Marketing CLARITY Podcast
Marketing CLARITY Podcast
Website FAQ's, SEO Confusion, + "Working With Us" Guide Walkthrough with Wicky Design
In this episode, marketing coach Ross Herosian sits down with a member of his Marketing CLARITY Community - Mark Crowell. Along with his wife Barbara, Mark runs Wicky Design – a Wordpress design and development company.
We talk about his transition from a corporate job to entrepreneur, the most common questions he gets from people looking to create their website, and we’re going to go through their “Working With Wicky Design” document which made me love not only what they do, but how they do it.
Learn more about Wicky Design - https://wickydesign.com/
Want to see the video version of this episode? Go to https://youtu.be/bzYnV0nEy04
Did you enjoy this podcast? Please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts (or wherever you listen. It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really helps our show get discovered by other people looking for marketing help. Plus, I love reading reviews!
For show notes and to listen online: https://www.tripodpodcast.com
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➕ Join our FREE Marketing CLARITY Community full of tips, strategies, and how-to’s related to marketing, content creation, sales, and social media: https://tricycle-creative.com/join
➕ Are you wandering around in a marketing fog? Our Marketing CLARITY Coaching program can help! Learn more at http://getmarketingclarity.com/
CONNECT WITH TRICYCLE CREATIVE
Website: https://tricycle-creative.com
YouTube: https://youtube.com.com/tricyclecreative
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hellotricycle
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hellotricycle
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hellotricycle
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hellotricycle
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Did you enjoy this podcast? Please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts (or wherever you listen). It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really helps the show get discovered by other people looking for marketing help. Plus, I love reading reviews!
For show notes and to listen online: https://www.marketingclaritypodcast.com
➕ Join my FREE Marketing CLARITY Community full of tips, strategies, and how-to’s related to marketing, content creation, sales, and social media.
➕ Are you wandering around in a marketing fog? My Marketing CLARITY Guide can help! Learn more at http://getmarketingclarity.com/
CONNECT WITH TRICYCLE CREATIVE
Website: https://tricycle-creative.com
YouTube: https://youtube.com.com/tricyclecreative
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hellotricycle
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hellotricycle
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hellotricycle
Twitter: https...
Today I'm sitting down with a new member of my marketing clarity community. Now if you haven't heard of it yet, my marketing clarity community is where I help solopreneurs and small business marketers just like you improve your marketing skills, increase your digital marketing know how and expand your support network. It's totally free. And I'd love to have you join us at clarity dot tricycle dash creative.com. Yeah, I know it's kind of a messy link. So I'll go ahead and put the link in the description. This conversation was recorded both in audio and video, so if you'd prefer to check out the video, again, I'll put the link in the episode description. Pretty much everything translates just fine to audio. But in the last segment, you might want to see the document that we're actually discussing. In this episode, I'm chatting with Mark Crowl, along with his wife, Barbara, Mark runs wiki design, a WordPress design and development company. We're going to talk about his transition from corporate job to entrepreneur, the most common questions he gets from people looking to create their website. And we're going to go through they're working with wiki design document, which made me love not only what they do, but how they do it. And if you haven't already subscribed, please, please, on whatever podcast platform you're using, please take a moment, subscribe to this podcast. And if you like what you hear, leave us a review. It really really helps me to grow my audience. And I super appreciate it. Hey, Mark, thank you so much for taking the time today to chat with me. And then I guess, by extension, the viewers out there. Yep. How you doing? I'm good, man. I'm good. I'm, we were just talking at the time of recording. I mean, like a tornado watch. And somehow my house is being painted also. So it's like wackiness over here. But that's, that's like the life of working from home. Right?
Mark Crowell:Yeah, there's always kind of distractions. They were just ripping up the sidewalk this past week. Really right in front of my house. So yeah, I didn't take any calls last week. I was like, I can't take any calls. They had a big bulldozer, like they ripped it up. It was fun. I take a few minutes and watch how they rip up drywall to
Ross Herosian:see learning. When you work from home, you learn. And I got the double whammy between the possible tornado the house painting. My dog hates all of those things. So it's like, it's just a bananas day. So I I'm really excited for this conversation to maybe normalize my day, a little bit, a little bit. So let's start. And I think always a very logical place. Talk about wiki design. What you guys do how you started fire away?
Mark Crowell:Sure, sure. So yeah, wiki design started full time back in about 2014. So at the time, we were in the transition of we were living in Tampa, Florida at the time. And I wanted to move up to the Philadelphia area because that's where I met my wife now, which is Barbara, she's the other co owner of wiki design. She was originally from this area. So I took literally one trip up here and decided I wanted to make that move. So kind of fast forward, we went 2014 We moved up here. And she was working kind of part time doing web design. And I was still working full time at a corporation doing website design and actually 3d animation. So she just wanted to go all in on it because we were able to afford it where she could do it part time. And I couldn't quite yet so she went all in and 2014 and then it took me about four more years. So around 2018 I was able to quit my full time corporate job to run the business with her. So we've officially both been full time and begin design since 2018.
Ross Herosian:So you came you came from a corporate setting role and jumped into the entrepreneurial space.
Mark Crowell:Yeah, yeah. It was a little scary. I'm not gonna lie it was probably it was the scariest thing
Ross Herosian:I'm right there with you man. I had the same thing. I get it.
Mark Crowell:Yeah, cuz it You're so used to that, like, you know, steady paycheck, or you know, the consistency of always getting paid. So that's why it took me a little bit to kind of get used to it, we've saved up enough money where we knew that, hey, we had, you know, a year's worth of savings. So even if it failed, I would always go back to another job. That's the thing, there's always if you're in the corporate environment, you're not quite sure, you can always just take the risk. And then if it doesn't work, you can always go back to work, and then figure it out. Like kind of reassess. Yeah,
Ross Herosian:I think with proper planning, most failure is temporary. I mean, honestly, like, we did that we did the same thing. I came from, I would say, majority corporate roles, for sure. Right, when I jumped into creating tricycle creative, I was running a nonprofit part time at that time. But prior to that, 1015 plus years of corporate, you know, environment life. And, yeah, I mean, I always kind of had the itch. And I think that was always a scary thing of jumping right in is not having, or at least I needed to set up a like, safety net. Yeah. You know, and so that's what I did I put it, you know, I kind of took us took out and put aside in its own separate account. You know, like, just don't touch this. This is an emergency fund, rainy day fund. If I get no clients, if the business goes under, if I need to supplement, we have this fund. It's here and ready. And I'm happy to say to this date, haven't had to touch that yet. You know, but I think if you do those things in preparation, not in preparation, expecting that you will fail. But I think just being prepared, because this is a whole different ballgame.
Mark Crowell:Oh, yeah. Yeah. And when you come from the corporate environment, like I said, you're so used to every two weeks, that Friday you get paid where you know, you run your own business. There might be times where you don't get a paycheck that well month, but then the next month, you get enough to cover month. So
Ross Herosian:feast or famine. Yeah, that's, you know,
Mark Crowell:when I was running when I was doing it, when I was working full time, I was still helping out like part time, so the weekends, after hours, so I kind of already was getting comfortable with it. And then there was you're kind of know if there's that point where it's like, Alright, I'm starting to waste too much time, at the full time corporate job, I can do that. That's how you can when I'm sitting on, I kind of analyzed how many hours I wasted on calls, I was like, Oh, I wasted I'm not joking 30 to 40 hours a month, on conference calls. Well, they do made two websites.
Ross Herosian:And I gotta tell you, it's the one thing I do not miss about the corporate structure. And the thing that drove me, the narrative, if you will, that drove me and continues to drive me crazy about work from home, is just this corporate necessity, because they don't know anything different. Just to meetings. I'm the same way. If I look back at my time, I'm sure that there were days 50% towards some of my roles, more than that, were just totally wasted. Like, I famously was in a role, where the head of the company, we had a standing meeting every week, and this person insisted is be at like 8am. But they never weren't work at 8am. They didn't get in until nine, but they never would change it like the net. So it's like we had to be in there early sitting around for an hour. It was just like a total waste of time. And that's what drives me crazy about work from home. Where when, when a more corporate or whatever environment is so quick to trash work from home and like, oh, people aren't productive. I'm like, have you done a proper audit of that? Productivity?
Mark Crowell:I'm so much more productive at home because, yeah, I would have people that would walk around the office and they would chitchat with me. You know, I would get up and take a break. I mean, you're only getting a few hours of like real work out of someone.
Ross Herosian:Now, I miss, don't get me wrong, I missed some of those. When I was working in New York, we'd pop down to the subway to the Dunkin below our office, walk around, shoot the shit. And I love that. Li and like a lie. I miss a little bit of I miss camaraderie. But when it comes to productivity, they ain't necessarily the same. Yeah. So back to wiki design. Let's talk specifically. What is it? What's the service or services that you you guys offer.
Mark Crowell:So yeah, our main services, we just do branding and web design these days, we used to offer other services, like SEO, and social media management. But now we've just gotten back to our core services, which is just the branding, custom web design. And then we can also do like ecommerce websites, membership websites. So we wanted to really just this past year or two, we kind of refocus just back on those core services, because we started to see that we were starting to offer too many things. And during the pandemic, in the beginning, we actually were doing pretty good. And we were offering like website maintenance for websites that we didn't build, we tried all these different things, and it worked. And it did help out a lot of small businesses doing that. But then we started to notice that, hey, we need to kind of just go back to what we were doing. Because on top of that, if you have seen we have a lot of YouTube videos, so we are focused,
Ross Herosian:you guys slate on YouTube. I really do. I love what you do on YouTube.
Mark Crowell:We learned a lot this past couple of years. So we went all in on it early last year. So last January, January, what is it? 2021. I'm losing track of what your market is.
Ross Herosian:Down and I'm about I'm about to have my first child, so I'm also going to fall into that, like, it's all going to become blurry as hell, I'm not gonna know the day the time. So I get it again.
Mark Crowell:Yeah, so yeah, we went, we went heavy, we were doing two or three videos a week, for about a year, and then we kind of scaled back. But um, yeah, we wanted to really kind of focus on that. And the great thing about making YouTube videos is once you get to a certain point, you can of course, start to make a little bit of money off of you know, ads, and then we push just a few affiliates. You know, we only work with so many different companies or software, we push those affiliate. So it's like a little bit of it's almost like a part time income just on the side. Yeah.
Ross Herosian:No passive income stream. And I think for anyone out there, particularly if you are you know that solopreneur or croffer, creative services. YouTube can be a very viable thing. But let me stress this, and I think you'll agree, you have to come in creating valuable, helpful, insightful, entertaining, even content first. That has to be your first priority. Monetization comes if you do that first step, right. Do would you agree?
Mark Crowell:Oh, yeah, for sure. In our situation, we don't do like entertainment. We're strictly like kind of just boring tutorial, but it works. So there's an audience for that on YouTube. There's definitely Oh, yeah. Orioles? Yeah, and the big reason why I like to do videos. I'm huge into organic ranking. I love that I can post a video on YouTube and have it rank way before my website will get indexed. So I can Yes, once you become an authority with a certain topic, I'm not joking, you can post a video and it gets crawled and indexed in organic search, like pretty much instantly. So yes, it's very competitive, like this low hanging fruit all the time for what we do so.
Ross Herosian:And that's where it's, that's where YouTube is really big. In discoverability, if you have a niche or expertise, right, and you have insights, they're really strong. You know, as far as discoverability, in, if you're making how to content if that is relevant to your service, or your expertise. That's like the number one YouTube stuff. I mean, behind gaming, maybe, right is how to. And so I mean, and you could, there's a Venn diagram of those two things, how to gaming, which is usually where I spend a lot of my time to be fair, like, I'm always like, I'll be streaming something while I'm working that kind of thing. So yeah. So now with your website, service, do you work specifically or exclusively in like a WordPress? Is that? Is that how you guys work?
Mark Crowell:Yeah, we figured out over the years, it's best to just specialize in one thing. So yeah, we're 100%. WordPress. And we use the Elementor. Page Builder. So Jen,
Ross Herosian:love I've used we've talked about things great. Yeah, it's a great,
Mark Crowell:it's our favorite page builder. We've been using it since like, 2017. And yeah, we haven't really looked back. We are looking at you know, so we always kind of having a roadmap for what we might want to build in the future. So there's a few things in the pipeline that we're always kind of looking at, but yeah, we've been using Elementor for a while it's perfect for us. So when we create our websites not only do you just get a website you also get like custom training videos on how to update your own website. So which I
Ross Herosian:love Have I love I mean, I told you, I mean, we we met, because I have here and they're offered web dev web design services. And getting back to your earlier point, like, listen, like, you offer a lot of things. I don't love doing websites. And I really wanted to find a partner, a collaborator, that when people come to me, and they say, I need or want a website, I can hand it off, right to someone who I have trust in, who is equipped to handle these types of clients, and who does this stuff every day, which is why obviously, we're talking today, but why we first met? And, you know, I think that in a lot of those cases, when people come to me, then I'm gonna be curious to get your input on this. There are a lot of common mistakes that I've seen solopreneurs small business owners, small business marketers, when they come to me when they're coming to me saying I needed a website wanted a website, there's a lot of like common issues. What are some of the common issues that you hear or you deal with on on like a regular basis?
Mark Crowell:Yeah, that would definitely be a lot of times when people come to us, in most cases, they've been burned by a pass company. So they have found somebody who can do a website really cheap. And a lot of times, it's just you figure out, or sometimes you don't figure out what that your website has been outsourced? You know, it could be overseas. And know, it's really hard to make updates on the back end.
Ross Herosian:There's no or you don't know how to your point. You Like, I literally worked with a client the past year, didn't even know how to get access to the website.
Mark Crowell:Yeah, that's not good. Yeah, no, no.
Ross Herosian:But it happens more often than you would think, where people hire someone else. They build a website, they don't think, yeah, to ask to get access there then like shackled to this person.
Mark Crowell:We've been in a few situations where it doesn't happen often. But it can where a past developer or company can hold your domain name hospice for free. And that's what I don't want to comment like it can happen. Yeah, hosting. Hosting is another one where, okay, you have your domain name, but where are your files? Where's the some guy in a? Does he have a server in his basement, and you gotta pay him money
Ross Herosian:to get access to your basement? server.com? They're reliable, right?
Mark Crowell:I've seen that guy.
Ross Herosian:That's who I host with. Are you telling me that's a problem? Now? I'm a little concerned.
Mark Crowell:Yeah, that's definitely something that does happen pretty often when people do come to us is they've been burned. Or it's not as common, but sometimes people come to us completely brand new don't have any idea what it even means to have a website. You know, they of course you can. You can be sold, you know, website like from Wix or Squarespace, you know, they have really good marketing, where they're like, hey, in five minutes, you get a website up and running. That's great. And all, but your website's not going to look like the ones you saw on television, if you don't
Ross Herosian:know, because those were five minutes. Yeah, exactly.
Mark Crowell:So I think there's a lot of really good marketing that says, hey, webs making websites are easy. And that's not the case. In a lot of cases. If you want a professional website, you're gonna have to make a small investment, because that's what it is. It's an event. Yes. Yeah, it's not just a monthly fee that you pay Wix or something when you
Ross Herosian:were starting your business. There are expenses that I think it is much more helpful mindset wise for you to look at them as an investment. Your website is maybe number one. I know everyone wants to think or for a while there for a couple of years there with the proliferation of social that, oh, I don't need a website anymore. You do? Oh, yeah. Don't believe that. That's not true. A website has so many incredibly valuable aspects to it for your business, from legitimacy to SEO to sales to to content to a place for long form short form, all content. It's your home base.
Mark Crowell:Yeah. Your situation where so we just recently purchased this house and we needed to get some work done some plumbing work. I'm not joking. I called and went to at least six, seven different websites. I called up these people. They don't even answer the phone. So I eventually this is a good thing to know is Google has a thing called Google guarantee. Were these companies are paying top dollar to get ranked inside Google. And so I called up one of those guys who actually went to their website, very professional website. And guess what happened? That person who had the professional website, they showed up on time, they answered my phone call, they actually invested time into their business, rather than just getting a quickie website up and yeah, so I won't even hire contractors or anything these days unless they have a real online presence.
Ross Herosian:Yeah. And I think, you know, I have another story years ago, I had someone in the service industry just like, well, you're talking about like, home repair, he was a contractor, I won't go into what exactly it was. But nonetheless, one of the first things he wanted me to do, and this relates to website access. Hey, Ross, could you change the phone number on my website? It's wrong. Oh, okay. How long has it been? Ah, years? Oh, jeez. That's insane. Like, and it was baffling on two accounts. One, I will say just somewhat of the laissez faire about it, but to, again, getting back to that is a simple thing. That even if you're not, oh, I'm not a web guy or web person, you should be able to get into your site to delete, add new phone number. Yeah. Right. At the very least. I think it's just like a minimum threshold, or, and I think the other piece, and you mentioned this a little bit, and I know you provide on your YouTube channel, some really good insight from a technical SEO standpoint. But I think you've mentioned confusion about SEO, when people come to you, is that something that you as a web person, you get thinking those things are like, Oh, they're definitely just connected. And since you do web, you do SEO?
Mark Crowell:Oh, yeah, for sure. I'm actually I just had a call with a client a couple days ago, and he, you know, we're gonna build his website. And then on that same call, he was concerned, Hey, how can I outrank my competitors, and all of this, I'm like, Alright, first, we need to build the website. First, you can't outrank someone unless you actually have something to rank. So a lot of times cardio for those,
Ross Herosian:of course.
Mark Crowell:They think that it's just the same thing. It really is a totally different beast, there's
Ross Herosian:connective tissue. But so as an SEO guy, who also deals with people who come to me, who have no SEO experience, there's connective tissue between the technical SEO and what has now become what could be called semantic SEO. Right. And there's a big shift has been a big shift for the last two years, that SEO is driven a lot more by content on site content, then by technical not the technical is not a factor. It still is. Yeah, but that the way that Google's artificial intelligence algorithm, indexing spiders, its whole mechanism, it understands language better, understands relationships better, but relationship between language understands conversation better. And so with all of those things evolving, the move has been a great deal in SEO towards the importance of improved on site content. But these two things go together, just like you said, well, listen, we need to get you a site that is functional. B, you can access B looks good, professional. And I say functional double because it's functional.
Mark Crowell:Say like the website is basically the way I look at it. The website is like the foundation of everything that you are running. So then your content strategy, your SEO. So yeah, it needs to be looked at as kind of like it they are together. But it's also like you got to get the website functioning, everything working correctly, is the foundation, then you just build off of that which, like in our situation, our website, we produce tons of content. But I don't ever really go into our website and like, you know, change code to try to make it look better for Google. Like once you get it down, you just kind of create the content and go on from there. Yeah,
Ross Herosian:because it doesn't work anymore. Also, like these, you know, if you're out there watching this, it may be because you're need a website, one a new website, and then now you're like, Well, I'm an SEO sounding interesting to run. Don't walk away from people who are just about hiding keywords in the code. It does not work. And if you're out there, and you're not sure if you're ready to make the investment on SEO, or you really want to learn more to figure it out. I offer a six week SEO bootcamp So I call it the SEO one on one boot camp, you can sign up for it. It's six weeks we work together, we have a meeting a week, I explain SEO completely. And just like everything else I do, I give you the training wheels, for you to be more informed to either do it yourself, or no enough that you can hire someone to assist you. And if that's us, that's great. If it's not us, that's okay, too. So I just want to put that out there too, because I deal with the same thing I do. A lot of people come to me, they only know SEO has been thrown around, I've
Mark Crowell:heard, the thing I like about SEO is you can ask 10 people what SEO is you're gonna get 10 different answers, which is not a good thing for the industry. It's true.
Ross Herosian:It's very true. And that's what when I do this, I really start with the essential basics. Because to be fair, Google, there's a lot of gray area, by their own admittance, they'll tell you some things, and then they won't tell you some things. And then they won't even maybe know some things, but they don't want to play their hand. You know, it's it keeps you on your toes, for sure. Now, it's not
Mark Crowell:nonstop education and learning with SEO,
Ross Herosian:and web in web. I mean,
Mark Crowell:we're offering some SEO stuff a while ago, but I'm like it that was turning into a full time thing. So I was like I gotta do I gotta choose one of the other basics
Ross Herosian:100% 100% Pinky swears and handshakes. They were all well and good when you were a kid. But when it comes to your creative business, you need contracts, contracts protect you. They provide transparency. And in the event that client turns into a nightmare, they can give you a clearly marked escape room. That's why I use panda doc, Panda. That was the first software I purchased for my business, because I recognize the importance of being able to easily create proposals and contracts that clients can review and sign electronically. You can even integrate with popular payment collection systems like QuickBooks, or stripe. So as soon as the contract is signed, you can get paid client in the books, money in the bank, use the link in this episode description and start your 14 day free trial. With panda Doc, you can stop crossing your fingers and start counting your money. Hey guys, Ross here with just a quick note. On this next section of the conversation, we're going to be talking about the working with wiki design document. And there is a ton of great stuff here. And it works in both audio and video. But I wanted to remind you, I did record this episode in both. So if you want to see the actual document that we're talking about here, you can hit that link in the description to also check out the video for this part of the conversation. So I want to now jump in when we first when I reached out to you to start you did something which I've told you since but like just made me totally fall in love with you. I already like once I received this email I was kind of already like these are the guys I love I love what they do. I'm looking for WordPress people that you did something so seemingly simple, maybe deceivingly simple, but it really sold me on you guys and that was you sent me over this kind of like working with us guide and I wanted to take a second more than a second several seconds to go over this with you. Because two reasons if you're out there watching this and you are a small business owner solopreneur and you need want a great word stable, beautiful functional Wordpress site. You should see this document I think it really helps to outline what the process the type of thing that comes with it. I did this also with my graphic and logo designer Adrian. So if you haven't checked out that video, I'll put it up here at the top. He broke down his logo design process. I love process. I love process. So when you see other people do it, I like that. Yeah. Oh my god. And I think to the to what we were talking about that mystification. I don't know how websites are made. I don't know how logos are made. It's not to at all downplay the creative craft. It's to make it under Stan double, because when people don't see how stuff is made, I think a lot of times they just assume it's easy. Yeah, exactly. You know. And so let's jump into this document. Because I also think it's good to share if you're out there and you own a creative business some, this is absolutely something you should do. And there's a phrase that I got from another clients, like borrow with love. I'm not saying you steal this from, but the idea, I think is something that you should think about for your business.
Mark Crowell:Yeah. And you can use it for all different types of businesses.
Ross Herosian:Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think any business, it's valuable to have this type of thing. So yeah, I reached out to you, and you replied with an email, but you also they also check out this attached document, and it got me a little fuel for you. And your wife, Barbara, I understood, okay, great. This is a two person shop, that kind of thing. You preface it here, read through this thing. And I love this to make sure the processes work for you. When you work with someone, this is how I look at it. It's a collaboration, particularly with a website. Oh, yeah. You know, it's not why
Mark Crowell:this document isn't it's not just saying, you know, oh, we agree we do this, it's this. This is the process is going to help you. This is what you can expect. This is more like setting the expectations up front.
Ross Herosian:Yes. And I think that's really important. expectation setting is really, really important. Again, particularly with website, particularly with digital, I love this page, too. This is when we're work. This is when we're available. You know, I think it's good to set boundaries, my therapist says is good for me to set boundaries. So I'm applying it to business to right. Here are ours.
Mark Crowell:Yeah, this is like one of the main reasons. First things we wanted on the documents like this is when you can contact us. Yeah.
Ross Herosian:It's an emergency. Not everything is an emergency, and a lot like I've been working, having my own business now for I think, one to five years. And it's probably the nature of the services I offer. But I'm really yet to experience a oh, this is truly a house on fire. We need to talk immediately. Exactly. Yeah, getting all the way back in the corporate world. Every fucking thing.
Mark Crowell:Everything. Yeah, especially when it's the end of the quarter or something. And then
Ross Herosian:it's like compounding fire. It's like this guy's house is on fire. And he lives in a condo, and he's setting all the other people's houses on fire. It's like, Oh, my God, just no Jews. So I think this also helps because you set the stage, hey, we're going to use a project management tool, the best way to communicate with us with his email. Yeah, which I love. Same with me. Same with me, but I love setting expectations. I just love that. This is a what's included. And you do this at a high level because I know you have a couple of different packages, but you're kind of saying okay, here's what you're gonna get. I work with so many creatives solopreneurs. Who? This is something where I think they need to spend more time and I work with them on it is I know it's extra work. I know. You're now putting down on paper what you're going to deliver. But it's put on your big boy pants. You're running a business? Yeah.
Mark Crowell:Yeah, I mean, you're almost it's almost like we wanted to document like how we do build these things. And why not just throw it in here be like, Okay, these are all the tools that we tend to use. Let's just throw it in here. And, and the good thing about this too is this, we change this up pretty often, you know, we change out the FAQs later like, this is like a living document. Like for some reason. Let's say we don't want to use the Elementor page builder or WordPress in the future. We could just X that. And the documents the same, you know,
Ross Herosian:pretty much yes. Yeah, exactly. The core. The rest of it is it still applies? Yeah, if you change out Elementor for something else, you can go and change that out. But they understand that now. And I will say this to some of your clients. This may all be gobbledygook. Right? Yeah. But I would say, just like your example of like going with the Google recommended, this just shows the thoughtfulness and the care that you've given to this stuff. You know, and I think that matters a lot, you know, and around website design, too, because there's so many different moving parts. For example, here to talk about the technical piece posting piece, you know, fonts, image, that kind of plugins. But I think it also someone who reads through this and is interested and they don't know what this is, it's their opportunity to ask you about it.
Mark Crowell:Yeah, exactly. Because you don't want to get to a point where you're at the contract level, and there's all this fine print. And they were like, oh, no, I thought you're gonna build it on a different platform. Yeah. No, let me before you, before we even have a phone call with the person they watch, or they look at this document. So if they don't like our process, which is fine, we're not for everyone, then that's okay. You know, but at least upfront, we're not wasting each other's time, we're not getting down to the contract level, and then you don't like the fine print. So this is kind of this is kind of like a stripped down version of like, what's in the contract? Basically,
Ross Herosian:I will say this, a lot of the people who maybe don't have documented stuff like this, or don't go through this at some stage like this in the sales process, I think they maybe are doing it because they're like, Oh, well, if I put that in there, I'm going to scare off someone. That's, to me, it's like, better to scare them off than to like, attract the wrong person.
Mark Crowell:Yeah, you know, it took us a long time to realize that we're not for everybody. And no business should be, you know, so generic that it just caters to every situation, every person. That's not how it works, you know? Yeah. I mean, it works like that with tons of industries, you know?
Ross Herosian:Absolutely. Right. How I choose my dish soap brand, maybe, you know, as specific as totally like free and clear versus
Mark Crowell:Yeah, like an airline, like if I don't I just thought of an aeroplane or something like you choose spirit or frontier, if you want to go budget, but then you can go to the nicer ones, like the deltas, and until Yeah, but you know, I don't know.
Ross Herosian:Yeah, absolutely. And I also say this, you know, I know you send this out. I know. Also, I want to put out a caveat there, that the pricing may change. I'm going to skip down over it not to be like, ooh, super secretive. But listen, guys, if you're watching this, understand, don't be like, Hey, I
Mark Crowell:watched it. 10 years later.
Ross Herosian:Yeah, yeah, exactly. 10 years later with inflation, where it's at? Oh, my God. Yeah. Like you said, and this is, this is not a bound contract bound video. But But I want to talk through this. Just outlining, hey, here's what's included. Right. And subsequently, I love this next part, too. Here's what we'll need from you. This is I think, again, one of the more important pieces of any type document sales contract of its type is being very clear on what you need. From the client. Yeah, exactly. Right. Like this isn't going to be just a, I need a website. I'm a plumber. Alright, see you later.
Mark Crowell:Yep. Yeah, yeah. Oh, many. So many people think that that's what it is. But that's why I was like, you know, what, if this, I think this document can intimidate a lot of people who aren't ready for that, because they're like, holy crap, I gotta be serious about getting the content and the images like, these people are messing around. Like, that's, that's what the purpose of this was, in my opinion is like, this is there to help not only us, but to you too, because we don't want to, like I said, we don't want to go back and forth and be like, Okay, where's the content? Are you going to have it this week? We're in a situation now where we figured out hey, we don't really want to get started on the project unless you're really serious about it. So it's almost like a commitment to us that you're serious as much as we are, you know,
Ross Herosian:and I would say this also right, I think this is where it's always been a real sweet spot for my flagship coaching program, the clarity coaching program, where if you see a document like this, and you're like, I don't know the answers to this to to my voice, my look, my fuel, my color, my customer, my who the prospect my how to talk about my services in a thoughtful, meaningful, impactful way. That's really what my flagship program is meant to fix. And this is again another reason why I even reached out to you because they go together like peanut butter and jelly. Right? Where you come through my coaching program. You have you walk away with this customizable actionable marketing and content plan. You can take that bring it to someone like you
Mark Crowell:Yeah, that's right. Perfect. Perfect. Yeah,
Ross Herosian:yeah. And you're gonna say, oh my god, this makes our job so much easier. Right? All these questions we had about your brand, your services, your company, your customers, you but like that's already made for you inside of like the coaching program that I do the clarity coaching programs. So there's kind of, I always talk about, like order of operations, if you will, to these things. Right. And then from there, right, plan, website. I mean, we talked about, you know, SEO, right, SEO content, which is, you know, intermixed. There's overlap between these right? I'd say organic. And then that's when like, okay, you can start to upgrade into potentially paid. And this is another great conversation I had, again, if you didn't check it out, I'll link it up here with Jill, who is my Google ads, Google SEM, Guru, we talked about this, where it's like, same type of thing, like trying to just jump into ADS first, without doing the organic work. First. It's not going to work. If it works, which is unlikely, it's not going to work nearly as well as if you go through the process, right. Trust the process. process and timeline. Speaking of which, it's almost like I planned that, but I promise you, I did. It worked out. Yeah, it's understanding how long is this gonna take? It's just gonna end. And if these things aren't MIT, which is what I love the you and us, listen, if we don't get from you, this, this thing. Okay, what's going to be delayed? There's going to be a delay. All right. I think that's a good transparent thing to share. Right? Yeah. Yep.
Mark Crowell:That was that was a really, that took
Ross Herosian:a little while to kind of I was gonna say, but I like it a lot. You know, it took
Mark Crowell:us a couple of kind of years to figure out like our sweet spot. And that's kind of where it's at. It's like, we kind of go week, our process can like week by week. But we are in a situation to where it's like we actually work in somewhere. Now. He's like, I needed up in like, two, three weeks. I was like, Alright, cool. Do you have everything? Yeah, you do? We can we can hit the ground running. Yeah. And he was ready to go. So we should be launching in two to three weeks? Yeah.
Ross Herosian:So let me ask you this, given that some of these things may take longer, I'm gonna guess more often than not for the client. And then for you, but like, What's your average turnaround time on a website that, you know, everything goes according to plan, but understandably, people maybe need a little more time to get this to us. Like, what's what's that look like?
Mark Crowell:Um, usually we say average four to six weeks, but realistically, probably the four weeks if everything well, that's
Ross Herosian:still crazy, impressive. That's okay. Wow. And we're talking about six, six to eight page sites, what we're talking about there.
Mark Crowell:Okay. Yeah, most most people fall into, like our six page package. I would say like a, like eight out of 10, I would say probably fall into that. And the rest would be like, hey, we need a custom ecommerce or membership website that's a little bit different than those. Yeah, those tend to take longer. Of course, you know, if you have a bunch of products,
Ross Herosian:more moving parts. Yeah, sure. Especially e commerce.
Mark Crowell:E commerce is a lot more moving parts. Yeah, yeah.
Ross Herosian:And then you just talk about actual payment expectation. And you know, two different options. I love by the way, the splitting up payment. The other thing I've seen, and for anyone watching this out there, particularly you taking on a big project like this, you know, there's a lot of different schools of thought on this. You know, one thing I've also seen is like a almost like a 6020 20, split, right? 60, upfront, 20%, halfway 20% When it's done. And I think that helps to maybe offset some of the, you know, initial ramp up to getting a website built. But I assume this is something Have you tinkered with your like payment structuring is, you know, that kind of thing at
Mark Crowell:all? Yeah, so the two payment, one where it's 50%, upfront 50% At the end, that that's pretty much always been there, since we started the business. It wasn't until actually COVID ties, we entered the six month payment because we really wanted to help small businesses that were struggling the beginning of the pandemic. So we've stuck that in 2020. And we're going to probably continue to keep doing that. I would say the majority of customers still just want to do the two payment options a little bit easier for them. But you know, it's starting to get maybe more like 30 40% of people are starting to choose the six month payment. So yeah, we've always kind of just had the 5050 I'm trying to think and that's
Ross Herosian:pretty standard. The 50 Yeah, I think is a very standard, common practice. So if you're out there looking for a website, don't be shocked if you see this again.
Mark Crowell:Yeah, I think I made I guess you could say I made a few mistakes when I was doing it part time I was doing 100% When I'm done Oh, that doesn't work. So
Ross Herosian:Oh no. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You do that poor poor bastard. Yeah. Wow, you gotta learn the hard way. That is. Yeah, that's brutal. Yeah, that's tough. I think also, if you do a split payment, you can also work in like, Okay. This aspect of it is non refundable to hedge a bet against those people who have a project goes sideways.
Mark Crowell:Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Which does happen happens. Yeah. Yeah. happens once in a while, maybe only once or twice. Maybe like once a year for us. Somebody just kind of abandons I don't know what happens. They either the company goes under or, you know, it could be a lot of different issues. Yeah, yep.
Ross Herosian:Or to be fair, and it sounds like you've ever had the situation like, this is where the night shift from being corporate world to entrepreneur, if you're like, I can't wait this client anymore. And you have in your, in your agreement in your clause, that there's an out for both parties to be like, I have that in my agreements. Listen, if I just had enough? Oh, yeah,
Mark Crowell:well, we do the abandonment. So after I forget what it is in our contract, but like, at least a few weeks, if we don't hear you go to the back of the list. And then if we really don't hear back from you in months, we have just given full refunds before because we're like, we don't want to deal with it. Ya know? So we've done that a few times. But yeah, it's after a while the project is just doesn't exist, because our process for our pricing might have changed.
Ross Herosian:So yeah. And I think that is completely up to you. As the business owner, if you and I get that too. I 100%. Get the Listen, I'd rather just give the refund because I just don't want to deal with it. Right? It's totally up to you. Right? If you're watching this, whatever type of return refund non refund terms you want. That's the beauty of being an owning your own business, you can do that. Right. So I think whatever you're most comfortable with. And then lastly, just an FAQ. Right? Once again, it would almost look like I planned this. But I swear I'm just that good. How long does it take the website? How much does it cost? You know, what's considered a page, which is I like that one as an FAQ page. Yeah,
Mark Crowell:we get that a lot like people don't I mean, they'll call me brand new sometimes to us. They don't know what that means. Because yeah, we'd like to kind of price it per page, you know, a six page website isn't gonna cost the same as 100. page website. Can you explain what
Ross Herosian:totally? If it is, I'd love to work with you more if a six pager is working calls costing the same as 100. Yeah, I'm gonna have to have another conversation with you. Similar to when you were charging 100% That when you were done is a bad, bad move. mobile friendly platform. And you may be saying that they already answered some of this. Right. But we're going through this a little more detail. But I still think you know, you've been doing this long enough. You have it in here in the document once but you need to call out some big things in an FAQ section. Yeah. I also love the do you outsource work? I think if you're not going to work with wiki and mark on your WordPress, you better be asking this question.
Mark Crowell:Yes. It is something like I said, a lot of times people come to us because they found out their work was being outsourced. And the we were very transparent. We put on our about page, you hear about it here. Even when we're on the phone call. Usually with the initial consultation call. I'll say we don't outsource. I like to make it very clear.
Ross Herosian:Yeah. Yeah. And I think it is more and more a common practice. Yeah. And listen, some things, maybe can be can and are outsourced, understandably to like keep the cost down. So maybe that's what's making it accessible to you. But if you remember, what did Mark say? Many people come to him? Because they tried to go the super cheap route. And it backfired on him. Yeah, you know, yeah, the reason
Mark Crowell:why I like to say that we like to stress that is because if you're not only you know, gonna get a nice website with us, but you're gonna get us for like a month like you got us for like a month of our time, you can have access to us, whereas you work with other agencies, you never, a lot of times the person who's literally building your website, you don't even know who it is. You don't ever communicate with them. You know, that's important because there might be certain things that you have questions about, but you can't get an answer. Whereas when you work with someone like us who was just the two of us, we don't outsource, you can hop on a zoom or does email Hey, you know that that goes along with
Ross Herosian:that is worth so much that is worth the I'll even say premium. if you will, cost of your service, you know, the training videos that you also get the insight, the knowledge, the collaboration. Yeah, it's amazing. It's and that's why it's super, super important. So Mark, I just want to say thank you so much, man, this was so much fun. You know, I mean, I told you kind of beginning like, I'm a huge process nerd. So like, I loved going through your process, and sharing your story. But before we jump off, where can people go to learn more about wiki designed to contact you do any and all plugs? Fire away my friend? Yeah, the
Mark Crowell:the main one would be just our regular website. So it's Wiki design.com. So it's wi CK Why design.com I have to spell that out. Because a lot of times people think it's Wi Fi. Like
Ross Herosian:I say, I deal with it to a tricycle creative, don't and I got a dash in my Euro. Don't even get me started. So I feel the pain for sure. But well put it down here. Don't worry. Oh,
Mark Crowell:there you are YouTube channel, we have a link on the bottom, we have a little fee with our latest videos, we have the little icon on there, you can click on that to subscribe to our YouTube channel. And then, um, we're actually just on LinkedIn, we don't longer do Facebook and Instagram and all that we kind of dumped that a few years ago. So we're just now focusing on YouTube and like LinkedIn,
Ross Herosian:love it, love it. And guys, I'll put links to all of wiki design stuff in the description below. So be sure to you know, hit any of those links. Again. I love their YouTube channel as a fellow marketing creator. I love what you're doing there. Your LinkedIn super valuable. And yeah, if you're in the market for a website, go to their website. Contact them. Yeah, if you contact us we will so yeah, yeah, you'll get the document. You'll get the document we went over. And then was there anything? If you've watched this video, and you want to head over there? Is there any any any extra you know, bones? You can toss people that watch this video?
Mark Crowell:Yeah, if you contact us, you tell us you found us through here? Yeah, just email us at through our contact form or at info at wiki design.com. And yeah, we have a special deal with you guys. So if you want to reach out we can go work out a deal for
Ross Herosian:sure. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Thank you so much. Again, if you're out there and you are needing wanting looking for a quality, functional, beautiful WordPress site, wiki design should be your one stop shop. Yes. Cool. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to try pod. Be sure to subscribe and rate the show on Apple podcast, Google podcast, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you listen. For show notes and past episodes go to tripod podcast.com Connect with tricycle creative on social media at Hello tricycle, and learn more about how we can help you with your marketing at tricycle dash creative.com
