Becoming a better freelance web designer

[00:00:05] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there and welcome to the No Script Show. Last time we mentioned we wanted to do more content that had practical value.

The plan is to do a series looking at components that make up websites, and this would allow us to get more specific about design, but also accumulate a library of reusable snippets for future website builds we do on the show. But before that, it probably makes sense to talk about who this is all for.

We've called this episode Becoming a Better Freelance Web Designer and that's one of the main reasons behind the show. And I noticed David Waumsley there pointing the finger at himself. How are you doing, David? You all right?

[00:00:43] David Waumsley: Yeah, I'm good. Yeah, this is a little bit self-indulgent, this show, 'cause it is really for me.

But I thought I'm perhaps not the only person out there who single handedly is providing. Client building services, websites for local businesses, and probably not the only person in search of a kind of new method, getting back into HML and CSS and also accommodating intrinsic web design.

So hopefully by, as we'll see on the show notes, it's all about what I think I've done right and wrong over the last 20 years in terms of, what I've learned and how I approach business.

[00:01:22] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. This episode is really an episode in David lying down on the couch and being like, yeah, some sort of psychological analysis of your own, your own endeavors to build websites.

yeah, interesting. So the idea then of this show is to lay the foundations for future shows in which we build and in quotes, components, bits. For want of a better word, of websites and turn those out as YouTube videos or other types of content. And so this lays the groundwork for who might be interested in that kind of stuff.

So shall I put the show notes up or we at that point? Yeah. In which case we will go right totto the show notes. I'm just gonna say that if you want to follow along with any of this, then on the screen there is the, the URL where you can find all of this. It's no script show slash 19. So the digits one, nine, no script show slash 19 if you wanna.

Find out where these bits and pieces are. Okay. Over to you, David. Kick us off, David, what he thinks he got wrong.

[00:02:26] David Waumsley: Yeah, so yeah, I broke this up into what I got wrong partly right and where I'm going with this. So I think I Nathan, please add in things that you've got. Of course

[00:02:37] Nathan Wrigley: there's plenty that I got wrong as well, but it doesn't always overlap with what you got wrong. So that's interesting.

[00:02:42] David Waumsley: Yeah, And what, it's interesting 'cause it's 20 years since I was started building websites and I. Is, I've come first circle, but I think I understand things better. So the first thing I've put down here is not fully comprehending the nature of the web. And we were talking about this earlier.

I think this is true of most of us who came in at a point where web design was already we had. HTML tables. We were already looking at using the web as this visual tool to promote businesses, and we came in as designers doing that where I think most of us skipped the earlier part of the web story that is this free communication tool that would work on any device.

and it was a H TM L first thing, I think now because of the fact of intrinsic design, we've come full circle all of this a little bit where we're all saying, actually no, the web is a way of largely communicating to people. I. mostly text-based content and then making it pretty and that just swap, it switches the way I look at the whole business.

[00:03:50] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think there's a couple of things I would add into there, but basically it's a rehash of what you said. So the first one is that nobody, I think comprehends the nature of the web does that, because it's constantly changing. But also, like you said, the endeavor really was to create this kind of network of computers that in the event of a collapse of one part of the infrastructure, it would still find a way to get information from point A to point B. And, and it really was about academics communicating with other academics to share their knowledge and then it got taken over and we don't need to go into all of that, but it, now it's very much a, it's very much tied to businesses and, selling things in your place online, socially, and what have you.

And, but it does seem that there is a, the beginnings of a ground swelling, getting back to more of the traditional roots, like an open platform. I. To communicate your message out there in a free way that anybody can latch onto.

But I know that you are in the baseball to use that phrase. I know that you are inside all of this. I don't know that message is landing broadly yet. I. But I think it's beginning to land broadly. I think people are maybe, beginning to have fatigue of being sold at having their data mind and all of that.

So maybe we're at the, cusp of something. And if that's the case, this podcast is very well timed, well done.

[00:05:20] David Waumsley: And also when I was doing the work. it was a friend of mine who dragged me into doing this as a business because she wanted some help with WordPress at the time, and her old business or clients always started because she was in marketing and print.

So the web was just. An addition. Yep. It was just basically turning print into HT ML. Yeah. And that's the way that most of us have come in and talk to clients about it. But if we swap it round to the fact that no, it's a message we're communicating with HDML, which we then make pretty, I. It, does turn everything upside down.

So again, with the next thing, my mistake is forgetting the fundamentals, which is HTML stuff. as you get, as we moved into page builders, I got even less in tune with correct markup to make it more accessible and just to make more sense of the. The content itself.

[00:06:14] Nathan Wrigley: So yeah, I think we can all be forgiven for going along that road because that was just it.

Looking back, that was the way, I suppose it had to go for a little period of time. We were all caught up in, can we make it look like this? Can we use this clever, I don't know, fading technique or sliding technique? Can we get JavaScript to do this thing so that this kind of experience is suddenly possible?

and that's where we went. And the semantics just went out the window because it was all about the pixels on the page and the way it looked, and the, but the mapping of that is so straightforward. we used to hold magazines in our hand and you could do anything with that if you could print it.

It was possible. And then we wanted to simulate that on the internet. So that's what we did for years and we forgot. That it was actually about encapsulating it in this, HTML, the semantics of it. That was, I think, always gonna happen. the prettiness, the pixel pushing, the, making it look nice and to have cool animations and all that.

I think that was, that had to happen. and then there'd be some sort of nascent rebellion, which is what we feel like we got at the minute. So again. I'm, lie down on the couch, David, you can forgive yourself, I think for that one.

[00:07:28] David Waumsley: Yeah, and I think it's a good thing, because it's so simple really to mark up HML fairly effectively so it can reach more people and be usable to, billions of people with disabilities.

And the fact that we're an aging population means that we need to do this even better anyway, if we're to reach more people. So for the small cost of getting your semantics right with your H two ML. The benefits that you might even get as a business Trying to reach people Yeah. Are great. Yeah.

[00:07:56] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So, here's another interesting thing as well, is that the, more recent a, amendments to the HTML, sorry, the, the CSS standards and things like that, if you think about it, we had to go through this. pixel pushing. Make it all look pretty in order for CSS to, and again, I'm using air quotes catch up because a lot of the things in CSS seem like they're trying to simulate what we got in JavaScript, but without JavaScript, if So we've got a lot of things coming in that direction, but hopefully if we strip away the JavaScripts, you know the name of the show, no script show. Yeah, that will make the semantics more possible. Everybody will be able to access it on any kind of device, and it will basically be consumable by all.

[00:08:40] David Waumsley: Yeah, it's been an intro. This is going off again, but we were talking a bit before about Carousel CSS carousels and we, talked around that and there's a big debate going on as we're recording this about that because it turns out these CSS carousels work quite as accessible as they should be, which is okay. Yeah. and you hear lots of conversations about that because, there's a reaffirming, I think in the.

Kind of industry about the fact that we must remember it's HTML and CSS are predominant there, do JavaScript for anything else that can't be done by those first two. But above all of that, accessibility is absolute. That must be the most important thing. Everybody should be able to, because that's what makes the web unique, isn't it? Through the technology. It can reach everyone.

[00:09:27] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, interesting. And then the next one, the third one, ignoring the rule of least power and then in brackets, too many dependencies. You had to explain this one to me. So what were you meaning here?

[00:09:37] David Waumsley: Yeah. I started with has HTML and CSS.

Didn't learn it very well. Got into WordPress because that allowed me to do all sorts of dynamic stuff and that, and then with learning that, I couldn't have done stuff without WordPress, but then it ended up being other jobs came to me because I'd found a way and then particularly a page builder.

So you it didn't matter if it was a single. Landing page that should have been done with HML and CSS. It suddenly went into this whole bunch of dependencies and you keep building and building upon all these things, forgetting really, that you have to support these and they were never needed, So that was always my mistake, that rule of lease power, that you should start off as simplest possible and as you need it, you add into the pot.

[00:10:23] Nathan Wrigley: I do wonder if this one will go away because just stepping away from HTML and CSS and in almost every aspect of the technology landscape, so not just the internet over complication is the stuff of company's lives, isn't it? They have to invent new things, pitch those new things, convince us that, we need them all, make them, dependable, reliable, something that you wanna subscribe to if you like. And I dunno how many times I've had conversations in the WordPress space in which the, just this massive dependency, headless is a really great example where just so many moving parts to get that to work.

And no doubt there are scenarios where that probably is a decent thing. But for most people it's not. I don't know how I think the curious, the nature of humanity, being curious and trying new things out. I'm not sure that's gonna go away, but you don't need them for almost anything that you want to build as a, I don't know, client website.

You probably don't need any of those dependencies and telling yourself, I don't need to waste time on exploring those things is probably, time, saved, shall we say.

[00:11:35] David Waumsley: Yeah, and I think it'll come into our next episodes looking at components. 'cause we'll have to quit because not only the tools that you might use and the dependency on those, but also the extra complicated code that you might code in there.

Yeah. That weren't needed when the message could have been conveyed in a much simpler way. Yeah. So I think, this rule release power is one that I really hold to now, but. Totally lost it. 'cause you just get carried away. You just think, yeah, it's wonderful. I've got the system through this tool. I love this tool.

[00:12:03] Nathan Wrigley: I'm still massively encapsulated in that universe. I'm still dependent upon so many different things. n Engine X, Apache, my sql, some sort of Linux distribution, in my case. Then PHP, gosh, the list goes on. WordPress, a bunch of plugins. Quite a stack.

[00:12:25] David Waumsley: But in your case, nearly everything you are doing relies on a lot of generated content.

So you need something like that. You need some Cs in almost. It does. but it's slightly different from, I think, some of the client sites that I've done, which I should have just used some skills, Oh yeah.

[00:12:41] Nathan Wrigley: I've definitely built client one pager websites, which I've done in the page builder, because I knew that I could achieve it more quickly.

then it's gotta have. Some CMS in the background forever. And really that, I'm thinking of one particular case where it still exists. This website is still there and it is a one pager and it's got a whole CMS behind it. Yeah, makes sense. Updated, yeah.

[00:13:07] David Waumsley: Yeah, the next one was in forcing systems on clients rather than around them.

and I'm put in brackets, not being agile, I just learned in the way that I think, again, this is something which is probably generic to most people who are. Kind of web designers or front end designers, that we used the waterfall method, didn't we? We had a A system where we would agree what the design looked like, and then build it and set all this kind of system up for that, where 24 years ago now, some really clever academics in the more development side of things with the more dynamic languages realize that this kind of doesn't work as a way of building up a project.

And that is one of the things that I've done is I've listened to lots of people who say, oh, you need to do this. You need to have this discovery period. You'll need to run onto this. You need the content first. You need them to provide it through This system just doesn't work at all. Where if I'm Agile, which is basically saying.

Look, we don't know. We'll go and explore this and we won't spend more than what you're going to get back on it. So we'll start as simple as possible together. And you'll pay me for a certain set of work. And then, and that's work better for me than trying to invent some system because it means that they're paying for my time and we're trying to achieve a job, but it's entirely up to them if we go, it's their budget, it's their money.

Yeah, go a different route, so.

[00:14:31] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, we spent a whole load of time, didn't we, talking about being agile on the, on the podcast that we do for, the WP Builds podcast. And that was a really interesting journey, and I think your move more towards listening to clients, getting into conversation with clients, basically the whole thing being a conversation Yeah.

Was, was really transformational for you in a good way.

[00:14:53] David Waumsley: Yeah, and it makes sense. you can now, I mean it's taken, billions of pounds or dollars lost with the government projects and stuff to work out that they have to go agile because simply with a big project, if you start off, the technology might be changed.

You gotta agree it all and say, these are my aims, because they will not be sensible aims perhaps a year down the line.

[00:15:15] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah, so good point.

[00:15:18] David Waumsley: yeah, so the next thing was certainly in websites, it is the same thing really as various products. So I put beyond my abilities. So for me, I've realized that I shouldn't do things like e-commerce because I really, I rely on somebody else's technology to do it, and I don't know enough, I can't keep up with it, and there's enough work for me just sticking with basically static sites most of the time.

[00:15:43] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it's the sort of shiny object syndrome, isn't it? I think given the nature of technology, it's easy to get sucked into those different paths. I decided, as many years ago that e-commerce was not for me. There were just too many headaches there that I knew that I didn't have the technical capability to troubleshoot if things went wrong.

but I, think that's quite a sensible thing, but we're always being pitched the snake oil of. Yeah, do everything for everybody all the time. And I, don't know, I think if you know what your limitations are working towards those limitations might be. Might be the best thing that you ever did.

You probably got less anxiety out of it as well.

[00:16:22] David Waumsley: Yeah. If I want to stay as a single person on my own working, and that's my business, I need to keep it down to what I can stay up to date with. So what I did WooCommerce for some time, but that changes so greatly that I can't keep up with that and then learn the other stuff that I need to do.

So I realized that I'm stretching myself. But also the other thing was just seeing these as products, selling them to clients as products. The agile point again, that you really can't, you can't say you're going to get X project at the beginning of something because you need that room to communicate the direction it might go.

As you make it to realize. And that's the agile approach, isn't it? Yeah. You actually don't quite know what the end is, and you shouldn't know what the end is because you need that room. To be able to change your mind. And yeah.

[00:17:05] Nathan Wrigley: That one's, kind of about learning what your capabilities are and what you're comfortable with and, owning that a little bit and being happy in it, not necessarily always trying to find the next North Star that you need to aim at.

[00:17:18] David Waumsley: That's it. Okay. I just think, not selling websites as products is problematic. they're not really a product, are they? they're a communication tool. The web is a communication tool. It changes. We have to be agile. It's the nature of the.

[00:17:33] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.

[00:17:34] David Waumsley: Yeah. It's not an off, off shelf thing, which begins at this point and ends at that point, hopefully.

Yeah. You buy it and it lasts for so many years. It's just not, doesn't work that way. this next, my next one is one you've never fallen for, I think.

[00:17:46] Nathan Wrigley: No, I, I would just read it out, not taking payments upfront. It sounds like you early on didn't do that. I've never. Not taking payments. There was essentially, I always went for a kind of 40, 40, 20 split, like 40% deposit, 40% on some milestone, and then a final 20%, at the end.

And I've never suffered from that. 'cause it just, the wheels would grind to a halt if people didn't pay. But I never had that even, so that was all right.

[00:18:15] David Waumsley: You have to do a waterfall method with that one though, don't you? You do. So it is easier for me, now because I just say it's a, basically an agile sprint of work we're doing.

You're buying so many hours where we'll work on it with this aim. So I can say, pay that upfront and you've got these hours and then pay it the next, and you've got these hours and.

[00:18:32] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, but again, you've passed the test, haven't you? You've been paid upfront, whatever the way of doing it in your case. Non waterfall, in my case, much more waterfall.

It, still works, but don't. Don't not get paid and do a load of work. Yeah. that's not great 'cause you probably will regret it at some point. It might work out for years. And then one day you'll, overstep the boundaries or you'll have a client that just simply refuses to pay. And then the, silliness of that system will become self-evident.

[00:19:01] David Waumsley: Yeah, I've got the last one on the, what I think I got wrong was not having an escape route. the ability to pass clients on or let clients go free.

[00:19:12] Nathan Wrigley: Which I think, and what did you mean by that? Was this where you'd reached the end of the road of what you could do with them? Or when they came to you and said, look, we need a new website, but we don't wanna work with you.

we want the reins of what you've already built, though. Hand it all over.

[00:19:24] David Waumsley: Yeah, exactly. Most of the time, luckily I haven't really had so much un unless there's been a change of management or person, I haven't had people wanting to leave. But sometimes I've wanted to get rid of certain sites because I don't want to maintain them because I've put all these dependencies in, that, so I've had the problem now with certain things where you, picked your tools, so they were WordPress, a certain page builder, a certain set of these things, and they get to a certain point where some of these.

Tools are no longer, they need changing out. The client's not really ready for that. And, I can't, I want to pass these people on for somebody else to look after. 'cause I don't want to look after the maintenance of these sites bar, I can't do it with, I'm was gonna escape that largely. We doing HML and CSS because, you can, it's has too, Mel, you should be able to go to anybody.

Yeah. with your project. So that, I think not having an escape route, it hadn't really worked out. That in all honesty, the WebPress websites, I've got most of the clients who now I would like to be. Either getting them to do something new again or pass, pass them on. They're 10 years in, more than 10 years, pretty much with the same website that they began with, no work done it.

So it's quite remarkable. But they still see it as they want to keep what they've had, and I think well. Oh, interesting. We're gonna have to start again. And I, don't want to do it in the same way, Yeah. So I can't pass 'em on.

[00:20:55] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. I get it. That makes sense. But hopefully in the future, your html CSS approach, an anybody should be able to pick that up.

However, I do think you are getting to the point where you are in the 5% of people who can cope with the level of knowledge that you've got. I think most people, practi practitioner in this industry. Would not necessarily be able to pick up what you've got because they haven't had the chance to spend the time doing what you do.

But the theory is solid. But, I think you'll only be able to hand things over to a certain subset of people because they won't know. They, they'll look at the HTML and the CSF and go, what the heck is that? Yeah. so that'll be interesting in the Yes.

[00:21:38] David Waumsley: If we wanted. Okay.

[00:21:39] Nathan Wrigley: Shall we move on then?

Let's go to, what you think you did right, but not very well. You've put what he thinks he did right, but did badly. Oh dear.

[00:21:48] David Waumsley: yeah. setting up a recurring income, that was. Good. I think. So that in my case is, I always called it hosting and care and when it was WordPress it needed to have, be cared 'cause it needed updating and licenses needed to be paid on certain things.

Now with the h ML and CSS version of it, I can still say hosting as well, even though. I'm not paying for it really in the case. there's so much free options, but really now I just do it where I say, you can update your site with me. I'll do the updates for you because you haven't got CMS and also, just to keep me around.

[00:22:24] Nathan Wrigley: I think, yeah, I think the word hosting is obviously a bit of a weird one there, but it's the word which is most widely understood. Yes. If you were to just frame it as, I will keep your website online. Yes. That's just a bit wordy, but basically means the same, thing. 'cause it is being hosted.

It's just not being hosted in the sense that you are familiar with. It's, if you were to remove the files from the repository where you've got them, their website would disappear. but yeah, I know what you mean. But setting up recurring revenue. is definitely a good one. Yeah.

[00:22:58] David Waumsley: Did you ever, I've never asked you this before, after all these years, I don't think, did you ever set up in the first place where you didn't have a recurring income where you didn't look after this?

So you basically built the sites for people and then Yeah. Had peop people come back to you about those sites?

[00:23:13] Nathan Wrigley: That was basically what my business was at the beginning. It was me building a website, shipping it, and then saying, alright, see you later. And then hoping that in a few years time they came back, which they did, but it was this treadmill.

Of finding new work. However, luckily both you and I started on that journey at a time when people were going from no website to website. Yes. So there was much more of a, the landscape for getting new clients was much bigger. I think now almost every business either has a website. or ha maybe wants to redesign one, but back then most people didn't.

And so there was just this constant supply of the phone ringing, but I don't think that would be the case for me anymore. I feel quite lucky with that. Really,

[00:24:01] David Waumsley: I see I without the recurring, without some kind of retainer to, to stay with certain clients. I think you've got this real problem of the fact that you, in order to make money, you could be churning out hundreds of these, and then you've got hundreds of people who could randomly at any point turn back to you and say, I've got a bit of a problem with the website. Can you fix it?

[00:24:20] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.

[00:24:20] David Waumsley: And you've got nothing ongoing in, in terms of a relationship with those?

[00:24:24] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, I prob I did that for years and it just worked. it was a bit frenetic at times, but it just worked. And then I hopped on the recurring revenue bandwagon and figured out a price point which worked for the clients that I've got, which was not a lot.

So yeah, that definitely. Okay. Definitely. Good. What's the next one? Oh. Love this one. starting with face-to-face contact, you think, you did this a bit, but it was, you were doing it in an overcomplicated way. For me, it was a piece of cake. It was just always whatever form of connection people got in touch with me with.

So that was the phone or email or whatever. I was always gonna get them towards, if they, if their business was local and I could get in the car always that go and actually be in the same room. But if not, get 'em on a call. I. Skype was the thing back in the day and always tried to do that 'cause I figure I can solve in 10 minutes or I can do more in 10 minutes than I could in a hundred email exchanges.

And, I guess some people are quite good at talking as well. I'm quite good at talking. Yes. That helps.

[00:25:31] David Waumsley: Yeah. you got this right from the beginning. I didn't, I think because I was doing it through a friend, I got into the whole email conversations about what they want, which was stupid.

So I got into the face-to-face eventually, like you did, which was sensible. But I still think now I overcomplicated some of the things that we need to do. it was, again, it is got easier and I think it's gonna get even easier now when I explain. The approach, if you like, this kind of HDML first approach, this idea that, they could be doing it themselves if they wanted.

It's no hard sale, Yeah. I could even teach 'em a bit, but we'll keep adding to this. We'll make it better and we'll work that way.

[00:26:10] Nathan Wrigley: So in an odd way, I think also this, in a, in the future, this might become a bit of a, and I hate to use the word, but I'm gonna, it's the only one I've got superpower, because I think we're facing like automation and ai.

Overload and just being a human, just being a person that somebody can hop on a phone call with is gonna be such a, an interesting commodity. I think it'll be cherished, in the future. And so I think leaning into this is really good. It is. Sure. Is it time consuming? Yeah, of course it's time consuming, but there's much more humanity in it and I think it'll pay dividends.

Keep going, David. Bravo.

[00:26:50] David Waumsley: Do you know what it should be? The thing that we do best in it. Soft skills communicating. that's what we're here to do with the design. So if we can't do it with the clients, it's.

[00:26:59] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's a really great way of thinking about it. If you can't, if you can't interface with a client in a way that, you can talk about it, how the heck are you gonna build it?

How are you gonna communicate it if you can't have a discussion about it, an actual discussion. And email is so any form of written communica so much gets lost, the nuance gets lost. you see that moment when the, you're talking about a thing and the client's eyes get a bit wider and they get more heated and talk quicker, it's oh, that's the bit that they're interested in.

I got it. so anyway, there we go.

[00:27:31] David Waumsley: Yeah. and then the last one on this one I'm doing right, but getting it wrong, is encouraging all into the build process. So you know, all the stakeholders in it. Generally it's just one person, so not such a problem. But sometimes with the bigger organizations, everybody, I include them.

I thought it was brilliant when I used to do it. I was a big fan of getting clients involved in the page builder. Yeah. Page builder. Yeah. Yeah. Was the real leveler. Yep. because they didn't need the skills. We could work together on this stuff and there was some good in that, some really good moments out of doing that, but also it just introduced them to ways to be able to mess up their own websites as well.

okay. Yeah. Yeah. Where now I think if I'm doing it, I still wanna encourage them into the, into exactly what I'm doing as much as they're interested in. In terms of getting the messaging, maybe understanding some basic case, how it's put together. I'm keen if they're interested in that. So it's a, I want people to be involved in it, but I just, I wouldn't do it in that way with the.

[00:28:30] Nathan Wrigley: No. Okay. Okay. All right. Let's move on to this. Is the moment, really the bits that you think you've got right. With a few caveats towards the end? Yeah. okay.

[00:28:40] David Waumsley: Yeah. there's a bit of a. Bit of a gripe here in that one.

so not excluding low budget work, family, or friends is one of the things that, that's why I put the little, asterisks against that because that's, controversial in a lot of circles.

But that's been really good because just taking on any work means that I don't have to spend any time on marketing. It just means people come up and I find a way to meet them where they are. That's. Something that Paul Lacey said that term, I liked it. and I think that's really good because actually long term they're, they've been the most loyal people.

they're with me, some of these. brother's site will be going back almost 20 years, so he is probably given me more money than any client has up to this point, Interesting. Yeah. And so I think I got that right.

[00:29:27] Nathan Wrigley: Maybe, it's a function of you though. Maybe there is something in this one that people do wanna avoid because, maybe you are somebody that finds yourself getting hot under the collar and falling out with people if they don't listen or behave in a way that you anticipate.

but I think you are quite a. A relaxed kind of approach to most things. So maybe that works in your favor, when the client does something and then on does it all in a heartbeat and creates lots of work for you, maybe you are able to roll with that a little bit better. So I can see why that rule might not work for me.

it's totally worked. I've worked with, family and friends. I was just telling you, I've agreed to do a website for. a friend basically in the near future. Very happy to do that. it's actually philanthropic, so it's a little bit different, but, yeah, I would agree with that. it has worked for me too, but what are the, what are the caveats?

Do you wanna say them out loud or not?

[00:30:22] David Waumsley: no, I'll say it was just because of the fact that I'm saying that, and a lot of people would jump at me on this one. There are bunch of statements which I reject, which I used to hear particularly, I think more in sort of Facebook groups in the. Page builder circles and there would be these things that grind my gear, so I'll just go through 'em, which is, clients aren't interested in the tools you use.

Clients are only interested in the value you bring. You are the expert, not them. Clients without X budget are not serious. And these are all things that I think are the last things that perhaps page builders should use. And I think they come from these kind of. Business courses for page builder users that are a little bit like the online trader courses and apps that you get.

They're led by motivational speakers who sell you the dream of a lifestyle, tell you what the secret formulas are for dealing with it, but they don't concentrate on whether you've got the skills to match.

[00:31:21] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, I think that's those kind of things. that's the hook, isn't it? they can sell you this dream, but if you don't have the skills to match, it doesn't matter.

And I've always taken the approach, and you've said this I think prior to hitting record, that essentially there's gotta be a little bit of, skepticism. Because if somebody truly is that person, why are they packaging it? I'm selling it.

[00:31:41] David Waumsley: Yeah.

[00:31:41] Nathan Wrigley: Telling it to you.

[00:31:42] David Waumsley: Exactly. You would keep hush or you would be the industry leader.

Everybody would be doing what you are doing. You wouldn't have a secret any longer, would you? No, exactly. so yeah, and they generally don't talk, and I think with all of those who are a little bit dangerous because of the fact that, there is a. Some truth, obviously, truth in all of those things.

if a client doesn't have enough certain budget, you may, because of the way that your organization works, you have a limit. There's always some sort of, top level. But to just set this and to say that people can't have a website, It just go, it grates me my gear so much because the, web was given to us for free.

Oh, nice. So anybody can, It was so anybody can get HTM l document out that explains on their domain to reach everybody. That's a freebie. We come in and we improve upon that with our skills that we bring to it. So I think when somebody says if they don't have X money, they shouldn't be on the web. It's just.

[00:32:43] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that, that, that's a really interesting framing of that argument. I love that. So the web, H-T-M-L-C-S-S is free, and we come on and finesse it. And so the idea of closing people out, you, have no business having a website without X number of, let's say dollars down.

Yeah. Yes. Yes you do. Yes, you totally do. It's, free. It's, almost like a human, Okay. So there's all the caveats as well, Then, sorry, that was my rant. no. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. It's good to see the pitchforks coming out a little tiny bit. the next one then is not specializing.

You think you've got that right? you're glad about that?

[00:33:23] David Waumsley: Yeah. Because I think a lot of people will say, particularly these business courses, that you need to find a niche. And I think that's true in the sense of what you do and the person you do the locality or in on all those kind of things put you in a niche.

But I think trying to say, I only do this type of websites, I do websites for plumbers only or for vets, Sonia, I think no, because the skills we should be bringing are these front end generic skills. These things about being able to communicate through HTML, the message of someone, and I'm not gonna be an expert in veterinary practices.

and be a, that they're good to be the expert. My job is to use my general skills, soft skills to be able to pull out what their messages is within their specialty. So I think no, I'm, I've decided a generalist is perfect given what I do.

[00:34:15] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, precisely Given what you do. And also, if there's a really nice project that you turn down, because it's not a vet website, that seems such a shame, you might learn.

So much during that and enjoy the process and they're just the perfect client in every way. But Are you a vet? No, I'm so sorry. we and I set up We have no business doing your website.

[00:34:35] David Waumsley: yeah, exactly. And if I set up, David's website, building for vets or something, and then Nathan comes along in the same area and says, I've got even better vet sites, You know what I mean? Get into that.

[00:34:49] Nathan Wrigley: I do, This is something I've mulled over for a long time. My skills regarding vet's websites, as opposed to yours. I, I dimmu, I think, I think you're probably better. Next one then. Critically assessing to keep costs down. Oh, yeah. Okay.

[00:35:05] David Waumsley: I've always been.

[00:35:06] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, you have always been.

You are much better at this than I am.

[00:35:09] David Waumsley: Yeah. Checking out the backgrounds of people into whether there's something that's something I've done with sort of page builders. I trust the people and look into them, not just what they're selling me, and I've done it a lot with hosting as well, which has saved clients money, I think, because hosting can be really expensive and they'll sell you a whole load of stuff you don't need.

Where I've always jumped onto the easiest way to be able to do the hosting that I think is safe enough for me to be able to manage. anyway, there's not much of a point on.

[00:35:38] Nathan Wrigley: No, but I, think you're right. I was always taking intuitions from you about those kind of things. 'cause you would always do the research, whereas I just generally didn't ever get to Yeah.

More due diligence on yeah. Exactly. Being marketed at me. Yeah. and then I, guess our final section Yes. So is what you're trying to solve now, what's going

[00:35:57] David Waumsley: on? Yeah, better messaging. So I need to talk to clients. I need to get over this intrinsic design. I need to get over this. What I've been saying through this is this kind of content first over pretty pictures of websites thing that we've been stuck in for the last, I don't know, 25 years.

And that's, what I've gotta get much better at being able to get this over to clients I think. And, the next one really, which is just the lead up, this is our segue to the rest of nicely on the episodes, is, we need faster building with snippets, which is why we're going to stop looking at all these components, because I need them for more jobs and more recurving.

[00:36:37] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. So the intention for you, as a business is to have a collection of. Tried and tested bits of websites, components of websites that you yourself can reuse, store them in some repository of your own confection. but also as a nice gesture is to demonstrate on YouTube videos like this, how you have gone about doing that.

Building them from the ground up, what they do, how they do it, how you could copy and simulate what David's doing so that you don't have to do. All the hard work sounds like, sounds like fun. So is that, the plan then to start doing those fairly soon?

[00:37:14] David Waumsley: Yeah, I think so. Hopefully I'm putting him on the spot here.

'cause we're mentioning, we, hopefully we might have our previous guest, Paul might come and join us where we can just talk a bit about what components we do. Because big debate I, for me is I want to simplify everything. So every time I start to look at any kind of component you make, I just think, do we need this?

[00:37:34] Nathan Wrigley: no. But that, I think that's brilliant. I think that's a really good way of approaching it. Certainly from the. the accessibility point of view, the optimization point of view, the SEO point of view, all of it feeds into that. So rather than starting with everything, being bloated and then installing things so that you can undo the bloat work from the basis of, do I need this?

And only if it needs to go in, put it in, it'd be a fascinating journey. Yeah. so you are, we're calling those components and the idea then is that, over the next weeks, months, whatever, joined by Paul Lacey. I guess from time to time, is to build out those components and show how it can be done.

That'd be nice. Yeah.

[00:38:13] David Waumsley: Yeah. I'll be stealing from everybody, by the way.

[00:38:15] Nathan Wrigley: But that's the nature of the web, right? It's, and it's not called stealing by the way. It's, it's borrowing, I think honoring honor. Yeah, that's right. Be honoring many people. That's right. You will be mentioning them by name.

if that's the case. And we've come to the end of that one. Is the, is it time to say farewell? It is. that was interesting. So now we know what David's good at and what he's not very good at by his own submission. And, hopefully yeah, in the near future, we'll start doing a bunch of content related to.

Like practical, how to videos about little web-based components, bits and pieces that you can use to make your own workplace.

[00:38:53] David Waumsley: Yeah.

[00:38:53] Nathan Wrigley: I like that

[00:38:54] David Waumsley: the format that we might do, because it gives us a chance to look at just one part of a website and talk about the UX and the design. Yep. And even SEO and, pull it apart.

Where before, where we were starting to build sites, we, it was a bunch of code that we just had to skim over quickly. Yeah. So we can start to really hone in on the Cody stuff, but also the. Where it fits into the design. I

[00:39:16] Nathan Wrigley: like that. Yeah, me too. I've got some ideas which I'll share after I've stopped this video.

So I'll, I'll speak to you in a few seconds, but thank you. If you've been listening or watching, really appreciate it. Thanks, David. Thanks. Bye bye-bye.