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Brent: I'm Brent Weaver and your watching uGurus; the must watch web series to become
a more profitable and in demand web professional.
Today I'm here with Ryan Burney of 3 Roads Media. Welcome to the program.
Ryan: Thanks Brent. Good to be here.
Brent: So Ryan, tell me about 3 Roads?
Ryan: Well 3 Roads is a company I started back in 2007 with a business partner of mine
and it was actually an accidental start up. We were
trying to go after a little side project of ours and
said "Well how are we going to make money?" So we just kind of started this company. I
knew web, she knew design, and so we combine our
talents and decided to just kind of get our feet
we. Trial by fire if you will. It just kind of grew very organically and kind of off the
cuff. We didn't know what we were doing and that was kind
of the fun.
Brent: Did you eventually figure out what you were doing?
Ryan: Well, I don't know if you could say that. It was a constant learning process.
We did actually at one point kind of hit our stride
and that was the fun of it is not know what we were
doing and just kind of starting a business. It was like everyday was a new challenge so
yeah. I guess eventually we did figure it out.
Brent: Very cool. So that's kind of where you guys started and has 3 Roads transitioned
over the last six years?
Ryan: For sure. We started off literally in our apartment and full disclosure. My business
partner and I were dating. Whether or not that's advisable
we can get into that later.
Brent: Were you dating and then start a business or did you start a business and then start
dating?
Ryan: That's a fair question. We were dating and then started a business. I don't know
if that's worse or better than the other way around.
Brent: Is that like third or fourth date material? Your like we had done dinner, we're going
to movies, and now we're going to start a business.
Ryan: It's like having a baby so I feel like you should probably wait until 27 dates or
something like that. Just wait awhile then do it. So
we started it as a side thing and we were actually
surprised at how well it grew. From the excitement of getting the first phone call to signing
up clients we were like "Hey, this is actually
really fun" and we moved into an office. We realized
okay, clients actually want to meet with us we should probably get a respectable place
to meet them. Not Starbucks, not our apartment. So
it ended up growing into an actual agency. When
we moved into an office we figured "Hey, maybe we should actually make this our full time
thing and it's clearly no longer a side thing" and so it transitioned from, well, I way to
make side money to the way to make money.
We made a logo, and business cards, and all that so it transitioned into more of an agency.
We expanding our offering from just doing websites
to logos, and business cards, and the standard designing stuff you do as an agency. Then
we decided you know what? We could use some help
and so we hired some people and it grew from there and we found ourselves doing all kinds
of things including SEO. My business partner
took on some SEO and it actually reached the point
where I thought, 'You know this is too much. We're not really focused on anything. We're
not doing really well at anything, well I should
say we're not experts at anything, so we decided to
focus it more and just do development. And then we focused it a bit more and just focused
on certain aspects of web development and so
that's where we are today.
Brent: So what specifically does 3 Roads do today that's unique?
Ryan: Well what we do today is offer WordPress specific websites. So if you're looking for
a website at all you can come to us and we'll
get you set up very quickly and very inexpensively. So I guess our unique service offering would
be you're a small business owner just getting started. You don't have a huge budget but
you want to look good. You want to get out there
and look good and traditionally that would cost a lot of money. If you needed to get
started and have a nice looking website that did a lot
for you and what we found is that you can get
someone up and running very quickly and very inexpensively on the WordPress platform very
quickly and inexpensively for lack of a better word.
Brent: So you guys went from having pretty much anybody could be your customer to focusing
on the web development and then focusing even further on kind of a specific approach to
doing web development.
Ryan: That's right.
Brent: How is that working for you guys right now?
Ryan: Well it definitely helped in my opinion focus and it helped sell I think the product
for us instead of being all over the place and being
like we're a turn key solution which I think is
actually attractive to some customers. You could say well we really know ExpressionEngine
or we really know WordPress and I think that
gave prospects a lot of confidence. And we found
that we actually, specifically for expression engine which is another content management
system, that we increases the amount of leads we got dramatically for that particular offering.
So at one point we focused on ExpressionEngine and WordPress content management systems.
WordPress is a really big universe and so I think it's a lot harder to break into that
space but for ExpressionEngine which is a relatively small
universe our decision to focus on saying "Hey, we're
good at this" really helped us in the number of prospects that reached out to us.
Brent: So really focusing more from a technology segment than a type of customer segment. I
mean, obviously a certain type of customer needs ExpressionEngine or needs WordPress
but you guys were focused on technology not necessarily
the customer segment. So with those kind of, you say like turnkey right now, so you
got the WordPress platform. I saw on your website
you have a certain amount of themes you can pick to kind of go through this process, seems
like your trying to drive towards a very recurring
revenue focused business?
Ryan: That's right.
Brent: Where was the decision? I guess why did you guys make that decision in terms of
revenue models?
Ryan: Well that is a much more easier to replicate success in that way I think. There were
actually some frustrations that I had in particular. My partner not so much but I had in particular
with the custom agency model invoicing, estimating, sending out estimates and trying to
estimate projects because every project was different. We discovered that there was a
lot of time spent per project estimating, invoicing,
and just coming up with the specs for a project. That was exacerbate when we did all kinds
of platforms and we did all kinds of technologies.
So my thought was you know, we need to improve our process here. We need to tighten it up
a bit and I think if we don't have to estimate
we don't have to invoice. What if we can turn this
into a recurring revenue stream where there's a very fixed process. It's more like a product
that you're offering and not so much like a service.
Maybe we can magnify our success by doing it
that way.
Brent: Gotcha. So I think the term I was hearing was kind of productized service where you
take a service and you turn it into something that
can be easily replicated, can be kind of stamped out and then you can attach some kind of recurring
retainer on top of that. How has that shift been for you guys in terms of is the new model
working or are you guys still figuring that out?
Ryan: Still figuring it out by and large. It actually just happened this past year so
up until the end of last June we were doing the custom approach.
And then it took about six months to actually redo the website and redo the business model,
and go through and kind of fine tune it. This is
uncharted territory for us. It's brand new. We're replicating what other people have done
successfully but for us it was a complete 180 and so it's still in the beginning phases
so I can't say for sure how it's working. But I do know
the initial feedback and the initial customer acquisition that we've gotten is promising.
Brent: Seems like people are happy with the product?
Ryan: Yes. The people that have signed up it seems to work very well for them and I
think that it's just a matter of replicating that.
Brent: So when you guys had a larger team how did you go about finding talent?
Ryan: That's a really good question. I think that a lot of it can be luck. It's timing.
We had a really good guy come in the door but at the same
time I think you can control for that. You can go out
there and present yourself in a way that would attract certain people. The guy that we found
who is a really great part of our team I want to say, if memory serves me correctly, we
put out a resume on the Denver Egotist which turned
out to be a site that he checked everyday. So the
Denver Egotist tracks a specific type of person and so A) We said what type of person do we
want to attract? In this case it was a designer to help us with web and also the graphics
and Sue said the Denver Egotist seems to be a place
where designers would go looking for jobs.
So we put out a resume or a job posting tailored to you know a quirky type of person that we
thought would really enjoy working with us. So I'd say A, where do these people go? And
then B, tailor your offering to those people. Write
the language in a way that's going to attract them
and then when they come in I would say your agency, your office space, who you are is
either going to attract them or it's not. So I would
say don't change what you have to try and attract a
specific person just put yourself out there in places where they're going to be and then
tailor your language accordingly.
Brent: So in terms of projects with the bigger custom projects and now even down to kind
of some of your, I don't want to use the term
"cookie cutter" but kind of feed based, template based projects.
What are some of the things that you learned to help you launch and manage projects?
Ryan: Let's see. Well are you talking about just the process of getting a project from
discovery to completion?
Brent: I think, you know, client says "Yes, let's move forward" to dot com has been launched.
Ryan: Gotcha. Okay. Well one of the big things that we learned was you have to set
expectations up front with customers or else what happens is you run into scope creep.
Scope creep is to me it's like gravity. It's just
going to happen. It's part of the process so you have to
control it as well as you can. So I think setting expectations up front is one of the
biggest things that we learned to do and if you do it successfully
you're going to have happy clients or at least understanding clients. Things inevitably go
wrong or take longer than expected so if you can set
their expectations and say "Hey, what you're asking for is complicated.
We haven't done it before this way or we've done it before and it took longer than expected.
It could take longer' for example. If they're
aware of that going in as opposed to "Yeah, we'll have
this done in a month or two months. No problem." And then it takes two weeks longer than the
two months. I mean, if you at least build in some cushion or an expectation it'll take
longer things will be fine. I don't know if that
answers your question.
Brent: Yeah. So setting really good expectations helps with the management and delivery of
the project. Now what about post launch? Right
now you guys have this kind of recurring model where they're just paying a fixed monthly
fee all the time.
Ryan: Yeah. So it's kind of like you're launched on day one kind of thing?
Brent: Yeah. So how are you dealing with support after the fact?
Ryan: Well support is actually built in to our plans right now. So it's ongoing and it's
kind of an open ended thing so if you sign up for one
of our ongoing plans you have built in support and
depending on the plan you get you have more and more support. Basically the way it works
is if you need some help you submit a ticket and
we jump on it as soon as possible. And our promise
is to get to in within 24 hours, usually a resolution within that period of time.
Brent: So actually to get the ticket in and to have it resolved in 24 hours?
Ryan: Yep. Because the type requests they're going to be putting in are not going to be
as extreme. A, because the themes we're working
with have been vetted, they're tested; they're not going to be mysteriously broken. So it's
going to be a lot easier to determine what the
problem is if there is one or implement a custom solution that they want you to do like
"Hey, I want you to move the sidebar to left" for
example.
Brent: So you guys do that work but I imagine some of that custom work isn't necessarily
built into that fixed recurring retainer?
Ryan: That's true and that's kind of one of the challenges we faced is how do you say
"Okay, we've got these premium themes that are great
but at what point do you tell the customer no.
This is way to custom. It's outside the scope of our say 99 dollar a month plan" because
at some point it's possible for a customer to say
'I want you to do this' and it's just not going to be worth
it for you to do even at 99 a month. It's an ongoing educational process to say "Okay,
we can do x, y, and z within the parameters of this
plan." But if the customer were to come and say "I want
you to integrate all the Google apps into my website so when I post a blog post it goes
to all of my social networks." I mean it might be a
bit extreme. So our rule of thumb has been if it's
going to take more than two solid hours of custom coding we'll probably have to go back
to them and say we can't do it and maybe go outside
of the plan and say maybe we can work out an hourly thing or a fixed like 500 bucks
we'll do it for you.
Brent: In terms of you as an entrepreneur, what daily practices have gotten you to where
you are today?
Ryan: I would say that constantly educating yourself on your discipline is very important.
So for me that's primarily front end work and so
just being aware of what's new and what's on the
horizon for CSS, HTML, jQuery, things like that. So I like to go out and read blogs not
necessarily everyday. I should but I at least make it
a habit to frequently go out there and say, "Hey, what's new?" I do a lot of that anyway
because my job is typically everyday I'm solving problems and so I'll go out there on Stack
Overflow or say "What's a better way to do this?" The
client wants a full width image on their thing and now we have view port based image sizing
for example. If I wasn't out there reading, and
solving problems, and finding answers, and always
finding better ways to do things I wouldn't know that and I'd be stuck back in 2008 or
whatever it is.
Brent: You mentioned Stack Overflow, are there any other resources for folks in the front
end world that you would find worthy of sharing
with the community?
Ryan: Well stack overflow is great. It's a good mixture I would say. If you have a question
it's probably going to be answered on Stack Overflow.
It's unbelievable. WordPress Answers is good for WordPress specific answers. I like Smashing
Magazine, the jQuery Docs are great. I'm trying to think of specific blogs that I go to for
people. Chris Coyier is very good he has very excellent
blog called CSS Tricks which has all kinds of CSS related information. Beyond that it
really just depends what I'm searching for.
Brent: Maybe we'll have to get your blog roll.
Ryan: Yeah. I'll have to think about it and pull up my bookmark list.
Brent: So you mentioned front end design. What are you best at? Is front end design
kind of your thing or in your whole arsenal of talent
what do you think you're best at?
Ryan: I would definitely say the CSS/HTML/jQuery. Those three powers united create any
website you want.
Brent: Sure.
Ryan: And then I know a little bit of PHP.
Brent: Obviously your launching lot's of WordPress sites on your platform. Is that something
you have other contractors come and fill in the more advanced stuff for you?
Ryan: At this point it's not necessary but as we go forward for sure it will be necessary
to go and find talented WordPress developers who are
comfortable with the platform. I think that means
you need to know PHP, definitely how WordPress works, because in my opinion if you're going
to do any significant level of customization to a theme you have to know PHP. So yes, going
out and finding contractors that know those three
technologies as our business grows and as we get
beyond the point where we can handle the routine maintenance of our existing customers. It's
going to be essential.
Brent: In terms of you've been doing web professionally for over six years, so what have you
learned over those six years that you think other web professionals should know?
Ryan: I don't even know where to start with that. I mean, I started doing web back in
the 90's but professionally it's been just the last
several years. First and foremost I would say you need
to know how to run a business first. You can geek out all you want and code websites, and
get totally lost and stuck in your code, but at
the end of the day what you're going to find is that
you haven't invoiced your customers and the IRS is sending you notes and you're not going
to be able to survive.
Brent: I think you and I might have similar back stories.
Ryan: Yeah. So you need to pay attention to the business first and foremost. It's very
easy for me especially I like to get in and do the
work and then also be high level but there's this middle
ground of you actually have to send invoices out. It's not as exciting but you have to
do it or you're not going to get paid and you have
to have a collections process in place and you have to
have a rapport with your customer. You have to talk to your customers believe it or not.
You have to go out there and say 'Hey, how are
you doing? How are things going? Why haven't you
paid me?' in a political way or in a diplomatic way I should say. Be a business man first
I would say.
Brent: So it's keeping on top of those operational stuff, kind of a business 101 thing, so you
think our audience can definitely relate pretty well to that?
Ryan: For sure.
Brent: In terms of trends, what are you following right now? I mean it sounds like you like
to get into the front end stuff, but in general the
web right now. What trends are you following?
Ryan: Well I'm really interested in having been deep into code since '95 to the early
2000's. I wasn't as active but I came back and I was
like what is this non-table based nonsense we're
talking about? So to go from being introduced to CSS and then watching CSS, HTML and then
what you can do with those technologies since '06,'07, to today. It's just been a phenomenal
thing to watch and so what I'm interested in is just continuing to watch that grow.
What HTML and CSS and Java script combined can do now
that was just not possible two or three years ago
is just amazing.
So I like to go to the Chrome developer's library where they are just experimenting
with crazy things with Chrome and the latest web technologies
is fun. More specifically I love to see what's new in the spec like CSS shapes and regions
that just let you do things with websites that you
could never do before. Like wrapping text around things and having more of a newspaper
layout which just wasn't possible before. So I like to keep up on those things.
Brent: Or maybe there were certain things that were possible like heavy graphics based
or you were doing things that . . .
Ryan: Yeah, you had to do flash.
Brent: Yeah, increase the page size and stuff like that where as now it's just super fast.
Ryan: Now it's just straight semantic stuff which is really exciting.
Brent: Do you guys do a lot of responsive stuff in terms of your themes?
Ryan: Absolutely.
Brent: Like have you guys kind of tackled that whole beast?
Ryan: Yeah. Absolutely it's funny because that's another piece that I've been amazed
to watch. When we started three years ago in '07 mobile
was, well nobody goes to the web on their mobile. Seriously, we weren't behind or anything.
It was just the way it was as I remember it is
you didn't have to worry about mobile in '07 and then it started to become less and less
of a fringe thing.
Now it's just you have to be responsive. The great majority of our themes are responsive
and I think that going forward we're going to only
pick themes that are responsive. I think that theme
designers are only going to make themes that are responsive.
Brent: Cool. What's next for 3 Roads?
Ryan: We're going to continue to refine our new model. It's a constant learning experience.
I think in order to be really successful you
have to figure out what your niche is and just tackled it
and be really good at it. Try and be better in that niche than anybody else. I think it's
just going to be a matter of refining what our niche
is, understand what it is, and going after it. Perfecting
and just constantly trying to get better. I know it's kind of a generic answer but that's
kind of what I'm going for.
Brent: No. It's good. I mean we preach a lot of find that niche, find that ideal customer,
figuring out how to leverage that one customer group
instead of trying to grab everything. It seems that
you guys have figured out how to get more and more focused which is very cool.
Ryan: Yeah, and to your point if I may go back to a previous question you had regarding
what would I tell people as web developers. I would
say it's very tempting when you start to want to
do everything and be everything to everybody because your like if I don't I'm going to
get paid because I need more customers. I'd say that's
okay to do for awhile but you're going to want to
focus as quickly as possible and if you have the luxury I would say focus from the beginning.
Try to dominate a niche right from the beginning
instead of trying to go everywhere.
Brent: Almost figuring out from doing a whole bunch of services like what you get passionate
about and what excites you.
Ryan: Yeah. That's fine.
Brent: It sounds like that's a little bit of the 3 Roads story in terms of you guys
were seeing customers that didn't have the big budgets
and you still were able to provide them with quality
product and you figured out how to make that work.
Ryan: Exactly.
Brent: Very cool. So if you people are interested in you they can find out at 3roadsmedia.com.
Ryan: 3roadsmedia.com.
Brent: Do you guys have a blog? Twitter handle?
Ryan: We have a Twitter handle @3roadsmedia. Admittedly it needs to be more active but
we do have a Twitter account and there's a LinkedIn
page as well.
Brent: Cool. We'll definitely catch you guys and hopefully we'll be able to check in with
you sometime in the future and get an update on
your focused 3 Roads project.
Ryan: Absolutely.
Brent: All right.
Ryan: Sounds great Brent thanks.
Brent: Well stayed tuned for more great content from ugurus.com.