having your accounts department call them up and say you owe us money. People are not bothered when the accounts department contacts them and says you owe us money. They are when the person they are dealing with directly does. Strange, isn’t it? It’s one of those things. People are scared of accounts departments. There also scared of lawyers. Find a lawyer client. Build their website and do free SEO for them and get them to send out legal letters for free.

Carrie: I’d be worried that they would turn around and sue me for I don’t know something. We have a fantastic question from Matt. He says what have you learned from the sales end of things since starting this new job and does that translate into any advice for developers promoting their products?

 

Ben: It’s difficult because I haven’t really…the sales guys sit on a different floor, which is a beautiful thing because when I was a journalist the sales guys sat on the same floor. I swear there was one time where I literally turned around to one of the senior sales guys and said if you don’t stop walking around this department…you’re disturbing my journalists. I will take that mobile phone I will shove it so far up your *%* …. that every time someone rings you will get very excited let’s just say…as a euphemism. I think honestly you’ve got to care for because obviously I’m working for the man and there are contract regulations of what I can and can’t say. I think the crucial thing that I’ve sort of glimpsed is having a clear process and explaining that to the client. And just from something that I’ve done, I will hold my hands up again…one of the things I’ve been terrible at is if I got behind on something…you know because I was so determined to get through it and actually catch back up…I sometimes wouldn’t…I’d go dark. I think a lot of the time that’s what happens. It’s not that developers are hiding from people it’s that they’re that focused on trying to get stuff done. And avoiding disruptions so they just don’t take calls. Having someone whose job solely is to contact people when there is a query is a great thing. That’s not necessarily the job of a salesperson. Oh! One thing! There is a tool out there.

Carrie: I thought maybe there were ants in your underwear.

Ben: No. No. This is actually someone to approach to be a sponsor on the show Carrie. They are absolutely phenomenal. It’s a company called Silktide. People might have come across their tools like sitebeam and nibbler. But they recently released a new tool called haystack. It’s a phenomenal tool for finding really simple low hanging fruit….maybe not strictly relevant say for someone like Matt who has a product business but if you do anything like social or small business websites, it’s a tool that you can find particular types of businesses in local areas. So you might look for a florist in New York. It will bring up the top 10 results. Then you can actually run tests against it. It will tell whether they’ve got a Facebook page, whether they’ve got a Twitter page, whether their site is mobile responsive, what the score of their website is. It’s just a great tool for being able to go out to their customer site and say hey. We’ve been doing the research into your market and we found that you’re great in this…always start with what they’re doing well. It makes people feel better.

Carrie: Interesting. Silktide. Ok. I’ll check them out.

Ben: Yeah. Start with what they doing. Say it’s great you have a great Facebook page. It’s great you’ve got this but we noticed that your website isn’t actually mobile responsive. Because of that, if somebody’s out and about…you know make a joke. If it’s a florist. Say obviously if somebody’s done something wrong and they need to find somewhere to buy flowers to make it up to their wife, you’re not going to appear at the top. What we can do is a really simple conversion to make your web site mobile responsive. It will cost X amount of dollars. Is that something that you would be interested in? You know it’s that type of thing because one thing that I think a lot of people forget …you know it’s the type of thing that I learned having worked in other industries where when a client…it’s all about starting them off on a small package then building up trust. Then getting them up to those packages that are several thousand pounds or several thousand dollars. You’re not going to go jumping straight into that. It’s a great tool for finding that. Anybody who’s looking for a way to sort of find low hanging fruit, that’s a great tool to look at.

Carrie: Cool. Well we’ve got some questions over in Google+. We’re going to pop over there and grab those. Nicole comments thanks Ben. You give me hope. My question is how did you wean your past clients off your plate while taking on a new job? That’s a great question.
Ben: That is a really good question. I was very fortunate that many were coming up to their 12-month renewal. I just basically explained that I was going to be winding down the company. That I was still going to be around if there was an issue but that I recommend you…so go to…if you want a company that specializes in maintenance…someone like Wpsitecare. Or if you want somebody in the UK, sort of point them in the direction of a couple of people who I know from UK Genesis stuff. I think that’s a crucial thing. There is a saying don’t burn bridges because you’ll never know when you need to cross them again.

Carrie: Yep.

Ben: I think that’s a crucial thing. Just because they’re not going to be your customer anymore… just because they’re not going to be working with you directly doesn’t mean that when you go freelance again they’re not the best people to go to again and say hey! I’ve gone freelance again. I’m sort of building my business back up. Do you know of anybody who’s looking for website? If you’ve taken care of them and put them on to somebody good, they’ll quite happily still refer people on to you.

 

Carrie: Love that. That is golden advice right there. We have another one from Dave over in the Google Q&A. He says I missed the beginning of the interview, so I apologize if this has been covered – and Dave spells apologised with an S so I know he’s one of your UK buddies…He said since you’ve been at the new agency any workflow lessons you’ve learned? Like  in terms of maybe how they manage their projects?

Ben: Yeah. So as I said earlier on, one of the things they do is they assign deadlines for when a site has to be turned around. That deadline is not triggered until the client has supplied content and images. Which I think is probably the best way of handling it once they supply the images. If they’re taking more than 3 months I think they then have the content team who they refer them on to. They say hey look. You’re obviously not going to be able to…you’re struggling to find the time to produce this content. We have a content team. We have content packages. Would you like you speak to somebody about that? This is the company I work for now. It’s like 90 people and it’s going to double in the next two years. You can’t do that as a freelancer. So the number one thing is go to WordCamps. You will find copywriters there. And just literally get up a lightning talk and hijack it. Just ask a question who’s a copywriter? Literally do it as a “community” thing. You’ll basically making a note of a copywriters and round them up  and get their cards. If you can basically say to a client look you’re obviously struggling with this content. We can help you out. Pass them on to a copywriter and get it back. It removes the roadblock. Even if you if you take a hundred pounds off of it…like 200 bucks out of your budget that you’ve been given by that client to get the content. It’s better to do that. Take the hit and get the website out the way. Where it interrupting other projects.

Carrie: So what I just heard was hijack WordCamps.
Ben: Not in a bad way.

 

Carrie: I’m just kidding. No good stuff. Davinder would like to know other than Drupal is there any particular skill set or language that you’re hoping to learn at this job?

 

Ben: As I said one things that I’ve been brought into this is my experience with WordPress. They have an app team within the company of about 30 people who work on that. It’s a big app company. It not necessarily something that I would love to go into…app development. I would love to sort of dabble in. What I’m really interested in is ways of using the REST API within WordPress. I’m combining it with a front end JavaScript; framework like Angular or Amber, to sort of really build something that isn’t possible or is possible with PHP but you’re removing the confines of having a server based language where it’s got to send a request, process it on the server and send it back. Instead of doing that, actually sending the heavy lifting over to your browser. So that’s the difference. That’s why JavaScript is quicker than PHP because it’s processed locally. So really diving into that and finding ways of using that within client projects to sort of create a niche for myself. That is going to be the way it goes anyway. I think realistically in five years time it might only be like 25% of WordPress websites and are built with some JavaScript front ends. It’s going to be important figure out…I don’t know…it could be more than that…it could be less than that. I do think a significant chunk will be developed with JavaScript. So I think that’s going to be sort of an area to look at. It’s going to be really interesting to me. It’s something different. There are different use cases for it. It’s really just a case of expanding on what I’ve already started diving into with JavaScript frameworks and building upon that.

Carrie: That’s another benefit of being employed right there is that you can learn on someone else’s dime.

Ben: Yeah and get paid for it.

Carrie: Yes. So we’ve just got a few minutes left here together so if you have a question for Ben, you best get it in now. Before we wrap up though, I did want to mention…a couple weeks ago or maybe it was last week…the time flies. I opened up a survey for officehours listeners. It’s over @office hours.fm/survey. I’ve had about 20 folks take it so far. Thank you to everyone who’s done that. Basically just trying figure out who’s tuning in so that I can continue to hone content and find guests that are the most interesting and can serve you best. So if you would take a moment I would greatly appreciate that. Then if you’re not getting reminders for the podcast and would like to, you can just do that over @officehours.fm/subscribe. Ok.

Ben: This could go on for another two hours. It’s nice when you can do it on somebody else’s dime.

Carrie: Nice. Well then, since you’ll let me carry on, I would love to thank Texas Texas Gi Spice for the kind five-star review over on iTunes. I really appreciate anytime someone drops off a little word of encouragement there. So thank you Texas Gi Spice. Love the handle there. Ok. So Ben. I don’t have any more questions from the audience. So that means you get to say whatever you want to say.

Ben: That’s a dangerous thing.

Carrie: You’re not bound by the questions.

Ben: That is dangerous. There are many many things I saw today that are not appropriate for this but were very funny. I suppose probably what I’d say is related to why I made the leap from being a freelancer to going into employment, don’t be afraid to actually make that jump. Freelancing (like Curtis McHale says) is not right for everyone. You’ve got to have a mindset and while I’m good at it, I enjoyed it; there are various things that are detrimental. I haven’t seen my friends much since I started freelancing which is a byproduct me living sort of…living a driving distance away from me as well equally the amount of time I’ve had off in the evenings as well has been that it’s not worth me driving over there to see them for 20 minutes and come back. I love them but 20 minutes with them is not enough time. If you feel that you are sort of struggling, that you’ve got the stress of money being either feast or famine don’t feel like you’re failing if you go back to working for someone. The reality is that you do development or you do design because you love doing development or doing design. People say yeah one of the amazing things about doing freelancing is that you get to choose your clients. That’s now always the case. You’ve got to take clients that you don’t enjoy working with. If they’re people that you don’t enjoy working with because they have a poor attitude they will cause you issues. If you work for someone, invariably it’s very rare that you are going to have to deal with those complaints. They’ll have processes in place so that the developers and the designers aren’t dealing with those people directly. It’s just nice to be able to go in, do your hours, get things done, get paid for  ultimately doing something that you still love doing and then have a couple of hours in the evening or like what I do…my girlfriend Vickie loves sleeping in…whereas I’m an early riser. Saturday morning I get up about 7:00 a.m. in the morning. She doesn’t get up until about 10:00 a.m. So I’ve got that three hours in the morning where I can go and do Treehouse, code a little bit of stuff. It gives you the ability to do that. Let’s face it. If you have that time and you are working freelance you’re probably going to use that time to work. It’s not healthy. Let’s face it. Office banter is some of the best banter. So it’s not a bad thing.

Carrie: That’s what Slack and Twitter are for.

Ben: Yeah. I’ll give you an example. There was a great one. Two of the designers who basically had Apple ear phones…you know how teenage girls have them in one ear and they share them. The project manager basically popped up over the dividers and went what the *%)@ are you two doing? It was like you look like a bunch of teenage girls listening to pop music in a playground. It was brilliant. It’s that type of little stuff you miss in Slack and that type of thing. I definitely feel like I made the right decision. We’ll see what I thing within a year’s time.

Carrie: Awesome. I’ll have to have you back on the show for a recap. A year in the life of an employed man. What happened next? All right Ben. Well we’re going to wrap this up. I very much appreciate you taking some time out your evening to join us. And thank you to everyone who tuned in and asked some great questions. I look forward to seeing everybody next week. Cheers!