[00:00:19] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, learning from mistakes in website development agencies.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.

If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.

So on the podcast today, we have Jennifer Schumacher.

Jennifer has been working with WordPress and web development for over 15 years. Her journey began with a spark of curiosity in university, building her first WordPress website after a YouTube crash course. Then evolving into freelance gigs, team collaborations, and eventually running a white label agency working alongside other agencies around the world.

Jennifer’s experiences have exposed her to the highs and lows of agency life. Projects that run smoothly, but also cultures that can become toxic, people burning out, and the all too familiar frustration of unbillable hours, and broken processes.

This inspired Jennifer’s lightning talk at WordCamp Europe 2025, where she shared some of the most common, and painful, mistakes she’s seen agencies make, and what can be learned from them.

Jennifer walks us through her path in the WordPress world, and we discuss three real world mistakes agencies make. Web support that drains your soul, the design handoff from hell, and work more, bill less, and smile anyway.

We talk through support, bottlenecks, frustrating design to development handoffs, and the dilemma of over servicing clients without fair compensation.

Jennifer shares her candid perspective on why processes and honest communication matter, not just for the bottom line, but for the mental health and building sustainable teams. She also discusses how transparency, learning from failure, and continually improving processes can improve agency life.

Jennifer’s approach is refreshingly open about both the mistakes and the solutions, aiming to help others avoid repeating them.

If you found yourself frustrated with agency workflows, or are hoping to build a healthier business in the WordPress ecosystem, this episode is for you.

If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you, Jennifer Schumacher.

I am joined on the podcast today by Jennifer Schumacher. Hello, Jennifer.

[00:03:26] Jennifer Schumacher: Hello. Nice to be here.

[00:03:28] Nathan Wrigley: We’re here on Contrib Day. It’s WordCamp Europe 2025. Now, because it’s Contrib Day, that means you haven’t yet done what it is that you are going to do at WordCamp Europe. But you’ve got a presentation, like a lightning talk. So you’ve got 10 minutes to stand on the stage.

The idea is that you are going to be talking about agency, WordPress agencies, how they mess up, I’m going to use that word, and how they can learn from their mistakes.

So before we get into that, just tell us a little bit about you.

[00:03:56] Jennifer Schumacher: I started web development about 15 years ago, maybe a even more even. I was at university, no money, on a freelance platform, and somebody asked me if I could build a website. I checked on YouTube, okay WordPress. I said yes, and then I sold a website. No idea how to do it, honestly. But then YouTube helped me figure things out, and that’s how I started and fell in love with it. No way to turn back.

Went for it, did a couple of freelance gigs and then, you know, joining other team members, joining other people in the freelance world, building like groups, working on stuff together, working on projects. And then it grew, got bigger. We got bigger projects. We built a white label team working for the agencies, collaborating with other agencies. And that’s what I have done over the past years. So that’s a bit of my background.

[00:04:47] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that’s perfect. Yeah, that’s great. I think your story sounds like a lot of people’s stories in that they, if you began 15 years ago, the web was still very much discovering what it was going to be. And you drop in and learn as you went along. I think maybe now that’s a little bit more difficult. I think if you drop in these days, it’s maybe more challenging. There’s so much more competition out there and things like that. yeah, your story kind of mimics mine except that you grew an agency and I didn’t, I just stuck as a one person, and that kind of worked out for me.

[00:05:15] Jennifer Schumacher: Yeah, it’s like the people network, right? You meet different people and then you get to know each other, and then you start learning, and then you think about the opportunities. And then either you say, okay, this is a path that I want to take, or you don’t, right?

[00:05:27] Nathan Wrigley: And have you ever worked for other people in website building? Have you worked for other agencies, or been an employee? Or has it always been you and the agencies that you have run?

[00:05:36] Jennifer Schumacher: I never have been like an employee per se, so it was more like a contractor, but either freelance or for the agency that we built. But the nice thing, and why I really loved this was it was in different roles, right? Sometimes I was the designer in the beginning, or I was the developer. Later on I did develop myself, but that was in the WP Bakery days. So I don’t do that anymore to be honest.

Yeah, so it was design then more development. And then later on I moved more into project management. And then in the most recent years, there’s so many things that I, after all those years, you know, it’s nice, I love WordPress, but certain things make me sick. I was like, God, no, I don’t want this anymore.

Certain stress levels that I’ve reached where I said, no, I don’t want to do it the same old way as usual. This is something that my talk will be about, to be honest.

And the last couple of years have been more about process improvement. Doing things faster, less stress, and then also all these unbillable hours that many people just hide below the table. So this has been my focus for the last couple of years.

[00:06:41] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Well, I’ve got to say it’s very, very nice to meet somebody who’s really open and honest about their successes, but also things that they consider they could do better. Let’s use the word failures. I think most people kind of hide that stuff, but it’s really interesting that you are doing a presentation where you are raising that as, okay, I messed this up, I messed this up, I messed this up, and here’s how I took it as a, you say learning opportunity, which I suppose is the best way to parse any of those kind of things.

Why are you doing a talk though at WordCamp? So this is kind of a more of a community question. It’s not really about the presentation itself. I’m just curious as to why, what is it that you get out of it? Do you just enjoy sort of hanging out at these events or, why have you decided to do it?

[00:07:20] Jennifer Schumacher: How can I explain that in the best possible way? I’ve met many great people over the years, but I’ve seen many of them who got frustrated about certain things in part of the culture at the agency they worked at. I’ve seen toxic cultures as well. I’ve seen many projects that started off very nice and then it became frustrating over the time. And then towards the end, people were not getting paid according to what they actually delivered.

I’ve seen people that later on actually quit and they said again, I don’t want to do it anymore. That they were so frustrated, especially in project management, I’ve seen a couple of them just drop out. It’s like, you know what? Not doing it anymore. And I don’t think that that’s worth it.

If we don’t talk about what goes wrong, if we don’t acknowledge about stuff, these things that could be better, and then say, hey, you know what, let’s figure out a better path and resolve this kind of stress because we deserve a better team that’s in sync, then what are we doing? If we just continue and say, well, that’s agency life, you know? That’s how it is in agencies. No, it’s not supposed to be that way.

If you just accept it and just go with it, then it’s going to be that way. I think it’s worth sharing that, because if you don’t ask the question, how can it be better? You’re not making anything better to be honest.

[00:08:38] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Thank you. So let’s hope that the wisdom that you impart will land with the people. But you’ve got this idea of three real world agency mistakes. That’s what you’re going to focus on in your 10 minutes.

I have a question around that. So obviously you’re going to highlight the things that went wrong, explain how you tackled it. Do you ever get the sense though that there’s ever, and I’m doing air quotes, a perfect system? Have you ever landed on something where you think, okay, that’s it, I do not need to improve that thing anymore? Or is there always room for improvement?

[00:09:09] Jennifer Schumacher: Well, that’s a good question to be honest. I’m German. Many Germans try to be perfect to be honest. But I don’t think perfect exists, and isn’t imperfect perfect. Because the thing is like, learning is a journey, so if we set up a system and then we figure out, okay, let’s try that way, and then we work with it and then see, what can we tweak, what can we improve? And isn’t that what makes it perfect, right? Because we keep improving things.

There are new things coming out now, you know, AI is everywhere. So, are there certain things that we can use that help our system? We just keep tweaking it. So, no, perfect system. Do I want one? No. Is it fun to keep tweaking things? Yes. So I think you’re just trying to get started, build a certain setup and try to improve it over time.

[00:09:58] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. So that would’ve been the way I would’ve paraphrased it as well. You kind of get something which feels like it’s good for now and then the technology changes, WordPress adapts and you have to figure it out a new. Okay, that’s great.

So there are three things that you’re going to tackle. Maybe you could’ve done 5, 10, but the time was probably the limitation. What are the three things that you are going to mention? What are the three things which agencies make as mistakes that you have encountered?

[00:10:21] Jennifer Schumacher: First of all, I had to think a lot about, okay, which kind of situations do I want to include, right? Because over the years, you know, you collect a lot of stories, and I think the most impactful is a story. You want to talk about a specific situation where you were in. And so I was thinking about, what should I cover?

For each story I made a nice headline. I can just quickly share those headlines, and then you think about what you think that that means.

[00:10:46] Nathan Wrigley: Perfect.

[00:10:47] Jennifer Schumacher: So the first one is, support that drains your soul. The second one is, the design handoff from hell. The third one is, work more, build less and smile anyway.

[00:10:59] Nathan Wrigley: Let’s go back to the first one then. You’re going to have to say the exact wording, because I’ll probably get it wrong. What was number one again?

[00:11:04] Jennifer Schumacher: It’s web support that drains your soul.

[00:11:07] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, tell us, what went on here? What calamity befell you and your agency that led to that portion?

[00:11:13] Jennifer Schumacher: I’ve seen it in many, many agencies and if, for example, once I had a agency in Switzerland and they said, we manage one point of contact for our clients. So this was mainly the project manager, right? So whenever the client wanted something, they contacted this person.

Why was that not a good idea? Because pretty often the people that I met were just simply overworked, especially when it came to support staff. Because the client got in touch with them, they got in touch with the designer. The designer got in touch with them. They got back to the client and they were just in the middle on every little item.

And the more you have of this kind of support work, the stressier it gets. And this is something where I’ve seen a lot of things go wrong and where I’ve seen a lot of frustration just for being the person in the middle.

[00:11:58] Nathan Wrigley: That was something which was commonly, I want to use the word taught. People often told me it would be better to always deal with this one person, because that one person at least is this single point of contact. You can build up a relationship with them. Just prize that open a little bit. Has that led to problems, and what were those kind of problems? Was it that that person, I don’t know, maybe they are not a good communicator or something like that?

[00:12:21] Jennifer Schumacher: Well, the thing is, that person doesn’t, it’s just a person most of the time that communicates. This person’s never resolving the issue. So for example, the client has something super simple, I want to change the position of that button. So the client asks their single point of contact. The single point of contact, they go to the developer, hey, they want to change that button. But then the developer goes back, but yeah, but this position we cannot do, it’s not recommended.

It’s like ping pong. And let’s say changing that button takes like maybe just 30 minutes, but the entire communication about where the button should go and why not there, why it would be more recommendable to go into that spot exactly, or which size or animation they want. These kind of details take maybe two and a half hours. But now the client doesn’t really want to pay for the communication about it.

And then in the end, I’ve seen many, many agencies, they just put this under the table, under the rug, or they say it and then just don’t admit it. And if you have a lot of these support items, you have a lot of unbillable hours. And is that sustainable? No. Is that frustrating? Yes. Especially if you’re a small team and you need to bill for the time. If you’re not able to bill for it, then what are we doing here?

[00:13:31] Nathan Wrigley: So this is the idea then that in a company, let’s say that you as a freelancer are working with a company, I don’t know, maybe they’ve got a hundred employees or something like that. You’ve set it up so that you only speak with this one person in their company. But those other 99 people are funneling all of their bits and pieces through that one person.

You just get this backwards and forwards. That one person becomes a bottleneck because they’ve got to communicate with the 99 people. Any change has to go through them.

Okay, what was the second one? I’ve forgotten, I’m sorry.

[00:13:57] Jennifer Schumacher: The design handoff from hell.

[00:13:59] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, what’s that?

[00:14:00] Jennifer Schumacher: Have you ever worked, like you’re a developer and then you are working on a project where they say, okay, the design will be done by a design agency or by some other designer. And then you get the design, you’re like, well, that doesn’t fit anymore what I thought I would spend on time in the beginning. And then I get a file, it was not even clear like this page, what should be the H1?

And then inconsistent styles. And then suddenly on the mobile view, if the designer also did a mobile view, the designs do not match at all. Like, on this screen they use this size, on this screen, this size. Super inconsistent. And this is so frustrating. Because as a developer, in theory, then suddenly you have so many hours.

Then, again, you have to decide, do I log them? Do I tell them that this is not anymore a fit? And if I am not anymore making it a fit, do I look bad? And again, unbillable hours. And then either you bill them or you’re like hiding them. I don’t like that.

[00:14:57] Nathan Wrigley: This is the idea of if you are, I guess if you’re in a big agency where you’ve got a design team, and the design team is literally in the, you know, the cubicle next to you. That’s a fairly easy point to solve because you just stand up and have a chat about it. But if you’re a freelancer, or you’re dealing with a third party design agency or something like that, it’s a real bottleneck, isn’t it?

Because you get a design, it looks great, but suddenly you realise, well, yeah, it looks great, it would make a great magazine piece. Transferring that over to the web with H1s and paragraphs, and it’s got to be accessible and color contrast has got to be good and all of this kind of stuff, that suddenly becomes problematic.

And usually the client doesn’t have that same level of expertise. So you know, they might catch sight of that design and think, perfect, do that. Do exactly what we see and then you have to have this whole tennis again of explaining, well, actually we can’t do it quite like that. So, okay, that’s the second one.

[00:15:50] Jennifer Schumacher: What I can tell you is that I’ve seen this happen nonetheless in big agencies too. I have worked also with agencies with more than 150 employees. And it always depends a lot on their internal processes and how they approve and the system, right?

Nonetheless, I’ve seen also like big design agencies, and it looked all fancy, but then it did not match up. Maybe you’re very good at selling, but if you internally do not have certain systems in place, this stuff can still happen.

[00:16:21] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. And I also feel that when I was doing this kind of work, when I was a freelancer, I had to be all the things. I had to be literally everybody. I had to be the designer, I had to be the developer, I had to be the communicator, I had to be the marketer, I had to be the SEO. I had to be all of these things. And with the best will in the world, I’m not the best at all of those things. Probably one or two things I’m pretty good at, but the rest of them fairly lousy.

And so that kind of fits in as well. And again, the process, getting a process exactly right. You are all about sort of saving money by having a process, saving time and money by having a process, yeah.

[00:16:54] Jennifer Schumacher: To be honest, in my opinion, it’s mental health. Because if it goes on for too long that you’re charging less than what you are actually bringing to the table, that’s frustration. You bring that frustration to your home, that’s when you get stressed out. You share with your family what happened. You are like unloading the stress. You are not that much capable of being a good listener if you’re stressed. And you want to be a good listener with the people that you love. So, what are we doing here? You know?

[00:17:23] Nathan Wrigley: You also become like a double fronted marketplace a little bit. Because you’ve got the designer over here who’s giving you designs and you are sat in the middle. And then you’ve got the client over here and you are sat in the middle. And you become this person that has to communicate the ideas in both directions.

And when they say, we want this, you have to communicate that back to the designer. Do you have like a trusted designer or a design, like a network or a team or something like that, that you just more or less rely on that because you’ve figured out they know what I am typically going to want?

[00:17:52] Jennifer Schumacher: I give them guidance how I want it. Some have, you know, worked with me before, here and there, and then they already know. But I tell them exactly how we need things, and then I point things out, okay, hey, like a checklist. Okay, we need to check this, this, this, this, this. And this sometimes could take a lot of time too, depending on the people that, you know, I work with.

But it’s not that I have like a hundred percent go-to person per se. No. Maybe I can share that same thing. I did design many years ago, then development. And sometimes I need to also, you know, pause and say like, Jenny, no, don’t jump in and just do it yourself. You know, I could, but I just should not. So I just try to, let’s say, express how I need things to be done before going into development. If that’s not done, we’re not going into development.

[00:18:41] Nathan Wrigley: I think designing for the web is really difficult because it is a real skill in and of itself. You know, if you’re designing for a magazine layout, I mean, obviously there’s a high level of skill required to do that in an effective way. But then being able to actually understand the semantics of that design, and how it might look, and especially now where we’re going into a web which is not three view ports. It’s not just mobile, it’s not just tablet, and it’s not just desktop.

It’s this much more kind of, we have no idea what you’re going to be viewing it on. We don’t know the width. I think this sort of Intrinsic Design, which people keep talking about, that makes the job even more difficult, okay. So there’s number two.

Number three, what was that one?

[00:19:23] Jennifer Schumacher: Number three was, work more, bill less and smile anyway.

[00:19:27] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, go on. Did you say work more, bill less?

[00:19:30] Jennifer Schumacher: Yeah. Work more, bill less.

[00:19:32] Nathan Wrigley: That seems counterintuitive.

[00:19:33] Jennifer Schumacher: Yeah.

[00:19:33] Nathan Wrigley: Most people would say work less, bill more.

[00:19:36] Jennifer Schumacher: Well, everybody likes to say that, which is unfortunately, the truth is not always how it works, right? So, how about this? Have you ever been on a project where time goes by in the beginning, everybody’s excited? All fits, looks good. We’re progressing and then the client comes back with feedback and then there’s a change. Maybe it’s a change request, you know, okay, we add some extra hours.

But then there’s something that either we did not notice, for example, oh, this doesn’t work in the Safari. And suddenly we need to work a bit more to make it a fix. But the budget is really tight. Anyway, we need to fix this. Or the client wants something, oh, but this should also animate. You animated this, but also this needs to be animated.

Details. Detail here, a detail there. And then suddenly you notice like, well, the budget we had is not anymore available, but the client is still asking for things, and even saying stuff like, that should be included. How could you charge that extra? Or it was not communicated early enough like, hey, you know what, client, our budget is getting tight. If you are requesting more things, we will need to invoice you extra down the road.

Of course you want to say, okay, if there’s something wrong with our work, we will cover this internally. You don’t want to be somebody who says, okay, I did a mistake, but I’m not correcting it, haha. But if the client is requesting more stuff, you need to let them know in advance. Because if you let them know later, they also go like, huh? Where does that come from? Why didn’t you tell me that this has got more expensive?

And then suddenly you cannot charge them for that. And now you worked more, but you are effectively billing less if you take your effective hourly rate, what you actually delivered and work.

I’ve met agencies, freelancers, when they would really calculate their effective hourly rate, they would be crying, sitting in the corner of the room and crying. This is frustrating, right? And nobody likes that. But anyway, they expect you to sit there smiling and just pretend like everything was good.

[00:21:33] Nathan Wrigley: Do you always do that with your clients though? Do you have that approach of, we must smile through this, even though things are not necessarily working out? Because that was one of the things that you wrote in your description. Let me just find it. You wrote, it’s about laughing, learning, and maybe even recognising a situation you’ve been in yourself.

So do you try to have that sort of humorous approach when things are not working out? Can you always laugh? Because sometimes these things can be so profoundly, well, annoying, let’s go with that. It’s difficult to laugh, I think.

[00:22:01] Jennifer Schumacher: I think it depends a lot on your personality. I can tell you something. So I live in Spain and in Mexico. I’m German, but I don’t live anymore in Germany. But I think when you meet different cultures and see how they react, how they treat certain situations, that made me open up my eyes and see like, okay, you know, you always have the choice. How do you react to this? This is your choice.

And if you get frustrated and you dwell into the pain and just continue again and again, and in the same cycle, then that’s your choice. What’s the other end, right? You can just say, hey, you know what? It was a mistake or this happened. I’m not happy about it, but the only thing I can do is appreciate that it happened because it gave me the opportunity now to learn from it. And that’s the super different perspective.

Some people are not capable of thinking like that, but I prefer to think like that, because it makes me feel better and it makes me look at possible solutions and focus on that. Instead of me looking at the situation, focusing on the issue and the problems.

[00:23:07] Nathan Wrigley: I think it’s very difficult in the moment sometimes to be so, I’m going to use the word sanguine. Just to be so measured about it because you know, something doesn’t work out. Maybe the first reaction is a buildup of anger or something like that. But to have that, to be able to in your head, parse that and say, you know what? The anger probably won’t get me anywhere, but viewing that as a learning opportunity.

Because you go into pains, that’s what you say over and over again. Treat it as a learning opportunity. It’s almost like Zen Buddhism, or something like that, you know, it’s kind of trying to turn a bad situation into a good situation.

But you are also at pains to say, well, it feels like you’re at pains to say, just don’t keep repeating it though. You know, if something bad happened, learn from it, but then adapt the process. Make the process different so that it doesn’t happen a second or a third time because, well, that’s crazy making.

[00:23:57] Jennifer Schumacher: Yeah. But that’s, again, the reason why I think I really love the opportunity to be here and to be having that speech at WordCamp. Because, I get frustrated just thinking about it, I’ve seen so many great people just do the same thing over and over again, because they think that’s it and that’s how it is in agencies. It doesn’t matter if they work at this agency or that agency.

Maybe some do it a bit different here or there, but the same problems come up and they do not really think about, how can I resolve this? New project. Like, new projects will fix it, or let’s sell more. Let’s fix it in the next project. Let’s fix it in the next project.

But then they don’t think about a fix. And I have a couple of people who I really think like, God, you’re so good at what you do, but why do you do this to yourself? Why don’t you think about how to get out of this mess? And I think that’s what I want to do, what I want to share because you have to focus on how to solve this. Otherwise, if you don’t make it a priority, you’re stuck where you are.

[00:24:50] Nathan Wrigley: I guess also, each one of us really genuinely does have, so I’m focusing on a freelancer at the minute, you know, so you’re not in an agency, it’s just you. We all really genuinely do have a unique set of attributes which make us the way we are. And it may be that you just have to lean into those. You’re good at this thing, you’re not so good at that thing, so maybe that gets outsourced, or maybe you just have to approach it in a different way. But it’s very, very hard.

I also think that over the last 10 years, we’ve lived through a cycle of YouTube videos where people are trying to pitch us the perfect solution. In 10 minutes I’ll teach you how to revolutionise your agency. Some of that works, I’m sure, but there seems to be quite a bit of snake oil there as well.

And what i’m trying to say is, just because it’s in a YouTube video or somebody is shouting from the rooftops that they’ve got the answer, it may be that that answer actually won’t work for you because that’s not who you are.

[00:25:43] Jennifer Schumacher: Yeah. Well, that can be too. The thing is like, if you see those fancy videos on YouTube with these nice titles, they put them because that gives them a better click rate because people are more like, okay, well, I want to see if I just say like I have something that’s way high work. If you think that that’s a good idea or not, that’s up to you. It’s not a big selling point, right?

So they write it that way just because of the enticing title makes you click. So that’s also, you know, it’s your human brain that follows this kind of direction. Yeah, so I think a big part, just as you mentioned, resources, YouTube. For me, the biggest part has been asking. And that’s why I loved, we started white labeling, working with other agencies, I learned so much from them. So much.

And just sharing, I have one CEO that I once asked, he had built an agency with over two hundred employees, and they started out as four many years ago. I asked him for lunch. I asked, I would love to know how you did it. What was your motivator? How did you decide who to hire? How did you find the right people? What were the big decisions or risks that you took.

And I think that is so important. Why not? What do we have to lose? I think, why not open up conversations and just ask, how are you approaching this? And I think this kind of stuff gets lost a lot. It’s not just only just sitting there and looking at YouTube videos. Who else could I ask? How do you deal with this?

[00:27:12] Nathan Wrigley: I have a question, which is maybe one that you don’t want to answer because it’s quite vulnerable. But what is your biggest mistake? What’s the thing that if you look back over your career you think, oh boy, that was a calamity?

[00:27:23] Jennifer Schumacher: I have one and I think I’m not, well, it is embarrassing. Yes, it is. But why not? It’s like a learning opportunity, right?

So when I was younger, oh God, I don’t know how many years ago, it was like 10 years maybe. So I thought, okay, I want to build a team, I want to do this. Let’s make it at an agency. We have clients, we have projects, okay, cool.

So I searched for people. I got an office and we were all there. And I thought, okay, I also want to be great with our culture because I think, you know, the team is what matters because only if the team is happy, we can make great work. I wasn’t going to be the one that’s sitting there with a whip, you know, like, do this, do this, do this. That was not how I envisioned myself.

But I focused so much on this team that I did not notice that I did not yet learn enough how to be a good salesman. Few months later, I ran out of money.

And because I was not yet intelligent enough about putting up boundaries that certain clients were like, oh, what? That should be included. Why was that not covered? And we just went in and covered it and not communicate, okay, that we stopped covering certain things for free. We did not yet know how to charge certain things on time.

So we were still like, or I was still, did not resolve it. I did not think about, how do I need to do it so I don’t get myself in the situation that I would have a hard time getting out of, especially financially? And then I had to say, okay, that’s it. Pack my bags. I then started a job in sales. And then I had to learn, damn, how do I sell? How do I communicate? And that I did for a year and a half. And when, again, made more money outside of the job, I did quit.

[00:29:06] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so that was a real learning opportunity, wasn’t it? You went, the whole thing collapsed but the key bit that was missing was sales. You pick yourself up, got a sales job, learnt the sales portion, and then kind of began again. I guess it worked out the next time.

[00:29:18] Jennifer Schumacher: Yeah. This time, we’re still here.

[00:29:20] Nathan Wrigley: That was the low point. That was the thing which you did worst. Maybe you’ll be good at answering this question. Some people are a bit shy when you ask a question like this. What’s the thing that you think you’ve done best?

[00:29:29] Jennifer Schumacher: Oh. What? The best.

[00:29:30] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. What’s the bit that if you look back over your 15 years, I mean, it may not be exactly one thing, but can you summon up something which you think, actually, do you know what? I’m really proud of me for that.

[00:29:41] Jennifer Schumacher: I’m really proud of me for opening up and saying like, you know what, that’s not how it has to be. I don’t want this anymore. I want to see how I can improve this. I must say that my husband has been a bit of an inspiration here too. He’s the kind of person that’s like, ah, I want to work less. Like, I don’t want to work that much. And he finds a way to do it. He always does. He always finds his way around. It’s like, how come that he figures that out and I don’t? And I’m like, sitting here stressed.

And there was also this thought like, do I like this stress? Do you know these people who are addicted to this kind of stress? And they just think they need it. It’s like, do you really think you need it? Do you really think that that’s what you want? Yeah, this is what made me think. And I’m happy that decision, saying like, you know, no. I don’t want that anymore.

And i’m still having things to learn. You know, there’s still things that I’m working on. Totally. I think having that in your, like a little angel, I don’t know, or figure in the back of your head saying like, you shouldn’t do that. Can this be better? Think about it. That’s what I’m proud of.

[00:30:47] Nathan Wrigley: Being honest with yourself, even if that means some uncomfortable realisations.

[00:30:51] Jennifer Schumacher: Oh God, yeah. Tell me. Admitting to yourself like, damn.

[00:30:56] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean. We often have a culture of, okay, just work harder. Just keep going. Just keep doing the same thing because I’m pretty sure the process over there is bulletproof. Just keep going, and maybe being a bit more open with yourself and trying to learn from the mistakes.

[00:31:12] Jennifer Schumacher: And I think when you see somebody, it’s not cheating the system, but it’s kind of like doing it faster and being more relaxed and even having time to do some extra stuff, and you’re like, I want that. Why am I not striving for that? Why the hell I’m just focusing on being more busy? I think you start doubting things.

[00:31:31] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that’s interesting. There’s always somebody in my life who seems to have way more free time than I do. There has to be a reason for that. And probably that they’ve just figured it out and allowed themselves the time off.

And I always found that curious. I would find myself sitting at the desk doing the busy work, just because it felt like I needed to be shackled to the desk because that was where work took place. But really, I probably would’ve been way more productive if I’d gone for a walk for half an hour or just did something a little bit more for me, and then come back, regroup, start again. I never did learn that.

[00:32:05] Jennifer Schumacher: Isn’t that, like it sounds so weird, but isn’t that kind of the expectation of society that you should be sitting there on that desk. How come you’re just going for a walk? How come you’re just saying, you know what, I’ll just get my hair done. Let’s just relax a bit and then I get back with a clear mind to that issue. Why not? But no, society expects you to be available, to be at the desk. That’s how you look good.

[00:32:29] Nathan Wrigley: And it’s curious, we’re in such a fortunate position. I mean, obviously if you work in an agency and they provide you with a desk and you have to be there from nine to five, you’ve got that. But there’s a lot of people in our industry who don’t. You know, they’re working out of a spare room in the house. Maybe they’re doing it out the kitchen or what have you. And you can, you genuinely can, take time off and do other things and work a little bit later because you gave up some time during the day. You can be flexible. I think that’s one of the most remarkable things about the industry that we’re in. It’s utterly brilliant.

[00:32:57] Jennifer Schumacher: I read the other day on my phone an article, it was about a bank where they were saying like the four day work week. And they were saying like, now that AI is around the corner, it’s a no brainer. That’s going to happen. Because we will be able to get more efficient with how we do things. And I think, isn’t that beautiful to more focus on outcomes instead of like the nine to five.

Well, depends also how you manage the agency and everything. And I’ve seen many, they said they want to call their employees back. For example, in Mexico, like I live partially there. Many, many people got called back. But others in Germany I’ve seen, they still keep a hybrid model. Some days they just say, okay, we do a day here, a day there. But many developers said like, nope, staying at home.

[00:33:42] Nathan Wrigley: So people listening to this podcast, hopefully some of them will think, do you know what? It’d be really interesting to chat this through with Jennifer. You know, she seems like she’s got some interesting ideas around that. Do you have a little community of people that you vent your anger, vent your frustration with? Do you have a little clique of people where you share the ideas that you’ve been discussing today?

[00:34:01] Jennifer Schumacher: Besides my husband.

[00:34:02] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, how do you keep yourself sane? Yeah.

[00:34:04] Jennifer Schumacher: I do not yet have a big community, but I am working on this. Because I think it’s great just to share. I was in this mess, in this chaos until I realised, like I had this awakening moment for more like 10 years. So 10 years, I kind of would, was like lying to myself, I feel.

So I would love to share more. I want to do a LinkedIn live show. So I’m preparing that kind of stuff just to share, like we do, like a bit of talking. How did you do that? And just this story. I have a great network of people that I’ve met over the years with great stories.

And this is something that I want to share. I also wrote a book for freelancers, where I just share the exact same thing because damn, I wish I would’ve noticed certain things earlier, to be honest. Because 10 years is quite a lot, you know? And especially when you start out and you’re freelancing, oh God, I just charge way less. I just shouldn’t think about it.

But you know, I didn’t even know how much I was worth. I didn’t even know how to protect myself so that certain situations I could say ahead of time, you know what? That’s it. This entire project management mindset, or building the system, it didn’t occur to me for so long. I just thought, no, let me put this in a book and then, why not?

[00:35:21] Nathan Wrigley: So, where do we find the book? Or where’s the best place to find you, which then might link to the book?

[00:35:26] Jennifer Schumacher: On LinkedIn. And just, first of all, my network, I just want to get some feedback and then improve it. And then let’s see what else I can put in it. I also can share you something, maybe that’s something you found interesting. There’s this writer, Ryan Holiday. He has a great, great book that’s just called Growth Hacker Marketing. Read it. I love it. And I love the way how he writes this book because it’s so honest. It’s so transparent.

And I wrote it the same way he did. I took my entire inspiration, how I wrote it, based on his book. And I also have a couple of stories that I share at the end of the book from other people out of my network. How they did resolve, for example, the cash flow issue, right? How they approached the entire setup. Where how they even were able to sell their agency. You know, like build it and sell it.

That’s what I mean, ask others. Ask others how they did it. And then not getting stuck on these fancy YouTube videos for people that say they have the solution. But I think it’s so much worth it just to have conversations and learn and listen.

Maybe you do not have to take everything that people say, but maybe just can take a bit here or there and then build your own. That’s what I like.

[00:36:34] Nathan Wrigley: Perfect. Jennifer Schumacher, thank you so much for chatting to me today.

[00:36:38] Jennifer Schumacher: It was a pleasure to be here, to be honest. Thank you.

[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, building a successful agency through strategically planned growth.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.

If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.

So on the podcast today, we have David Darke.

David is a Bristol based entrepreneur, and a longtime WordPress user. He is the co-founder of Atomic Smash, a digital agency specializing in WordPress and WooCommerce performance optimization.

Since its founding in 2010, Atomic Smash has grown from a two person team into a thriving agency, known for helping businesses improve their digital platforms with WordPress.

The podcast today traces David’s experiences growing the agency, and the many highs and lows he’s been on.

David’s story begins in a business incubator, where the affordable desk space facilitated invaluable networking, and relationship building opportunities. Through perseverance and strategic networking, David has grown the agency from these small beginnings into a robust team of 20 professionals.

We talk about the myriad challenges he faced, from overcoming the initial skepticism due to his age, to the trials of managing business growth and client expectations.

You’ll hear about the critical role that external business coaches have played in guiding his agency through different stages of growth, and how strategic learning has been pivotal in expanding beyond core web development skills, to mastering business acumen, and operational strategies.

David also discusses his current role, which involves less hands-on coding and more focus on technical oversight, sales, and strategic client interactions.

He shares his insights into the importance of delegation, finding work-life balance, and ensuring his team operates efficiently without overextending themselves.

We also get into the evolving web industry landscape, particularly the integration of AI and SEO into their service offerings, aiming to position his company as a strategic partner for client growth.

He emphasizes the importance of hiring the right talent, including freelancers, and the necessity of pausing business coaching to implement growth strategies effectively.

Whether you’re an aspiring freelancer, an agency owner looking to grow, or simply passionate about WordPress, this episode is for you.

If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

And so, without further delay, I bring you David Darke.

I am joined on the podcast by David Darke. Hello David.

[00:03:46] David Darke: Hi there. How’s it going?

[00:03:47] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, good. Nice to chat to you. David and I first met, well, we haven’t really met much because the role in which I met David is one where I’m typically quite busy. I help out with the WordPress London meetup, which happens each month in the city of London, and David was doing a talk there.

However, the nature of my role is that I am face down in an iPad trying to make sure that the recording happens, and then as soon as the event is over, I busily tidy up with everybody else.

So I never really got to meet David, but I did manage to catch his talk in great detail. Gave a presentation over there essentially about growing an agency, managing a successful agency. So we’re going to get into that conversation today, but before we do, David, would you just give us a potted bio? Tell us a little bit about what you do, the journey that you’ve been on with WordPress and your agency.

[00:04:38] David Darke: Yeah, yeah, great. And I’ll also say, you looked busy and not stressed, which is actually quite an impressive thing for all the equipment you were managing on the day, but yeah.

So yeah, my name’s David Darke, started a WordPress based agency 14 years ago. We are based in Bristol in the UK. And I’ve definitely worn many hats in that time.

So started off with myself and my business partner. I was the primary developer and only developer within the team.

We’ve grown the team now to just around 20, and my role has shifted in that time going from the only developer, to development lead, to operations management part of the actual business. And now I’m actually shifted away from operations, and more on the growth and sales side of the business. So definitely all inwardly focused, and then now outwardly focused.

Again, worn many hats and that’s been one of those challenges of owning and running an agency is the need to adapt and wear different hats.

[00:05:33] Nathan Wrigley: When you began with you and your business partner, did you have an intuition that you wished to grow? Was it more just, let’s start a business, let’s put food on the table and see where it goes? Or did you always have that light at the end of the tunnel, that thing that you were aiming for, growth, growth, growth, getting new business, grow the business, employ more people? How did that all work out?

[00:05:55] David Darke: Yeah, it’s really funny. In the first year it was that sort of approach of, we need to get clients. We had no money, we had no funding, we were all bootstrapped and self-manage. We literally worked for, it was about eight to nine months before, so in normal jobs, it’s basically the only job I’ve actually had.

I was actually part of a photography team, a photo editing team for a sportswear company. It’s a random role, but it was basically just get some money behind us so we can actually live in the first year, really.

And initially it was just, let’s do it, let’s try it. It was the perfect opportunity. It was directly outside of after leaving university. There was no risk. I had no family, you know, it was just case of, if it didn’t work, we’ll just get a job.

So the idea was, let’s try it, let’s get going. And as soon as we started moving the idea of, not necessarily, not aiming for massive growth, but the idea of having a team behind us was a real goal at that stage.

And we definitely took a long time to actually employ our first person, and that person’s actually still part of the team now. He just had his 10th anniversary. So from our side, we definitely took quite a while to actually get that first employee on.

But after that is really a case of, let’s work out what team size we need to be to facilitate all the things we need to do. Make sure that myself and my business partner weren’t overloaded. You know, there’s definitely a period in the middle growth of the business where we’re just doing too much stuff and were spread very thin.

So working out what sort of team size does it need to be to allow us to have the flexibility to give more responsibility to team members, and also give us the brain space to think about how the business should be shaped, grown, and how it should just maintain itself really, yeah.

So now we’re at the stage where myself and my business partner are definitely doing less on the tools jobs, I’m basically doing no production work at all, but we’re able to invest time in the business and the team.

[00:07:36] Nathan Wrigley: Do you work exclusively with WordPress based projects, or are you more of a broader church than that? Do you do web development in other areas, maybe even software development, things like that, or is it just purely WordPress?

[00:07:49] David Darke: We have a couple of sites where they’ve got a primary WordPress platform and they use some like Shopify for their e-commerce. So we do support a bit of Shopify on the side. We basically do no real software development or anything outside of the WordPress ecosystem. Every single one of our clients has some form of WordPress installation at some level.

That does, when you’re talking about WooCommerce and big sort of CRM integrations, it does mean we have to have our fingers in a lot of pies. We integrate with things like Salesforce and the other big CRMs. So we do have to interact with some middleware sometimes, but 99% of our clients are WordPress.

[00:08:24] Nathan Wrigley: If you were to hang out in Facebook groups, and LinkedIn groups, and things like that, there’s always a lot of conversation around where you were at the beginning of your journey. You know, I’ve got this agency, I’m a one person team, I would like to grow and what have you. And it feels like you’ve probably gone through all of the things, you’ve tripped over all the trip wires, hit all the hurdles, got past them all in some way, shape or form.

And one of the things that came out was, the bit that you just mentioned about, maybe it’s regret in some way of not making the first hire sooner. And I never managed to scale an agency, I was always very happy to just operate myself, but that was one of the things that concerned me a lot, was making that first hire, committing myself to somebody else’s welfare.

Am I right in saying that you, looking back, you think you maybe should have jumped off that a little bit sooner and hired the first person sooner, to free yourselves up to do other things?

[00:09:21] David Darke: Oh yeah, definitely. And you are right, it’s more about, we didn’t want to necessarily employ someone and then have to let them go because there wasn’t enough money to fund their salary. It was really that simple. Making sure there’s enough security in the business to make sure that we just spent the time and effort in getting them on, getting them into the team, and then having to let them go.

That’s from our side, and also from their side. We hadn’t employed anyone before, we didn’t want to disappoint them. They want to be part of the team, they want to be part of the journey, we didn’t want to then have to say, well, you got to go now because we didn’t think this through properly.

So we definitely spent a lot of time and I would definitely say at the start there was definite, we were doing too much stuff, and then we had too many projects on, and by the time we needed to have someone on the team, it was almost like too late because the recruitment process does take. You need two weeks to basically start looking for people, you need another couple of weeks to basically do interviews and do that whole process properly and meet them.

And this was obviously pre covid, so a lot of it was in person, it really was, interview process was getting people into our studio space to actually speak to them. And we really did it too late. We should have been doing it months before so they’re ready to join. So again, it’s just that sort of balancing, and it’s easy with hindsight, but actually the balancing of making sure that our capacity was right, and how we balance our capacity, we did it too late.

And if we look back now, we did have the security even with the upcoming projects, but it’s just quite big thing to do on the first time. And even from a legal side, just not knowing exactly every box you need to tick when you employ someone, like what contracts you actually have to have. Actually getting the contract and you need to pay someone to do that, or you need to get, you know, there’s a lot of things to do. So the advice is, try and do it as early as possible if you want it to do it.

[00:10:57] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, the interesting word that you used there was capacity. And so there must be, in your head, looking back, obviously now with hindsight, you recognise what that capacity was. Do you have any rule of thumb that you could bring to bear to this conversation? Let’s say that somebody is, like I was, a web agency owner, or maybe there’s two or three people who’ve joined and they’re just beginning to get the intuition that maybe they could take somebody on. Is there a rule of thumb? Maybe that’s around finances or the, I don’t know, the bottleneck in the pipeline of work you’ve got? Do you have any sort of wisdom about when that first hire might be suitable?

[00:11:33] David Darke: Yeah, I think at the start, it wasn’t like an intentional approach, but I was definitely working seven days week. And definitely got burnt out around year three or four in that sort of process. And that idea of actually being able to be at a position, obviously finances are one thing, you need the money to pay their salary, that’s like an underlying thing of security that side.

But I would definitely say the idea of being able to deliver projects in a capacity where you are only working five days a week, and actually have a normal nine to five or whatever the timeframe is, in X number of hours, seven hours a day, without needing to work in the evenings, without needing to do all these things.

Actually, even if you are a freelancer, or just trying to grow, or just the idea of being able to do the work in a sensible timeframe, and if you can’t do the work, then you need help.

And that’s basically the rule of thumb. And that’s how we even work out our hiring capacity now, is we look at the team, we look at what needs to come up. Can we deliver this stuff with a team that we’ve got?

And that’s the sort of tipping point of actually how we scale and grow, and in the areas we need to grow and scale. So even within the team now, we only have one designer. We don’t do huge number of projects, but if we were doing more and more design work, we’re literally looking at, how much capacity does that designer have? When do we need the second designer? Or do we just need freelance capacity? That’s really how we balance it. So just trying to make sure we’re not over-delivering and just not doing insane hours, just making sure everything’s sensible and you can actually start to look back and enjoy the actual process rather than it being this burden.

[00:13:02] Nathan Wrigley: I think obviously the finance is a given. If there’s not enough throughput of cash, then the business is not really a business, it’s something else. But the intuition around seven days a week being something that is unsustainable, I think everybody can grasp hold of that.

So if you wish your business to be five days a week, seven hours a day, and it’s seven days a week, 12 hours a day, then maybe there is extra capacity, and assuming that you’ve got the finances. I think that’s an interesting one that everybody can grab hold of. If the amount of free hours in your week don’t match what you wish to have, then maybe it’s time to start looking around for additional help.

[00:13:38] David Darke: I really, really, wholeheartedly agree that actually, someone working five hours a day in a productive and structured way is actually probably more effective than someone working 12 hours a day. It really is a case of actually having the brain space to think about what you’re doing, and less procrastination and more focused on just doing what you need to do in this timeframe. That limitation actually really helps to make sure that you’re not twiddling your thumbs, you’re not doing things that don’t need to be done and really gives focus.

I think actually from our side, restricting our time, I now actually only work four days a week. So that’s brought another restriction around, every Thursday I’m not in the office, so I need to make sure what I need to do in the week is done, usually at the starts of the week, and then Friday, I’ve got the capacity to almost plan the next week, or do meetings, or do those other things.

So those limitations sound like there are limitations, but actually it’s more of a guide rails of how you need to use your time. And then as soon as I leave the office I’m not interacting with the business. That clear definition really helps from a, the classic work, life balance, you know, really just having that definition. And most of our team, that is the case. It really is a case of, once the time’s over, you pick up the next day. But it does take quite a lot of management and organisation to do that, especially personally. That’s something I had to learn. That was one of the biggest of skills I had to learn is just how to organise your own time.

[00:14:56] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think everybody can identify with that thing where, it’s late at night, you’re trying to read a book or something like that, and you realise that for every 10 lines that you read, none of the information has gone in. And you could map the same thing to your work life. It’s so easy to fall into the trap that 12 hours a day, good, five hours day, less good, just because I’m doing more hours a day.

But I think you’re right. There’s this sort of burnout which just builds up over time. It’s sort of compound interest, you just feel more and more burnt out, each hour becomes less productive. So taking that absolute time out, and in your case, four days a week, maybe it’s five hours in the office, something like that. Step out of the front door, you are back to social David, if you like, and normal life, and then walk back through the following morning and you’re back to work. I can really identify with that, and hopefully the people listening to that can as well.

[00:15:45] David Darke: Yeah, and also I’ve got a 2-year-old as well, so that really puts a clear definition of, when I’m at home, they’re the focus really, it can’t work both ways. You can’t work with a two odd running around basically, it’s almost impossible.

[00:15:57] Nathan Wrigley: A lot of people might be at this point saying, yeah, that’s all very well, David, but what about, where does the work materialise from? How do you get the work? And obviously now that you are more established and your name has been circulated many, many times, I imagine that’s a different jigsaw puzzle than it was in the beginning.

So let’s cast our mind back to when it was just the two of you at the beginning and you were presumably scrambling around for work. Do you have any advice there? I mean, was it just that you just happened to be in the right place at the right time, the internet was taking off and so on and so forth. Or were there things, looking back, that you thought, actually, do you know what, we did that really well, and we did that really poorly?

[00:16:35] David Darke: I definitely see that the conversations we have nowadays are very different to the ones we had in the past. I think client’s knowledge of even WordPress is a lot higher. So they’ve, again, it’s just maybe just the maturity of the internet and the idea of project managers and digital teams have probably been through two to three websites in the last 10 years. And people’s sort of growth with that, and experience with it has changed.

So I think when we were sort of pitching WordPress websites, and actually the whole web development projects, there’s a lot less emphasis on how much money needed to be spent on a website, everything was cheaper. I think their expectation now is there needs to be good investment in sites for them to be effective, and that was a lot harder sell 10 years ago, I think.

So there’s definitely been shift and change in people’s understanding of what it takes to build a website. And we talked to project managers, digital project managers now, they actually understand that when you create a new website, it’s actually quite difficult to do content migration. You need two months to like move all the content and do an SEO plan. 10 years ago, no one cared. Just do the website, just get out of there. But they’ve been through it.

I think the internet is at that sort of age and maturity where, and the teams that work in businesses and digital managers, they kind of understand the pitfalls of rushing those things, and there needs to be time and thought.

I think when it comes to your question around how we find work. We started in a business incubator. That was more of a case of, there was some services tagged on, but it was basically the idea of, you join this incubator, it’s very, very cheap desk space. When you start, I think it’s every six months you are there, might of been like less than that. Every whatever time period you’re there, the desks get more expensive. So the idea is you start really cheap and it gives you the idea, within two to three years, it’s at the point where you should be sort of moving out of the incubator and thinking about other spaces or other options.

For us it was just cheap desk space. It was the ability for us to get out of the house, go to somewhere where we can work, and the idea is, well, we might meet some people while we’re there and, what actually happened is when we got dropped into this business incubator, we were pretty much the only web developers in this incubator. So actually being able to help and do favors for people have built to lasting relationships where we still talk to them now.

Some of them are freelance or contract UX people. Some of them are data people. And they were just there because again, they just wanted desk space. But the people they’re working with now are bigger organisations, bigger corporates, and those relationships have tied together. But at that time we were basically doing really small work for them, but we’re around a group of people that needed help and needed advice. And again, expertise and knowledge in general was limited 10 years ago.

So I think that really helped us in that initial stage of like, how do we just get these small bits of work? As the team grew, it was really about us being proactive with conversations with people we wanted to work with. That has been effective, very ineffective sometimes. But it’s finding, for us, our unique offering and the way we work, which is more of a maintenance basis and a recurring model, that we kind of really dialed into, and we found the benefits of that. And that’s, for us it’s our ability to sell that to clients.

You know, the idea of you don’t necessarily need a brand new website every three years. If you just work on the one you’ve got, adapt and evolve it, you can actually save a lot of money without needing to build a brand new site every three years. So that’s taken us quite a while to find our model, and our sort of unique offering. But actually finding people and being able to sell that has definitely shifted and changed as the business has grown.

[00:20:03] Nathan Wrigley: It sounds like there’s a fair degree, in your business at least, at the beginning of what you might describe as networking or socialising. It’s not all about, I don’t know, posting Google ads and paying in that way. This is meeting real people in this enclosed space or out in the wider community or what have you. So it sounds like you were getting local business possibly, at the beginning.

That kind of leads me in a curious direction that I didn’t anticipate. And that is, did you rely, you and your partner, on your gregarious nature? Are you outgoing? Was that some sort of superpower that you maybe have?

I think it’s possible to say that a certain proportion of people who end up in the web development space are not that, they’re fairly introverted, and so the idea of mixing and socialising might be something that they’re feeling, yeah, a little bit uncomfortable about. So I just wondered if you wanted to speak to that, whether there was some element of your personality which enabled you to grow.

[00:20:57] David Darke: That might be a possibility. I would also say that at the time when we started the business, myself and a business partner looked quite young. When we’re talking to businesses and companies about how they want to be growing their website, we just generally looked like we just left university. So actually from a sales perspective, that wasn’t actually particularly a great thing. We didn’t look like we had the experience. We didn’t look like we’d done this process many times.

I think from our side some of the networking side of things was beneficial, but then actually hiding behind some of that other communication and other ways speaking and reaching out to businesses was actually beneficial. Because you could actually show expertise and experience in other ways. So it’s kind of like twofold.

But definitely from a networking side, the thing we’ve definitely found with networking events and just general things, you have to be quite careful if you are trying to find new business. For example, most WordPress meetups, you’ll be talking with people that use WordPress, or develop WordPress, build sites, and not necessarily clients or potential clients. So you then have to find those particular networking events that would actually have potential clients in them. And that might mean that you are going to something that’s a bit more random. Even something that’s maybe based around accessibility or something that’s based around, I don’t know, even environmental impact or something like that, where you’ll be talking with other people that potentially would have those challenges, and then you can speak to them about their website and what have you.

So it is about a selection of what events you go to. But I think the networking side of things is super important because as soon as you come across a challenge, and if you’ve spoken to someone, a great branding person that you met two weeks ago, that person’s at the top of your brain. As soon as you see someone with that challenge or you try and help someone, or even a current client that might come to you with a branding challenge, we basically don’t do any sort of branding at all, we just do development work and design work.

But as soon as we find someone has a challenge, you can just grab these people really easily because they’re just forefront of your brain. And that’s the power of networking more than just meeting people directly. It’s just getting people to know what you do, and when those challenges come up, they’re the front of people’s brains.

[00:23:05] Nathan Wrigley: So you are now at 20 people, I think you said, or thereabouts. So you’ve gone from two and you’ve added 18 roughly. During that journey, was it always upwards? Did it always go from two, to three, to four, to six or did it ever sort of slide down again? What I’m trying to get at in this question is, has it always been growth or have there been moments when that growth has stalled? When the anxiety, looking at the financial spreadsheet, has been more than it was less, put it that way.

[00:23:34] David Darke: Yeah, hundred percent. Definitely hasn’t always been up. There’s definitely times where we’ve had to go down. Some of that has been natural just churn of people leaving and then they have been replaced. Some of it has been from loss of projects or loss of clients and had to make difficult decisions. So it’s never as, well, for us, definitely wasn’t always an upward trajectory. I’d definitely, from my side, there was also points of stagnation and really from our side to actually work out how we get past those. We’ve needed external business coaches to really help us prioritise and work out how we utilise our superpowers and what we’re really, really good at, into better, more cohesive offering. And that will really help grow the team.

So I think from our side, we were kind of quoted these numbers of, when you get to around sort of 10 people, that’s certain number of challenges. Growing from 10 to 20 is another set of challenges, and getting beyond 20 is basically another set of challenges. So it’s almost like these milestones in growth.

And we were definitely lingering around 10, 11 for a long time, just because their natural, even the process you have internally to scale to that number, just needed a lot of internal help, internal and external help to get beyond that. So yeah, there’s definitely been points of stagnation. There’s definitely been points of retraction. But if you look to the graph in general, it has been upward.

[00:24:52] Nathan Wrigley: It sounds like you’ve put yourself in the path of people who you recognise to be good teachers of whatever it is that you need to know. So maybe that’s some aspect of, I don’t know, web design for those people in your business that do that. But it also sounded there, like you have deliberately gone out to find business coaches.

So that maybe has nothing to do with web development, but you’ve got to balance the books and there are ways of doing that. Is that the case? Do you go out and find people who you think, okay, I need to learn this thing, rather than reading it in books, I’m just going to take the direct route and go and find a human being that can do that, or an agency that can do that? Because I guess that’s fairly important as a short circuit of trying to figure it all out yourself.

[00:25:34] David Darke: A hundred percent. Yeah, we were very active three, four years ago of finding a proper business coach. And business coach is like, that’s very much like a phrase that could cover a lot of things, like you’re saying, could cover financial, could cover operations or whatever. But actually when it boils down to what we needed, it was almost like a third party for myself and my business partner to be responsible too. To actually say, we’re going to be doing these things, we’re going to be doing this activity or whatever it might be, a task that needs to get done in the business or a KPI.

The first thing that they basically said to us when they joined was, your accounting’s terrible, go and get it sorted, like basically just go and do that. Look at this and just give that sort of advice and experience to say what’s working well, what isn’t. And you now need to go and do this. You’ve got two weeks to go and do this or however long, and get it done.

And actually there’s not many people that myself and my business partner are responsible to. We’re responsible to our employees for employee led things, but when it comes to business level things, we’re just responsible to ourselves, you know, each other.

So actually having this third party to basically wag the finger and say, you need to get this done and you need to get it done now was really helpful to actually make sure things got done. Yeah, that level of experience and that third party to be responsible to was really, really beneficial. And the thing that we kind of got to, and the point we got to was they helped us form KPIs, so key performance indicators for the business, and metrics we can track, and they helped with our accounting processes, they helped with our general capacity processes and all those sort of things that helped the business.

We then stopped using them because we basically had a load of work that needed to happen, you know, months and years worth of work that needed to happen. And the idea is we’ll probably pick up that relationship again when we are at the next stage because we now need to work on, we now need to do the growth, we now need to do these things. And we were at the stage where we kind of knew what we needed to do, and we were just basically checking in at that stage. We weren’t getting anything new.

But there are going to be set of challenges that we’re going to face in the next year, two years, where that relationship will be super beneficial again. So I genuinely think that having an external voice, an external ear as well, just to talk through problems, that whole classic rubber duck programming of just speaking your program out loud to someone, it really is super beneficial. And having a mentor, and actually being a mentor for other people is very, very important.

[00:27:50] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it’s almost like you’ve hired in a third partner or something like that. Somebody who’s got the right to tell you, you’re doing this wrong. There’s a better way to do this. And I think as a freelancer at the beginning, just you and your partner, it is easy to assume that everything needs to be done by the pair of you, and if it can’t be done by the pair of you, you’re failures. And of course, in the real world, nobody has the capacity to do all the tasks in every walk of life. We employ people to do almost anything that we come into contact with. So that’s really interesting.

Are you good at delegating? Because again, right back at the beginning when you are doing everything, and you’ve got to go from two to three, I think this is where probably I stumbled, and I’m sure a lot of people can share in my experience here.

I just seem to find delegating quite difficult. I don’t know what that is, but there’s this thought maybe in the back of my head that, well, I know what I need to do, so I should be the one to begin it, and end it and, what have you. Are you a good delegator or was that a skill that you had to learn?

[00:28:50] David Darke: Yeah, definitely had to learn. And I’d definitely say I’m a very average delegator. So my approach to it now is trying to be a bit more hands off. So if I’m not involved from the start, it’s a lot easier for me to not be involved in the future. Having oversight and seeing how things work is definitely beneficial. As soon as I’m trying to get into the, I’m quite detail orientated, so as soon as I get to know the details and I feel myself wanting to be more involved in something. If I’m a bit more hands off, and allowing our employees to have responsibility for things, that’s easier for me to then not be involved in the future and just allowing those things to happen.

I was definitely a bad delegator at the start, and it’s definitely something I’ve worked on and improved on in the years. But it’s more about techniques rather than naturally just this becomes a thing you can do. It’s more just allowing people to have responsibility for those things. And myself, just making sure I’m only checking in when I need to check in or whatever’s needed for the task at hand. It’s definitely a challenging thing and it’s

one of those tasks, that sort of soft skill which isn’t really something you can just do a course in or learn. That suite of soft skills is something that you don’t really get training for as a manager or a business owner, get trained for very meticulous or very particular things around accounting, or if you need to do a certain process, you can just get a course. But that soft skill stuff is super important, but it’s hard to get training in, and you kind of just have to learn as you go really.

[00:30:11] Nathan Wrigley: Do you ever have to pull yourself back from the opposite of delegating, just getting in too deep into the tasks that your employees are tasked with doing? You sort of find yourself looking over their shoulder and thinking, oh, that’s curious, let’s have a chat about that. When really your job now is divorced from that, you are one step back, one step higher if you like, and you’ve got to just pull yourself back from that precipice.

[00:30:34] David Darke: Yeah, I mean, not necessarily in the way, my role now within the business, because I’m more to do with the sales side and the growth aspect and less about the internal workings, I definitely find that’s a lot less. From my side, the things I’d be checking in now and making sure happens is once a client joins, making sure they’re happy and checking in from that perspective.

Definitely from my business partners side, who’s now more internally focused, it’s basically their role as a director to direct, actually steer the ship. So there definitely needs to be a certain level of oversight and seeing what is happening. But I think our personalities and characters, he’s very, very good at having a lot of different things, and having oversight of a lot of different things without needing the granular detail.

Whereas I’m, because I’m more detail orientated, I kind of need everything to help make decisions. But I think for my new role I’m definitely less involved and less overseeing and that side of things. But it’s almost important that it does happen to some degree, that people have oversight of stuff, just to make sure things are done in the right way and make sure that things are profitable, for example. And we have a set of business values, make sure things are being delivered with those values in mind. It definitely needs that in place. It’s never just about wagging fingers, just watching, making sure people are working or anything like that. It’s really the case of making sure the business is doing what it’s meant to be doing.

[00:31:47] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it sounds like you have to have trust on a fairly profound level, that the people that you have invested your time into, and they’ve invested their time into your business, you can trust them. You delegate a task, and the anticipation therefore is that that task will be done and they’re going to tackle it in the same way that hopefully you will have done, and the processes are there to make sure that happens.

So now that you are, I’m going to use the word manager, maybe you have a different word for yourself. I’m guessing, again, if we rewind the clock, I’m guessing that you probably weren’t able to look forward and think, yeah, this is what I’ll be doing in 10 or 15 years time, this is what my day will look like, because you generally concentrate on the next six months.

Do you enjoy the work that you are doing? I’m not meaning to back you into a corner there. What I’m sort of angling after is, there’s bound to be bits of this new role that are satisfying, but there’s probably bits that, oh boy, I just wish I could hand that over. And again, that’s part of growing the business.

Because it feels, sometimes I have conversations with people who are in similar positions to you, and in some cases they’re stepping back from the more managerial role and they’re going back to the, I want to be in front of a computer and I want to be doing coding again, and it’s still my business but I’m going to employ somebody else to do the managing part, and I’m going to go back to being a developer because that’s what I enjoy.

So it’s questions around that really. Do you find the same satisfaction in the work that you’re doing now, or do you find sometimes you look over at your employees and think, oh, wish I was doing that again?

[00:33:10] David Darke: I think from my side, the things I really enjoy doing, I really enjoy experimenting and having sort of technical oversight over things. My needs to be doing coding and delivering is slightly less. But again, a lot of satisfaction, enjoyment even just from the sales process of really delving into a client’s challenge and communicating with them about how we can solve those things. That actually requires me to actually have a lot of technical oversight, understanding, not necessarily prototyping, but actually being able to articulate to them how our work will improve their site.

And that does require, that does sort of scratch that itch from a technical side of me being able to work with clients, and talk with them, and do technical audits, and actual solution architecture and stuff for new potential clients and existing clients. So I definitely feel that my need to be on the tools is covered by that.

My real, I guess purpose within the business is to make sure the business is growing, that’s the key thing. That’s where I get real satisfaction from is seeing the team working, from seeing the business grow. And that’s almost like at a different level from my own personal need to do coding or those sort of things. So I get a bit of an itch, scratch from that side of things.

The definite story that we have when we employ people, and we really do look to try and grab freelancers to be part of the team, because they’ve had to deal with, I don’t know, some of the minutia of sending invoices, getting new clients, having to tackle all these things of being a freelancer. And when they have the opportunity to just do the work they want to be doing, you get really good results from people, and you get a really satisfied employee because they just get to worry about what they’re doing, rather than worrying about the work upcoming, and having to worry about were the invoices sent. Do they have to do their tax return? You know, all this other stuff that they just don’t get to do.

So I think from my side, it’s really like a character thing. And you do have to ask yourself what you want to be doing within your business. And there’s no reason why someone couldn’t run a business and be any sort of business. It could be a design business, branding, it could be developments, that they can’t build themself into the business in a way where they are still on the tools. They could be a solutions architect, they could be lead developer, but it’s about building the business around it so there’s still opportunity of growth and they still have ability to concentrate on other things.

There’s nothing against someone actually doing the work and running a business. Just you need to have that character to be able to handle that, and also want to be able to it.

And I think what we want to be doing within the business is something we worked on a lot with our business coach, because we have worn so many hats along the way, just actually picking those things that we did really enjoy and trying to build them into a role that we wanted to move forward with was a key part of the work we did with them.

[00:35:41] Nathan Wrigley: I think every industry, no matter what you’re in, you’re always staring over the horizon. You’re always trying to figure out where the next piece of work is coming from, or what the next big wave is. But I think particularly the web, technology, but the web specifically, that moves at a really incredible rate. You take your eye off for six months and you’ve lost sight of what’s going on.

And I’m just sort of wondering about that really, if there’s anything in the near term that you are thinking about. I don’t know, that may be AI, it may be something that you’ve seen in the WordPress space that you really like. So that’s an open-ended question really. Where does the business feel like it’s going to you? What pivots are you thinking about over the very short, near term?

[00:36:19] David Darke: AI is super interesting, it’s something we’re definitely keeping an eye on. And the understanding that AI is going to be part of everything, every app in the next 10 years. It’s going to be here, it’s here to stay, it’s not going anywhere, it’s going to grow. And the idea of how we utilise it. Most of the time, the way we deliver stuff to clients is understanding what is in the marketplace and making the good recommendations.

So you might have a particular brief that says, we want to be using AI as part of this project, you know, really delving down to what actually means. Is it a chat bot for sales process? Is it chat bot for support? Is it something around content creation? It could be anything.

So I think from our side, the things you want to actually be focusing on, again, it’s really delving into our, the way we work and trying to work with clients and find clients that really want to be digging in and helping them grow, not just helping them keep their website online, help them, support them.

The idea of us or anyone being able to produce a website that looks pretty good, either using page builders, or AI generator websites, or anything is becoming more and more easy. So the human connection there and the ability to actually be a strategic partner and help growth is going to be the key to businesses in the future. It’s more about the strategy and the consultation that happens around these things is going to be where the profit is, where the actual need for businesses is going to be really focused.

The way we’re adapting is basically bringing in bigger strategic brains, not just delivery, it’s about businesses and growth. That’d be business insight people. It could be even just SEO specialists, we don’t do much in the way of SEO, but that’s quite a simple thing. But actually having a specialist on the team for growth rather than just for building a website. We’re part of your team, your digital arm of your team, how does your website grow? That’s going to be our offering more and more in the future. So we’re not just delivery partners.

[00:38:11] Nathan Wrigley: Fascinting. Honestly, it’s been a really interesting chat. I’ve enjoyed very much hearing about your journey. If anybody else has shared my intuition and would like to contact you, maybe they’re interested in the way that you’ve grown, or maybe they’re going through some struggle that you have perhaps overcome already, where would be the best place to find you? Be that on social media or your website. What’s the handle that you would drop?

[00:38:34] David Darke: Yeah, probably the best place would be LinkedIn. I’ll give you a link. Yeah, I don’t actually have it off the top my head, but it should be just LinkedIn, David Darke. But, yeah, that’s probably the best place. I’m trying to be on social media less in general so, yeah, that’s definitely a good place.

[00:38:46] Nathan Wrigley: Well, in which case, I will put that into the show notes. So if you go to wptavern.com/podcast, search for the episode with David Darke, D A R K E, you will find it in the show notes there. So all that it remains for me to do is to say, David Darke, thank you so much for chatting to me today. I really appreciate it.

[00:39:02] David Darke: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.