ELITE : SIX Think Tank meetings are discussed over ZOOM with our members every Friday at 9:30am.
Facilitated by DANNY : DE HEK meetings are recorded for our Podcast, we’ve been doing this since COVID-19 if you’re interested in joining in with us check out our Website.
Transcribed by Otter
Danny de Hek 0:00
Welcome to elite six business networking Think Tank facilitated by your host Danny de Hek. The place where decision makers come together to share their experience, knowledge and skills. just realised I went recording so hopefully it is recording now. So let’s start that again. And we’ve got Laughlin McNeil is all messed up good to see let’s be an Auckland diet. sorry we can’t hear you. Could you take the mask off?
Good stuff. Yeah, welcome along. We’re just explaining what people do. So what do you do in your mind at the moment? Yeah.
Lachlan McNeill 0:53
bookshop looking at a book now I’m a recruiter, technical recruiter with the renewable space at the moment. And that brings me
Danny de Hek 1:03
good stuff. All right, David Carson.
David Clarkson 1:08
Yeah, I’m David Clarkson from dynamic communication we build more confident, more competent, more credible communicators. So I’m a public speaking and business presentation skills try and I do some other soft business skills training as well.
Danny de Hek 1:25
Who even helped me a little bit and look at me now. Cool. jenelle michelangeli Jolene
Jaline Pietroiusti 1:33
Ilene. So it’s chalene and Steph from Oakland, and our company is called the odd way. And we specialise in e commerce. We bold e commerce site. And we do Shopify and Magento
Matt James 1:47
was a second way we were coated to say, take it away.
Jaline Pietroiusti 1:54
We didn’t call it the second way
Danny de Hek 1:59
huh? Clinton are you adding
Clinton Selby 2:04
content from LEGO Star? We provide economic solutions and furniture to make your home office a safe and productive place.
Danny de Hek 2:13
What else do you do?
Clinton Selby 2:15
Also co founder of genius co working and theory made and insight into.
Danny de Hek 2:24
Cool, thank you, Chris. Up next and in Judah after they’d like
Chris Cameron 2:30
Chris Cameron. We each can inspire and empower people to develop positive outcomes in themselves and families communities through martial arts and personalised.
Danny de Hek 2:41
Cool cooking some food went a long way dude.
Jude Stirling 2:46
If I’d known I was going to be in the spotlight, I actually tried my hand. Jen stealing Krantz accounting services. We provide bookkeeping, accounting and business advisory services to small to medium sized businesses based on pretty much everywhere in New Zealand. And most of our clients trade based. We have clients who’ve been to properties and whilst we don’t provide well lately, a bit of a counselling service as well, so, yeah, that’s us.
Danny de Hek 3:21
Good stuff. All right, McLaughlin and Shawn, I think you’re on mute but can you say today like it was just you just people.
Shaun Jin 3:34
Quality cleaning Christchurch has controls and one stop services for property improvement.
Danny de Hek 3:44
Not very good. Well, I don’t think I missed any way I don’t get everyone to know
Helen Oakes 3:47
Helen. Oh, it always misses me. She was late for the meetings. Tonight I was making you’re
Danny de Hek 3:54
cancelling Judy cancelling. Sorry, needed counselling, marriage counselling. Get
Helen Oakes 4:00
married. So thanks again.
Danny de Hek 4:05
Was it me? Well, we
Helen Oakes 4:07
don’t need marriage counselling.
Danny de Hek 4:14
All right, we will be Hello. Yes, sir.
Helen Oakes 4:16
I am Helen from A to B photography. And I shoot portraits, landscapes, sports, and anything else that anyone else wants, I guess. And I run my own online businesses.
Danny de Hek 4:33
There you go. Hey there everything. Oh, hopefully you’re looking at the screen. Hopefully it’s coming up. I’ve just split between two screens. It’s made no difference. So looks like it might have jammed. Right. So last week, we did discuss HDX business ethics. And we talked about people’s experiences, problems, solutions, and takeaways. And so I started the topic off with a couple of examples that I had. And ironically, the whole meeting revolved around me So, this week, we decided that we talk about managing clients. So we were talking about I believe it’s gonna work and it is working right away. So managing their clients expectations or managing their clients in general, because at the moment, that’s a real tricky beaver is to manage clients successfully. So if you’ve been to I think tech meeting, you’ll know that we first talk about people’s experiences with trying to manage their clients. So let’s get the ball rolling. And let’s tell me how you go bit. Helens already pointing at the screen. Yeah, there we go. What’s people’s experiences and managing the clients? Is it easy?
Matt James 5:50
I think, for me, where I know we have an ongoing relationship with some form with clients. It’s really good to summarise the expectations and deliverables. So that’s obviously in the quotation but also in terms of trade. So I think you’ve had an extended gig with someone, sometimes, you need to have that point of reference to go back to to say, Oh, this is what we agreed or this is a no, this is out. And so definitely having, you know, a specific contract about a particular gig you’re doing but also a chance to try unfortunately, had to rely on the term to try increasingly now as people struggle with some financial situation. So I’m eternally grateful for the, the guidance I got many years ago to always have terms of trade, so I would recommend to do that. And,
Danny de Hek 6:49
yes, so maybe in a nutshell, you could say that to avoid any customers and misunderstanding is to have good term to trade so that they’re fully aware of The situation for the life that you are at.
Matt James 7:05
Yeah, so it’s one it’s, it’s like a great, what’s the scope of the job is like it was a project plan. That’s, you know, this is what I’m going to do. And it needs to break into phases and all that good stuff, or components, and then have the overarching thing is, by the way, and this is how can I go to you commercially? It’s one on one to be paid and got it.
Danny de Hek 7:24
Yeah, I just paid a guy last night actually. And he was doing some work for me. And it was quite nice experience because of all the way all the way along. He was, you know, sort of making sure that weren’t going to get a bill and then all of a sudden be surprised by the total amount. But he did keep me up to date along the way. And also, it was easy peasy. So as soon as the bill came in, I paid it and I thought easy. No stress, no drama. I had no surprise. Oh my god, how much? Yeah, I think it’s nice about doing it. anyone asked about any experiences with managing your clothes. What do we need manager Collins?
Jaline Pietroiusti 8:00
Just on the technical side, because we offer ecommerce and those type of services that when we working with customers, you need to be completely transparent about what you’re building. And if there’s any problems with a project, you need to tell them right away. So this is the challenge. And this is how we’re going to resolve it. And sometimes it’s called trial and error. And that’s also another discussion, you need to have to make sure they’re on the same page, and it’s not going to cause problems.
Danny de Hek 8:30
Yeah. Yeah. I just created a guide to do a website. And and I thought, you know, when a when a patient hasn’t had a website for more sometimes what they think it’s gonna turn into, you know, he wanted to be able to walk in somewhere turn on his phone and start recording live and instantly pop up on his website. I’m sitting there going, Oh, my goodness, it’s terrifying. Because it just doesn’t happen quite like that. There’s a lot of, you know, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so we bumped into my cafe yesterday. He’d gone and got some other quotes from other website developing companies, and now must be screened. Because they’re obviously a little bit too cheap. And also he’s, he’s, we’ve built a relationship with them. And it’s a good thing. And we want to be part of this journey. And we can and now he’s got a more realistic expectations of what a website is, it’s a better time for me to talk to him. And that was quite interesting, because I was downplaying my services. And he goes, this is exactly what I want.
Nigel Young 9:30
Actually, just any, you raise a really good point, the one of the things I’ve found with clients is being able to be clear right from the get go just exactly what the expectations are. Because, you know, you hear the term scope creep, and it can happen. Yeah. And also the like, sure, what’s the financial implications on the way past? So yeah, establishing the expectations, I think right up front.
Matt James 9:57
Yeah, where I’ve also learned is when some people come to you and no one anally right now we don’t try to do that too much now, but in the old days, we certainly did. And they would, they would make a judgement on us to pay what our hourly rate was. Of course, the hourly rate is multiplied by the number of hours you have spent in the job. So then I’ve actually get the bill go, how much and we’d have to explain it also, what I found now is, I always try and in a talent engagement model with a quote, I also tell them, I’m estimating this with this much a month or whatever, and it kind of makes it happier, those conversations are the best thing is trying to fix pricing, which is what increasingly, we try and do
Danny de Hek 10:41
is to get people who are hoping that I’ll do the website free and then take maybe 10 or 5% of the sales they get from their website. And I’d and then you’d be in here no notice couldn’t get over that one. And I think I’m all good with that. Thanks to you don’t think your website’s gonna work. Ces like there’s so many different sectors and getting them on we’re measuring we will work for them to see. They they used to combination providers used to he thinks pay up to 30%, even rental car companies for booking the $5,000 booking and somebody attacked 1200 bucks, but it was incredible. Yeah.
Helen Oakes 11:19
Few things recently where I had someone asked me if I wanted to shoot a school ball, and there was no mention of payment or anything like that, just let us know if you can do it. And I’m like, Okay, well, you need to supply backdrops because I didn’t mess up backdrops. And you need to let me know what the school want to do with the photos and things like that. And I said to them, I do have an upfront fee because I went on someone else’s website to see how they do it. And they said we do not shoot for nothing and then hope to sell. And that’s often what I do in my sports photography, and whether they think I’m going to do that or not. So I put it straight out and said I haven’t up front so you have this and I will sell the photos for you. Or if you want some sort of cat let me know. But they expect someone things that I do to just tune out and shoot for free. And then you make your money afterwards but you know it’s real risky What if I don’t sell much and I’ve turned up and spent five hours during the show? Hmm Exactly. Yeah. So their expectations are Oh she’ll do nothing because she can make money out of selling the prints but you don’t necessarily sell a lot you know or you may do it’s just there’s no guarantee
Nigel Young 12:37
then they’ll Chairman say how much do you want for print you on that much? Are you serious?
Helen Oakes 12:42
Yeah.
Danny de Hek 12:43
Well they don’t buy any prints
Helen Oakes 12:45
Yeah, that’s right. So
Danny de Hek 12:46
didn’t like the way the he looked that day. Yeah.
Helen Oakes 12:51
Needless to say, I haven’t been back on them because I don’t think the school or pay up front. And if they do, that’s great. But you know, I think they all think photographers just gonna turn up for free and do it and they make their money you know, what was the school? No, it was funny money slightly private not
Danny de Hek 13:17
funny Is it funny going on so that’s cool. All right problems problems problems lack of contact, maintaining regular contact, or lack of contact. Maintaining regular.
Matt James 13:33
So when is maintain regular contact me was was experienced thing to do and the lack of contact. It’s a problem.
Danny de Hek 13:42
Yeah. Maintaining a regular contact, what’s okay then? Well, that’s a great discussion about some ways that we could stay in contact with their customer without looking incompetent, just right, spider and I’m just hoping that you like it. Can you tell me if you like that one. So I can do the rest.
David Clarkson 14:01
can’t see it.
Danny de Hek 14:02
I’ll see. There’s no photo. Jesus guys, come on
David Clarkson 14:09
me Danny.
Danny de Hek 14:11
Sorry I forgot Lola say Jesus am trying to be over goodness. He is the one behind you a basic idea now. All right, Chris, are you awake? Yeah. Are you on mute? I’m just thinking about I want to get new Brian did I come on? I’m taking, taking notes.
Chris Cameron 14:39
Understanding, managing, managing is around communication really is it is that you have to have the systems in place underneath and then it’s about having good communication lines that are open and transparent with your customers and and if they feel they can talk to you about any issues. And you can work through it, then it’s relatively straightforward to manage your clients. Yeah.
David Clarkson 15:07
I you know, I think it’s some personal touches is the key, isn’t it? It’s not for it’s not for nothing that the bank has gone on to the tune relationship marketing for nothing. Yeah. And and really, you know, I agree with you, Chris. It’s all about maintaining those relationships, you know, and things are going well. still talk to them. You know, what often happens is that we don’t talk to people until there’s a hiccup. Sorry, a hiccup.
Danny de Hek 15:36
I’ve been opening a bank account with kiwibank Wow, what a performance. You have to begin, I had to prove where I lived. And I had to give a hint of a letter that went from my business to my home for some reason. Yeah. That was all part of it. And then I had a trust and I had to get my lawyer involved. And I see I’ve already got a bank account. I’m a Wisbech. So after waiting it’s taken six weeks I finally got I’ve got money in the account, but I couldn’t get it out to I finished it. Yeah, yeah. And then at the end of it, I get a letter in the mail said, I need to fill out another form after the lady says everything’s done, and you’re good to go. But yeah, it was this time, but she did sort of was he was a week and a half between correspondence and I finished up going into the office and the young lady that helped me she was brilliant. You know, she had a relationship with us and got personal and we finished up going back and getting Lucky’s a bank account, Helen smoocher, personal and business over there and all that sort of stuff. But we got there at the end, but what a performance man.
David Clarkson 16:44
It’s all around the anti money laundering thing. No, Danny, all banks are the same. You’ve got to jump through hoops. You know, I’ve been one of the bank accounts that I run for one of the other form the museum. We’ve been a customer I’ma have with specs for something like about two decades. And would you believe because I wanted to change the signatories around, and then get on to electronic banking? I had to. I had to jump through bloody hoops to do that exactly the same way as you. And thank God I didn’t have a trust involved as well because I’m thinking about setting one up for it. But it did it took it took ages and it’s probably one of the most frustrating exercises you can go through the banks these days are just so, so cautious and nitpicking. It’s awful.
Danny de Hek 17:41
But as you say that as it’s the money laundering act that’s causing them a lot of grace. lawyers have got double the work to do these days because the government changed up making this sort of thing what what industries, don’t manage your clients. Well, if I said sky TV, I just love to go in there and Is the company around and you know every time I’ve dealt with Scott it it’s just been a rough experience mission having a reputation like that. Well, what about some of your experiences with Apple Danny what do you do about
Nigel Young 18:15
your holiday good on the day? Yeah.
Danny de Hek 18:21
Bought I am funny enough I bought an apple pen for my iPad and that’s going to be delivered on the 20th and then two weeks later I am buying myself a new MacBook Pro and that’s going to be delivered two days before the pin turns up. But no keeps going back. You know? Well, yeah, so it would have anyone else can you think of something? Yes, it’s the shopping or the are we can we survive in business? I know online shop shopping experience, but the you know, like, we really try our best but it doesn’t seem to matter what we do. We just, you know it we get back to them as quick as we can and they don’t like it. We say something they don’t like us and but I mean, it’s a bit different for us. But face to face business.
Jaline Pietroiusti 19:07
Yeah, but it’s not you. It’s actually the customer.
Clinton Selby 19:10
I love the set telling the customer that logo was right.
Jaline Pietroiusti 19:13
Yeah, no, they not.
Danny de Hek 19:16
Okay, wait, if anyone she complained it took, I think it was Judy. She was complaining that day 20 that product wasn’t there. They got delivered, I think on day 37 that she’d gone to the credit card company and managed to get a refund. And then on Monday, she received her goods. And I couldn’t believe it. And you know, we hit 20 days to reply to people who make a complaint, but the bank decided that they’ll just give the money back. And you sort of think oh, and I’m not even going to contact the
Jaline Pietroiusti 19:45
idea. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 19:50
We have a lot of troubles with New Zealand post but I don’t know if it’s all the dealing but they’re not responsible for nothing when it goes missing. And here, we had a stolen had somebody I bought a $300 camera lens off me. And my mate, Steve sells and watches it a lot, we’ll put an emphasis on the goods. So he went to his account manager, he spends probably four or 5000 a month with them said no worries, we’ll put an intercept on the goods. Here’s the tracking and took literally six weeks before the goods got to New Zealand. And then their goods got delivered to the address of the person that bought the goods, theoretically that stolen. And I see what it did the intercept and they said our New Zealand post told us that we couldn’t unzip the goods until they’re in the country. But they forgot to tell us that pat. And it’s like, ah, all right, we explained it was stolen, and somebody’s going to get some stolen goods and it’s coming from China. So that was a $300 loss this week. And I love that I needed another camera lens. But yeah, sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do. You just got one.
Helen Oakes 20:54
We’re having a lot of New Zealand post, you know, where does the I don’t know if anyone knows that. The lore around this, but where does the back end when we get the product delivered, it shows it in the post have delivered it. Even their GPS shows it’s gone on to the property. And then the person rings us and goes, we haven’t got the goods and we’re like, Well, we’ve got profits being delivered. And then they write to means in post music policies, or contact the sender and get them to put in a claim. And we’re like, we can’t put in a claim you’ve delivered it. It shows delivery. And they pretty much saying that as as the little guy will compensate. But we haven’t lost it. It’s in the posts that have lost it’s got to the destination. So who’s out? Because I’ve got two of those and I’m probably gonna lose about 150 $200 because of Indian pipes. So we’re just here Is it is it up to me to refund the customer or is it up to me to fight for I just don’t know.
Jaline Pietroiusti 22:00
Wow, that’s scary. No,
Danny de Hek 22:03
it’s just the way it is. We just bought it into a company. That’s all right. So So what’s some solutions with managing clients then? What some solutions? I think I like systems and procedures.
Chris Cameron 22:16
Yes. System systems.
Danny de Hek 22:18
Yeah. And Pro is making minor typo when I need it. This is
Stef Pietroiusti 22:24
Yeah, put everything in razzing. Yep.
Danny de Hek 22:29
I’m trying to
Nigel Young 22:31
get a firearms licence. Oh.
Jaline Pietroiusti 22:36
Get a firearms law.
Danny de Hek 22:41
That’s not funny Nigel. People are listening to us
Helen Oakes 22:46
on a podcasting and talking about that. I know this is off the subject. But did you guys have guns in South Africa? Do you have them at home
Stef Pietroiusti 23:00
He put the stock with peace to the buy you that kind of stuff.
Jaline Pietroiusti 23:08
Yeah, there were a lot of people that had firearm and yeah, the government wanted all their firearm tended in getting them out against, you know, crime people would break into your house and do horrible things to you. Yeah. And still say, no hand weapon.
Danny de Hek 23:30
They go there to pick up
Jaline Pietroiusti 23:32
some dirt. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 23:36
Too late.
Jaline Pietroiusti 23:37
Yeah. And even if you do hand them in, they get put in the wrong hands. What happens and then they can use against you
Stef Pietroiusti 23:47
to actually pick up weapons that you see, and other people can call in the system. Thank you. Bye
Danny de Hek 24:00
is not a good idea to you know that what we
Chris Cameron 24:07
think Am I really
Stef Pietroiusti 24:12
always want to spy tech martial arts
Danny de Hek 24:20
so um he uses CRM systems at the moment.
Stef Pietroiusti 24:24
Mm hmm
Danny de Hek 24:28
like my contacts on my phone is the most simplest way I, I do it because every time I upgrade my phone I want them to be with me all the time. Even though I believe that some sort of system in itself just having all your contacts Oh, every time I get a client I put the first name last name, email address and phone number my phone and then I enter in the company name I normally put in brackets. know them rather than the company name in Yeah, and then I keep people’s business cards on my desk and I load them on my phone and then I throw them away. Let’s
Nigel Young 25:07
say something a minute ago, what was that?
Chris Cameron 25:10
I was just saying CRM systems that are crucial to be able to track. All right a customer’s details on the journey we are at with them.
Danny de Hek 25:20
And for all my websites I’m using remains. And that is just amazing. Like, we’ve got maybe 40 standard emails. And as soon as somebody contact us via Facebook, or Twitter or any other form, email, of course, then it all groups that together as one client, and then we can go through the whole correspondence is actually brilliant. So I’m actually using it for elite six at the moment. And then I’m going to use it for Danny as well. Danny de Hek calm and then Helen is going to use it for her photography. And then we just have one big area where we login and use it in Just currently hired somebody to help us do a lot of their email inquiries and they can have access to it and see the trial and within that system when we’re corresponding with people there’s an area for notes. So in the notes area we’ll put tracking for parcels or if the phone does all sorts of things and it is brilliant Actually, this what we do the whole company around at the moment.
Got to Good night. Oh, okay. Again. Okay. It’s a Bluetooth headphone unfortunately know what’s happening. Here, they’re, they’re good for blogging, the flies going into your ears. Got one of those devices, the baits in the glove box of the car. I think you can wave at us more small All right. So we were we were talking about CRM systems, solutions, talking to your clients. Was it a good solution? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And what what I won’t do the full hour today and what I’m going to do with my having a general chat at the end, and carry that on and talk about people’s well being really yeah. Dealing, I just don’t we try to stay on target. But there’s a lot going on at the moment. Be out front. That’s right. I still love a book. I listened to it funny enough. I think I talked about it a couple of weeks ago, but it’s called flip it. And I found that we’re trying to say when you step up is basically front up and explain to the customer where you’re at. Or maybe you’ve gone over budget that’s gonna be a good example is not when you have a lot of so much time and near the end of the job. feel like you’ve done twice the amount of hours and you quoted and you feel that you should pass it on to the customer but you don’t feel you can. But then sometimes the customer keeps asking for more and more and then before you know, it just never ends those jobs sometimes. scope creep
Nigel Young 28:14
we were talking about before. Isn’t that disputations?
Lachlan McNeill 28:18
Huh? No,
no.
Danny de Hek 28:22
Yeah, he’s we can thank you, man. Okay, I
Nigel Young 28:29
don’t know. I don’t even
Danny de Hek 28:31
know. Sal. I don’t know Batman.
Lachlan McNeill 28:34
Oh. All right. Do you feel loved?
Danny de Hek 28:38
Hope you feel loved. Sorry, buddy. Love to say us. What do you think he was trying to say?
Helen Oakes 28:49
Something about being in recruitment.
Danny de Hek 28:53
What are you guys
Nigel Young 28:54
coming from him? It will be very interesting. I know. That is true. Many years
Danny de Hek 29:03
I’ve known for a few years now, I don’t know as long as you remember first. We got together and they said, you know, no dogs. It is heavy, you know, no small wheel, isn’t it? We had a Holland’s brother come down from Auckland. And we had a friend over randomly rang us up as soon as you come back for a glass of wine and works out that he knows your brother Really? Well. Yeah, cousin, cousin. Yeah, yeah, thanks for that. Uh huh. This is just a
Nigel Young 29:31
slight change of direction. If we’re going to talk about coming up, you’ve been occasionally raising the idea of how we could sort of someway combine our resources into almost a consultancy type idea or something like that. Just expanding on that. I know you’ve got the idea at the moment of having several people look at your business, but any thoughts on how to expand that?
Danny de Hek 29:52
You mean me?
Nigel Young 29:54
Yeah, well, just, you know, this whole idea of coordinating ourselves together into a more of a consultancy type idea.
Danny de Hek 30:00
Yeah, I have actually because elite sex has certainly changed the way it’s going at the moment. So what I’ve done like, for example, Lance had been doing some work for me at the moment, helped me do some security, it is on my website. And it’s a great little the service that is offered. And he’s figured out how to do it. It’s taken us a couple of weeks to get there. And now I sit down now what would be nice to be able to have that service available, so I can offer it to people. And then I’m sort of like a robot, quite the other. I’ve had a client for 15 plus years. And they’re just not the business. And they want to know whether I can upgrade the website. And the whole process around that was really cool because I could send them to a page where it outlines a service I’m about to offer and a button where they can purchase it. And then I see Then also Helen and I are travel writers, and we love travelling and if you haven’t gotten a photographer Helen has a package on her website. If you want some photography, we’re quite happy to come down as travel writers on our own back, stay at your accommodation and pay for Helen to take the photos. And then we’ll put it all together. But while I was doing the quiet, I thought this is so nice to be able to give a link to an actual service that people can offer. And I thought, in an ideal world, we should all have everything that we can sell an easy, clickable pitch purchasable way. So on digg.com, just last night, we did about 12. And I’ve got that with pretty much where I want it to be in a lot of aspects. So then when you go to calendly, my booking service, everything that I had to sell was out there for people will click and buy. So even the elite six focus service, we will get six people together in a room like this and give somebody some advice. I’ve added that as a product. And
Nigel Young 31:51
when I was thinking off the focus,
Danny de Hek 31:53
yeah, I think that’s sort of, you know, like, I think there’s a lot of people out there who might just want I know A friend of mines and client of mine, who does website, he’s a business coach, he’s gone on to Relationship Coaching. And I think that’s the case, because a lot of people are stressed and he’s looking for a new flavour or something to do in line with helping people. But I think even what I’m trying to say is there’s a lot of small services that I’m offering people now, and I’ve actually modularized them. And I think that if somebody says, I can do this, there’s no sort of like saying, I can develop a website, that’s great, but it’s a big job. But if I, if I could say, Look, I know people that can set up your Facebook page, and they will start you and train you to get it going. It’s a package of at 500 bucks. Or if you want to manage this without a poster for two days, it’s I know, $100 a month. And I think everyone needs to come up with a service. I know, Clint. He’s quite there today, but he’s at the moment. point he’s looking at sitting at people’s home offices. So he’s come up with three different packages where you can do a small, you know, full on or whatever. And that’s what he’s going after at the moment, even though he might fill out an offer for $100,000, so to speak, he’s now got packages available for the small to medium size users from two and a half, five and a half $14,000 packages. So now I can point somebody and say, Look, you want a home office? Go to Clinton, he’s got three options. Yeah, because I think the hourly rate things coming back into play, you know, somebody who’s telling me the hourly rate was $75 the other day and again, you need to increase it. You know,
Jaline Pietroiusti 33:38
here we we stole quotes on hourly rate. Danny Wow. white label service for ecommerce.
Danny de Hek 33:45
Hmm. Well, it last job I quoted the last two jobs are quoted this week there. I’ve quoted them at $15 or sorry, 15 hours at $120 an hour. And then I just gave him an example of the websites that were done around That price. Yeah. And it’s ridiculously cheap that they’re no honest. It does take me about 15 hours. And then sort of gives me an area of saying to the client, while I’m about 10 hours, and now we’ve got five hours, I’d like to spend the last five hours on doing this, because I think we most piggyback, yeah,
Helen Oakes 34:19
no. julaine Do you have a any sort of packages that you do as well, like you punch things together or not?
Jaline Pietroiusti 34:25
And so, yeah, we’re thinking about doing that right now. We’ve been so busy with the partner in Australia, we haven’t even had time to look it out focused on our own website from what we want to offer. So it’s going to quieten down a little in August, so we’ll be able to do that. But yes, definitely.
Helen Oakes 34:45
Yeah, I think having like Jenny said, having those packages is quite good. I have three lifestyle packages. And you can just see what you get for each one and how much time I spend on each one. How many images and so it gives people try psyches
Jaline Pietroiusti 35:01
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Danny de Hek 35:05
And they’re not too expensive either. It’s kind of like going for the low hanging fruit. I think it’s really important Yeah. You know I can I can build a website in 15 hours and have it up and running and I can do a lot so why not charge my hourly rate and they might look at my hourly rate expensive but then they got this particular guy went away and said he got other quotes and his eyes just got rolled back into rootedness he assumed and a half thousand 12 15,000 Yeah, and he’s gone. Yeah, yeah, like I yeah, that’s what it takes me and I will promise you at the end of that you won’t get anything that really works or just be some static piece of glossy brochure. Okay, and go.
Jaline Pietroiusti 35:42
Exactly, yeah. No, it’s quite scary. What people are being charged. Yeah. Okay. But yeah,
Helen Oakes 35:48
we could probably all do that though. We could all have some sort of penguins couldn’t wait and a one two and three and it’s lower to higher or higher and lower and it just gives people options and I think I feel they’ve got families money that way too.
Jaline Pietroiusti 36:03
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, we do a lot of ad hoc support as well. So we definitely looking at selling bundled packages for hours for support or a rescan or whatever the case is, and we can definitely put that into practice.
Danny de Hek 36:17
I think if we just gonna stop this year and set up another one, as well, I think we just use WooCommerce. So I’m just looking at Helens website as an example there. So we have we’ve just revamped A lot of it, but if we go into the shop, and you can click on photography, do sports. Straight. last, last off, yeah. So that one’s finished. So because Helens got this on a website, then it gives people an indication of the photos of what the lifestyle photography is all about. Because he’s gonna lie Bruce’s got fantasies done. Nice good looking fella. That one Then here, it’s a little snippet about what lifestyle is about. And then here we’ve got bronze, silver gold. And obviously people will just want to, you know, something, you know, say it’s $500. And here’s the bullet points of exactly what they get. She’s gonna redo this. Listen to me. But in the meantime, what that means is I can literally come along to the top of the website and grab the URL and give it to somebody and point them to a place where they can click Add to cart and our way. Yeah, yeah. So in the same with, you know, if we go to
Helen Oakes 37:38
property one,
Danny de Hek 37:39
well, we’re not just going to use it, but I think I think that’s what I’d really like because I want to I can add products or services into elite sex. So if somebody says to me look for, you know, whatever the service is, if it’s a three to $500 service, we can have an online shop where people can purchase that we can basically say so with my services of My Shopify and my WordPress, my web hosting, video editing, whatever it is, they can just come along and say, well, like, for example, when I was doing this quote for this guy wanted a website, I just tell him to go to my website, click on my services. Here’s a little bit of introduction about what WordPress is all about, and why I use it more I prefer it. And then here’s my this package takes 15 hours 1800 dollars, click, click here to order and that will go through and then I’ve got other examples of websites that I’ve done recently. That will be of that calibre. I think
Helen Oakes 38:38
it’s like there is you stop the toing and froing of lots of emails of like, this is what you get for this, this is what you get for this, it’s all there and you can just give them a link. I do that now if someone says, I get a lot of they don’t say enough like that, how much we’re a photographer photos and I’m going well what type of photo has how many photos you know, so what I do now is I say go to my website. phase of the packages. And then it just it stops all there. Yeah. convoluted talking about everything. Yeah, that’s brilliant. Yes. informative, and how do you manage scheduling? Okay. scheduling, like if a client wants things done ASAP, like, how do you manage that?
Danny de Hek 39:20
I just started I probably don’t have that much work on to be honest that that’s a problem. I just sort of work it and life
Helen Oakes 39:26
pages have booking pages on hers on kalindi, which is they can schedule it on there, which works really well for him.
Danny de Hek 39:34
Yeah,
Helen Oakes 39:36
yeah.
Stef Pietroiusti 39:36
operasi on where you can actually do it. Yeah, you can.
Helen Oakes 39:41
parts of your calendar that you can, and it’s quite a good system. Yeah, I might even look at that at some point. So it does.
Danny de Hek 39:49
I’m starting to pay for this literally services. So if I like for the photo session, for example. That loads it’s in an iframe unfortunately. So This is showing more, here’s the whole service. And it’s 650 US dollars, including GST. And then they come along, and I’m only taking bookings for that on a Friday. And it’s a three hour session. So they click on that, confirm. And then I’ll ask them, I want information about the name the business in about the middle ear that they can give me. And then they’ll come through here and get the credit card details. And we’re done. But when it comes to looking at the I’ve got that service on my own, well, let’s just pretend this is your website, the next one, which is elite six. Then I come along, and I’ve got focus up here, which is the new service I’m offering now I’m going to I can promote that page on the internet. And, and he explains exactly what we’re offering. And then it’s got book a session. So when they click a book session, it doesn’t go back to my other website. It goes through my other billing system and then they can fill that out. And then and then pay on the fly. And then I’ll go through and I’ll manage it some other way. But I’m lucky I’ve got some really good billing systems in there now that were really good. I
Nigel Young 41:14
wanted on my own this sorry, point of I just thinking about what you’re doing here makes me just thinking that there’s a lot more, there’s a shift now, isn’t that a lot more acceptance of paying up front for something, and the service afterwards is the old days instead of doing something in the invoice, which hopefully gets paid 20 days after that, or whatever?
Helen Oakes 41:33
I think it’s much better that way. You know, you have people that you’re struggling to get money out of. And if they pay up front, it’s all done and dusted. And you know, it’s so much. Yeah, I’m
Nigel Young 41:45
thinking that’s almost become standard practice now, isn’t it? Yeah. Can we do the work?
Helen Oakes 41:51
Yeah, you think of anything else when you’re paying for swimming lessons some way you always pay up front? But that yeah,
Danny de Hek 41:58
I think I think most What I’ve been struggling with for years as people say to me, I’m too cheap. And then I start quoting three to $5,000 for a website, and I just don’t get the jobs. And then I think, well, it just doesn’t work. You know, I don’t want to work on an hourly rate because it’s so the best thing I’ve ever done is so more time and 1015 hour increments. And it’s just that’s just signed in. And then all of a sudden, I realised the guy that I’ve just quoted, he’s got investor. So he came around, we’re talking for an hour, and he’s lovely got built that relationship. I told him and he said, Can you put it all together on an invoice? I can give it to my investors to pay the bill. And I should have had him here. But the meantime, I’m still not, you know, he’s got other quotes now. So I could probably double my prices. Don’t be too cheap from the investor’s point of view. Yeah. But you know, the guy that come around, he’s lovely. And I said to him, I don’t care I get this job, but I want to be part of your journey. And I can give you a lot of advice, but your social media stuff and how to use gadgets and and I said, let’s do this together. And when would you end up at the cafe yesterday, he was standing outside on the phone and he waved at him. And then
Helen Oakes 43:01
I didn’t realise who he was, and I’m looking down was it
Danny de Hek 43:06
and then he came in and we had a good conversation with him, but we hit a real brilliant relationship where he wanted to come and talk to us and i think i think that it was everything in there that there plenty really.
Helen Oakes 43:17
I was quite funny though. It’s kinda like it was meant to be because he came here we had a good chat. And then all of a sudden we bumped into him in this cafe that he doesn’t normally go to and he doesn’t I don’t eat lips around the area, and it just sort of worked out.
Danny de Hek 43:32
Nothing even like I don’t do this have a good drink, but do you charge per month? Straight away? Do you have a monthly fee or a yearly fee? Or how do you as a per month
Jude Stirling 43:44
and most of our clients are on a monthly fee, but we still do have some people who just come to us for compliance. It will do anything. You’re just an annual fee. Hmm, yeah.
Danny de Hek 43:57
been a game changer in the accounting field before With the pay you can have per month. And you know, and it works good for everyone. I remember one lady who she went bankrupt, he was an accountant. And I see why don’t you charge monthly? Because you get paid over two or three month period. And I seen you doing GST for people and then in there clicked on this deed and then you check a big bill on the left. No one of you not going in anywhere. So she’s doing gsts and nearly climbed out of it, but then also the guy we have to keep changing.
Yeah.
So charging differently, I think it’s quite Paramount right now that we need to obviously think different. I mean, we’ve already worried that if we don’t charge enough for customers, we think we’re desperate. I just saw $12 a $12 product. That means that person paid $8 shipping and bought something for $3 90 who would think
Helen Oakes 44:51
and they’re gonna wait 40 days to get
Danny de Hek 44:55
25 days. quite quite short um yeah so what what would be stopping us marketing other people’s products? What What could go wrong? Like if I decided that I want everyone in the late 60s getting one product or service I can sell that cat cost more than three 400 bucks. What would you sell your actual Yeah, so I mean, is it something that’s worth their time selling for that amount of money in what slows us down when we ask you in objects that that matches the transaction time? You know, writing an invoice is it worth my time doing all that sort of stuff, but you know, like, I get paid with PayPal, and it’s in my bank. You know, anyone can, you know, have a payment, you know, at stripe It’s brilliant, you know you can get credit card money’s off people real easy these days. You know so there’s a lot of students that I challenge you all to come up with something you could sell. I could buy another one of these is my favourite messes. Anyone has seen a MasterCard before I really bought my mom couldn’t sell this to me. This is a I think a 260 or $80 mouse and I was trying to find a wireless one because I didn’t have enough ports in the back of my computer they don’t sell them by the way Clinton but you know these widgets in his product so I mean, maybe he will come up with a product could be a challenge for us. Chris
Clinton Selby 46:43
Genoa pay to both our websites as well, which I thought might have sold our first one today actually is similar to Apple Pay.
Helen Oakes 46:52
Yeah, so people buy it and then they pay it off. Is that right? Yeah. Teen teen equal payments.
Clinton Selby 46:58
Yeah.
Danny de Hek 47:00
have to pay it’s only as any up to a certain amount that they’ll let you do that as it grew but your rifle is a big ticket items
Clinton Selby 47:07
and yeah I’m a bit funded yet actually because this wanting to buy two and a half thousand dollar cheer in I think I’ve got a feeling the limits like 1000 but I’m just about to find out
Helen Oakes 47:20
Chris Do you sell any type of clothing through your business like geese or the belts or t shirts and stuff? Yeah,
Chris Cameron 47:31
we so we so students have to purchase is at a certain point they have to buy the weapons as they go through the programme sports bags that they can put the gear into. We do beanies and cats. So we do a range of different merchandise kind of options. Yeah, they will but it’s the tricky thing with all mentioned dice is about the stock and yet if you want to buy likely it will cost you quite a lot. Where if you want to buy it overseas, you need to buy in bulk.
Helen Oakes 48:05
Yeah. Could you do like print on demand or something?
Chris Cameron 48:10
It’s too expensive. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you’d be looking at if you do, I’d say take t shirts. We do print on demand t shirts. You’re looking at it. 40 $40 maybe for a T shirt. Okay. Yeah.
Danny de Hek 48:24
Well, yeah. What’s something we’ve had success with in the past that we used to sell a lot of? I mean, anyone really? I’m just trying to think of things that have worked really well in the past.
Clinton Selby 48:37
What about you, Danny?
Danny de Hek 48:41
cyclinder.
Helen Oakes 48:42
I saw an ad for that come up. Actually, my email. I don’t know why.
Chris Cameron 48:49
We used to sell. I used to my head My background is laughing. We used to sell services, so tech services. tax refund services to people. Yeah. And we sold truckloads of them. Oh. So services is anything to remove pain or complication? Yeah, it’s gonna sell. You just need to find what it is. It’s this the problem. And then if you have the solution to that problem, then you’ve got a good chance to be able to sell it.
Danny de Hek 49:24
I went to a website yesterday and I went to local and I wanted to buy a bottle of whiskey, and I wanted it delivered. But they’d only give me clicking select. I couldn’t actually get an accent. So then I searched for a service, I think it was called bread. And they had a house whenever I wanted, they would pick it up and drop it off within 60 minutes. Ah, that’s it. So I ordered my bottle from the same shop and they dropped it off and it cost me $7 and it was delivered within 60 minutes. Wow.
Jaline Pietroiusti 50:03
Is that South Island Bay? Only?
Danny de Hek 50:05
I’ll see if I can find it because I just thought it is a great example of somebody sitting up there. You’re lucky, you’re here. I’ll see if I can find it. Oh, but not only that, they gave me a tracking for the driver. So that was even more exciting
Helen Oakes 50:24
company in the posted business, that’d be great. It was quite
Clinton Selby 50:29
bizarre, because when he turned up, he had I put up he was foreign. And I couldn’t quite understand his accent and he was just standing, giving me a bottle of whiskey. And I’m like, what, what are you? What’s this for? And he’s like, it’s for you. And I’m like, right? You It was quite bizarre. And then of course, I’ve got your email and I was like, Oh, thank you.
Danny de Hek 50:56
Because it not only there that was personalised because they told me the drivers name. gave me a cell phone number. And then as GPS coordinates, sorry, I pulled that off the clip, I had to find the service. But it was pretty. And I just thought it is a great example of, you know, coffee lovers of something. Yeah, somebody sort of in the times, I mean, I mean, I just want to say that I really want to challenge everyone to come up with something they can sell from, you know, $100 to $500, that somebody can click about and give the credit card and you get the money. And then you over do it. Is it a, like I’m doing a workshop at the moment, and I’ll give you a little bit of insight. If I sign up somebody on Shopify, I’m a Shopify partner, they actually give me a trial Commission for the first two months. So that means that I can come up with a workshop showing people how to use Shopify, how to set it up. And then if they sign up and pay then I get a commission. So it makes me doing a free workshop, where I might spend 4500 That’s in front of the camera showing people everything they want to know. But they must sign up from this link. And 59 US dollars a month.
Clinton Selby 52:09
I can tell you an experience I’ve had just recently by LinkedIn. And I think I mentioned and I’ve actually engaged with them, but a guy reached out to me digital marketer, quite a slick combo of very quickly, I’ll tell you what he said. And it was quite compelling. I was like, Oh, that’s quite clever. Just here, I’ll read it out to you.
Danny de Hek 52:31
Based on the chat person, we might be able to use it in there. So
Clinton Selby 52:34
yeah, his opening statement was Clinton, I won’t waste your time here. Here’s the approach. We will work for free for a month. You don’t like us, we bugger off into the sunset with a tail between our legs and you want to pay to succeed. No catch.
And he did a follow up saying hey Clinton and putting my money where my mouth is we work completely for free word of mouth and show you what we’ve achieved. Talk Faiz blah, blah, you came for a chat. And I sort of had partly ignored it and they needed a third follow up. And then this is where he got mainly See, if you’re not interested to meet a beggar, I don’t want to annoy you with these stupid LinkedIn messages. But if you’re worried about legitimacy, you can talk to a couple of key companies I’ve worked with. And I did do that. And both had very good experiences. So yeah, and as of yesterday, getting them to do some work for us.
Danny de Hek 53:25
different approaches, I think, if you think in different array that
Clinton Selby 53:30
has says patches, basically return on investment, so their digital marketing company and you know, there’s a million number of them are out here. So I meet with the team on zoom yesterday and gave them access to you know, website and AIDS manager and all that stuff. Yep. Yeah. Anyway, I’m just saying
Danny de Hek 53:48
I have a backup of your website just in case it goes wrong. Yeah.
Clinton Selby 53:54
That’s why I gave you a heads up.
Danny de Hek 53:58
But yeah, I got stopped That’s what it’s all about. So maybe there’s a challenge next week, do we? Maybe we’ll come up with a side hustle that we could do. Would that be a thing? You know, no, the invoice or not? I mean, I know locklin’s got a real good one where he’s been doing CVS for people. So rather than recruiter, I know they get paid quite a bit, and the side hustle of sitting up and helping somebody put their CV together might be the low hanging fruit. But team low hanging fruit does add up to something substantial. Yeah. And I don’t personally think they’re lucky. It’s the folly. I take Liberty insaneness but you probably don’t value your expertise until you do it and realise that people really want this. And then all of a sudden, you go No, actually, I can offer a lot of a lot of my experience knowledge and skills to people.
Jaline Pietroiusti 54:48
Yeah.
Danny de Hek 54:51
But if I if somebody contacts me and says I’m looking for a job, first thing I want to say now is watch TV boy. Oh, it’s Well, hey, just get lucky to have a look at it. Of course. Yeah. bid, you know, couple throw in a box. And he was lots of people he looks at CVS all day long, he will tell you what patient about
Lachlan McNeill 55:13
25 bucks. And he’d say, well, 25 bucks, you can be in the pile. You know, if you won’t be on the podium, it might cost you 300 or $500. That’s a lot of money and say, Okay, let’s imagine it gives you a gives you a job two months earlier than otherwise. Yeah, too much work. Oh, yeah. Oh, adorning the dawning, you know. So if you want to be in the race, and if you want to participate in the race, and you want to be at the back, that’s fine. But to be in the front, you really got to have something that’s gonna work for you. And that work for you is going to be directly in dollar terms. But to put you know, if it costs you one day, sorry. Yeah, that’s a bargain. So sometimes
Helen Oakes 55:52
you do have to pay more. To get more I am selling my car, old car at the moment, and I could do like a $48 It’s straight right knee or a $99 or 150. I just made out I’m just gonna do the 150. And it’s got so much traction. It’s amazing. And now there’s a bit of a bidding war going on. So
Danny de Hek 56:16
yeah, that’s, we’re gonna live together 1500 a lot. Listen to that. We
Helen Oakes 56:20
started $1 $1 night reserve. And I was like, I I’m really worried about that, you guys. No, no, believe me, it’ll work. And now it’s up to about three grand. So
Danny de Hek 56:33
I’ve got a, I’ve got a guy that actually says, just put the link of IT service was called give me breed as a delivery service, so don’t need to do to that.
Jaline Pietroiusti 56:46
I want to check it out. That’s cool. Yeah, I’m all about convenience, especially when we busy.
Danny de Hek 56:52
Yeah, I just can’t believe that it was everything in anything they pick up. There’s also a portal on the website where I could search diverted feeds, and drop off stuff. very slick service, but you have a plan here to go. However, guys, I think we’re, we’ve done for time. So I’ll just finish off the podcast so I can stop the recording. I’ve come up with this brilliant new service, I think it’s called otter. And basically, after the podcast is finished, I upload the sound recording and it prints the whole lot into a blog for me. So I did notice that when I say elite six, and he comes up as elite six, and I haven’t got time to edit it all, but I’m sure you guys will understand that it’s not elite six, but there could be another opportunity and another time so if you’re listening to a podcast, thanks for tuning in and and by all means check out our website, elite six, credit and Zed and come along and meet some of these crazy people of the absolutely awesome Have a great day.
Transcribed by Otter
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