Smashing Podcast Episode 49 With Paul Boag: How Do You Ship A Billion-Dollar Idea?
Drew is a Staff Engineer specialising in Frontend at Snyk as well as being a co-founder of Notist and the small content management system Perch. Prior to this More aboutDrew
In this episode we ask what qualities are required to introduce change in large organizations how to convince management to do the right thing and how to ship a billion-dollar idea. Vitaly talks to expert Paul Boag to find out.
Web Development Ludhiana
Vitaly Friedman Hes a user experience consultant conversion rate optimization specialist and all-around expert in digital transformation from Dorset in southwest England. He helps savvy marketers product owners and UX advocates make the case that a usable accessible and people-first experience and are not reading this and seeing this. Hes the best part of business success. In fact hes worked in digital for 25 years and according to his Twitter profile hes a very grumpy old man off the web. Apparently he also is an author of six books on topics such as conversion rate optimization and digital and transformation. And he provides coaching training and consultancy for digital strategy. So we know hes an expert in digital transformation conversion rate optimization and UX and all that stuff. But did you know that he spends every Saturday evening drinking tea and chatting with his Cheshire cat called Frankie.
Vitaly Mass smashing friends please welcome Paul Boag and hello Paul how are you feeling today
Paul Not bad. All things considered. Thats the official British answer to how are you. Theres a really funny comedian called Bill Bailey who talks about that. He says about how Americans when theyre asked how they are theyre awesome everythings awesome. Its an awesome day. And Im having an awesome time while the British say well not bad. Thats as good as it ever gets it means all things considered.
Website Developers
Vitaly Right. Right. Well its wonderful to have you back here. I mean we go way back and its wonderful to see you in person as well. Although I have to admit in a very different setting with a very great background in the back and no fancy lamps no fancy lighting no even fancy microphones whats going on with your life Paul. I was told that youre now not at home. And this is kind of going to stay this way for a while.
Paul Yeah. So its your fault because I saw your jet-setting lifestyle for so many years where you were traveling around continually. And I thought I wanted that but being me being old and not quite as adventurous as you going from Airbnb to Airbnb we bought an RV out in the states. And so we are now traveling around. Were basically trailer trash now. Were traveling around the states sleeping in car parks and just visiting the various places around the states. Its good actually its very enjoyable but yes it means I dont have my fancy podcast set up and I just look like a disembodied head amongst the brown background.
Vitaly No thats not that bad actually. So I should give you credit for that. You blend in well. Talking about blending in I would say its interesting because always now when I think of you I always think about all the things that youve been doing all these years. And it feels like you had so many different hats. At one point you would be doing mostly UX and you would be doing digital strategy and then you were coding websites back in the day as well right
Website Development Company
Vitaly Yeah sure. And also we worked in agencies and being a big part of an agency and not having your own big career as a digital UX consultant. So Im wondering there might be some people here listening thinking about who are just starting out their career and UX is a good thing to kind of dive into. Is there anything Paul that you are now looking back think okay I wish that when I was starting out when was it like 20 25 years ago I wish I had known X or Y what would be those things
Paul Yeah. I mean it was 27 years ago now which is terrifying. Yeah its a question that I often get asked. I think the main thing that I would say to myself and of course it was a very different world back then and the web was very different. So people often ask me oh what advice can you give someone starting in their UX career today Well none because I started mine so long ago that it was totally different. But in terms of what I would tell myself which is what you asked I think I tell myself to focus on the soft skills. Dont get caught up on the latest tool or the latest design technique or whatever. Those things come and go but interacting with people being persuasive presenting your ideas well and not being a complete idiot to work with.
Paul Those are the kinds of skills that really last so. And were really bad at teaching those. Take Smashing Magazine and this isnt a criticism of Smashing Magazine because everybody has got this problem. Youll find hundreds of posts about design techniques development techniques all of those kinds of things but you dont find as many posts about how to survive a meeting with your boss or how to pitch the design-in or how to review somebody elses code without coming across as an asshole. That those are the kinds of skills that I think are in short supply.
Vitaly Well maybe we should change that. I mean I heard that you have a bit of time while youre traveling some places. Would you like to write a few articles maybe that would be just on that topic
Paul Well to be honest yeah. I mean to be honest a lot of the articles I have written for you have been around that kind of thing.
Paul Because I do tend to write that kind of stuff because I think its important. I mean the favorite article I ever wrote for you was one about mental health wasnt it Youre not a machine and youre not alone which its still one of my favorite articles Ive ever written because I think it was a very important article to write but it had nothing to do with design or development.
Vitaly Well I remember another article that you wrote a while back that got quite a bit of How to put it It was argued. Many people were arguing if this is a good way of kind of explaining things or not because I remember vividly you publishing that article about SEO right Yeah. Do you want to share that story
Paul Not really. No. Because I dont want to drag it all up again. No. So I wrote an article saying that yeah SEO I cant even remember really what it said.
Paul But basically I was rude about SEO wasnt I but that was a long time ago to be honest. And SEO has come a long way since then. It was back in the day where SEO was a lot of smoke and mirrors and oh were going to spam links and all of that kind of stuff/ now of course because Googles algorithm has matured most of SEO is basically good content which is great. Thats the way SEO should be. And actually that was what I implied in the article back then that you should just focus on creating great content. That was part of what I said as I remember. Spend your money on content not on SEO consultants.
Vitaly Yeah yeah. Yeah. Pretty much sort of plenty of SEO consultants that came your way decided to argue with you in the comments. I remember that vividly. Not only in the comments Im sure.
Paul But it was really good you see. See I think sometimes its really difficult because weve lost the ability to disagree without it escalating. I mean that did escalate to some degree. There were a lot of people that strongly disagreed with me but I had some amazing conversations at the back of that. And I actually posted a follow-up post on my own site which basically said Youve educated me. The view that I shared of SEO on Smashing Magazine was even then a little bit out of date and that SEO was already transitioning away from what I described as being towards more being content-focused. And so it was a really educational process to me and I think it was a very worthwhile conversation. But these days its like that wouldve exploded up into quite a violent and obnoxious discussion. And it did to some degree even then but not as bad as I think it wouldve done today.
Vitaly Thats about right. Thats about right. Well you mentioned that youve been in this industry for 27 years now. Thats a lot of time of course. That makes me wonder though. So youve been doing this maybe some kind of similar work for such a long time. So have we actually managed to sort out these general misunderstandings about the role of UX and what UX means and how to use UX and how to transform organizations Because it seems like we still keep running in circles having the same conversations. So did we fail at kind of doing the good UX education work out there Or where do you see the state of things now working with companies and organizations small and large
Paul Yeah. Yeah. I mean things have certainly progressed theyre much better than they were. So I think most organizations now recognize the value of UX which is a huge step forward. They didnt always. I think the many larger organizations UX is taken more seriously. And it does have that seat at the table to some degree. I think however there is still a lot of confusion about what UX is and what it isnt. I think its still used interchangeably with UI. So UX UI designer. While in my mind those are very different roles. So yeah I mean were making progress but like anything these things take time dont they Cultural change is always difficult. And when youre talking about an entirely new discipline and integrating that into existing organizations that doesnt happen overnight and were still only a quarter of a century old which is barely out of our teens.
Vitaly Thats right. Thats about right. Well now that youre talking about those large organizations/companies because youre spending quite a bit of time working with companies on digital transformation. And I even heard that you wrote some books about this.
Vitaly Oh thats very kind of you but this was not supposed to be a promo at all actually. But Im actually quite wondering because Im working on my own in some kind of large rooted organization and they are bringing along this notion of lets establish a UX culture. This sounds very foreign. Something doesnt feel almost alienating to some people like oh you want to do this now Weve always been working differently. So why should we do that now Why should we change that now So what would be then your starting point if you want to start moving an organization again of any size really towards something that would be a little bit more user-centric They have their own of course business goals. They have their own KPI. They have their own old way of thinking. And in my experience changing the way people work is hard. It sometimes takes not even years like multiple years its really really difficult. So how would you start moving the needle
Paul Yeah. The bigger the organization the longer it takes to turn. I mean there are different ways of doing it top-down or bottom-up. If you do it top-down then you are basically targeting senior management initially. And sometimes someone in senior management gets it and then you can start chipping away from that angle. But most of the time it has to come from the grassroots. And really I think of it as a political movement. Lets take changing policy towards the environment right If you just go in and you write your MP youre not going to get anywhere by yourself. Okay The way that you get large-scale change like that is your band together with other people that feel the same. You make a lot of noise and you get the attention of those people in power.
Paul And fundamentally its the same when youre trying to change an organization you have to find allies. You have to find other people in the organization that has got the same desire to be more user-centric. Now they might not know the term UX but they might. Marketers for example. UX people are very rude to marketers but ultimately they want to achieve the same thing because they want customers to be happy because if customers are happy they repeat buy. They recommend you to other people et cetera. So you could go to those people and you start creating an informal group of people that share your views on UX. And then you start to mobilize just like a political movement would do. Write yourself a manifesto right What do you stand for What do you want What change do you actually want to see Very specifically.
Paul Then do you start propaganda basically. You start doing lunchtime sessions and sharing UX best practices. You send emails around. You get in guest speakers. You make a noise. Ive run internal conferences within organizations. Ive started newsletters and internal blogs you run a marketing campaign promoting user experience best practices. And thats how you do it. And you begin to build momentum over time and only go to senior management when you have got sufficient momentum that they cant ignore you. But youre right. That takes time. Takes time to build that kind of culture.
Vitaly Yeah. So the interesting part for me is really that very often it feels like you really have to be so well prepared for that meeting with senior management.
Vitaly Sometimes it feels like you have like 20 minutes shot. This is the window that you get. And if you can convince them thats the only chance you get because nobodys going to be talking to you ever again.
Paul Then youre doing it wrong right Ive walked into meetings like that. Ive been in meetings like that but I already know the result by the time I stepped through the door right A meeting like that has got to basically be a rubber stamp by that stage. You have got to have spoken individually to each of the people in that meeting before the meeting you have to need to have won them over beforehand. And a lot of that is about lets say Its a couple of mistakes people make first of all they go into meetings like that and they go well no one think of the user. And nobody cares about the user other than you. So thats mistake number one. And then-
Paul Yeah. But its true. Because were all inherently selfish and were no different right If somebody from the compliance team said to you will you not think about our legal obligations right Are you telling me you would really give a shit No of course you wouldnt. Right Because youre selfish. You care about users because youre a user experience designer. So we all are selfish. We all think about our own individual areas. So thats one thing dont talk about users. Youre wasting your time. The second thing with those kinds of winning over senior management is that you got to not ask for too much right So for example I dont know lets say youre Disney right And youre a little group of Disney and youve got this amazing idea of you to want to create magic bands with RDF chips in them that could do all these incredible things.
Paul But you know its going to cost a billion dollars to renovate all of the hotels all of the theme parks all the rest of it. You dont go into senior management and say can I have a billion dollars Because theyre going to say no no matter what it is that you say. What you do is you go in and say can I build a prototype a proof of concept right For a much smaller fee using a backlog right And this is exactly what Disney did. So reduce your ask go for little steps. Slimy tactics to move towards your idea. And then in terms of the not talking about the user instead what you do is you go to each of those stakeholders and to the finance person you say well if we implemented this magic band yes theres going to be a big upfront cost.
Paul But our ongoing operational costs are going to go down as a result because the finance person likes that right And then you talk to the marketing person and you say oh can you imagine how excited kids are going to be to get their band And how people are going to photograph it and theyre going to share their band if we could personalize the band so theyre different. Theyre going to love that.
Paul And then you talk to the operational director and you say oh well people wont have to have money so the number of transactions that need to be processed will go down. And so we could be more efficient in the way we work. So Im taking the same idea and instead of talking about the user experience Im tailoring it to each of those different people that Im speaking to. So when I walk in the room theyre already all convinced right Otherwise you are wasting your time because you walk into the room you give a pitch and you cant tailor it to the individual person. Youve not got enough time to convince them. So youve got to do it before you get there.
Vitaly Okay. Well I think we should be speaking a bit more in the nearest future as well but maybe actually looking into some more of the kind of navigation search kind of problems that often show up on websites. People dont find what they want to find. People cant accomplish stuff that they want to accomplish. And lets imagine just taking an example you have a huge site which has dozens and dozens of subsites different departments owning different sites. Its all very messy. Some of them are a kind of legacy. Some are just really poorly designed and all those things plenty of content duplication ambiguous labels just all the best things kind of put together right What would be the kind of your process to actually just deal with it in a complex organization that has just literally hundreds maybe even thousands of people involved that is willing to actually get better in terms of UX
Paul No no no no. Do you honestly think thats the case Lots of people think theyre willing until they realize what is actually involved. In a situation like that Okay. I was going to make a flipping comment. I wont make a flipping comment. What would I really do Okay. In a situation like that I think the first thing I would want to do is audit everything so. And I dont mean an in-depth audit because therell be too much to do a proper content audit. But I literally would want a list of all of the sites. And I would want an owner for every single one of those who owns it right And who is maintaining it. Id also probably want very top-level analytics on it. How much traffic is each of those sites is getting and a sense of when the site is last updated right
Paul And the reason that I want all of that is because normally in the vast majority of situations there will be a load of stuff that could be just cold right That nobody really owns that hasnt been updated for the longest time that has got hardly any traffic going to it. So the aim would be to viciously cold back everything that was there. And the logic is very simple right The logic basically boils down to For a long time theres been a perception that its like a brochure. You publish it and youre done which we now know is not an option. That you get rocked redundant and trivial content. And so any web service any website needs to be maintained over time which means it needs an active owner and active budget regular reviews et cetera.
Paul So when youve got hundreds and hundreds of websites potentially thousands of websites youve got one of two options havent you One is that you hire enough staff to actively manage every single one of those websites right Which you end up with hundreds and hundreds of people basically which is totally unfeasible. So you pitch that first. And of course everybody says no because thats completely unrealistic. Theres no way that you can justify that. So that leaves option B which is to reduce your footprint your digital footprint down to a manageable level right And so that means culling anything that cant be actively managed and maintained across the organization.
Vitaly But Paul that means deleting and archiving stuff. Thats scary. Who wants that in a large organization Who knows maybe well delete something important maybe we will not be able to find something important. Who even knows all the dependencies on all those things
Paul Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So youre not going to delete anything. Because A why The web is cheap. Having content online is cheap but what we need to do is we need to archive it. And by that we need to remove it from navigation. We need to remove it from search .it can still be Googled and any internal links that go to it will still work. But then at the top of the page we need to add a banner or notification that basically says this page is no longer being maintained. It was last updated on this date right So that can deal with anybodys fears that content is going to just disappear and its going to break stuff. Then therell be other content that you have to have online for compliance purposes that nobody ever looks at but it has to be there. Fine.
Paul Then with that kind of content what youre going to do is youre going to remove it from navigation. You may potentially remove it from the internal search but you still have a direct link that you can share as you need to. So there are lots of ways. Everybody thinks that every page that we have online has to be treated equally and has to be treated in the same way. There has to be part of the navigation. It has to be part of the search. In reality probably most stuff doesnt. A lot of stuff is just legacy or standalone content or that could just be directly linked that could be handed out as a URL et cetera. And then of course that simplifies your navigation down. It simplifies your search down. It means that people can indeed find the needle in the haystack so. Because youve just suddenly made that who stack a lot smaller. So yeah I mean its really about stripping back to something thats actually manageable and maintainable by the organization.
Vitaly I can always hear people screaming in the back of the room screaming and asking about things that were related to what you mentioned earlier all those practical tips about how to convince management about anything. I think at some point you were even thinking about writing an article how to convince Or maybe it was my title that inaudible 002544.
Paul And I said Ill write an article for now. And Ive actually written the article for you but I just dont think youve published it yet. So its your problem mate.
Vitaly Oh okay. Well Ill have to look into that but maybe kind of bringing this up again its always the same story. I think its always very useful to get insight from experienced people like yourself about how would you even deal with situations where you get difficult clients where you get scope changes that are coming in late where you have situations when you just have a really poor specification you have communication problems all those things right This is pretty much in every single project thats going to be appearing in one way or the other. So what would be your good strategy to deal with on the one hand with managers right And on the other hand with clients
Paul I mean I do a whole day workshop on this. Ive literally just done a workshop on that for front-end masters. So yeah its a huge subject that I think What would be my top tip out of that
Paul Yeah. Yeah. The trouble is a lot of it is kind of interlinked things. So for example its about how you set up a project in the first place and manage expectations out of the gate in terms of whose role is what. And lets take for example scope creep right With scope creep theres nothing wrong with scope creep right As you go through a project right You learn things dont you You do user testing hopefully. You do user research hopefully. You just have ideas when youve seen the prototype that hasnt occurred to you. So what happens out of those things You have ideas you learn new things you learn improvements and you want to improve them. So actually scope creep is good right The only problem with scope creep is we insist on having projects with fixed budgets with fixed timelines and fixed deliverables right
Paul If we get rid of that idea then suddenly scope creep is fine but thats complicated to do that opens up another can of worms right So one of the things that you might want to do is dont do these big website projects right So occasionally I get asked to redesign a website. I dont tend to do a lot of that work these days. But often if Im asked to do that Im asked to kind of oversee the process. And the first thing I say is I am not going to do a project that is an end-to-end project right From initial user research through to delivery and post-launch optimization. Im not doing that as a single project. That is a big mistake. Instead Im going to run a series of smaller projects. Im going to do a discovery phase right
Paul Which is going to clearly identify user needs the competition the constraints everything like that. And then that is going to inform me giving you a quote and a timeline for a prototyping phase where I create a visualization of it. And I test that and that visualization and that prototype thats going to allow me then to quote for the build phase right And I could give you a price hourly because each phase informs the next. So how you structure projects makes a big difference. And then of course that means that between each of those stages between discovery and prototype between prototype and build you could change the scope all you want because its another project. So things like that make a big difference as well. So yeah.
Vitaly Yeah but what if youre working lets say you have this big procurement processes and all those big companies and tenders and all those things where you kind of need to know upfront. Im guessing looking at your face right now that you are going to say just dont do them. But Im wondering if this is the answer that we should be getting to
Paul Yeah. Yeah. I mean I dont do them. Its the honest answer because Im lazy. And any time theres a procurement team involved which requires a fixed price and fixed scope immediately thats a warning flag for me that its going to be a nightmare project. So Im just too lazy to deal with it. But I understand that Im in quite a privileged position. What I did do when I ran Head Scape with projects like that and my preferred approach there is to yeah Ill give them a ballpark for the whole thing right I will quote them for the whole thing. But in my tender I will say that this is an estimate only. And I will introduce the idea of breaking the project down and doing it in different ways. Just because you receive a brief asking for a certain set of deliverables in a certain thing doesnt mean you have to give them that right Its okay to say hang on a minute. I dont think youre doing this in the smartest way right And that there is an alternative better way of doing it.
Paul Now one of two things will happen in a situation like that. Either theyll dismiss you out of hand right In which case you really dont want to work on that project right Because it will be a nightmare from beginning to end the expectations will be unrealistic. It will be challenging. There will be problems with scope creep and all those different areas that weve just talked about. They will happen. There will be no way around them right So that would be a huge warning sign.
Paul Or they go oh these people are suggesting something different. Oh thats interesting. And theyll actually like the fact that youve challenged their brief and suddenly all of your competition that has just blindly followed the procurement rules and done what they were told to do suddenly look less proactive. They look less like they care about the project and that they want the best for the project. So actually its a really good way of differentiating yourself to actually turn around and say well heres something that kind of gives you a sense of the overall budget but this is how you really should work it. And that ultimately itll work out cheaper that way. Because obviously the overall budget I have to add a load of guesses in there and a load of contingency in case my guesses are bad.
Vitaly Yeah. Yeah. So I also see some agencies or companies using value-based pricing where they actually go in and think about the impact that they can make in an organization and then kind of price based on that. Whats your take on this
Vitaly Im very much excited about whats coming up next year listeners please pay attention now. Bookmark this spot in the recording.
Paul Oh people are going to hate me for this. Jonathans start is a great I think its Jonathans Start. My brain is just shut down. Hes a really great guy who pushes value-based pricing a lot. Im cynical about it. Some people seem to manage to get it to work and good on them. And well done them but it feels like a fantasy to me value-based pricing. I understand theoretically makes a lot of sense. If Im going to earn a company a million then its perfectly reasonable for me to take 10 of that 100000 even though its five grand worth of my time right Thats perfectly reasonable. Dont disagree with the principle. Its the reality of it that is difficult for two reasons. One is that in a vast number of projects depending on the type of projects you do that can be extremely hard to prove to get real numbers right
Paul So unless its an eCommerce site or something like that then actually its pretty hard to get a solid estimate on how much potential you could make. Secondly you are giving no guarantees that you will get that level of return. And you cant make those guarantees because there are so many variables involved. When you are quoting at the beginning of the project you dont know what constraints may exist that would limit what you can do. You dont know what the client might say they want or dont want. They might come up with stuff thats a bad idea. There are so many things you do not know that there is nowhere on earth you can be confident you can generate that degree of return right And so how then can you say I want this percentage of that number. So I think in principle its great and it sounds wonderful in practice but it rarely works.
Vitaly So Paul then can you hear the voices from the back again saying but Paul but Paul but we are UX practitioners. If you look at the number of job applications all around on UX its tons of openings. So because he was speaking about millions how do you then become a millionaire by being a UX designer It doesnt work. Well the reason Im bringing up this question is because a good friend of mine told me once many many many years ago hes kind of more my mentor. And he told me Well you never become a millionaire by just working 247 or kind of having a full-time job alone. You really need to think about passive income. You really have to think about how do you invest money And you cannot just make a lot of money by working nonstop. Thats just not going to work. So how then do we become a millionaire as you expect
Paul exactly. Well this looks really high quality doesnt it You can tell that Im in a quality vehicle at the moment. First of all I would challenge why do you want to become a millionaire And this is really interesting. Take my dad for example right My dad is a worldwide photographer. They have barely any money ever right They earn below the national average of the UK. Okay Yet they travel around the world right They go on multiple cruises every year. They go all of these amazing places on somebody elses dime right Because hes a wildlife photographer. And he lectures on cruise liners and stuff like that. So money is only a way of enabling you to do what it is that you want to do. So the question then becomes what you want to do. And because I do a lot of mentorship of agency owners right And agency owners a lot of them start going on about passive income and stuff like that. And dont get me wrong. I have passive income. I get passive income for the courses that I run. I would say the royalties from the books but how little that actually is but I do get-
Paul Well you dont get rich writing books. Everybody knows that. Thats not why you write them. I mean unless you write Harry Potter or whatever so. So but I do have passive income but not an enormous amount but I live the life. I want to live. I go where I want to go I do what I want to do. So the question then is not how do I become a millionaire but how do I get the lifestyle that I want right And thats a very different question. And there are different ways of doing it. And passive income might be a part of it.
Paul In other words an exit strategy where you sell on your business whatever that is. And then you can retire early. I take the approach of Ive designed a business where I have to work four hours a day right So and that is achievable as a UX designer or a UX or you can get your rate to a point where you can get away with working four hours a day take over a good income and spend the rest of your time enjoying yourself. So I dont think the answer is just to become a millionaire. I think the answer is to get the lifestyle you want. Thats my opinion anyway. Unless of course your lifestyle is I want a yacht. In which case you do need to be a millionaire.
Vitaly Well yeah but just because youre working four hours a day we cannot afford you anymore. Because youre getting really really expensive no Im just kidding at this point.
Paul Yeah. No no I am very expensive right Ill be upfront with you. I will charge anywhere between 195 and 165 pounds an hour right That is my rate depending on the number of hours that you buy. And I can maintain a charge-out rate at that level because Ive built a reputation that means that demand for my services outstrips my ability to supply that. So basically I could charge and weed out people that cant afford me unless I really fancy the project. Thats enough. This is how you should price projects right And this comes from Mike Coos. Do you know Mike Coos Yeah. Hes an amazing amazing designer amazing from Australia. And he told me this once he said when he comes to pricing this is how he prices. He says to himself How much would they have to pay me to make me want to do this enthusiastically right. And I think thats a great way of pricing. Okay Because then you work on the stuff that you really really want to work on right That you really enjoy. And because you charge that at a lower rate and then the stuff that you dont want to do you charge at a higher rate which subsidizes the stuff at a lower rate so.
Vitaly Yeah that makes sense. But what would you suggest then to people who maybe dont have that much experience and they kind of have to compete on the market and the market is quite saturated I mean if youre a UX expert thats great. That works but still you go to there are plenty of platforms which provide services for like 30 50 80.
Paul So I work with a lot of agencies that are kind working on these platforms like Fiver and Upwork and stuff like that. And those platforms are universally without exception price orientated right So you are always going to be stuck at the bottom of the market and youre always going to be competing on price at that point. And also youre competing against free stuff. Youre competing against creating a page that you can use a template from on Square Space its a losing battle. So youve got to move out of the bottom of the market. So how do you move out of the bottom of the market Where you start to build your own audience rather than relying on the audience thats provided by these marketplaces. And Ive got a course on this called Finding Clients where essentially you need to decide okay I want to target a specific sector because most freelancer agencies their marketing approaches are terrible because theyve got no training in it.
Paul They dont know how to do it. Nobodys ever taught them how to do this kind of stuff. And so they throw out the old blog post and they redesign their website for the 20th time. And they put out a few social updates and they call that marketing well thats not going to win you any new clients. You need a strategy for targeting a particular sector getting into that sector and building relationships with that sector. So you become the go-to person for that sector. And once you are the go-to person once you are the person that everybody goes to higher education you must go to Paul for that once you get to that point because you are specializing then you could push your rates up. And also you are targeting a sector that isnt just going oh I need a cheap web designer. Now I know Ive skipped over a lot of detail about doing all of that but you know we havent got that long but.
Vitaly Well have another session on just that Im sure sometimes soon in the future I think.
Vitaly So maybe just one final question to wrap this kind of slowly wrap this up. I think just two weeks ago I received an email from somebody who just again working maybe I think three or four years spent in the industry and what they were asking is how do I negotiate my salary So Im working lets say in a product team or Im working in an agency and it feels like you are hired for the position and youre kind of stuck. So the inflation is now through the roof and it doesnt seem like everybodys going to get any increase in the foreseeable future also because the company isnt doing that well. So at which point and how what would be kind of strategic advice from your end to say this is how you do it in order to increase your salary at least get a stronger position in the company maybe instead of salary have more ownership or anything like that over time. Whats the right way of doing it
Paul But the truth is the reason I dont know is the last time I worked for a company was in 2001. So yeah. So its not an area I work in. Of course I was an employer for a long length of time. And I could tell you what an employers big fears are which is that you leave and so our desire is to maintain our staff because getting the new staff is really really expensive. So I think if you are getting dissatisfied with your salary probably an honest conversation with your boss and say look I want to be completely upfront with you all right Im getting to the point where my cost at home because of inflation and all the rest of it is getting high. Im going to need to start looking for another job Im afraid right
Paul And instead of me taking lots of half-day sick and that kind of stuff which is so obvious I thought Im going to be upfront with you and tell you instead. And if I get offered another job I will come and talk to you first if you want to match the salary then we can certainly have that conversation because I dont want to leave here. But this is the situation that Im in. And it might be that is enough for them to want to nip that problem in the bud. And theyll give you an increase there if not follow through on that look for other jobs find other positions. And if you do get an offer go back to them. So sometimes thats the only way of doing it. Its just honesty about your situation. Because most employers in my experience at least theyre not out to screw you over. Theyve got their own targets and things that theyre worrying about their own budget-free constraints and that kind of stuff. And so honesty is always the best policy. Isnt it really
Vitaly Yeah. That sounds about right. Well maybe the final one then. So Paul is there the universal wish you would be writing a book about all those things combined and again the management and the growth and I dont know what else. Do you have time doing it dont you
Paul No I dont have time on my hand. I will write another book. I will inevitably write another book eventually. Its obviously quite a big-time commitment to write a book. I dont think it could be about
Vitaly Is it I think for you its easy peasy. You just go ahead and say okay I can commit to the next three months. And then I get a chapter once a week. Thats much what it was like last time around.
Paul Yeah. I mean I can write a first draft in about a month of solid effort. Yeah. But I dont earn any money in that month so. And you got to keep that in mind as well.
Paul But it doesnt cover my charge out rate. Lets put it like that which weve already established is unrealistically high so. But of course its completely worth it for me to write a book because it kind of generates new business and stuff like that. But it does mean Im in an interesting position. Lets be honest about these things right I write books about subjects that I want to work on more right. So when I wanted to do digital transformation I wrote Digital Adaptation. When I wanted to do more organizational user experience cultural change I wrote User Experience Revolution. When I wanted to do conversion rate optimization I wrote Click. That is simply how it works. And every time without fail it shifts peoples perception of what Im an expert at.
Paul And I win work in that right So its a really good marketing strategy but theres the problem. Literally if I write a book on soft skills or I write a book on winning clients or whatever what work does that bring me See thats the interesting one isnt it And thats where you have to think ahead with these things. And what I was saying earlier about your marketing approach needs to be strategic. Yeah perhaps it would get me more work with agency mentorship freelance mentorship and stuff like that. But thats not a big earner compared to working for a multinational company.
Vitaly Well I know I have another title. No no no no no. I have another title. I would love you to write a book about something like I dont know establishing processes or working in large enterprise organizations.
Paul Yeah. See now that one thats got a lot more potential a lot more legs for it in terms of running my own business.
Vitaly Okay. Well that sounds about good. Thats good enough for me but Im not going to let it go Paul. Im just saying so Im going to send you a few messages back and forth.
Paul Yeah. Im feeling really bad about this interview. I feel like all Ive come across is this really callous person that wont do anything unless Im paid theres other money to do it.
Vitaly No I dont think it comes across this way at all. I think when I look at the articles and every now and again when I Google anything really I will be stumbling upon one of the articles that you have written over all this what 200 years
Vitaly Yeah. Thats pretty impressive. So this in mind I mean I have no doubt that you do a lot of things also just because you honestly believe in that. If you dear listener would like to hear more from Paul you can also find him on Twitter where hes at Paul Boag and on his website which is surprise surprise Boagworld.com. His books all the books that hes so kindly mentioned in the last five minutes also available of course from Smashing Magazine. So you can also find them and read them. And if you want Paul to write more books send him messages. Actually hell appreciate that. Right from that end. Thanks so much for joining us today. Paul do you have any parting words of wisdom with the wonderful people listening to us now
Paul Ive always got the same one which is a success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm which is a Winston Churchill quote. And when it talks about whether youre talking about getting a pay rise whether youre talking about changing the culture in your organization or whether youre talking about getting a project over the line success is going from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm. So just keep chipping away and youll get there.
...Read More