Episode 18: John Hawkins  [music] I credit my next guest on community code as being the person responsible for the bulk of my WordPress career. And so I'm thrilled to be introducing you to John Hawkins, who you might know online as Vegas Geek. He's one of those WordPress community members who's been around long enough to have accidentally changed people's careers, including mine. In this episode, we get into the weird math of word camps, the stuff you can't measure. hallway conversations, after parties, teaching one small thing on a stage and how those things can end up shaping your entire trajectory years later. We also talk about Zoom fatigue and why he is building in a sustainable agency that doesn't depend on the panic of next month's pipeline. If you ever wondered whether showing up is worth it or if you're building things alone and starting to feel isolated, [music] this one's for you. Welcome to Community and Code, the podcast where we talk to the human beings behind the commits. I'm here today with my friend John Hawkins. Uh John is a very long time WordPress developer. Uh you ran your own agency, I think, for a while. Uh done lots of things. Um and I'm just so glad to have you on the podcast. Welcome. Uh welcome, John. >> Thanks, Chris, man. It's been a long time since we've chatted even and uh it has been. Yeah. Good to catch up. For sure. >> Yeah, for sure. So, uh I'm going to start by sharing the story and we've talked about this before too. Um one of the reasons why I'm really uh excited to have you on uh the show is because um it was a presentation that you gave at uh Word Camp Salt Lake City. I think it was Salt Lake City. Um I think it was when it was Salt Lake City and not Utah because there was a year when it was word camp Utah. Um it might have even been Word Camp Utah. It might have been that first that last year it was work camp Utah but you gave a presentation on plug-in development. Um and basically it was like hey if you're doing stuff in your themes functions.php file you know enough stuff to write a plugin and maybe you should think about just writing a plugin and you know branching out. Um and I was doing things in functions.php files and I had never thought of myself at the up up to that point. I had still uh considered myself a uh web designer. I would did not consider myself a developer. Um and uh just just opening that door was enough to set me on a path uh to become to like go really really deep into the engineering of of WordPress and plug-in development and things. Um that I mean that that says a lot for for your presentation. It says a lot about word camps, about like what the effect that they can have. Um, so I'm I'm yeah, I'm super excited to have you on uh because I I I love that story. Like I love I love being able to share that like that like uh like the you know, one of the reasons why I got back involved, why I got involved in speaking and uh doing documentation and things like that was also because of that because because you inspired me. Uh, I'll tell you the first time you told me that story, um, like it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Like it was it was so awesome. Uh, you know, we now all these years later, right? You've spoke at many events and blah blah blah. And you, you know, you're up on stage and you you're thinking like, I I sure hope I'm putting out something that somebody is going to connect with and maybe find useful. And so >> that was just such a powerful >> like hey this stuff means something like you know and you know I ran I ran our WordPress meetup here in Vegas for many many years and I would always tell people like hey you should you should come and speak and they're like oh no no no I'm no expert you know I'm always telling them you don't have to be an expert you're here and there's all these people that are right below where you're at wishing they at your level. Like that's >> that knowledge that you have is just is so great and you just pass that on and >> it lights a spark in somebody and then you know >> you didn't think you were a plug-in developer but you were totally you already were like I I didn't do anything. I didn't make you a developer all you know I just turned apparently I just turned that light on and you're like ah that connects. So yeah awesome. >> Yeah. Well, and it it's also like not like from from the perspective of of uh also being involved in meetups here and and organizing Word Camp Salt Lake City myself, like it's it doesn't matter necessarily for you to be an expert. Like nobody is an expert. And there's like I feel like there's this conversation that I've had about like the difference between a junior developer and a senior developer. And like the difference is really the difference is more that the junior developer thinks they need to know everything and a senior developer knows that they don't know everything. Like and that's the difference. >> Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. >> Because there's so much time that you spend uh building yourself up and and and and feeling inferior and having imposter syndrome and like I can't do that or like the stories that you tell because you're new or whatever. But like >> no, in reality like those are just that's just a story that you're telling yourself. I'm 30 years into this and I'm still Am I a junior developer? Yeah, probably. [laughter] I don't know. But that's just how I feel because uh you know I think the I think that uh that senior developer level isn't so much about what you know. It's knowing who to ask and knowing where to find solutions. >> That's it. That's it. >> Yeah, for sure. I totally agree. Um well, let's go back into sort of the the origin story um a little bit when when you presented at uh Word Camp Utah. I'm just going to say that it was Utah. Um >> it was in Utah. >> It was definitely in Utah for sure. [laughter] >> In Utah. Um, uh, when you presented, you were, I believe, one of two, uh, members of the agency you were running at the time, Nine Seeds. I think it was just you two, right? And I think that that was the year where you had just decided to go, uh, word camp hopping. >> Um, >> yeah. >> So, so, so talk about, uh, talk about 9C's. talk about getting uh that sort of up and running. And then also the experience of of kind of doing uh a Grateful Dead experience uh touring uh all the different word camps. >> You couldn't have put that better. That [laughter] was spot on. Uh sleeping on people's couches, like the whole works. Um yeah, so we I mean I was in a corporate job right before while I was kind of really diving into uh WordPress itself and I'd been using it for a few years and I just my I say that uh at that corporate job I worked there 10 years. Nine years were amazing. Last year I would have chewed my arm off to get out of there. And then we we ran Word Camp Vegas that first year, the very first year. >> And it was very much a light bulb moment like, "Oh, wait. There's like I can maybe do something else aside from that other thing." And >> uh so it was me and my buddy Todd and then Shane Sanderson. Uh the three of us, we we all basically quit our jobs and just started Nine Seeds. And um you know, I think that the uh the idea of like traditional advertising, like trying to do Google ads or like running ads anywhere, like just never really felt like what we wanted to do. And I really loved the community aspect of just going to like a word camp and meeting people and chitchatting. Like I had so many great conversations just that first year, even while I was running around like a madman. uh just trying to organize that first event. I still had so many great conversations with people that I'm like, I don't think we should advertise. I think the way that we advertise is we go to as many word camps as we possibly can. We speak and we sponsor at as many word camps as we possibly can and we just keep doing it. We just keep doing it. And we went to like that first year. The first year, it wasn't really the first year. The first year was pretty mellow. Like we probably went to, you know, a handful, but like the second year, um, I don't know if you know this, but what I did Word Camp Phoenix and Word Camp New York in the same weekend. >> Oh jeez. >> Yeah. Those are not two cities that are close together. >> No. No. >> Just so you know. Yeah. And but I I had already agreed to do Phoenix and New York says, "Hey, you know, would you like to come and speak?" And I'm like, "Well, I'm not going to miss New York. That sounds like a pretty huge >> event. >> Yeah. >> And it was. It was amazing. And I again I just met so many people >> and that was really our entire advertising idea. Like that's how we wanted to do it. And um I've always been I love teaching people and I've always felt like when you teach somebody something, they remember that and they love you forever for it. And that's what we found. We would just go from town to town to town and speak and talk and chitchat and go to the afterparties and hang out and >> yeah, it was great. It's fantastic. >> And and like word camps are uh often not close together as as evidenced by Phoenix and New York. >> Uh there the travel is not necessarily cheap. Um, and and the time to to get there and the time that you're there and then then like the sort of uh >> like I mean I I feel like I have like a little bit of a hangover on my on my way back home from from a word camp. So like how I'm assuming that you were still able to work but like obviously like there's all these different factors like how did that factor into that sort of like uh whirlwind tour of the United States via WordPress? >> Well, it was easy. We weren't making any money at the time. So all we could do now it was it is it's challenge. Yeah. Um I will say that I learned a lot from that uh from that whole process because like now if I travel anywhere I almost always schedule either come back on Saturday or you know come back home on Saturday so that I've got Sunday to kind of recoup >> or take that first day off. just don't don't schedule anything and then just kind of ease yourself back in because it is it's exhausting like the the leadup, you know, you're especially if you're speaking, you know, you're prepping slides, like that's that's a week of your time to do that >> at least. Yeah. And then afterwards you do you have that you have that hangover that downtime where you you need to recoup. You need to uh you know the conversations you want to kind of like replay those conversations in your head and distill those down into like not just I want to reach out to this person but hey I had this conversation with that person and that person and really those two people need to meet. That's one of my favorite things. I love connecting people. Yeah. I want you to come to me if you need the services that I need. But just as important to me is like if I can find somebody that is a perfect client for you, that feels just as good. >> And and that stuff comes back to you. Like we've we did that for we did that for years. You know, we were passing projects back and forth between uh different agencies. Um I'll tell you a story. I was at Word Camp U. Well, it was word camp San Francisco at the time or Word Camp US if you go back far enough, right? And so somebody knew that we were there from Nine Seeds. And so he had come up to me and he's like, "So, you know, how many of these people here are your competition?" And so I kind of look at the room and I'm like, "Well, everybody and nobody, >> right? A project that was like, you know, WebDev Studios was doing these gigantic projects. >> That wasn't us. like that was not something that we just weren't going to be able to handle at that time, right? Like we weren't going to go take on a six figure project that would have probably buried us. >> Um but you know, like the three to five to $7,000 project, we were crushing those. So yeah, like that's that's the thing like you everybody like introduce people to the right people and uh and good stuff happens. That's all. >> How did you come to WordPress in the beginning? like how did that how did that become the thing for for you and then for nine seeds? I was blogging before WordPress and I was like writing straight HTML into a text editor and uploading files and oh man it was painful and then I started going through so I was doing that originally and then like different CMSs started coming about and I hopped around and I hopped around and I just kept finding them and I felt like I all I really was doing was spending all my time converting my content from one thing to another thing to another thing and um I actually found WordPress about 3 months after it came out. A guy that I was working with at that corporate job actually uh introduced me. He's like, I think this is something that you might like. And it was easy and it was it was kind of the easiest of the tools that I had used. And I mean back then it was, you know, very very thin on features, right? >> But it did what I needed. Yeah. And so I was doing that and I was just doing that for a while and then it started being like, hey, I wonder if I could make it do this other thing and then themes came out and then plugins came out and then like all these things and it just kind of really set in and I the more and then of course I started meeting the community, right? Mhm. >> And because there was a community that I could ask questions to and get answers from, like that was so far ahead of where some of the other ones were. Um, so even in the early days, there was uh, you know, there was people that you could ask. So that was that's kind of how I found and kind of how it became entrenched. And then once I started making changes for myself and other people were like, "Hey, could you make these tweaks for mine?" And, "Oh, sure." and I was charging him very little to do it and doing it for friends and family and all of a sudden it's just it was just buried and then once I really you know once it really got going then at that point it was there was just no way I was going to change course there was just uh you know if you're going to be an agency you could be an agency that says you know we work in any platform and that's great and that's fine but man being a specialist and having people come to you like you have all of that built-in knowledge from the 10 projects you just finished. >> Yeah, >> that's that's hard to beat. So, >> yeah, I just there was there was just never once it got to that point, there was just never the thought of trying to be a generalist and do everything. >> Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. What um what things did you like what impact did going to all of the the camps and talking it as as many of them like everybody talks about or a lot of people talk about how um word camps don't really have a an ROI a return on investment right you sponsor or you speak and maybe you get some like a little bit of like uh name recognition uh but really it's more about like like I you know speaking from a company that sponsors uh word camps, it's it's more about a brand awareness thing rather than like a direct lead sort of thing. Was that true for you back then? Has it has that changed over time? Have you like watched that evolve? Like what was your experience when when you kind of came to the end of this this year um and sort of reflected on it? What did you sort of notice? Yeah, it's hard to you're not going to go to a word camp, especially in in another city, right? I'm not going to go to Salt Lake and then just come back with like five leads that turn into projects. That's not typically the way that it works. Um, but you do you go to these things, you go to the afterparties, you talk to these people. And I will tell you that my favorite thing that happened in that in that first year and it was probably pretty late into the year was somebody filled out our contact form. We hop on a call and I would always ask people like how did you how'd you find us? And uh they're like oh so and so told me about you >> and I didn't know who so and so was. I had never heard of so and so. They had just happened to be at an event where I was speaking. They they remembered that, hey, this guy talked about this thing. >> Then they found somebody who said that they needed that thing and they again making those connections. That's what it's about. They they were doing the exact same thing. They had two different contacts from an event. So yeah, that's what there is. I don't think you can go and say Word Camp Chicago 2012 netted me x amount of dollars because that that number is zero, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> But it's not zero over the long enough time. Like it's it's not zero. It's it's connections. It's people and those people uh Word [clears throat] Came Chicago, perfect example. I think that's where I ended up meeting uh Brad and Lisa from WebDev Studios separately. They because they weren't working together at the time, right? >> Um >> and then I ended up working there. >> Y >> many many years later. >> So I don't know is that ROI. [laughter] >> Yeah. Right. I mean that that's that's the thing is it it's uh my experience has been in sort of this intangible uh almost like just a a vibe. Um, one of like my first experience with Pantheon uh was I think really from meeting them uh meeting the Devril team at uh uh Loopconf which was in Salt Lake City that year. >> Um and talking to them talking like I talked to everybody because I like I would go booth hopping, right? Um and that was a small enough event that you could sort of like talk to all of the different vendors. Um, and Pantheon stuck out to me as as being different because they kind of knew like they knew where I was coming from. I had also like done lots and lots of tech support and like early on in my career. So like I have this like radar for like knowing when people like get that I know what I'm talking about versus people that are treating me like the tier one support person who like you know we give the same answer to everyone sort of thing, right? Um because I always tried to do when I was doing support and I I went I was on tier one for like I don't know 3 months and then I was on tier three. So like I tried to like figure out pretty quickly like how how deep can I talk to this person on a technical level. >> Um just based on the things that they're telling me, right? Um, and it see and like they it felt like uh they got it and and I they gave me like a free account or whatever and I started playing with it a little bit and uh then like years later uh I would um I I you know actually use them uh or like you know years later like I I'm looking at like they have a job posting and I'm like okay like it's it's from it's from like those sorts of like in-person like things like like that being able to like meet them in person like gave gave the impression like these people know what they're talking about that led to like later on when something an opportunity comes up like oh yeah I'm going to think about them and um what I've observed from from since being here is like there was a period of time where we weren't sponsoring and then the sort of like sentiment the general is like we sort of fell off the radar right and so like one of the things that I've been trying to do is like let's get us back in the conversation let's go to the things let's make make ourselves known and I think that it's really helped and I think that it it's really just it's a vibe thing. It's it's hard to like qu you can't quantify vibes. >> Yeah. I don't think it's ROI, right? It's ROC. It's return on connection. Like that's >> There you go. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Well, you've been in you've been in this space for a really long time. Um your talk about like how your sort of like path through WordPress and through these different like uh agencies has sort of like evolved over time. the sorts of things that you've kind of like been drawn to. >> So after Nine Seeds, I I left Nine Seeds to go work at a startup and that startup exploded. I worked at a different startup. >> That one I I don't remember what happened with it. I ended up working at three startups in a row and uh the uh one of them was a casualty of of co basically and that's how I ended up getting laid off and then luckily I got picked up by one of that company's clients and I worked there which was another startup and um you know I think it's uh for me one of the things that was happening was after I left Nine Seeds where I had a team and I was working on uh WordPress with people all the time and sharing sharing information back and forth and learning from people. Uh that was that was amazing. That was an amazing time. And then when I went into the startup, I was actually doing WordPress for a specific company and that was a totally different animal, right? Because I'm not trying to learn everything under the sun. I'm just trying to get really deep on what this one what this one project needs. And so that was a totally different way of being involved with WordPress. And while I was doing those things, um especially during co like I tried to keep the Las Vegas WordPress meetup going during COVID and we were we were doing them on Zoom for a while and then just everybody got Zoom fatigue. >> Yeah. And we we ended up having like the same six people come every month and it was I wasn't teaching anybody anything. So I really got burned out on it myself because I also had Zoom fatigue. Right. So I totally backed out and I I like you said about Pantheon, I feel like I just disappeared off the face of the earth, right? Um, which is weird especially for somebody like me because I I love chatting. I love talking to people. Like that's what I do. Um, and so all of a sudden I really wasn't doing a heck of a lot of that. And so after going from startup to startup to startup where I was again just that like insulated developer um and then I got laid off about a year and a half ago but I had been doing some things and I decided you know what I don't I don't want to go get another job. So I've actually just been uh running my own agency again but uh now it's Vegas Geek and so I've been doing that uh by [snorts] myself. Well, not I can't say it by myself. That's not true. I've got I I have helpers um for the past, you know, almost two years now. And uh I love it. It's it's it fits again. But in doing that, what ended up happening was um a while back I even though I'm having great conversations on Slack and chitchatting with folks, um a while back, uh I'm sure you know Brandon Dove and Jeff Zen from Pixel Jar, right? So Brandon and I were both really getting into automation like NAN and and things like that. So we were having these conversations and we're like we should do something a little more solidified. And so we we picked a day of the week and once a week like we just started meeting and just talking and learning and sharing and like that felt so good again because it had been it felt like it had just been so long since I was in that uh learn and share mode, right? >> And so now that's actually grown. we've kind of it's no longer just the automation stuff. Like we're back to talking about projects and development and uh you know there's a lot of really cool stuff going on under the hood in WordPress these days. So like we're we're diving into that stuff and talking about projects and how they work together. So yeah, it's going into that time where I felt like I was just so far removed from the community uh after kind of like during an ending of COVID like during all of that uh to now kind of coming back into it and you know trying to re-engage and and be involved online and with other folks just feels so good. It feels like I needed this and I'm I'm glad to be bringing that back. >> Yeah. So like a like a virtual meetup sort of like hangout kind of thing. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> But not something that I have to run and produce like I don't have to make slides and I don't have to, you know, I'm not preparing anything. We we have a we have a conbon board where we just throw topics on it during the week. We're like, "Oh, hey, let's talk about this." And we do. We just jump on and talk about it. And it's it's great. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I I I feel like that's really important. um particularly when you are sort of in the small agency or sort of like solo dev kind of mode because it's it's very easy to to be sort of isolated and out on your own island. Um and and not know what other people are even doing because you're so just you're you're >> grinding and you're trying to get your own done and and and it's it's hard to keep track of all the things. So, it's it's good to have sort of a designated space to to have other human contact. >> Yeah, it was it was probably like three or four maybe five weeks in where I got off the phone and I was just like there's so much value here. Like just so much value to be had just in a one-hour conversation. And I mean, you know how it is. you you wake up Monday morning, you got a bunch of stuff to do, then Tuesday and then Wednesday and Thursday and then all of a sudden you're back to back to Monday again. And if if you don't set aside these times to like do it, it's very easy to go four, six, 8, 10, 12 weeks without, you know, without talking to anybody, without having any like meaningful conversations where you're where you are learning something like, you know, even we just even talk about things like what are you using for passing credentials when it's needed? what are you you know just because if you're by yourself yeah you can go ask the internet yeah you can go ask GPT all those things but I really want to know like how did you solve this like what worked for you because there's 5,000 ideas online sure but what are you actually putting in practice and that's way more valuable than any chat GPT result >> yeah well and and for you. Uh, Vegas Geek is a name that you've held on to. I mean, I knew you as Vegas Geek before I knew that you were John, right? Like >> Sure. >> It's it's an online persona that has existed for forever. Um, but now you're using it as as uh as a company, an or Yeah. So, is there a difference between um uh for you between having Vegas as sort of like your own sort of personal online identity versus now it's like a brand, >> right? >> Or do you think about that? >> Funny, you should say. Um, I I have been wanting to get the domain name johnhawkins.com for 30 years and I got it like >> two weeks ago. >> Nice. >> Yeah. Um, and part of it has to do >> I'm never going to get chris reynolds.com, [laughter] >> right? It turns out if you pay enough you will. >> Oh, yeah. Wow. >> Yeah. So, um, for me what I was what I was realizing is, uh, you know, my Vegas geek I for a while I was down to I only had one email, john at vegasgeeek.com, and it was great. It was fantastic. And then all of a sudden I had one for one client and I had one for another client and now I had like eight emails and I was like, "Okay, if I'm going to have this many that I need to deal with, like what I really should be doing is I should be breaking apart that Vegas geek John Hawkins thing. Not only at the email level, but at the bigger level, there's there's stuff that I want to write about. Like I want to blog about different things and do they fit for Vegas geek? Is that is that right? I want to do I want to talk about board games and whatever like you know my guitar I don't know >> probably not. So maybe there does need to be. So just over really just over the past couple of months I've really uh started putting in a effort to go okay Vegas Geek is the brand I I need to do that. So, I'm, you know, I'm going to just start retooling things, the website, content, etc., social media stuff, and um I'm just going to break the two apart because Vegas Geek is growing and it's turning into a little thing that's that it's a that it's its own thing that isn't me. >> Yeah. >> And that and that's cool. And I'm I'm I'm pretty stoked about that really, honestly. >> Yeah. I mean, I think that like, you know, when you and I kind of entered the internet was a very different time where you basically didn't give your name out online. We were I don't know if it was paranoia. I don't know if it was like there were fewer security things. Maybe it was all of the above. >> Um, but like >> it was it was just a natural thing to to your name is not a thing that is is now that is public domain. And now that that's that's really shifted um where where everybody just like their name is is everywhere and you can look people up by uh and see you know the various different John Hawkins is on the internet. Um but but so I think that you know to to a degree um the way that I internalize it is is like seeing Vegas like Vegas geek is part of that sort of like internet founding kind of uh beginnings. Yeah, it's it is it was it was my persona. It has been my persona. It is my persona. Like that's not that's not going away. Yeah. >> But uh but yeah, it's true. Like that's I don't know that that's necessarily I uh I mean I have the word geek tattoo. [laughter] This is like I've been a geek my entire life. And so when I moved to Vegas like Vegas geek was just kind of this cool thing. And like I just really dove into it and >> got the idea early. >> I did. Yeah. And like I I don't know. It kind of felt more like, you know, like because especially when you're doing like handles and stuff like John Hawkins, if if you're not like day one when a platform >> Yeah. >> launches, you're just not getting it, right? So you So you do you come up with something. And I I did want something that um that I could then own all of, right? Uh so yeah, so that's kind of how that all that's kind of how that all started really. Um and then you know all of a sudden you you look up and it's been 20 years. [laughter] How's that happen? I don't know. >> So but yeah, and you know again now I feel like maybe maybe John Hawkins can be his own thing again. >> Yeah, >> we'll see. We'll see how that goes. Um, what are some things, especially as you're getting back into more soloreneurish type world? What do you what do you feel like you've learned from like running an agency, working at agencies, but now working again for yourself? Like what are things that uh that you've taken away from that journey or that like other people could maybe pick up from from mistakes that you've made or things that you've learned along the way? >> Man, mistakes that I've made. How much time you got? >> Um, yeah, >> 20 minutes. [laughter] >> Fair enough. Okay. Uh, no. I will, you know, early early on, um, I I never wanted to host for people. I never I never wanted to be the host for people. And what happened was over time people would be like, "Oh, you know, my hosting sucks. Can you just do it for me?" And I always said no because I didn't want to be the phone call at 3 in the morning. And I will also say that at the time, like way back when, I didn't know nearly enough. And I didn't know enough people. >> Yeah. >> To to make it so that I could actually do hosting for people and make it secure and strong and fast and all of those things. And um so because of that, because I was because I had that stance kind of early on, uh you know, so much of our work early on was um bring a client in, do their project, push them out the door. Good to know you. Adios. >> Yeah, >> I hate that now. I hate [snorts] it. I I have turned my thoughts on that around so much. Every single time I am working on a project now I am thinking about recurring revenue. How what services can I offer? Don't just you know yeah you can build somebody a website that's great but how do you turn that into a package that you can then continue on with? Now, I'm not an SEO guy, but I know a guy, so he and I are working together now where we can now together offer some SEO services. I'm not going to do that because SEO is its own thing. But anything that you can do to bring in that recurring revenue because I tell you what, all you need is two bad months where no leads come in the door and you know things start getting pretty scary. Uh what was the saying? What was I just I [clears throat] heard a saying somewhat recently that um like you know most people are two bad months away from being homeless where are further are closer to being homeless than they are from being from two good months making them millionaires. Yeah. Right. Like that's just >> that's the that's where we live these days. And so having that that base, even if it doesn't cover everything, even if it gets close, but it's something that you could at least pay the rent, get some food, you know, having that was huge. And so when I did get laid off 18 months ago, I had already been working on building that recurring revenue for about five years leading up to that. So when that happened, I wasn't I didn't wake up the next morning going, "Oh now what?" >> Yeah. >> I just kind of dove back into work. And then what I started doing was what other services can I offer the people that I'm already connected with. And then as I'm doing that, I started telling people, hey, you know what? if you if you have other people in your network, tell them about me and I'll give you a month of hosting and maintenance for free or you know, whatever. Didn't matter. Like anything that you could do just to get people to say your name in a in another room uh was huge. So that right there if if you learn nothing else like just figure out a service that you can offer and >> yeah, >> dive in. Yeah, I uh I had the same opinion. Uh when I started when I was freelancing, I never wanted to get into hosting. I ended up doing it for a couple people, >> but I wasn't like hosting them. I was just like managing their hosted stuff, which is >> exactly >> also not a thing that I want to do like really like [laughter] um >> and certainly not not at the time and certainly not at the time when like you know this person over here has GoDaddy and this person over here has like Blue Host and this person over here has DreamHost like like if it was going to be my choice and everybody's going to be under one roof and I manage you all in the same way in the same the same you know >> um >> but also like you know we're talking old school like before the WP engines and before I mean Pantheon was around maybe but maybe not even doing WordPress at the time like there weren't like these sorts of uh companies that would give you a lot more tools to uh help you maintain those sites. Uh it was all like, you know, what was it? Uh InfiniteWP, I think is the thing that I used where it was like a little app that connected to all the other uh sites that I was managing that I could hit a button and then and then it would run updates on everybody else's site. Um like that that was that was how how you did it and because I didn't want to have to log and that even that was like groundbreaking like when I discovered that using that like oh my god this is amazing. [laughter] >> I just got back so many hours in a day. So great, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. But like again like to your point like I I remember when I when I joined uh humanmade um they they had built their own cloud infrastructure on AWS and I was like I never wanted to do this but I also obviously see the value because it's exactly what you say like like >> being able to to do that that that ongoing recurring revenue and being able to like say like no we actually have a thing that we've tuned really well and have people who know how to do it. Like more power to you. Like go do that thing because that's that is a very specific skill set to do it right. Uh versus just like yeah, I've got my thing hosted on Blue Host and like I pay them five bucks a month or whatever and and hopefully it works. >> Yeah. So for for me, I I actually don't even I typically don't tell people that I do hosting upfront. That's not what I do. What I instead do is I say, "By the way, I will do your monthly maintenance >> where I'm going to take care of all your stuff. It's basically like white glove. You're going to pay X amount of dollars a month for that. And by the way, I'll host your site for absolutely free. Your your hosting is free, but while you're with me, you are always paying a maintenance fee." And the whole reason is there's no sites that are in my ecosystem that are not getting updates every couple of weeks. Not you know uh all of those things like you know one one thing on your site go on your server goes completely sideways and you know then you're then what right? So, yeah, I I never want I I really was picking and choosing as I was going along with it. And so, uh I'm only bringing on people and I'm only working with people who they're not looking for $5 a month hosting or you know that's because believe me, I'm way more expensive than that. And I tell people right up front, I'm the most expensive hosting option that you are going to find. But I don't care. If you don't want the services that I have, that's totally fine. I'm happy to do it. I'm happy to work with you on your situation. But, you know, when you say, "Why is my site so slow?" and I say, "Well, I offered you four solutions and you didn't want those." That's a different conversation. >> Yeah. Right. Yeah. >> So, yeah. >> Yeah. No, it's definitely something that I I would have appreciated hearing at the time that I was doing that. I I had I think I had one I I was working with um one of my clients was a lawyer. So my my very first web design job was through a company that was local in Utah and they were basically just hired a ton of contractors and they just like did like commodity websites like you would call them and you say I have this I have this thing I need a website and they would answer like a survey or something and maybe give a logo or some you know stuff and then it would like feed off to like they had some in-house designers and they had a bunch of like contractors um and we would contact them. we had to get like a special headset and whatever all this stuff. So I did that for like a year. Um and then one of the one of the people that I worked with in the course of that was a lawyer in New York who was a criminal lawyer. Uh it was a really cool uh guy. Um and he ended up leaving that company cuz they were kind of a pile of And there's a whole story about them too like the the the co-founders ran off with a bunch of money like a whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. Utah. Um [laughter] anyway, he got out before that happened, which is good for him. Um but he uh when he left um them, he contacted me separately. He's like, "Hey, would you want to still do this stuff?" And then he asked me, "What's your retainer fee?" Cuz and that was the first time I'd even like heard that phrase. I'm like, "What is a retainer?" [laughter] >> Please hold. Let me go look that up. >> So I gave him something really like really low because I didn't know what the hell I was doing at the time. It was like 20 bucks a month or something, but he just like, "Okay, great. I'll pay you on a retainer. I probably won't need very much, but every once in a while that means that I can contact you and you can do whatever." And it wasn't it was >> I mean 20 bucks is is nothing, but 20 bucks is 20 bucks. Like it's it's it's something and it's and it was something that was recurring and like >> Yeah. I >> And it was and it was probably like that starting point for you of like, "Wait a second, hold the phone. I can do this." >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Retainers were something that I avoided for years as well because I'm an idiot apparently. I don't >> Exactly. Yeah. >> Well, I mean, yeah. Now, like, absolutely. And and what I tell people with retainers is, you know, it's not that you're like what you're doing is you're basically jumping to the front of the line. >> That's what that you're you're paying this and you are basically jumping to the front of of my queue every single time. Yeah. >> And Yeah. like that is if you have the right people that if you find the right people that need that or just want that comfort level, >> that's gold. >> Well, and the other part of that is is >> it's not just gold for you though. It's gold for them. >> It also keeps you in the conversation. >> It keeps you in their head and it keeps like every month they have to send you something, right? even if they don't even if they didn't talk to you, which means that they're thinking about you at least every 30 days, which means that when something does come up, they're not going to be thinking of somebody else. They're going to be thinking of you because you're the person that they've got the the agreement with. >> Yeah. >> Exactly. And that that again, that goes right back to speaking at word camps and teaching somebody something. If you teach somebody something, then they come to you and ask you, "Hey, can you do this thing for me?" And you charge them whatever you charge them. the next time if that if that first interaction goes well, who are they contacting the next time? You and only you. Over and over and over again, which again, now this is uh a look behind the behind the curtain. But again, with the monthly maintenance, >> the monthly maintenance is is just the get your foot in the door because really what that turns into is, oh, hey, I saw this thing on your site. I can fix that for you. Sure, that's two hours. this month. Maybe it's an hour next month or three the next. Maybe it's nothing for 6 months and then they're like, "Hey, we need a redesign. Is that something that you can do?" Yes, it is. And they're only going to be coming back to you. So, that's where it's you're doing that service for somebody on a recurring basis and you are you're keeping yourself in that uh in that conversation and they're just not going anywhere else. They're they've got no reason to. And as long as you don't screw it up, >> they're not going to. >> And that's the moral of the of this episode. Don't screw it up. >> Don't screw it up. [laughter] >> Well, thank you, John, for coming on. Uh for for anybody who might uh not know where to find you online, which is obviously Vegasgeek.com, but besides that, uh where can people find you uh in the internet or in real life? >> Uh I don't exist in real life. I don't know if you know that, but uh true. But um uh yeah, Vegasgeeek.com is probably the go-to. And who knows, maybe by the time this airs, uh johnhawkins.com might be a thing. Who knows? We'll see. >> Um you planning on going to uh Word Camp US in in Phoenix next year? >> Uh I don't know. [clears throat] I don't know. >> It's very warm. I >> But here's the thing. I'm I'm already in Vegas, so >> I know, right? It's not going to be that much different. That's why for you it's like it's like a little bit it's it's less of a drive for you than it is for me. Uh it's already like you're already blisteringly hot. Like Yes. >> Exactly. [laughter] Yeah. We don't go outside. That's why I said we're not we don't exist. So >> yeah, I don't know. I uh I might So much of it just depends on on timing and uh >> what's going on. >> Yeah. >> I think I I think the fact that it's in Phoenix does make it a little more tempting because it is closer. Yeah. the ones that are uh across the country. Again, these days I don't have somebody footing the bill. I've never had somebody footing the bill, by the way, I should say. Um I pay for it myself. So, I really have to now consider >> it. Yeah. >> Justify >> Yeah. >> that ROC, >> return on uh >> connection. >> Return on connection. Thank you. Yes. All right. Great. I I love that. Uh I think that's a good place to end. Uh, thank you again for coming on, John. Uh, thank everyone who might be watching or listening to this in the future. And for everyone, uh, we'll see you on the internet. [music] [music], Episode 18: John Hawkins, YouTube, 01kgjkr9yd86f7j0w9w12jf2v2.