# Recurring Revenue Playbook: Selling and Scaling WordPress Maintenance Plans | Josh Hall

Channel: Melapress
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kFhF2wF1f0
Duration: 1 hr 2 min
Language: English
Words: 12534
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/1kFhF2wF1f0

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[0:01] [music]

[0:09] [music] and we're on. Thank you very much for joining us today. Um before we start today's episode, some housekeeping items. The WordPress security survey is closed. We'll be publishing the results in September. Thank you everyone for everyone who participated. Uh we've crossed the 200 respondents mark. So we did very well this year, much better than last year. Uh last week also released some plug-in updates. So check the website, check our change log to get an idea of what we have released, what's new and improved. And also by the time this episode airs, I will be at Word Campus US. So if you you won't be there,

[0:53] you're missing some talks. Go to wordcamp.tv. I'm pretty sure that within a few days all those talks will be on maram.tv. Now in regards to today today's guest la during the last episode we had Kyle from the admin bar where we discussed you know the whole process about signing clients. So kind of like this week's episode is a continuation of that because we have someone who had his own agency but now is running a sort of community to help uh designers, web designers or developers build their own agency and their own business. And we're going to talk about the followup of once you sign up a customer, what comes next

[1:29] to maintenance and scaling up the business. And to speak to us about that is Josh Hall. Hello Josh. How are you? Hey, I'm doing great Robert. Thanks so much for having me on man. I am pumped to be here. You're welcome. Um so to start off with for those who don't know you, can you just give us a brief introduction and tell us a bit what you do and how you

[1:48] are involved with WordPress? Yeah, so today I am the founder of Web Designer Pro. It's a community. It's a small community of web designers, freelancers, solarreneurs, and agency owners who are just learning and building and growing together. Uh most of them are WordPress users, but we actually cater to folks who are even outside of WordPress now. Um but prior to that, I was a web designer for a decade and ended up selling my business

[2:11] in 2020 when I started teaching online. My first course, coincidentally enough, was how to build recurring revenue with a maintenance plan because that just changed my life. And I'm happy to share my experience of what I'm seeing work today with that. U but I sold it to actually one of my students who took his business to six figures largely based off his maintenance plan. And so now I still am a consultant for that agency. I I oversee what's working and and what they're doing, but I'm able to to fully just focus on my community. And I'm also the host of the web design business podcast. So uh since we're in podcast

[2:41] land, if you haven't given that a go be a nice compliment as well. I've been doing that since 2019. So, um, I've been fortunate to, yeah, I I've got like probably a hundred years worth of education all in 440 plus episodes at this point. So, pretty cool. I real feel real fortunate to be where I'm at in the

[2:59] industry. Wow. Really interesting. We'll definitely add a link to the podcast in the show notes. Uh, before we starting on LinkedIn, you said you used to be a cabinet maker. I did. Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't [laughter] sure how Yeah. I wasn't sure how far you wanted to go back. Yeah. So, I was just

[3:15] curious. Yeah. Yeah, sure. I was actually a cabinet maker for actually a tour bus customizing shop. So, I worked on like Johnny Cash's bus, Metallica's bus one time. And then at the same time, I was a metal drummer in a rock band and I got laid off from my cabinet making job and because I was doing the band thing. We were traveling around and I just had an interest in art and design and so I got into Photoshop and then I actually started with graphic design because I did our t-shirt designs, our CD artwork and then we were playing a festival one time and somebody asked, "Hey, who did

[3:49] your artwork?" And I said, "I did." and uh they asked how much would you charge to do ours and I was like wow I can make money at something I actually enjoy doing. Uh so that's what got me started in graphic design and then I found out really quickly that all roads lead to websites and then I got into web design and then built my my business from

[4:07] there. Interesting. We we share a lot of common. I'd like to be honest I'd like to I've been thinking about buying a van because I go a lot to the bicycle with children like some sort of camper van etc. And also, yeah, I listen to a lot of metal. It's funny you mentioned metal because I've just been a few months ago to a a band's reunion. It's a band called The Gathering, which I used to listen when I was 18, 19. It's funny cuz I was at their concerts when I was 18, 19. And back then, basically, everyone was young with long hair, etc. And now all the

[4:38] visitors, everyone's with short hair or bald or with white beard basically. [laughter] That's so true. And everyone actually has enough money to buy beer now. So, yeah. Exactly. At least that's the difference. Yeah, good. So, let's jump right away. So, yeah, as I said in the introduction last week, we spoke about the onboarding process. Now, once you on board the customer, you had your own agency for a number of years and now you're actually yeah, teaching others basically through a community that you have built how to maintain those customers and how to grow your business. So, let's so you have engaged a new customer. Let's start what

[5:12] comes first basically what what's the focus? Well, to kind of frame this all around recurring revenue, there's a few different ways to go about this. And honestly, I'd love to say like there's one triedand-true way to do it, but I found so many different ways work. Some people will not even take on a customer unless they agree to a maintenance plan and hosting for at least maybe a term of like 12 months. What I did personally was I was really transparent with clients right from the get-go and saying that we're going to start with just building the project. It's either paid upfront or usually 50/50, like 50

[5:46] upfront, 50 upon completion. And then at the end, we have our hosting and maintenance plan to help support you and to be there along your side monthtomonth. That way, you can lean on us for any additional add-ons and changes and and support moving forward. That worked really well for me and that works really well for a lot of my

[6:04] community members at Web Designer Pro. Um, I know some people I've one thing I've seen work pretty well is that they will basically just give one month free of hosting and maintenance after a site goes live and then they after a first month most clients are down to keep on continuing if there's a nice report and um there's some support behind it. So that's kind of what worked for me as far as like doing the project, but then also letting them know, yes, there's a subscription, there's a recurring revenue plan, but it does give them the

[6:34] option to move forward or or pass on it. Um, because I think what one thing that's hard is, you know, recurring revenue, recurring revenue is hard to sell and it's a lot easier to sell a one-off product or project, but not everyone wants to engage in a subscription right away. So I like I still today I mean this worked back in 2000 a decade ago 2016 and it still works today. I like building trust in a relationship and clients are going to be way more interested in support you know doing a support plan moving forward. So that was kind of the process that worked for me. One-off project sprinkle in that

[7:14] we have a maintenance plan and then hard sell once the project is close to completion. That's that's a very interesting selling point. Uh I agree with you that of course there are multiple different ways of selling things. I think it's also good to judge the the the client as well. Maybe get an idea of what they want, what they're looking for. But yeah, I I like your idea actually because many people very good point uh just push for recurring revenue right away. But I don't know you yet and it's my website, you know, I mean, okay,

[7:44] maybe you'll tell me the price, etc. It's good that what you mentioned that by building the website you at least we work together for a few hours because to build the website to go through the project they you I'm sure you already have a few meetings you know they get to know they get to know how you work right and basically get a feel of what you do totally and especially if anyone uses the model that worked for me which is build a website and then do do the maintenance after one thing I would do is if you do give them any amount of time after a project goes live if you

[8:14] just completely rock their world with customer service and support and sharing results as quickly as possible, they it'll be the easiest sale in the world. And that's what I found to be to be true for me because, you know, if you if you want to start off with even like subscription web design, which is a model that works, too, which is where you might just say, you know, we just have a monthly plan, maybe it's 197 or 297 a month, and it's a 12 month contract or 18-month commitment. It's just it's a harder sell. And if somebody doesn't know you, especially nowadays in the age of

[8:47] distrust with AI and everything else, it's just going to be hard to get somebody to commit to a full year, year and a half because that's their business, you know, that's their baby. If if they have a bad experience with you, but they're committed to a year, I understand from a client's perspective, that'd be a really hard sell. So, yeah, I just I really like building that relationship first and then selling the

[9:05] recurring revenue services. Nice. H you also said first you build the project and then you kind of, you know, like sprinkle ideas that, hey, we have also maintenance. How how do you go about that? At what stage? Because you don't want to build the website and they're now it's too late and they're gone kind of thing. But you don't want also to be all the time like, hey, I'm building your website, but you have this. You don't want to be pushy either because you might push them away. So, can you tell us a bit more like how you find the balance on how you sell like

[9:30] the the maintenance plan? So, I like having it on the website. Um, I have a kind of a framework that has worked for so many of my community members and it worked for me, which is build, support, grow. So most of my website builds were of course in in the build category of services and then on the website I have website support and that way even if they don't click anything there they at least see it and know it's a service. Uh and then for anyone who has like a growth plan or a strategy or any ongoing services that's what kind of the the third category is

[10:02] for. But practically how I sold that was in the beginning with a proposal I would I would pretty much mention it everywhere. I have it in the contract. I have it in the proposal that we do offer hosting and maintenance. Um, and we'll we'll cross that bridge basically once we get towards the end of the project and then we can support you as you go live. Um, and then I really don't mention it during the project just because I don't want to if you're in the middle of a project, I think it's important to serve and not just sell constantly. So, I usually just wait until they're super happy. And then once

[10:35] we get ready to do the final tweaks and revisions, and I say, "All right, this is the final stage of the prog the project. Here's our deadline." Uh, just a reminder, after this, we have our monthly maintenance and support plan. I sold it right away once we went live or right before we went live, but again, a lot of people do a month free, which is fine, too. I personally did not do that, but that can work as well. And so once the site goes live, then we do our hard sale as far as like, okay, the site is live, our maintenance plan, our hosting can kick off month-to-month. No

[11:08] pressure, no risk. The site is yours. If you ever want us, you know, for any reason, if you move, the site is completely yours. I do always recommend including the hosting though. and as somebody in the security side of WordPress um you know like you said you don't want somebody to move to a less trustworthy host we'll call them and [laughter] and then wonder like well I'm not going to maintain the site if if I'm

[11:33] not controlling the hosting environment. So I always recommend getting people on your hosting. You still give them the freedom to move if they want to in the future but um it's it's critical to have hosting in there I found. Plus, like I know this question will come up. What if somebody already has hosting at Blue Host or GoDaddy or something and

[11:55] you you don't host there? Buy them out. I always recommend spend the extra hundred bucks or 150 bucks and just buy them out and have them move to your hosting because it is worth every penny. It's so much better to build your recurring revenue. And I'm happy to talk about price points, but I just recommend buying them out, getting them to your hosting and and maintenance plan, and then that recurring revenue starts immediately. Good. So I I think good point. In fact, I was going to ask you like what's the difference? Because getting them on your hosting, it's easier when they are new, but if they

[12:24] have a website, of course, and they are somewhere else somewhere else, you have to move them. Um, so when it comes to maintenance plan, one thing that's standing out from what you are mentioning, it's very important to have like a a standard list of things. No, it doesn't make sense for an agency or a designer or developer to have a client with this host, a client using these plugins, a client using plugins. like how do you go about especially from your early days you started how how did you shape that sort of uh framework or that list of things that that uh that are included in the maintenance plan? It

[12:56] definitely evolved from client needs and like what type of scope of projects I was doing to I got pretty serious about I will not maintain a site that is on I I actually had a list of platforms that I just will not maintain sites on because I don't trust them and I can't be liable if they get hacked or the performance is bad. However, I made I don't know. There was a couple clients who were really good clients that were in the medical field and they had to have their sites hosted on this like HIPPA compliant IT service. So, I was like, "Okay, obviously you're a great

[13:30] client. We'll do what we have to. I'll work with your IT team." But um I would always recommend everybody have like basically a list of of hosts that you will not uh you know work on sites on just because it affects you, it affects your tools, it affects how the tools connect with that hosting platform. It

[13:46] reflects optimization, all those things. So, my maintenance plan was a mix of plug-in updates, basic optimization, um, monthly reporting on just basic site stats, and then the big seller for me was because clients, some clients understand that, but some clients don't understand that a website is is not a living and breathing breathing thing, but it is a living thing digitally on the internet, and it's like a car. it needs maintenance or it will break down or if you leave it unlocked it's going to get hacked eventually. So security was an aspect of that and we could talk about tools to manage all that but um those are all things in the maintenance

[14:24] plan but the biggest seller by far was I said that we are in your corner every month you get one hour of support for anything that you need that's on the site a team member changes copy tweaking if so there's something you want to add that's you know within the confines of what we can do on your site within that we'll take care of you I was really worried about because at my peak I had over 75 projects that we for maintaining in websites and I was like what if 75 people are messaging me every month that's a ton of time it was like a fraction of that that would that would

[14:57] need work there were a couple hight touch clients but I found that like 90% of clients never had anything and then I might hear from them like once a quarter so that was the basis of my plan was updates basic optimization basic security um few other like reporting few other things in the maintenance plan uh based off of whatever tool you choose to to maintain the site and then one hour of support and that sold like gang

[15:21] busters for me. Nice. Yeah, the supporting is the same. We do sell plugins. We develop and sell our own plugins and it's is it's true like usually it's a very small percentage of people and you get used to these people because some of some customers are those ones which are always emailing every month for example with a free update. There are people who you never hear from them and they use your plug-in for five, six, seven, eight years you know or there are those people who send like one occasion every month and then in reality no one really gets in touch. I mean there might be a

[15:48] customer or two who might be like almost every two three weeks sending some email but but on top of that and I would say just on that Robert like I would have a higher tier plan for the intensive folks or like if you're doing e-commerce and they're relying on you on a lot and they want more time than an hour. If you're down for it I would make it available like typically what I recommend is having two tiers public but then a hidden tier and I'll explain. So, like the the main standard signature tier, $99 a month is a really common price point that is still selling so

[16:23] well for hosting and maintenance. Some people dip down to 79 and but I've seen folks do 129 to$149 a month for the same services as that plan. That seems to be a sweet spot that's still selling today in 2026 left and right. And then I would have a higher tier plan that's basically just more support time if they need it. And generally, I'd recommend at least doubling that price. So, you may look at like anywhere between 200 and 300 a month for like pretty intensive support, especially if it's a larger scope project or a membership or an e-commerce site. But then I always recommend having a hidden fallback plan and just hosting

[17:01] and basic maintenance. No support time, but just you're in their corner and they could get your discounted hourly rate. That's another perk of the maintenance plan is they get a discounted hourly rate for any ongoing work or retainers that's outside of that. And then those you could do for anywhere between 49 and maybe 69 a month. But uh that's only like a fallback plan. That's if somebody says, "Listen, we can't swing 99 bucks a month. We just launched the site. I don't have it in the budget." I came in and said, "Well, we do have just I was like, "We don't publicize this, but we do have um just a basic plan. That way

[17:33] we can at least support you. make sure you have the the all the optimization stuff in place with good solid hosting and there's no, you know, ongoing support, but you can ping us anytime and you'll get your discounted rate on our hourly rate that setup worked a decade ago and it works just as good today. I'm happy to report. So, so it's it's literally just recurring revenue, not for nothing because you are hosting them, but then they have then if they need support, they pay a discounted rate for an hour or something and Yep. Yeah, they just don't get your ongoing hourly um rate. But again, it's

[18:08] not something I recommend advertising because I have found if you give people three tiers, they're always going to go for the lowest tier unless there's a really clear difference. So, a lot of people would see 99 or 129 and say, "Well, I don't really know if I need to do that hour. I'll just do the basic plan." So, I like having that as a fallback plan. And it's nice to have client and that wouldn't include monthly reporting either. that would literally

[18:32] just be hosting and just updating plans. So, um I like having that difference and yeah, the fallback plan's great. The last thing I'd say on that is if somebody just does not move forward with the plan, uh I have a whole course on on how to do maintenance plans. And in there, I have a liability release. And what that says, it's basically just your plan listed out. And if somebody denies your plan, you just send them that and say, "Okay, no problem. you can always come back to us if you choose to to have us support you, but just know you are liable for this, this, this, this, this,

[19:04] this, this, this, this, this, and this. [clears throat] And then suddenly they're like, oh, so if a site gets hacked, you know, good luck. You can talk to us, but it's our full hourly rate and, you know, it's, you know, you're not going to be a priority because you're not on our maintenance plan. Of course, said maybe a little nicer. Um, of course, but it is that that I found to be really key is to send them that liability release. And it's not a scare tactic, but it's almost like a disclosure and a protection for web designers because the last thing you want is a client to get

[19:34] hacked and then they're mad at you, but you're like, well, you didn't do our hosting and our maintenance plan, but they don't really probably understand that. So, that's been a huge help as well to help clients feel like, oh, okay, yeah, let's at least do the basic plan and then you can upsell them whenever they need more support moving

[19:50] forward. Of course. Yeah. talking about all the different plans, the hosting, secure hosting and all this stuff and customer trust. So, one of the biggest problems I've I encounter people myself, you know, sometimes you're somewhere at a public event or people ask you what do you do? I work with a website and there's always that someone that had a website, has a business, they're not into it or WordPress, they just had a website. Um, but they have no they need

[20:14] to update it, but they have no idea. They had some argument with the designer, whoever it was. So they no longer have access to the website etc. How do you go about that? Because you are hosting them uh you offer them support. Let's start from the basics. Uh do your do the clients or do you recommend clients should have admin access to the websites? How do you

[20:36] go about that? Depends like if there's any chance for them not to have access. That's ideal. or the the next best thing is to just give them like very limited access which luckily with pretty much every WordPress builder in WordPress out of the box. You can set pretty good user like they may just be an editor on WordPress or they may just have like I use Divvy so um you could do a lot with like Divvy for example to basically give them a different experience that is like [clears throat] you know they don't they can't blow up the site or take it down which can happen. Um, but I do like I

[21:08] found too I do recommend giving them access if they want it even briefly because most clients do it for a bit and they're like, "Okay, actually you just do it." Like I'm sick of like trying to figure this out. You just do it. We'll pay you extra or whatever. And then you could always delete their user profile on the website. But, um, I do give folks access typically if they ask for it. Um, some clients of course are going to need different training. I do recommend I have a client resources page which is almost like a little suite of like a dozen tutorials that are just super

[21:38] basic like here's the theme that we use. We use WordPress. This is how to do posts. This is how what your your experience in the builder is going to look like. This is basic SEO tips if you do a blog post. This is how to organize your images and media files. So, um at least you know basic training based off of what your stool your tool stack is is what I'd recommend. Um, but yeah, I, you know, if a client doesn't want to touch their website, that's the best, but most clients want to at least have access and yeah, I'd make a way for them to just

[22:08] have limited access basically. Have you ever had like this sort of convers like upfront as soon as you take over a website or build a website? Do you tell them up front that they don't have because sometimes I feel it's a bit I wouldn't say weird, but you know, like the website is yours, you're paying for it, but you don't have full access. Like how how do you explain that? It's in our It's in our contract that they can have access if they want. Of course, their website is there. So, like if they ever moved hosts or or moved from us, then we would give them a user login. But I

[22:38] mainly would always just, you know, pretty much take it based off of what the the client is saying. Like, if I think they're going to want to do blogs, for example, or make content tweaks or something, then we'll we'll usually talk about it on the process and then we'll just plan to have a a specific access point for them. Um, but there are a lot of clients who, especially serious business owners, who they're like, I'm not the web designer. I'm not touching that. Or they may have a team member who has access. That's more common, especially when you're working directly with an owner is they may say like, we

[23:10] have a marketing person who is going to want to jump in and do this or we're using a an SEO agency who is going to want access. And that's where we would assign that access point for them. Um, yeah, there's, you know, security concerns, but that could always be something that is maybe on the this the main tier and maybe on the basic tier for a maintenance plan. It just doesn't include, you know, client access. But, um, yeah, I try not to over complicate it and, you know, most clients are pretty cool, but I mean, I've had nightmare situations where clients are just either one completely blowing up

[23:40] the design, which is the worst. Um, but then, you know, they may be installing plugins. That's also something I'd have as a clause like in a contract, which is if a client installs a plugin that is not in our tool stack or or trustworthy network, we are not liable for it. So the client can't come to us and say, "Josh, why is the website hacked or why'd it go down or why is it slow when we just discovered they loaded 17 plugins in and they're not vetted." So it's important to make sure that's covered if a client takes over. So do you you do recommend designers,

[24:10] developers and agencies to have like also like a full stack of plugins like these are the ones we support. If you need anything else kind of thing like let us know and and then you work with C as you said like they not allowed to install oh I like this idea just install a plugin. Yeah I mean that's ideal of course it may depend on like how assertive you are as far as like you know like we do not allow plugins to be updated. That's always like or at the very least it would have to be maybe approved by you. That's that's something that could be done. I never did that,

[24:40] but um we always had like just like a tool a recommended tool stack, but you know, there may be a rare situation where they want some sort of functionality that's not in our typical suite of services and then yeah, we'd be okay to look at a plugin, but we would need to make sure it's it's vetted ideally before just, you know, supporting it basically because it's weird, you know, like web designers end up being support for like a plugin that you may or may not know. So if that's the case, then that would need to be at a different hourly retainer or something if it's something that you don't know

[25:12] cuz it's not in your recommended tool stack. Definitely. Definitely. Um you when we talk about web design, at what stage you are a web designer or developer building websites? Um at it sounds easier said than done, but at what stage should you start like as you said like at one point you had 75 uh clients um uh contracted. At what stage do you start uh yeah thinking of hiring someone else to help you with maintenance plans? Luckily, I think it's maybe like the best way to build recurring revenue as a soloreneur. I mean, you can get pretty far at that point at our height. What the setup that

[25:51] I had in my very small lean mean I didn't even call it an agency. I just called it a web studio is my wife before we had kids was actually doing our monthly reporting through manage WP and like literally going in and doing updates at least the basic ones unless there was like you know WordPress you know 3.0 to 4.0 or whatever. Um, and then I had a designer who was doing a lot of the ongoing support requests at that level. Um, so I wasn't actually even personally involved barely at all other than like highlevel updates and and maybe some highlevel client challenges or or new projects. Um, I

[26:27] don't know if there's a magic number, but basically what I would say is try to max out how much you can do by yourself and and luckily with tool I mean I used to use manage WP, now I'm with WP Umbrella. I think you're connected with Aurelio and and Yes, I know. Yeah, they're awesome. More recently moved over to Umbrella. really happy with them, especially from a security perspective and just a solid um you know like sound secure tool stack for for managing sites. Um but there's other ones. There's infinite WP, there's MainWP, a bunch of hosts have have options now, but I would basically try

[27:02] to like see what you could automate and then delegate and try to get as much done as you can. Of course, that may depend. Some people are really interested in scaling really quickly and they don't want to touch a website. Some people like myself, I like begrudgingly started to to hire out and delegate. I was like, "No, I I'm I do it all. I can figure it out." But then I got to a point personally where I had like 23 projects all on my shoulders and various sizes and shapes of projects and my daughter, my first daughter was due in like two months and I was like, "Okay,

[27:37] I cannot do this on my own anymore." I like officially had to start scaling at that point. So, I got some help. But, you know, it looks different for everybody. Um, but I would say as soon as you feel like um you can't market your business and work on your business and you just feel like you're mostly just reacting, it's time. It's time to get Yeah. As soon as you're building more websites and actually recruiting new

[28:02] customers, most probably. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good Yeah, that's a good metric. Yeah, for sure. Yes. And did you was did you hire actually full-timers or I mean honestly like nowadays with remote workers and stuff I think it's much easier. Yeah. even if not full-time but as you said you had a designer doing some support but I think it's very important even from day one and that's why most most probably it's very good to be part of these communities like the one you are building to have different contacts because sometimes yeah there's a big update when websites broke down so you might need one of someone to help you right or

[28:37] well I'm so glad you said that because that's what I was going to say you just gave me the yeah that was a nice softball lead into web designer pro I mean that's one of the main reasons I I built web designer pro is to have a network of just like automatically trusted web designers. Um, and yeah, there are some people who are heavier on development or tech or we have like an email specialist who he just loves domains and email and hosting configurations. I hate that stuff, but

[29:05] he loves it. So, he's a great partner. Um, so yeah, you want to, you know, obviously whether it's web designer pro or like Kyle's group, the admin bar, obviously it's it's a much bigger community, but like, you know, have a network, a support network for sure to lean on. And then one thing I learned when I started to scale is I went very

[29:24] small, one small step at a time. Jonathan, who ended up becoming almost a full-time designer for me eventually, I started with one little CSS thing I couldn't figure out. He nailed it. Knocked it out of the park. Then I had him do like a section design of a page. He did really good. Then I felt comfortable with him doing like a full page. And then eventually I was more of the creative director and I did the

[29:47] homepage design and a couple main pages. And then he would just take it and run doing all the deliverables for the rest of the site. And then I got to the point where I'm like, he's like way better than I am now at design. So I'm just gonna have him design the site. And he

[30:00] kind of came crave director for a while. So that's kind of the this the the process that I took to to scale one step at a time. And then I had a developer who's still with me today in Web Desenter Pro and just he's just a master at WordPress and plugins and configured literally anything out. So they were all contractors though. There was never anyone who was like a W2 employee for me. Um it was always just basically I mean Jonathan was almost full-time with his amount of hours but it was still on a contract basis. And um my wife once we started having kids moved into just

[30:34] being a stay at home mom and then um started having you know the the maintenance plan stuff scaled out with our team. But even today that agency that I sold in transit my CEO who who bought it and took it over he's not in the weeds doing the updates. We have a designer who is also client lead and support and then we have a main developer who's doing most of the kind of like actual deliverables and getting into the code and doing the stuff. Um, so there's a lot of ways you can either have one foot in the door if you want to or just be completely removed from the

[31:07] support altogether. And there's a lot of services out there like I'm friends with the folks at Focus WP and they offer white label maintenance. So, like if you don't want to do the maintenance or make a relationship to to handle that as a referral partner or build a team, you can, you know, hire them or another outfit that's similar to do the maintenance and then you just keep a small percentage of the profit, you know, margin per month. So, it's kind of awesome. There's just so many ways to go about it. It really is kind of dependent on, you know, what you want to do, what

[31:35] do you want your day-to-day to look like. No, very good point. The fact that you mentioned there are also services like you can literally nowadays just focus on the business. If it's technical problem, you that agency can help you if it's a design problem that person can help you etc. And that's why it's good to have uh communities like yours basically to find

[31:53] uh these type of people. How much uh running this whole um community how much are you seeing now especially websites tech etc shift? How much AI is changing things? How much talk are you seeing about it and yeah what have you seen? Oh, it's it's fascinating from a security perspective because vibecoded sites I mean I don't know Robert you tell me like what are the secure I'll I'll certainly share what I'm seeing but from a security perspective like I don't even because I'm not a vibe coder I don't even know what that looks like from a security standpoint we uh we've we of course we've been

[32:32] experimenting here and playing around and doing our own stuff uh you you if you want to move as fast competition you have to use AI. But of course, there's ways and means how to do it because um if you just go to to to cloud or open AI, whatever um and you say I want a plug-in that does ABC without any sort of training or whatever, then it's going to give you a plug-in that does ABC. But yeah there are if you log into LinkedIn or go on secret websites there are millions of incidents where I don't know you can easily retrieve the client's information or you can get backend

[33:09] access through a back it is very easy because the it has no checks however you can build the system you can um especially if you are uh if you have a technical background uh it's very important development is is like a language you're writing a language um But even though AI can speak that language, it still needs some guidance. Um, so it's good to have some foundational background you and and as a person using AI in a technical understanding what things are. So let's say I want to build a plug-in u I don't know that sends an email every time someone logs in for example. I can either write a simple

[33:48] prompt write a plug-in that sends me an email whenever someone logs in. Um or I can write I can write uh um start building it piece by piece like I want a plug that sends emails. Uh make sure you check I don't know doesn't there are no open relays for example SMTP etc. Uh and then uh for um I want to have an option like that it always add that check that it always sends an email to the user's email and no one can basically temper with that you know. So it's it's it's up to you. more you know about how products work the better the

[34:22] better you can do. So you can still you can still vibe code some things but I personally have yet to see like a really good project you know you see it on LinkedIn especially people say oh I've just spent a weekend building our new CMS I've seen good projects with by the way but they take more than a weekend usually because you have to really because even like the development process if you're integrating it integrating it with GitHub you know um there's the whole process of okay uh are we going to use um uh PHP code sniffer

[34:53] PHP 10 integrating with GitHub action. So whenever there's a PR you run these checks you know telling the the AI model the LLM model uh configuring agents to say hey whenever you write code make sure you you use the the WordPress coding standard etc. So there is a lot that you can do and just just setting up before actually start writing a plug-in just setting up a whole GitHub repository with all the rules all the checks and balances etc. that can easily take you to a few days just doing that by itself. And then of course you can guide the the the it still makes mistakes of course and it's still very

[35:29] important to double check things. Uh what's what I'm I'm seeing as well which is which is quite effective. Uh because not everyone some people have a technical mindset they are builders but they don't know how to write code. So yeah people say okay read the code but they don't understand anything or at least have a basic understanding. What I've seen is a lot is what's important is when you are building something you also add a lot of testing automated testing you have [clears throat] um yeah you have uh integration testing end to end testing unit testing so while you are building whenever you add a new

[36:04] functionality make sure that AI also adds automated testing that hey does this integrate well with the other components does this work as it should be end to end when this user does this does it really behave like this so so yeah the more you can the more test you can add the more you can automate the better product it will be there will always be mistakes and developers write also also developers it doesn't have to be AI right uh nonsecure code you see you you still see some uh I wouldn't say silly but negligence vulnerabilities so yeah but it's a question of unfortunately I I I I look at WordPress the same thing

[36:40] unfortunately it's like oh everyone can write a plug-in so everyone quickly tries to fire code something I see I don't know what are your thoughts and that's why based that when you were talking about maintenance agreements from your what you were saying not just you by the way from what every professional says the less you allow the client to do the better it will work that's ideal especially if you're you know liable and well I mean exactly yes the liability is technically on the client but actually this is so timely Robert because um just before this we had our weekly web designer protocol and we're actually together we kind of

[37:13] started creating an AI policy and I think It's more important now than ever, especially with recurring revenue and maintenance plans, that you disclose how you're using AI, what AI tools you're using, what you will and will not maintain or support with client requests or client designs. Like one thing that's a big problem right now, especially if it's vibecoded, is let's say somebody creates a plugin that they vibe coded, but they're not a professional and they haven't done the checks and balances, they haven't done the testing, they don't have a support plan for it, they don't have any sort of gatekeeping or security in mind. That is a huge

[37:50] liability. Yep. That is you're now maintaining. So like for an AI policy, you may say we do not maintain or update any sort of AI tools that are not approved by us or you know just like just like WordPress plugins that are not trustworthy. To answer your question succinctly, that's the biggest problem that I'm seeing is there are untrustworthy Yeah. like DIY plugins, DIY tools, and tertiary to that is like DI DIY designs or AI slop designs that are now being sent to designers in Web Designer Pro from clients and they're like, "This is this is terrible. I'm not going to put this on the website." Or if they do,

[38:32] it's like they're they're having to like redesign an AI design just to fit with their current design that's professional. So, those are definitely the issues that I'm seeing. And I would, you know, just a quick tip on that is to make sure you get going on an AI policy immediately. Actually, on my podcast, the web design business podcast, I don't know when this goes live, but the episode will be dropping on next Thursday, August um I can't tell

[38:59] you exactly. It's August 20th. Okay, perfect. So, this same week that this is coming out, I'll have just released a uh a podcast episode on creating an AI policy. And it's just some guidance to to help you depending on your setup and your you know your your services and how you are or aren't using AI. But just being really clear about that. Plus, I think it's an important protection from clients because I've had some web designer program members take it very personally and get really upset, rightfully so, when clients are taking their design and moving it into AI or making AI designs and then just I mean, it's like a DIY

[39:36] builder from a decade ago building a Wix, you know, website or a GoDaddy builder website. And you know, those tools may would they they're okay in the hands of like a professional, but yeah, most DIYers are using those and they have no idea what they're doing. And it's really similar today. It's just instead of a Wix do-it-yourself builder, it's now an AI prompt and they're just able to just prompt and then just see things being created. But it doesn't mean that it's being created well. So yeah, for all those reasons and more, it's added some complexities. And I think the quickest way right now is a

[40:11] bit of a solution is just to have a policy and be really clear about what you will and won't support within your maintenance plan. Yeah. Yeah. Very good point. I think um especially with when it comes to website building, AI is being marketed as too easy. going full sec as I was saying with WordPress. I see and that's why I mentioned the less you allow the client to do the better it is for you because a client let's say you have a a bakery I don't know flower shop whatever any other business but you're not technical um yes we sell WordPress WordPress like oh the five the famous 5 minutes install

[40:46] free themes free plugins etc so yes most probably an average uh a normal business person who can use is handy with computers most probably can set up a website but people have there's a difference between set up a website kind of bit functioning website versus maintaining a website for a year for two for three and adding function there's a big difference and with is the same yes you can build a halfbroken plugin etc if you want to definitely very easy within an hour but yeah building an actual plugin or designing an actual website designing an extreme it takes much more than that so so they are the same thing

[41:23] WordPress and it's like we are overselling it's good don't get me wrong if you use This AI if you set up things correctly and use it correctly is very great tool but it should be in the right hands. The same like everything else with a knife. You can use a knife to carve something nice or you can use a knife to to to hurt someone. I mean the same thing you know. Have you seen but especially since you work a lot with you talk a lot with web designers and you were mentioning the recurring revenue and maintenance agreement. Have you seen a shift in perspective of the clients

[41:54] what they expect? Because listen, you were charging me 999 a month 3 months ago. Now you have AI. Why are you still charging me 999? Just have you seen that type of shift? Maybe people asking for more or something like that. I haven't mainly just because that's the plan that has like the the support aspect to it. I mean, by all means, if there's any AI tools with whatever you're using to speed up the workflow and this kind of to answer your question earlier like when should you hire? like I would absolutely rely on AI if you can automate things and get some help with that or if you have an AI agent that is

[42:28] trained on your you know your SOPs in your process for updating it actually may be able to do a lot for you without actually hiring another human to do it for you. Um but from a client perspective I think it's important to to put that in the policy on what's you know what's being used on their sites. But I haven't personally seen any clients say like, "Well, if you're using AI, I'm only going to pay 50 a month instead of 99 because it's really about the support experience." So, I think that's still again, it's like it's the human things that make services more

[43:01] valuable. It's the human experience. It's the human support. It's the human communication. It's the human strategy. It's the human skill sets that are are still really keeping web designers at a different level than like the do-it-yourself AI stuff. Because I have found too, I'm sure you've seen this as well, AI can, no matter what it is, whether it's whether you're using cloud code or whatever it is, it can be extremely overwhelming for somebody who doesn't know when to stop or how to to basically prompt correctly. Um because it's just an endless cycle and next thing you know I mean if anyone has got like coaching advice for example from

[43:43] chat GPT or whatever you know unless you have a really really clear prompt on giving like a a surefire answer it'll just it'll never stop. So, I think a lot of what's happening too is DIYers are probably, if it's not already happening, going to get to the point soon where they are just like so overwhelmed with the optionality and the endless like would you like to do this or would you like to do this where it's like I need somebody who's just professional to tell me like this is good or this is not good and when to stop and when to go live. So, it's going

[44:12] to be interesting to see that play out over the next year or two here with with AI being in the hands of DIYers basically because that's what happened. The big shift was 2023 when chat GPT went, you know, in the public sphere. DIYers had their hands on a powerful tool that's continuing to get more powerful. And like you've said very rightly so, Robert, AI is awesome if you know how to use it and if you're a professional and you would know, you have the context of experience on like good conversion, good site, good strategy, good experience, good best practices, good technical support, all that stuff. But you put that in the

[44:49] hands of a DIYer, good luck. They may something they may make something that looks pretty or just like halfway generic or sloppy. But yeah, you don't want that to be a representation of you as a professional. Yeah, as a matter of fact, you can spot I'm sure you've seen it. There's certain patterns that you can spot right away

[45:07] that website was built. I've seen a couple of times. It's always the same pattern. In fact, um at the last WordPress meetup I was in NA, the city where I live. Um yeah, we had this session where people tell you their URL and basically people criticize the web just just to learn what's wrong and there were three or four like you can spot right away different brands but completely same layout of the front page and stuff like that and I think that's where the again the tool uh the human element using it as a tool rather than relying completely on it just just just to build things you know is very

[45:43] important. Yeah. Yeah. And ju just to double click on what you asked, I I have not seen it affect maintenance plans as far as pricing goes. So that's good that's good news just because I don't know if clients are because it doesn't matter like if a web designer is saying we'll do your updates or monitoring or reporting whether or not you use AI shouldn't really be a concern to them. It's it's No, it's good because it's good to hear um it's good to hear that yeah people

[46:06] are still of course looking for people. I mean it happens to us as well, not just to us as plugin vendors. uh we're getting a bit more not often but someone for example encounters there's an issue with our plug-in uh they sends us an email instead of reporting the issue like hey I have this issue I asked and this is the problem please fix this code but wait like it's like maybe that works on your website but hey we have if you look at activity log we have almost half a million websites we have you know it's it's more simple than just changing a line of code have you seen any um

[46:36] interesting uh processes any any age any web web designers that have implemented any processes with AI that are helping them just to give you an idea because for example we talk about building things but sometimes even starting with the basics can help a lot like for us whenever we need to release an update of a plug-in we're not talking about code just release an update of a plug-in it's almost uh almost maybe not a full day of work but you know there's last bit of testing you update change locks update the website upload the files here etc we've automated most of that and does that and of course with a lot of guards

[47:12] but that's something it's very good at doing repetitive things when it's always the same hey you all copy the files there you move that have you seen any anyone like really taking advantage or some nice processes by web designers uh that are using them or some things that they have automated effective yeah it's kind of it's kind of a mix of like there may be automated processes and and I would probably separate the project like the the website build process and then the actual client process with like collecting content, doing revisions and having them write copy and all that. As far as like the actual website build, absolutely. I mean

[47:48] like staging site like I don't know if you how many people are like going into I use site ground clicking set up a WordPress site you know cloning over a staging site like there's a lot of processes like that that that are really really automated now which is great. Um, and then I have seen like more oneoff style approaches to where like when it comes to like I had a friend who just migrated I think 200 plus blogs from a previous site different platform over to WordPress and he used Nova to like just an MCP plugin to basically just like duplicate all the settings and he had a

[48:27] pretty beefy prompt to say like do not lose and because he's a professional he knows what to ask. Do not blow up the SEO rankings. Make sure you copy all the descriptions and titles and metadata and schema markup and everything and make sure it's perfectly moved over and the perma link set up and all this stuff to where like in under an hour 200 plus blog posts were moved and there was no SEO loss which is pretty amazing. Now you put that in the hands of a DIYer who's like hey we're moving to this site now but you can't blame the AI for not doing all those checks and balances. So, I've

[49:02] seen um some really cool case studies like that. And then absolutely, I think there's even more. I think AI is helping even more right now for web designers with the client facing side of things. For example, like instead of writing copy or waiting for a client to get copy, if you do a strategy call with a client and just ask them about their business and their customers and what they do, what they offer, use that transcript and feed it through AI to give you like really targeted copy based off of their needs. That can be a huge help. And obviously, you want to make it your own and and if you have a

[49:35] copywriter friend, even better. Um, but that's a good use case. I know like a lot of web designers are using prompts to help collect content and get things started and for revisions and things like that. Um, so things like that have been a a huge help on like the actual process of working with clients. Um, so a couple use cases there. Um, and I'm sure there are people who are further along than I am who are like really kneede and like actually are you

[50:04] familiar with Mark Sismansky? Uh, no. He has um he has a AI heavy channel, but he comes from a WordPress background and I kind of lean on him to to kind of learn. I'd be happy to connect you guys if interested. He'd be interested on the show um because he's very like AI first with his process. He'd actually have even more to share like with the actual process of building start to finish with AI. Um but he has a a a background of of WordPress and and

[50:30] knows you know what goes behind that. So, um, there are some I'm sure there are some processes as far as like being AI first start to finish, but I also I don't know the one thing I'm hesitant and if you can't tell by this point, I'm not against AI, but I am a late adopter and I'm I'm just quite hesitant on a lot of it. Um, I think one thing that I've thought more about recently is I don't want web designers to lose the love of the craft of building something and you know and designing and and honestly I I I can think back to times of my journey where I learned

[51:11] how to become a good designer and I learned to have a design eye and I learned I remember the first time I figured out this CSS thing that I was working on uh I was I just I still I'm not like a developer first guy. I'm a design first guy. So coding was really hard for me. But once I figured out the CSS trick, it like clicked. And then I became really proficient with CSS and really confident and comfortable with it. And I feel like one thing that's that's missing right now for a lot of web designers, especially younger folks who may not know the the intricacies of

[51:44] HTML and CSS and and the backbone of of anything online is they're missing the the progression, you know what I mean, of like going from newbie to not knowing anything to like next thing you know, you're like a professional. you know HTML and CSS and you know conversion design and you have an eye for design and you have a a different lens than clients do on copy and you think about user experience in a different way that's just like build me a nice website you know that's that's one thing that I'm a little fearful of of people missing out on yes um unfortunately uh it's even the

[52:21] same with de designers developers and everyone else um design uh even developers you basically learn by doing mistakes by breaking things and with AI you learn how if you especially have a technical mindset you learn how to prompt things but but you struggle to understand some some some basic troubleshooting things and it's it's in fact it's a it's a common problem I was at cloudfest earlier on this year it's a problem that it's also mentioned with security people and developers because to become a good developer you have to break things and AI is not allowing you to break things basically it's making a lot of things for you so

[52:57] having said And yeah for designers I would still say considering the the direction we are heading uh for anyone who has an agency web designer etc. I would definitely say even if you you are not using it for production I would spend a few hours a week just experimenting just playing because um even if you look at at the case of recurring revenue and stuff I'm sure maybe not to build but it will save you some time. I'm sure we'll find out how to automate some I'm sure like you you you've done a lot of repetitive work no as as an agency or web designer usually

[53:32] um forget the website building but then does the maintenance plan maybe even some support email some stuff every month you have to copy this file you you had a lot of that no as a as a sure oh absolutely especially good point folks who have been doing this for a decade or I mean I'm coaching people who have been doing it for 15 20 years at this point they've got processes And it's not easy to get somebody to change their process if they've been refining

[53:59] it for 15 years. Um, so like you know automating something that has been done by a team or that's that's a big ask for for an established agency owner who is now going to need to trust that an AI tool is is not going to break something or at the very least if they break something know how to fix it or tell somebody that they broke something. So, that that's certainly a big deal. Um, like and a lot and it's interesting about the like few hours a week because I think a lot of busy business owners, especially when they do become a true business owner of their web agency,

[54:35] you know, you you do have to almost be intentional, especially nowadays, to retool and learn and because it's just so easy to get stuck in your ways. And I think we're all probably guilty of this. Um, but myself like, yeah, like I I I have to remind myself like I can just like I learned to delegate and trust somebody to build websites for me, my agency, I need to learn and be comfortable to delegate and automate and trust some of these tools that are available now. Um, so I'm going through it too as far as that goes because yeah,

[55:07] you you know, you get set in your ways. This is really important, too. I mean, I' I've got like a couple members of Pro who are managing three, four, 500 plus clients. That's a big deal to move to maybe an AI agent that's updating things in bulk and there's not maybe maybe it's important to have human oversight. Um, but yeah, for all those reasons and more, I understand it's it's not an an easy thing for everybody just to say like,

[55:33] "Oh, yeah, I'll have AI do it." No, I agree with you. I think if they use it properly, designers Uh if the average designer could handle 100 customers, hopefully they can handle to 100. It helps on some things. Uh but yeah, you need to invest time. I'm like you uh especially I'm assuming most web designer, especially if you are on your own yet freelancer, you're always busy doing other things. And the last thing you the last thing you're going to do is spare some time to decide just to play around with something new. Um I we're we're all busy. I'm the same. like I had now finally the last few months I've

[56:06] been like put some hours aside just to sit down and just to play around and that's the only way to grow and we we AI or not we work in an industry even design not just the technical aspect design these are things that evolve it's not like a job like a factory job where you do something the same for 20 years and designs are designs are evolving people have new tastes people have new ideas is evolving so as as a web designer especially if you want to keep on earning that recurring revenue and winning customers you have to also put some time to decide to stop doing what

[56:40] you're doing and I think as there's a difference this between working for your business and working on your business and people need to especially if you're on your own a freelancer building something and getting some customers with recurring revenue you still need to spend some time to detach yourself from working for your own small business to to work on it and invest on other

[57:03] things, right? Totally. It's also that idea of like investing in learning and then maybe implementing new tools. One thing to remember too is if you have a team, they need to be involved with this as well. So you as the owner of the business, if you have a few hours and you're like, "Okay, we're going to use, you know, Claude and the MCP tool and

[57:21] Nova and a couple other things." You know, that's going to need to be an entirely new level of learning for your team as well. And then this the standard operating procedure needs to be updated, needs to be disclosed in your AI policy and needs to be, you know, factored in. So, um, be interesting to see like what agency owners who have a pretty big team are doing as far as like are they doing learning sprints together. I'm I'm thinking about some of the members I'm coaching who do have a bigger team and it seems to be a bit of a mix because of course you know there may be a developer

[57:55] who isn't running the business so they have all the time in the world to experiment and play that you know the owner doesn't have time for. So that could be a benefit could be a curse too because again if the team is doing something that you don't know and they're using tools that you don't know they're using that needs to be disclosed as well just internally. So I'm sure you know with Malipress I'm I don't know what that looks like for you guys but I imagine there's got to be you know some leeway to to play around with stuff but also there's got to be some standards

[58:22] that stick to before any you know companywide changes. Yeah. No definitely that's what we're doing. So basically we're allocating I think Google used to do this in the early days. I'm not sure if they still do it. Um so Google they started as Google but then Gmail you know they do everything Google. Most of these projects were set because

[58:42] Google used to people work at Google. I'm not sure if it was one day a week or half day a week where you can work on anything you'd like. Just work on anything you'd like and then if it's a cool project, it will grow in Google. And we're doing the same with AI. We're right now uh asking everyone, hey, uh spend four or five hours a week. Do what you don't don't don't touch any work things, but do what you want with the experiment. Maybe you'd like to automate something from your work. Don't do it live but experiment two things. If you think it can work, let's discuss it and

[59:13] let's how we can use it. But yeah, it just gives people the freedom to do what they want with AI and then yeah, if it's something that can work, let's let's use it in our in our business. Why not, you know, and I think it's very important especially for designers because when you're on your own, I remember my days on your own and I'm sure you remember yours as well. You struggle to find time to learn and it's very important to

[59:32] experiment with new things. Yeah, it's it's interesting. You know, it may depend on someone's experience or where they're at in business, but you do seems like everyone gets to a point where you just realize like, oh my gosh, I've become a business owner. And you know, it's it's funny like I used to love tinkering around with CSS. I used to love a new feature in Divvy, which is the builder that I've stuck with. And um you get to a point where you're like, I have no bandwidth to learn something new. I'm just trying to keep up with, you know, with the with with the

[1:00:02] business and then sales and marketing. So yeah, kind of going back to what we touched on earlier, if you're there, it's it's time to get some help for sure. Yeah, it's a mind shift. It's a mind shift. I remember when I started employing the first people, uh just because it started as a hobby, part-time project, etc. Even when it became full-time, took me actually a few years until I started to make it, oh, this is my job because it was, you know, like it's it's it's a my mind, this is my business where you were just busy working doing what you're doing. But

[1:00:32] yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Every every web designer from what I've experienced most all web designers start as a hobby then it becomes a job and then it becomes a business. For some of us it becomes an exit. So exactly. Yeah. There's like stages of of a web design business. Yeah definitely. Thanks a lot Josh. Uh we can

[1:00:53] go on for hours but time is running out. Uh before we end this episode, can you give us more information where people can get in touch with you, learn more about you, and follow what you're doing? Yeah, you can go uh if you want to check out my community, webdesignerpro.com. If you go to webdesignpro.commpodcast, uh there will be a little special something there for you uh as a as a listener of this. And then my podcast is

[1:01:18] called the Webdesign Business Podcast. Um if you want to check that out and again, I do have an episode coming out this week. It's already live by the time this comes out about creating an AI policy. So, I hope that's a help. Um, my personal site is joshhaul.co. That's where I have my podcast and all my other stuff going on. But, uh, yeah, some links there. I'd definitely love to help everyone out if you're serious about

[1:01:39] building your web design business. That's really my focus is on the business side of web design. So, great. Uh, we're going to, of course, add some links to the show notes, uh, so people can head to your website. Thank you very much, Josh. Thanks. It was really nice catching up with you. Thanks everyone for listening and we'll see you

[1:01:55] at the next episode. Thanks, Robert. Thanks. Thanks. [music]

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