049 - Selling Website Hosting & Maintenance Plans with Jake Kramer

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Josh Hall web design show, web design show, helping you build better websites and create a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love. (upbeat music) - Hey everybody, welcome in, episode 49. In this one, man in this one, we are gonna get into the ins and outs of selling a website hosting in maintenance plan and this is a huge episode. This is something that if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know I'm a massive proponent of creating maintenance plans and creating more specifically hosting and maintenance plans for you and your agency because of the recurring income you can build as a web designer. So for this talk to dive into this in more detail, I wanted to bring somebody in who quite frankly knows what the heck they're talking about with this subject. So I've brought in a trusted colleague of mine, Jake Kramer, and he is with a digital design agency in Lincoln, Nebraska called Artillery Media and that probably sounds familiar because I had his partner, John Wootenon, who was another colleague of mine back on episode 18 and we talked about recurring income, but I wanted to do a separate episode to talk about specifically hosting and maintenance and not only how to craft your hosting and maintenance plans but more importantly, how to sell them. And the big trick here guys is that, well we'll talk about this in the episode but when you sell something that is ongoing, when you try to get a lead or a client to commit to something that is paying over and over and over again, the sales process is completely different than if you just get somebody to buy a one time website design. So we really talk a lot about the sales aspect of this and how you can position yourself to be able to build recurring income over and over and grow it and scale it over the long haul with these practices with having a maintenance and hosting plan. So I am just thrilled for you to hear this. Jake was very open about what they've done with his agency and the really cool thing about this is they have, in two and a half years, at the time of putting this out midway through 2020, see the beginning of 2018, up to now, they have taken in over 150 clients on their hosting and maintenance plans. So they have scaled this thing and they've done an incredible job. It's truly a model that is great to follow and I'm ecstatic to hear their process and how they did it so you can apply it to your agency and your business as well. So before we dive in, as you can probably imagine, if you are interested in doing this, either starting a WordPress maintenance plan or a hosting service or if you're interested in taking your current maintenance plan to the next level, I wanna help you. I wanna help you one on one directly with this and we can do that through my website, Maintenance Plan course. It's the first course I ever created and it's been helping hundreds of people all over the world with creating website maintenance plans. In that, we talk a lot of, actually a lot of this episode, I share from what I learned and creating a plan. So you're actually getting a lot of freebies from the course in this episode. But if you wanna take it to the next level, I dish out everything that is in my plan, how to create it, all the tools, all the strategies, you get all my templates, everything that I've learned from several years of building a maintenance plan, you can create a plan of your own or build up the one that you have currently and you can start, man, you can start building that crucial, splendid recurring income for you, your family and your web design business. So if you're interested in that, join today. I'd love to help you out with your website, Maintenance Plan. All right guys, without further ado, enjoy my really, really great in-depth chat about selling hosting and maintenance plans with my colleague Jake Kramer. Jake, welcome to the show, awesome to have you on, man. - Thanks for having me, Josh, appreciate it. - So I had your partner in crime, John Wooten on back on episode 18, we talked about different recurring income strategies for web designers, and as you can imagine, I don't know if you listened that episode, but your name came up quite a few times. I knew I was gonna have you on. We were, you and I, I think eventually are gonna talk a lot about client processes and onboarding and stuff, but what we talked about in that episode was Maintenance Plans, primarily. And you guys with Artillery Media have done just an outstanding job of growing a Maintenance Plan. And what we're gonna do in this episode is, we're just gonna kind of have some fun and have a case study style episode. And hear more about how you guys have brought in over 150 clients onto your hosting and maintenance plan and a two and a half year period. I mean, that is freaking awesome. So I can't wait to hear about that. I know my audience is gonna love this. It's so important as web designers to have some recurring income and one of the best ways to do that is exactly what you're doing through hosting and maintenance. So before we get into that, Jake, why don't you tell everybody, I'd like to start off with where you are and then what you do, what's your role in Artillery Media? - Yeah, you bet. Yeah, so ArtilleryMedia.com is kind of the mothership of what we both do. John and I, that is, and my wife, Haley, who's our project manager. We're located in the heart of the good old Midwest, Lincoln Nebraska, Go Huskers. And we build websites for folks using Divi, using WordPress all over the world. And we've been doing that now for quite a few years. And yeah, like you said, sometimes, which, thank you, Josh, thanks for those kind words. 'Cause sometimes it feels like when you're running a marathon, moving from, you know, mile 10 to mile 10.25 can be. So like, ah, but looking back on it with that context, yeah, you're right. We have made kind of some cool progress and that's something to remember and celebrate. So thank you. And that's, I mean, that's really impressive. Yeah, I understand like when you're in it, sometimes you don't really realize how good things are going or you don't really think about your accomplishments. Which that's why I'm big on reflecting and celebrating those wins and looking back and say, you know what, freaking 150 clients and two and a half years on our hosting. I mean, it's, that's awesome. That is awesome. So. - Yeah, we have this, we have this, I didn't have it behind me. Maybe I should have, but there's this big huge poster we have on our wall. It's just slow and steady wins. John got it all nice and done. He's obviously the wonderful designer. Everyone knows John Wooten, probably, who's listening, now I'm just kidding. But anyway, that's the kind of been the whole mantra because this whole snowball effect of what we're kind of going for here. My wife and I, Haley, we just recently did the Dave Ramsey get out of debt thing and he's really big into momentum, starting small and just tracking, making little wins, celebrating those wins and just keep moving, and yeah, looking back on it, that's kind of what we've been, we've been taking the same approach to this building, kind of this wonderful, I guess, freeing monster. Mine maybe monster is a wrong word. Rolling snowball, so to speak. - Yeah. - That's starting to become pretty cool. So, sorry, what was your question? - Well, no, I mean, that's great. Honestly, that's what it's all about. I think it's a great first point to have in mind is that when you start a maintenance plan or when you start anything, it starts small. Doesn't start off with 100 and some clients that you may have just one or two, but if you invest the time to getting your systems and your processes in place and you get it ready to scale, and that's honestly, frankly, why I was, that my first course was a maintenance plan course and that's why I was so passionate about that is because I share what I learn and once you have a path to follow in a system in place, that sucker can be scaled. And as you guys have found out, it's one at a time, but you land a few clients every month or one client a month here, two clients in the next month. Before you know it, you've got 30, 40 people on your maintenance plan where my agency, we're closing in on 100. I know at one point I had almost 70, or I had just over 70 long story short, maybe we'll talk about this, but I did have one white label client that pulled like 15 sites off because they didn't need them anymore. But I still had awesome recurring income, like it wasn't devastating. So a great first point, you gotta start small. And on that note, I'd actually love to hear about where your agency was and what you were offering in terms of recurring stuff in the beginning of 2018. What did that look like? - Great question. Okay, so let's kind of approach it from there. So I guess we'll go back even further. So when I was in college, John and I both went to the University of Nebraska, he's a little bit older than me. And we were in a band together. You've probably heard the story before. We started working on websites together. He just kept harp and harp and harp and, well, he didn't, yeah, he was just building websites at this point. And me and my 19 year old wisdom was like, John, it was such an innocent question. So John, are you gonna be building websites when you're 60? (laughing) - I love that. - And it was such an innocent question 'cause I literally had no idea. Anyway, that prompted him to read this book called Built to Sell, which eventually the follow up to them. John Wherelow is the guy's name. It reads like a novel. - Oh, it's such a good book. So I mentioned that. It's one of the first books I recommend in my business course that changed my life. And it's such an easy read. I read that in two days. It was great. - Yeah. - The audiobook, you kind of have to muscle through the first couple chapters 'cause the narrator's voice anyway. And his follow up to that, the automatic customer, the whole idea being, how do we productize a service business and how can we create recurring revenue out of something that the switching cost is high. And you're creating kind of infinite value for, right? Think of this like a phone plan. Think of this like something that you use continuously that can be scaled essentially infinitely as well. So we had offered maintenance plans. Well, John started the maintenance plans himself and just offering our really basic, I think it was like $29 a month to keep website the basic stuff, right? Updates, it backed up secure. And what that did is it kept clients kind of, it kept us kind of top of mind. I guess kept John kind of top of mind because he was running the ship almost entirely at this point. And he kind of started creating this thing and that was kind of a slow build. And every website we did, we really pushed the maintenance plan, but we didn't like force people to do it. We just sort of like, hey, you should do this. And a lot of people just didn't see the value in it. When you're working with the smaller business clientele, a lot of people just getting into web design do, right? You're working anywhere from 500 to 1000 bucks for a website up to, you know, let's say, three or four thousand dollars for a website. Those types of clients, you know, that's a pretty fair investment for them. And at least maybe this is just kind of the location where we are. But what we were kind of struggling with was people's kind of hesitancy to pay monthly for something that they didn't understand. Yeah. Right? Like, what do you mean? I have to keep my website up to date. Like, doesn't the hosting company do that? Like, what do I need? I'm paying my host today, you know, part of their big thing is backups. So what am I paying you for? Why do I need you? Right? So we, I start talking to John about, okay, well, what if we kind of added more value to this? What if we added hosting? Right? Because a big problem we were having as well with the maintenance plan was, um, I know where the city is going. I know where this is going. Yep. Yeah. When you're trying to manage a Ferrari and a Honda and a MoPED and you're trying to manage them all using the same system, uh, I get frustrated and it gets time consuming. And also, when you're trying to run a managed facilitate management on a website that's using flywheel, psychrown, godaddy, bluehost, hostgator. Um, I'll keep my opinions, uh, to myself when it comes to some voice. I'm sure everyone's like, mm-hmm, been there doing it right now. Oh, bluehost, why are you so bad? Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. So we struggle with that, right? Because setting up, um, the different staging environments, I mean, all the hosting stuff, right? And then you'll update, you'll do updates, and then it's like, it works great on all the site ground sites, but then the bluehost sites are throwing up an error like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And not to mention, you know, some hosts, boy, it doesn't really update like the PHP, uh, consistently enough, the PHP version. So you get that stupid annoying error that every client's going to ask about you. Roll it warning. Your site's running a PHP version that's, you know, 1500 dog years. And then your client reaches out like, "Jag, what's this warning?" I thought you guys were taking care of this. What took with that, man? Yeah. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Anyway, yes, right? Those are the, these are the common issues. And so, um, hesitancy to not do hosting was, um, we didn't know much about it. We didn't, we were hosts. I was a marketing major. I was 21 years old. I don't know anything. Um, well, at this point, I was probably 23, 24, uh, point being, didn't know much about it. We were, there was that fear that of entering into the kind of this, I didn't want to be the guy who you hit up, uh, when your sites down. Yeah. Right. Cause you're in the middle. I'm kind of the middle man. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You're the middle man. You're just the delivery guy. Did you watch the movie, uh, American made with Tom Cruise? No, I watched that one. Anyway, he's, he plays. It's great movie. I love it. I love Tom Cruise. So I'm going to digress here a little bit, but bear with me. In the movie, he is a pilot in, I think the 70s or 80s. Um, maybe that's way off. And he, he, he flies down to South America to take reconnaissance photos for the government. Well, then Pablo Escobar asks him, hey, on your way back, why don't you just, you know, drop off some drugs and Louisiana? So he just, anyway, the plot builds to him just kind of bringing people both ways, multiple ways. It's, it's hilarious, fascinating movie. But he has this quote that's just like, I'm just the crazy guy who always delivers. He's just a middle man. So, you know, when people were mad, he would just kind of toss around like, well, it could have been this could have been this. He's just, he's just, he's just the guy that delivers, right? Point being, that's kind of what we have been able to kind of become with the host because we are very transparent about how we now supply our host, right? It's not artillery servers. No, no, no, no, no, no, we are hosting on SiteGround. And by the way, SiteGround uses Google Cloud servers like I go deep with them. You know, this is the software you're receiving. This is what you're getting. Because I think that helped me a lot with my mental block of just not being able to feel like I could provide that service without knowing much about it. Yeah. So just being transparent with the client of like, look, you know me, you know my work ethic, you know I'm on the crazy guy who always delivers. We've worked that out, right? You have this website that you love. Just trust me. We'll figure it out. So that's kind of how I sold it the first little bit. And was that was that before the beginning of 2018 or was the beginning of 2018 when you started doing hosting and maintenance together? Oh, yeah. I'm getting ahead of myself. So up to 2018, we were just doing maintenance, just doing maintenance. And I was kind of starting to ask John because I wasn't an employee. I was a 1099 subcontractor for myself. So around that time, around 2016, 2017-ish, I just incorporated or an LLC or whatever it was and created my own company. So John has his own company. I have my own company and I wanted to figure out a way to make recurring revenue, right? Because every YouTube ad says every 20 something millennial should be making recurring revenue. So I'm like, hey, I need to get in on this. How do I do this? So I had a conversation with John about it. And John's like, why am I already doing maintenance? You know, what would it look like to do hosting? So that's when I researched it. That's when I really shopped around. I had conversations with a lot of different hosting companies. I talked to flywheel. I talked to a site ground. I talked to Bluehost. I talked to GoDaddy. And site ground was the best fit. Their support was the best. Again, in my opinion here, their support was the best. Their technology was the best. Their price was the best. It was way easier to sell this plan to the clients that we were already serving. Yeah. And still make a profit. March a little bit of a profit. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Because that's, you know, that's the point of business, right? You got to make a profit. Otherwise, you can't continue forward. So we were trying that. And we ended up going with with site ground. And I started getting on the reseller hosting. And that's that's right in 2018. So that's kind of how it happened was I was just asking about how do I get into this recurring revenue. We discussed some several different options. And hosting was kind of just the most natural way to do it. Because a website needs a host. And a lot of our clients turns out we're really frustrated with the confusion. Yes. Well, what happens if the, you know, and it was a lot of this work. Yeah. A lot of this work. We were doing anyway. So I want to transition to this point where like how you package that, but I just want to capitalize on a point you're making here, which is you are the middle man either way. Like that's what I realized. Yeah. Because I did the same thing. I had the same frustrations you guys had for a while. I, I was doing hosting. I was doing a mix of just maintenance and hosting and maintenance. And I just same thing. I was like, I just don't feel like I don't want to be the middle man. I don't want to hear from a client of their domain goes down. I just want them to talk to the hosting company. We'll do the updates. And then you guys host the site. But I experienced the same problems. Different hosting companies. First of all, sites didn't run well on certain hosting companies. Blue host, GoDaddy, all these other cheap hosting companies. And then it was the same thing. It was like even though they had their own hosts, their own hosting companies, I would just send them like an affiliate link to site ground, ideally. But if they sign up with GoDaddy, whatever, we'll just maintain the site. But I still got the calls when their domain expired. They didn't talk to the hosting company. They talked to me. I had to then say, well, you have to talk to the hosting company. But they're like, well, aren't you managing the site? I was like, well, I'm updating the site. We're doing the maintenance and the backups and the reportings. But you actually have the domains. I say, I'm sure a lot of people are listening to this going, yep, that's what's happening right now. And I just want to say I came to the conclusion, which just sounds like what you guys did well before I realized this is that you should just do both. If you can host the site and do the maintenance, it's less confusing for clients. It's more profit margin for you. You have more control. And I think more important than anything, it just makes it easier for the clients because they don't need to worry about it. You're their person. And man, talk about recurring income that's stable, like through a pandemic, I will only had one person leave the maintenance plan. And they were kind of a pain in my ass client. So I was like, you know, fine, whatever. But you know what? Nobody canceled hosting. So I say that to say, who's going to cancel their, yeah, they're going to turn their website off. So unless they're out of business. So I just wanted to say, yes, man, I feel those challenges. I know a lot of people are toying with the thing about, should I do hosting and maintenance? So I just do maintenance. I personally feel hosting and maintenance is the way to go. So my next question for you, Jake, I think you were kind of leading into this. How did you explain that to clients and how that helped them? Like how did you package all that up for them? Yeah, yeah, you bet. Josh, you're good at this. You're a good interviewer. Thanks for keeping this conversation on track. Oh, well. - You and I can talk for 10 hours man. So I wanna, although I like a good long form podcast, so let's do it. - Right on. So how did I package it up? That's the question. Okay, so several different kind of issues that we were running into. Number one was, who wants to pay $49 a month for hosting? I can go pay $2 for it and go to it, right? That was a large hurdle. Not a huge hurdle because it was surprising to me how easy of a sell it was when you get on the phone call with them. So maybe we should start there. Maybe we should kind of start with how I kind of pitch this. - Absolutely. - That'd be helpful to your listeners, okay? - Absolutely, yeah. - Yeah, that's what I'm gonna want to know. How the heck do you sell this? Like how do you sell it? - 'Cause I'm gonna curious how you guys came up, like when about that? Because yeah, it's like, well why am I gonna pay you 50 bucks a month when I can get my own $5 account at GoDaddy? Like, yeah, how did you explain the value there? - How to sell your hosting plan? That's the title of this episode. - There it is, bam. - Okay, here's how to do it. So when the lead comes in and you schedule that call, how I do it is I walk through a kind of a scenario of a client that we've helped in their approximate industry. And if you just get started and you don't have this yet, make up your perfect client, right? Hey, here's how we would do it for John Doe or whatever. So I kind of grab a client that's in their approximate industry and I walk through the process as it pertained to that specific client. So we talk about, I won't get too far into our process 'cause that's probably another conversation, but we talk about story brand. We talk about focusing on pain points. We talk about what are the issues you're having? I ask a question to them, if there's new websites at Unicorn, call it the Unicorn website exercise, describe this unicorn to me in the wild. What does this website do? What does it provide to you? What are all your hopes and dreams in this magical rainbow unicorn website? And they tell me, they do. And they say it would do this, it would provide this, it would help me with my lifestyle here and there. And it kind of adds the excitement. People want to get excited about what they're buying, especially if they're buying something for their business that they're largely on hook for for a small business. And that they're gonna pay every month for it. Exactly, this first phone call that you're with this person, they want to feel energized, they want to feel like, man, okay, this is someone I could feel like I can really kind of jive with, I can have fun with, and they're gonna have my back. And so that leads into the conversation of the website, obviously, and that's, again, whole no to conversation, but we talk about all that, we talk about our process, we talk about wire framing, we talk about strategy, we talk about the technologies we're gonna use, in kind of a narrative, how built a cell does it, right? You kind of use a narrative and people are smart enough to be like, okay, that makes sense. So we talk about branding, we talk about copyrighting, we get to hosting. Okay, so the site is launched, this unicorn website, and it's starting to do this and starting to do that. And what happens when you need to update a client? Oh, hmm, and I ask him. And hmm, well, you know, how do I, I don't know, I don't know anything about websites. Okay, well, you have kind of two options. Option number one is, you get on YouTube, and you figure out. And that's-- - Find one of Josh's tutorials. - Yeah, go to JoshHall.co, he's my guy, he'll hook you up, you buy a course, right? Or what if there was a hosting plan where artillery, and at this point, you don't have to make the decision yet, we'll just put it into the proposal because it's highly recommended and trust me, you need it. $49 a month, here's what you get, you get hosting. And yeah, you could pay two bucks for that, but our quality of hosting, from SiteGround, after the first couple of years, it ends up being about 20 bucks a month. So that's cost, that's just cost. If you were to pay that yourself, the quality that we're using is about that. Built into that is also our maintenance and security plan. So what this does is we're backing up the site, just like your iPhone, your laptop, there's updates, security things, software's change. So we're using lots of different softwares on your WordPress website, 'cause remember we already talked about WordPress and how that all works, and how Divi works. So you got the software, and you have a software within the software, Divi, and then you got all the software's on software's, plugins and bedcodes, Google Analytics, and all that stuff updates because the internet is changing. And so you need someone who can continue to make those updates for you and help educate you. We have this post on our website, this kind of comes from my obsession with Dave Ramsey that talks about be a teacher, not a salesman. So if we're constantly agitating, - Oh, that's a great point for any sales, yeah. - Yeah, be a teacher, teach as much as you can. Help them explain, because that does several things. It comes their nerves, it helps them understand that you're the expert in the field, and it helps you kind of guide them down this path that you know that they need, and the budget is just this annoying thing that just needs to kind of be overcome. So I had one guy tell me, ask him on the phone, would you rather your budget meet your vision, or your vision match your budget? You know, I don't want to sacrifice certain, these certain things in my mind, 'cause remember, we already decided about this unicorn website. So I don't want to sacrifice some of those things because I know that it's what needs to happen, right? Okay, so back to hosting. So starts with that, you get the maintenance plan, which we normally charge $20 from that. So it's already worth $49 value. Okay, if you go with GoDaddy, which is cheaper, they charge for a Nessus Cell Certificate. Well, what's that? Well, I'll explain it briefly, a Nessus Cell Certificate helps encrypt and it provides additional security, and it's necessary now on Google Flags people if they don't have it. And then on top of that, and this is the big selling point, these two things. Number one, it's a 50% discount on future hourly work for our artillery. So if you want us to help provide content updates to you, typically here's how that happens is, again, option A is you just go and YouTube it, but no one wants to do that. Who changes their own oil? It's messy and it's horrible and it's terrible. Number two is you can pay us to make those changes for you. On this plan, $49 a month, which you're already hosting with us, we're already gonna be your point of contact anyway. Right, just head us up. And if it's a simple thing, like we wanna make our customers happy, we're making a profit, of course, on this hosting plan, and I tell my clients this, so we're just gonna try to help you make you happy 'cause you're our customer and you're our client, and you know us, and that's just how we roll. And then on top of that, I'll also even provide some tutorial videos if it's something that you wanna continue to learn. So if you have an update, go ahead. One question I had for on that, Jake, is do you offer, does that include a certain amount of time per month that they could have for quick updates? Is that included? Yeah, so $49 a month, so we have several tiers, of course. Okay. Any good hosting planned out. So $49 a month is our lowest tier. $99 a month is our gold tier, and our platinum tier is $299 a month, which is, we call it the never log into your site plan. Astrox. Well, I like that. Up to four hours a month of four car seats, you can't be doing 40 hours. Right. So, which means that hit us up as much as you want. You can hit us up two times a day. So never log into your site. But once we hit four hour cap, we'll either tell you, hey, we've hit our four hour retainer for your plan, we can either do this next month or it'll be hourly. So, since you're on our plan again, you get 50% discount on our hourly. So our tillery hourly is 150. If people who are on our hosting maintenance and security plan, 75. So I tell clients this, if you don't choose to do this, you're end up gonna pay, gonna be paying for it because. We do that too. It's 125 hourly, but then 95. We don't cut it that much. We do 95 for clients on our maintenance plan. Yeah. But yeah, similar, like we just revamped all of our tiers. So there's, so you guys, $299 for the four hours, $199, is that like a couple hours or something? One hour, yeah. $299 is one hour and $49 doesn't include any. Gotcha. That's kind of just the basic one that helps folks just kind of understand and get on board. Okay. Because that's what you want to do is you just want to help them see. And don't make them sign a contract. You know, don't make them do that. Again, in my opinion, the reason why, again, completely my opinion, is because people will eventually see the value if you care about them and you care about their business and you help educate them. They're going to see the value. And then when they're hitting you up for things, then it's an easy sell. Hey, I noticed that you've been hitting me up once a week. I'd really think it'd be good for you guys. If you moved up to our $99 a month plan, because you get an hour included, I'll have to bill you for that hour. Plus, it'll just allow you to be a little bit more free and liberal with your content updates, because you can just send them to me. So how do you not worry about doing it yourself? 'Cause isn't that annoying? Yeah, that's-- --how you've been in the site for six months. You know what I mean? That's perfect. That's kind of my approach is get on our plan. And again, you get hosting, you get maintenance, you get SSL, you get our hourly discount, and you get to be on our team. That's the big thing. And again, just to back up real quick, Jake, when do you talk about hosting in maintenance? Is that after the narrative of the website, like towards the end of the strategy call or the sales process? or yeah, what does that come into play? - Yeah, great question. So again, my sales lead call is a really brief, 30 minute, sometimes an hour conversation, and we use that kind of metric of starting with kind of a case study and moving on. So I kind of hit hosting and chronological order of when they would expect it. So nearly the end of the call, hey, just so you know, in our proposals, we include this as our proposal, $49 a month. Let me talk about that real quick. Let me help you understand why we do this. It's in there. And then what we also do though, is we've discounted our build costs to include that profit for our hosting. So in other words, let's say that, yeah, we assume that a client's gonna be hosting with us for two years. So that's about $600 a year. So two years is about $1,200. Of hosting maintenance security, our time, it's worth the price. And that's low for the industry standard. Yeah. So what we say is, okay, we're gonna discount the build cost so that that helps make up for that. So it's a no-brainer for you. If you choose not to host with us, we're a business, we still need to make profit. We still need to make that money. So we're gonna need to just add that build cost back onto it. So it's a little extra incentive for them to get hosting and what happens with you. Yeah, it's like, look, 'cause some clients need to host themselves. Some clients, it's very rare, but some clients do. A real quick point I don't wanna miss here is the fact that you came in with the hosting in maintenance a little later on in the talk. I just, for everyone's reference, you do not wanna come out of the gate with hosting because of somebody's sees, even if it's a small 49 a month or 39 or even 29 or something, if they see something recurring right out of the gate, they're gonna say no. They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this person's trying to, nickel and dye me and get something monthly. And yeah, that's such a great way to go about it. Like, talk about the project and everything you just went over. But then come in with, be a part of our team here is what we offer as far as ongoing. Yeah, it's a great way to go as far as how to package it and how to sell it for sure. Yeah, training videos, right? I mean, you sell by doing. And by the end of the build, if your build process is really well done and really well put together and you have a great project manager that people love my wife and you have a really solid process and a really confident kind of person staring the ship like John and I, and people are gonna feel really, really secure. Yeah. And people are gonna feel confident. And when you get to the hosting, it's a no-brainer. So, these guys know what they're doing. What if couple scenarios here, because my structure on our plans are very similar. When I was just a solo printer, just kind of for your reference, what I did was 59 a month just for the maintenance plan. Hosting in maintenance was 75, but each one of those included up to an hour. So, similar, those actually just a little under what you were doing with your 99. Now, I did how I teach this in my maintenance plan course. Here's a freebie for everybody. I did have a backup, a fallback plan, to where if somebody said, I just don't see the value, I don't want this. I would say, well, look, I understand we can always scale up, we can always do this, but it is critical that your website is at least backed up and protected from hacks. So, I said, we'll do that, and we'll make sure it's protected, reported on for 39. It won't include the hour, but at least your site is protected and reported on, and that was a big sale for me. And I had a lot of people scale up from that to your point. But now, we're kind of at the next level with our maintenance plan to where again, it's ours is 75 for hosting in maintenance in an hour, up to an hour. For WooCommerce sites, we do 95, just for the extra updating. But then we have a one nine, woo, woo, we have a 199 plan for additional hours and working in 2.99, it's very similar. So, it's good to know price points here because I'm sure everyone's curious, 'cause yeah, just like web design costs, hosting and maintenance could be all over the place, but that's great. So, I was just gonna say, once in a year, I wanted to post to you, if somebody reclines initially, but at the end of the project, like you just said, they really love working with you, they say, you know what, you guys are awesome. If they move forward with maintenance and hosting, would you discount originally that what you talked about, would you honor, will honor the discount off the projects since you just signed up for hosting? Or what does that look like? So, this just happened this week. We have a lead client, the proposal price was 2000, really basic website. And she was really hesitant about spending the money for hosting, right? 'Cause she was kind of familiar, she kind of was just dangerous enough. And I just really approached it from a value perspective. Took this course in college called value-based pricing, the idea being that you can't afford not to purchase this. So, the point was, you know, let's say there's this new technology at a bank that helps make the bank $10,000 a month, and it costs $30,000. If you can show the person those facts, it's a no-brainer, value-based pricing. So, you focus on the value and then the pricing just comes along with it, comes along for the ride, and it's no-brainer. So, that's how I approach these things is. Okay, client, let me lay this out for you. Here's what's gonna happen. You choose not to host with us. We're a business, we're offering, and there's a multi-page website for two grand. So, we're like, look, we can't be profitable if you don't host with us. So, we're gonna have to have that build, that extra opt-out fee added on. And I'll discount that for you. I'll make it 800 instead of 1200. It's not a trick, it's legit. Like, we have to make that money, or we will lose money on the project. So, here's your options. Either A, you pay $2,800 for the thing, and you're not chained, chained. I know customers kinda feel that way, but they're not at all. You're not chained to anyone. You can host wherever you want, but your website goes down. WordPress needs an update, a backup. - It's on you. - You have an issue. Don't call me. I'll help you. I'll continue to help, and I'll continue to educate. I'll do the best I can. As soon as we launch that website, we disassociate ourselves from the website. In fact, we even kinda make you, well, we don't kinda. We make you sign a liability release that says, artillery's no longer a failure with a site. I understand, and it's kind of a 10-point checklist that is a good idea, but it's also scares people, and that checklist alone has saved a lot of people from opting out, 'cause it just lists. I understand that I will now be charged $150 an hour, discounting my 50% discount. I understand that I'm liable for security, and therefore the security of my clients information that enter there, right? Because if someone hacks the website, right? And someone goes into gravity forms, and grabs contact information for a foster child, for example. - Whoa, you're a little wiggle. Yeah, I just had an episode a little bit ago on, I had a guest from Termageddon on, who is who we use for all of our auto updating privacy policies, which, side note, is an additional recurring service for my agency that we offer. So you can add that as well, because yeah, not only does your website need to be protected with these policies that are constantly changing, but your clients do too, so yeah, that's huge. - Yeah, exactly. So we just make them, gosh, yeah, it's so true. So that liability release saves our butt. Thankfully, we've never had to actually have to deal with that, but yeah, we have that. And that kind of shows people like, okay, let me step back and let's reconsider this from a value point, from a value perspective. It's $49 a month worth it for me to have to learn a hosting. Is it worth it for me to have to get on bluehost for two hours when my SSL expires, and even though I know for a fact that I had auto renew on, it still doesn't work. - Why? - So you know, it sounds like you're not intentionally scaring them, but you're just throwing out the possibilities and probabilities. Like you're probably that, 'cause that's one thing I told people who passed on my plan is I have a whole template I share in my course. It's literally just listed out what I used to tell clients. If you pass, these are what, this is what you're liable for. This is, these are the potential things that are gonna happen and these are probably gonna happen eventually if your site's not updated, it's gonna get hacked. You're gonna be liable for all your costs, anyone's information who submits into your site. And I also talked about the time that sometimes a website hack can happen. Like you could spend hours, and then if we're not on your maintenance plan, if you're not on our maintenance plan, we'll get back to you as soon as we can, but it's gonna be some time. I don't tell 'em you're not a priority, but our priority is our monthly clients. So it sounds like, yeah, you're kinda laying out like the probabilities and possibilities, right? - Yeah, did John ever tell you the story about how our maintenance plan kind of sprung into place with his Christmas day? - Yep, I'm sure he's gonna talk about that story. - We talked about that in episode 18. Yeah, for those who haven't listened to it, first of all, I recommend going back to it, but yeah, he spent Christmas day fixing a hacked website and it was a nightmare. And it gave me flashbacks because I had, I didn't have it on Christmas day, but I had so many situations when I didn't know anything about security or maintenance and I had sites getting hacked. And it was the same thing, like it was turning a challenge into a solution and that was protecting websites. And we've hit on this already, but I mean, the value of a maintenance plan, just from the ongoing topic, of my perspective cannot be understated. Like a lot of my old clients probably don't even remember who I am from like 2012 and 13 and 14. - Yeah. - Because I was excited. I'm sure three years later they're like, crap, who did our website? Was it like Jim or Jerry? What was his name? And then finally somebody reached out and we reached out and they're like, we had to check down your email or something, but what a great way to stay top of mine. I mean, I don't mean to derail us with this thought, but there's just so much value in offering this service. And honestly, I think that's a great way to sell it is to just be genuine about the value. You don't have to come across like a sleazy salesman who was like sweating out of his, you know, button shirt, trying to get, you know, a $29 a month plan. It's, listen, this, like just be real. This is just a sales tip, just like Jake talked about. Just be real. Just talk about the plan, teach them. You don't need to come across sales. You just tell them about the importance. Tell them, I think more importantly, how you're in their corner. I know that was a big sales point for me for a lot of years and it sounds like it is for you too. Like, I like the way you describe that. You join our team. Like, you're a part of the crew. Like, we've got your back. That is just absolutely huge. And it's so valuable for customers and clients to have their trusted web guy or their web gal. And if you're current income for you, we're talking about a win, win, win situation to hear that I just love. That's totally true. And what I was gonna say on top of that is, first of all, do the work for anyone starting this up. Do the work and understand the basics. You don't have to be a pro, but understand the basics and have like a good understanding about like, know your craft, essentially. And then on top of that, once you know your craft, fall in love with the value that you're giving to your clients. 'Cause if you believe that, if you really believe that what you're doing is providing value and providing immense value, you believe that from the bottom of your heart, selling it is so much easier. Because you don't feel like you're having to pitch something that you don't believe in. You're trying to save someone's life, right? (laughs) Like the old evangelist. - You know what? - Honestly, yeah, yeah. And honestly, I think back to my early days, 'cause I know a lot of people get started and sales is terrifying because they just don't know everything yet. And well, no one knows everything. There's just too much to learn. But I remember thinking that same thing, like how am I gonna sell a website? I haven't really done many. And you're gaining confidence, but you just said it. And that's just a tip for anyone just starting. Just, you honestly just need to sell your passion and your value. I sold so many websites in the early days by explaining like what we could do. And a lot of that was stuff I had to learn. Most of it was, I would explain the ideas and I knew I was gonna learn a lot in this project. I was gonna have to learn. I didn't know everything yet. But by Golly, I was gonna learn some CSS tricks and learn this stuff. And that was, I wish I would have had my courses back then to save me a lot of time. But I learned it. I learned about C panel the hard way. I learned that stuff. And that's what gave me the confidence to sell. And honestly, just, we're not talking about sales in this episode, but we'll hit this. People don't buy what you know. They buy you. They buy, I remember, I specifically remember, one of my first website jobs I sold. It was for the old recording studio. My band used to record that. And I'll never forget our old producer, who was the owner, he moved forward with like a $1,500 website. It was only like, I think the third or fourth website I did. But he was like, I can see in your eyes that you're passionate about this. And I'll never forget that because that is literally what he said. He said, I can see it in your eyes that you're passionate. And that's how I sold that job. Like that was one of my first WordPress projects. And it went great. Like I learned a lot. That was before Divi and before, you know, maintenance plans and everything. But yeah, it's huge. And it's selling this stuff. And if you're a shy person, because if you're getting into the web, chances are the statistics show that you might be a little bit more of a shy introvert, like so many of us, get them excited about it. And then you just kind of are the hype man, right? You just kind of raise in the roof. So that question about the unicorn website. Does a really great job of that? Because it really kind of opens up their eyes like, hey, let's just dream for a second. Let's just kind of dream in HD. Let's just kind of paint this picture together. Like, what do you, come on? Like, what are you really looking for here? Like, let's connect on an emotional level, on a human level, but then all right, let's talk for real. Like, OK, what does that do for your life? What does that do for this? You know, if we automate this system, what does that do for you? What does that free you up? How many hours does it save you? Oh, man, if I could do that, it saves me two hours a day. Oh, my gosh, that'd be-- Oh, wow. How much do you bill? How much do you bill per hour? Oh, gosh, I bill. I don't know. I'd like to bill like 100, but I bill like 70. Wow, so that's like $200 a value per day, right? Yeah, wow. OK, well, you won't believe this, and then you're right there. So if you can kind of help them dream along with you-- That's a great kind of-- You can kind of help them get to that point with you. Ask questions, ask questions, pull those questions out, because that's really going to allow you to then just tag that onto the top, be like, OK, well, you said this. So what if we did this? And there's a software I've used that it kind of does exactly that, and you wouldn't believe it. And it might be the most basic thing. It might be commenting on a WordPress post. That's a default feature built in. But some most people, they don't understand how that software works. They don't know how that software works. And it may be just the most basic thing for about hosting, about WordPress, about Ditty. And it will seal the deal. You just got to ask those questions. It's also a great tip for sales in general, particularly with maintenance and hosting. Anything that's recurring and ongoing, because number one, remember, you're starting a relationship that's likely going to last years. And that's one thing I've told clients, like, we're going to be in this for the long haul. I'm your guy. You know, my agency, we are your team. And I think that's really, really crucial to help us to remember to lay out the vision for what it's going to look like. So you're not just selling a service. You are selling the experience of, OK, when this person signs up, they don't need to talk to their hosting company because they have you. They don't need to fuss with their website unless they're posting blogs. They have you. They don't need to learn WordPress. Don't need to learn Ditty. They can. They can use your training materials. And you can guide them for an extra fee or for a higher plan, a higher tier. But they don't need to do that. If something happens with the website, if there's any sort of breach, they are not the one to worry about. And then I know one thing I told my clients, I didn't do this intentionally. When you said that, Jake, it kind of brought me back to a lot of the meetings I've had in person or on the phone over the years with clients to sell the maintenance plan. And I often talked about what the day-to-day would be like. When you have quick updates, you reach out. We'll take care of them. You don't need to do that yourself. Even like reporting, you don't need to look at your Google Analytics if you don't want to. We'll send out the month of reports through our-- we use manage WP. And that will be there. You don't have to worry about back in your sites up yourself. We'll have everything there. And yeah, a great way to lay out the vision and just kind of give a good forecast of what's to be expected. Because again, not many people are going to be excited about signing up for a monthly subscription. So you need to make it exciting. You need to get them excited to make them want to work with you and realize, you know what? You kind of-- you don't want to make them feel stupid. But you have to make them feel like, I would be stupid to pass up on this because I'm going to end up spending way more time, way more money in the long run. I'm going to have to do it myself. And yeah, that's huge. Yeah. And remember that each client has different pain points. That comes from story brand. And that's really what we focus on. So we talk about that from their perspective as it pertains to the website that we're building for them. But don't forget to use that for yourself in the sales process as well. So really do your job of figuring out where their pain points lie. Because I have a client who's really concerned about page speed. Well, you wouldn't believe it. Our software is blah, blah, blah, blah. And I have a client who's really concerned about security. Our, you know, such and such and such. So you got to find where those pain points lie. And you got to sometimes even kind of barter with them or get them excited or get them, you know, paying a picture for them so that you know where those pain points are, so that you can create a plan specific for them. It may be already features that you already have built in. Yeah. It helps them see the light. That's great. Yeah. Because sometimes you just need to articulate the, like I said, those pain points that resonate with them. This is something I teach in my business course and I've laid out in a previous episode on my sales tips. But I love the method of matching mirroring. And what I mean by that is you can actually pick out, in this case, a key word. I call it a key word or a key phrase that somebody says, like maybe they're worried about security. Well, listen more than you talk in the beginning of a sales call. And then when it comes back around, actually making the pitch and selling your services, one thing I learned that was invaluable was just listening for that key word and then bringing it up again at the end of the conversation. They forgot, they mentioned it, but then you say something like, we're gonna take your security very seriously. And then they're like, oh yeah, security, that's huge to me. They didn't even realize that they just gave you the tip. They gave you exactly what they needed to hear to sell. It's for you to sell. So there's another sales tip. Listen for that key word, listen to those pain points, great point Jake, and then bring that up in relation to your plan and to your, 'cause those are all the things that, you know, like I said, clients are different, some clients, and we won't get into like personality differences, but some people are interested in a web design experience, some are looking to cut costs, [BLANK_AUDIO] are looking for results. There's all these different types of things, but you can absolutely take a keyword, take a pain point, and then bring it up at the end of the conversation, and then they're like, "Oh my gosh, you know me, you know, you listen because that's exactly what I'm. " How did you know that's what I'm looking for, you know? Right, you actually just told me the word. Yeah, you just filled your guts. Well, think about it like this. So it's a trick, but I would call it more of like. It's needed, it's necessary. It's a tip, especially now. Or a trick, right? Yeah, exactly. It's. Yeah, exactly. My first e-book is my six sales tips, which is what my previous episode was on. Not my sales tricks. Yeah, yeah. Because it's not a trick. It's actually real. Because what we've found is this. The market in general is shifting, and maybe completely shifted now, from a seller to buyer centric. And what I mean by that is, you know, rewind the clock 20 years, and the seller was kind of the head. They had kind of the leverage. They were the expert, and the buyer didn't have much information. They were oblivious. They didn't know. And this. Put this for candy bars, websites, cars, homes, you name it. The buyer was incredibly uninformed from a general perspective. So the seller could create a website that was, "Welcome to my website. I'm such and such a person. I'm such and such a business. Look at the awards I've won. Look at the amount of things I have. Look at all the services I offer. Contact me today, and in 1950, my grandfather blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and aren't I great?" And I'm the hero of the story, the business, and the customer is just this audience member, but it's long for the right. Well, in 2020, now, it's completely flipped. The market is now upside down, meaning the buyer has all the leverage, because the buyer has all the information, and the buyer, you know, quick Google on a sales call can fact check you. Be like, "No, actually, you're full of crap." Right? So, what do you have to do? You have to focus on their problems you are forced to. So think about it like a Snickers bar. I can sell a Snickers bar, right? The Wolfel Wall Street. It's a perfect example of this. Remember that movie, The Wolfel Wall Street, where he's trying to get people to buy it to sell him a pen. You know, sell me this pen. Oh, yeah, yeah. Remember that scene? And he talks about how, you know, sell me this pen. Well, it's a great pen. You know, I can personally get it now. Sell me this pen. Well, if you need the highest quality of pen, nope, and John Bernthal earlier in the movie, he solves it. Well, give me your signature. Why do I? Well, here you go. So you created that problem, so you helped them see the issue. So going back to my analogy of like a Snickers bar, there's a hundred ways to sell a Snickers bar. Snickers satisfies. Are you hungry? Well, you've got a lot of sugar in it. Well, you like peanuts. Well, you know, so it's such and such, so you can kind of position it based on their pain points. So, you know, are you hungry? Are you hungry right now? Yeah, I'm starving. Well, you probably don't want to form you. Well, no, I don't. Well, would you believe that the Snickers bar only has a hundred calories and it satisfies and it's got protein and it's got these peanuts? Well, you kind of help them see the pain points that you could position yourself into something that solves those pain points. It just so happens to be something that you sell. So that's how we approach it. And that's kind of how I would say is a really effective way of approaching it as well. That's great stuff, man. I mean, we're we're we're hitting on topics that can apply to every aspect of web design, not even maintenance plans and hosting, but all areas, whether it's fixed stuff, SEO, additional services. I mean, this is, yeah, this is just general great sales stuff, but I think it's even more key for hosting and maintenance because you are setting yourself up to be their person for a very long time. I mean, I tell that to clients. It's like, we're starting a relationship. A web designer is just not an average service. I remember a colleague of mine was a videographer and he sold his, his video business and he was able to like sell it and walk away from it within a month or two. Like it was just, you know, he had, Haynes clients over well, I'll tell you, I'm, you know, wrapping up selling my web design agency and I still oversee a lot of the aspects of it, but it is not like that with web designers. It is, you are like, it's it's been, it was, it's my heart soul was in that business. My clients are, have been with me for years. Like there's a lot more to it with a web design agency and you that can that can honestly do a lot of great things. Like yeah, there brings brings issues part, you know, sometimes, but there's such power with recurring revenue and income if you are so valuable to that person. And I'm just saying out loud to everyone, when you're a web designer, you are going to find out how valuable you are to your clients when something goes awry or when they need help. Like it is just not that service where you purchase something and then see later, I'm never going to talk to you again. They you're going to hear from your website clients over and over and be grateful, not grateful. Maybe that's the wrong word. I feel like I'm preaching, but be like, anticipate that. Be excited about that. Because here's why is going back to build to sell in that book, he talks in the beginning when he's setting up all the pain points of why Alex Stapleton to Stapleton, agency is really struggling. Well, M and Y Bank, money bank, right? All the bad guys, 80% of their billable stuff, 80% of their business, 80% of their bottom line. If I lose M and Y bank, oh man, I got a fire. How am I going to make mortgage? I got a trade in my range over. Oh boy, scary. Okay, hosting allows us to diversify the pool. So now I have, you know, in two years, we've we've built up 150 clients on this hosting and that's just the hosting and maintenance side. You know, 150 clients. What does that allow us to do? That allows to do several things. Number one, we're on the top of mind for those clients every month when we send a mobile and we say, and John makes it fun. You're right. Of course he does. He's John. He makes it. Oh yeah, we got you backed up. We're safe. We're covered. He does like the flexing arm, you know, the party cheer, like another day, you know, another month of no hacks. You know, we got your back. We're here to party with you and keep you safe and secure and that's great. And that's awesome. And we're on the and we're on the top of their mind. But that also allows us to be in a very unique position when we want to scale and grow as well. Yeah. Because if you have 150 clients in two years, we're paying you anywhere from 49 to 299 a month. Well, if you want to add a little bit of value in there, times by 150. If you want to add just a little bit, if you want to add page speed score testing or Google Analytics testing or you want to add a little SEO in there, well, now you can get 150 people to pay you 10 bucks a month more instead of having to sell that. Yeah. So many so many times, right? So it really diversifies your your pool and gives you a strong foundation to be able to be very flexible and free or like you offer. Yeah, free just oh my gosh. Yeah. And I was just looking like, you know, let's average 100 bucks a month per client with some of the some of your clients being on top tier or some on lower 150. That's 15 grand a month like that, you know, you're closing it on 200 a year right there, give or take. I mean, you know, depending, I don't know what you guys at Zach number and you don't have to go over that, but that's a quarter million. That's probably close to a quarter million a year right there, not including fixed projects and everything else you want to add on top that I mean, that is there's so much power in this mindset of, you know, having hosting and maintenance being integral. And I'm really glad we talked about a lot of the sales tips because I was going to ask how practically you got, you know, one step at a time, 150 clients and two and a half years and it sounds like that's exactly it. You you refine that process on at a time, one at a time. Yeah, I mean, I had to be awesome just to refine it one step away, but you had your systems in place. You made it scalable again, going back to the value of making a process, making something scalable from the get go that way when you have clients, you can just onboard them and go, go, go save your templates. I mean, that's why I have my course. It's literally like that is what it is. It's here's the plan. Here's the resources. Here's all the tools. Do it. Go like go for it. Slow and steady, baby. Slow and steady. Build those websites. Build that relationship. Think of the website build as like you're building the relationship. Nice. Because you paid $2,000 for a website or $3,000 for website. Like what? Like you can pay that onto a subcontractor and whatever point being like that's you're building a relationship because that hosting plan when they're two years into it and they want to hire someone and they want to do campaign or whatever like you're there. And they're going to hit you up and that's really where the value lies is the ongoing relationship. So think about it that way. Think about that. And here's what else. How cool would this be? Okay, let's say we get to 200 300 whatever how many clients that are on our hosting plan. Well, you know what? In 2025, artillery, no build cost. You want a website? Come on over. Pay us for $9 a month. We'll build it for you. Oh, because we have a system in place. I mean, you can also be so much more selective when you have good recurring income. You can't like that's when I got to the point where I started doing six figures and beyond it was like now I can be more selective. I don't need that cheap $500 client. Even some people I didn't even want to try to get on my maintenance plan or work with them because it's just not going to work. I'd rather focus on the real the super nice home inspector who out of tight budget, it's got $2,500, but by golly we can do that site for our lower tier and then get them on hosting and then go from there. That's how I built my business. It's huge, man. Such great points, Jake here, as far as selling. Originally I was gonna title this episode 150 clients in two and a half years, but I think I'm gonna retie it to selling a hosting and maintenance plan because this is huge and this is valuable. I've loved here in this process for you guys. I actually just have a couple to wrap up here. I have a couple quick questions. If a client declines the plan and they host on their own, do you, I guess they can come back and sign up anytime? That's not exactly what I meant to ask. I meant to ask, if they wanna host themselves, what do you guys do? Will you still do maintenance for a different fee, but if they have hosting on GoDaddy, do you just, how do you go about that? Like if they already have three years ago, 'cause I've had clients be like, well crap, I already have three years bought at GoDaddy, what are you guys doing that case? Just pay them out. You're gonna make the money, just pay them out. Okay, so to be honest with you, we've never really had a big issue with this because our foundation is so secure. But let's say, of course it's happened a couple times, where clients just like, I can't get rid of my mind of them doing it, right? I can't run my mind around $400 a month. Okay. Okay, so here's what we do. First of all, we have to remain profitable. As a business, we have to remain profitable. We've discounted our build costs to assume that you're hosting with us. It's not required. It's definitely not required. You don't have to, you don't have to go and get a phone plan forizing. But if you choose not to do that, again, that's totally fine. We just have to add more to the build costs because we still need to remain profitable. If you weren't to host with us and we did the build cost for what we're building you right now, we'd lose money and we can't have them. We have bills, et cetera. You're a business owner, you get it. You get it, you can't put it above us. It kind of builds some rapport with them in that way. Let's say that they do decide to host elsewhere and pay that opt-out fee. Make sure that you're just a very transparent with them about what you will be doing and what you will not be doing. Make sure that that's very, very, very clear because that builds that fence. Fences make good neighbors. Fences make great clients. And if you have that fence in place, you can constantly refer back to that and be like, look, this isn't kind of in what we manage and what we do. If you have issues with this and here's something to look out for and you could still be their teacher, you could still be their friend, you could still help them out and you could still provide that value but you just help them understand, look, a website is like a lawnmower. It's a tool. And we're gonna build you that lawnmower. It's gonna have a sharp blade. The motor's gonna be great. But you gotta mode that lawn and that blade's gonna need sharpening and you're gonna have to fill it with gas. Do you know how to do that? And if you don't, you're gonna have a hard time learning how to do that and is that really worth your time? So that's kind of how we approach that issue. But yeah, of course people some great idea. I never thought about that. Like I guess, 'cause there's a couple of different ways you could go about that. You could probably just like, let's say they have a hundred bucks that they paid for on GoDaddy and yeah, that, I mean, in the long run, that is, that's nothing. So you could say, well, we'll discount that off the build since you know, if you can, I'm gonna say, what, ah dang it. Why didn't I think about this in 2014? Yeah, no, that's a great idea. Just discounting off the build. What a-- Or send him a PayPal, man. Like don't go to an Amazon gift card or something. Yeah, just be like, how much do you pay for that? GoDaddy, 400 years, 20 bucks. Yeah, I'll pay for that for you. Yeah, that's great. That's how much GoDaddy is going to do. It is kind of funny, 'cause I mean, I've had clients that have invested several thousand dollars in websites, but they thought of a, you know, 59 bucks a year. It is weird. It is weird. The psychology of money is fascinating. I had one client, still one of my favorite websites ever. He had no problem paying four grand for just a fairly, not simple website, but it was just a brochure style site. No problem with it. It was like a seven, eight page website. No problem. The monthly plan would not have a word of it. Would not fear of it. So I told him I went through the whole process. I said, "Listen, man, you know, you know, "you can have your own hosting, "but if you don't have the maintenance plan, "here's what you're liable for, "here's what's potentially going to happen." His website hasn't been hacked yet, but I have a feeling at some point he's going to be coming to us wanting additional updates and stuff, and that's the time to upsell. Which is, I don't mean to take us on further, but it's another great aspect of maintenance plans and hosting is there's so many times to upsell and to cross the bridge when you can come to us. So yeah. Yeah, give them some switching costs, right? That's kind of a good tactic as well. Like it hurts to not do it. How can I create that? How can I create, and don't approach it from that direction, but have that be essentially kind of the happy outcome? Approach it from value. How much value can I give? That's really what is honest and noble, right? Is how can I increase the value to this customer? How can I make their lives better? Because a happy accent of that is the switching cost is horrible. The switching cost is terrible. Who's going to turn off their website hosting? Who's going to want to transfer that away? Who's going to want to sign a waiver that says, I'm liable for my information. Oh boy, I didn't know. You guys were doing all this. It's just terrible. So that's what I would say. It's also-- Yeah, it's not like a fear tactic, but it's just it is what it is. And I think a little while ago, I released an episode on Not Burning Your Bridges. And one of my main points in that was what we're talking about, leaving the door open for additional work. You don't want to be pissed off and mad and make a client feel angry or stupid for declining your plan. More than likely it's not going to happen. I imagine that 150 clients that you guys got in 2.5 years, do you know your conversion rate on that Jake? I mean, is it safe to say it's like a 75, 80% conversion? Maybe more than that. It's in the high 90s. It's got to be. Beautiful. Yeah. So it's rare. If you have a process down in place, it's rare. And I found that too. Mine was probably like 90% something like that. Yours is more flushed out and probably better. But I say that to say that 10% that does decline, don't burn the bridge, leave it open because you designed a website. They paid a lot. That's fine. Let them be-- if they come back for additional work, that's the time to upsell. If their website gets hacked, that's honestly good news. Because then you can get them. And then you're going to be able to take their website from there. I actually show in my maintenance plan course, I have a couple case studies on clients that deferred initially, but came back to me. And one of them was a hack. They were like crap. A website. I have the whole email thread that I show in the course. Because you can see my client, they're blurred out. But my client comes to me freaking out. And you see exactly what I said, how we can fix it. Then I land them on the plan. And then it's been great ever since. So there's a lot of additional opportunities for selling hosting and maintenance. So just to say, if you don't get them right away, that's OK. That's OK. You can get them eventually. Yeah. And use metaphors too. I'm a big metaphor guy. You probably know it's that already. But I use a lot of metaphors. It's like it's insurance for your website. You have a car. How much can you spend on your car? One car. Most businesses have multiple cars. One car. How much is that? 20 grand? OK. And you have to pay insurance on that. Well, why is that? Well, because there's liability. Because there's bad guys. Because there's drunk driving. OK, well, the same thing applies to your website. Well, also we're going beyond that. We're also providing the gasoline for the car. We're also providing assistance with the car and the oil changes. Use that as a metaphor. Again, trying to help them understand. Even apply that to their own business. Think about their own business if they're a plumber. How does that apply to their business so that they can understand it? Because a lot of the biggest disconnect is I'm trying to sell you this digital service. And you're like, well, 49 dollars is my-- Get out of here with that. That's crazy. It cost me 49 dollars. Well, blah, blah, blah. Help them understand. This is equivalent to this. Equivalent to that side speed. How that helps them understand that. Because that really helps them disconnect from some of the issues that they're having too. Yeah. And I think it's a good balance of warning them of what can happen, but also throwing your personality and then coming with that offer. And I just want to read on your website on your approach page. You have just a little bit of info about how you persuade, how you serve, and how you protect, which leads into the maintenance and hosting. And this is what I read. I just want to read this for everybody. You're three times more likely to get a virus from a church website than a porn website, which-- Seriously, no joke. You say no joke. Ask Jake. He loves this question. I'm sure they want to find out more about that. But you follow up with saying, our digital age is a dangerous one. One with-- Excuse me, one in which bad actors create dangerous software that attack thousands of sites per second. If you're not prepared, you're at risk. We're proud to say that none of our sites on our hosting with our maintenance and security plans have ever been hacked. We have your back. So that's just a great-- I mean, you can all link that in the show notes. Do you guys have your maintenance plan-- do you have a page that's hidden for your clients? Yeah, for/hosting. We'll take care. I'll put that in the show notes, because I was curious. I know it's not in the front end of your website, but I figured it was there for your leads. If they're interested in seeing more, it's a perfect. I'll link this in the show notes so it'd be a good reference point that people can look at. Of course, they can look at mine as well. But-- Yeah, we don't make that public on purpose. I send them that in a link, in a follow-up email from a call. Because again, I want some context to be there. I don't want them to just look at the pricing publicly and be like-- Yes. - His pages maybe are bit. - Yep, it's actually something I'm big on. I'll probably talk about it in my podcast here coming up. I talk about it in my business course, but I have a whole set of hidden pages and pricing is on one of them because I don't want everyone to see pricing. I also don't want every lead to see pricing. So I only send it to the ones that I think should see it. - Totally. And even so, like what we do on like our strategy questionnaire page is I make a video and I make it fun. Like who, building a website should be fun. - Yeah. - It's fun. It's creative. So I have a mustache in the video. I'm being goofy, I'm being silly, I'm being very educational. And I have the video number one. And then a big headline underneath the video is hold up right before the form and it says, hold up, did you watch that video? I know you didn't. No, you know, click on that video. This is your brand we're talking about. This is you. Like you can't take two minutes to watch a video to help us better serve you. Come on, watch the video. And that just kind of adds to the energy, kind of helps set the tone of like, look, we're educational, but we're also fun. Watch the video, we're gonna talk about you and then let's have a good time together. And let's conquer all your dreams together. - Beautiful. Beautiful man, Jake, this has been such good gold advice. I'll make sure the links we just covered, I'll put in the show notes. I actually just bought the automatic customer book by John Werelow. I'm also right on. So that one's coming. I like a good paperback myself. I can't recommend built to sell enough for anyone interested. Check that book out as well. Same author. - Yes. - Oh, I had one more question for you. What the heck was, oh yeah. What are you guys using for your updates and stuff? Are you, because you don't use man's WP, right? Is that right? - Yeah, John handles that side. He uses infinite WP. - Infinite WP. - Which is, I mean, they're all on the same level. - It's comparable. - Yeah, it's very, yeah. - There's quite a few. So I'll mention-- - Some type of a dashboard style that allows you to have remote access to multiple websites to do similar things. - Yeah, it's awesome. I know with, I'm sure infinite is the same way but with ManagedWP, we do all the updates in the dashboard. Can log into sites, all the backups, all the reports, all the security and stuff. It's, yeah, it's awesome. So-- - And by Josh's courses on this guys, he walks through a lot of this stuff as it pertains to building it in the background and stuff like that. - Yeah. I mean, we've covered a lot of good stuff here, but yeah, there's the technical aspect, excuse me, technical aspect of everything that, it just, you need a proven path and a guide. And that's why, I mean, I was so pumped up and passionate about recurring income 'cause it changed my life, man. My maintenance plan was my first dose of like, once I had payments coming in every month and I didn't have to do additional work, I mean, let's be honest, updating the sites as it breathes. Like that's very rarely are there problems if you have good hosting and stuff. And it was like the easiest money and web design and it just changed my life. So, yeah, I mean, I dish out everything. I know in my maintenance plan course, and obviously, Jake, you've been extremely transparent, which is much appreciated with all this stuff. Where can people find more about you? And, yeah, do you have any final note, man? - Yeah, yeah. The only thing we got is artilermedia.com. Hit us up there. Any questions you wanna keep asking me things or whatever? That's where I'm at. We're located in Lincoln. So, any folks listening in Lincoln comes swing by. It was a sweet office space here. - The Silicon Prairie, right? Oh boy, you know. - Yeah, I know. We're on the, yeah, we're on like the Columbus's, I think at the edge of the Silicon Prairie, we're getting closer to the east side of things. But yeah, John, this has been great, man. Hey, do you have like a final thought if anyone is like thinking about offering maintenance, what would you say is just kind of, what would you encourage them with? - Yeah, just dream about it. Think about how that relates to your life in small steps, right, the first hosting plan that I got $20 a month for, 'cause we split that all, John and I split everything, 50, 50, my expenses, was, you know, that covers Chipotle for two weeks. And then it turned into 600 and that covers my, you know, rents or my mortgage or whatever, dream, dream. And that'll really help you stay focused and just slow and steady, take it one at a time, get better, write down what you do better, put your process down, learn from yourself. There's, I'm reading this book right now called The 12 Rules of Life by Jordan Peterson. One of his 12 rules of life, which that book is fascinating if you haven't read it, is compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today, and make sure you're documenting that, right? If I'm comparing myself to yesterday, am I providing more value than I was yesterday? Am I helping my clients better than I was yesterday? It's a much healthier place to be, I think. So slow and steady, take it one at a time, build relationships and it'll come faster than you think. - That's great, man. I'm just gonna add one final point to that. And that is for those of you who have your business already in place and you've been going on it for a while and you haven't ever had hosting or maintenance, that's okay. I was in business for six years before I started my maintenance plan and I was able to, I think I had almost 30 clients sign up like the first couple of weeks when I launched mine, which was like big dose of recurring income. So that's okay. You can always reach back out to your clients and offer the new services and you can go about that way. So if you feel like you've missed out on a bunch of recurring income, you have, but that's okay. You can put it into that right now. So, we'll just start. - Start it, man. We could go for about 10 hours, but I'll cut it off here. This has been a great chat. I think I'm gonna have you on soon. I know you're talking about launching a podcast for your agency, which we'll dive into. And I'm sure we'll have, have you on in the future for client stuff and all kinds of stuff. So thanks so much for your time, man. - Thanks, I appreciate it. See you. - All right. - Take cheers. (upbeat music) - Hey guys and gals just wanted to pop in with a couple of things before you head out. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast. I would love to hear your feedback and it will also help other web designers find the show. Be sure to check out the show notes for this episode. Just go to JoshHall.co, click on podcast and search this episode number and you'll find all the links, descriptions and resources we talked about. And if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe and you'll be notified when the next episode is live. Thanks again for tuning in and I'll catch you guys on the next episode. [BLANK_AUDIO]