Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: We're in Sydney by ourselves. We don't have any family support here. So when we had a baby, we had a lot of things to do and we were very busy.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: It was just me and Brett.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Things were just breaking in the business. We decided I need to get off the tools. We need to separate the business away from me.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: By having a team, it just means that we have multiple developers to step up when it's needed.
[00:00:23] Speaker C: Welcome to the agency hour podcast, where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams and their communities. This week, we're joined by Brett Stone and Jeanette Wang, owners of Stone Digital, which is an agency based in Sydney that specialise in custom WordPress, Woocommerce, and Shopify web development projects. Brett and Jeanette are partners in life as well as business. So in this episode, we explore how Brett and Jeanette manage to be husband and wife and new parents and business owners all at the same time. We discussed the keys to growing recurring revenue. How to foster and nurture your team of a players, even if they're remote and on the other side of the planet, and overcoming the fear of hiring and leading a team. And much more. If you've ever considered working with your partner, or you're already working with your partner, but struggling to leave work at work, or even if you're a freelancer and are afraid to take the plunge and build your own team, then this episode is for you. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us.
All right, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Brett and Jeanette from Stone Digital to the agency hour podcast. Come on down. How are you guys doing?
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Well, you're looking pretty cold. Must be pretty chilly.
[00:01:39] Speaker C: Melbourne is just absolutely freezing at the moment. And yes, I do have heating in the office and I have paid the bill, but yes, I've put my big puffer coat on because it is cold and I'm old. And the older you get, the more you feel the cold. So there you go. Now, interestingly, we were talking the green room before we hit the record button. I think this is the first episode of the agency hour podcast that features a couple who work together and are a couple in real life. How's that working out for you guys? Maybe I should ask Jeanette first.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: Great choice.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Well, obviously it has up and downs, and, yeah, it has been the best decisions we've made, but the journey has been challenging, but we just tackle all the challenges as we go. And, yeah, joining agents in Mavericks is probably one of the best decisions we've made. To basically to help to overcome these challenges.
[00:02:34] Speaker C: Great. That's good to hear. Yeah. Full transparency. Brett and Jeanette from Stone Digital are in Mavericks club. We were hanging out a few weeks ago at Mavcon on the Gold coast. Before we start talking about the agency and what you guys are doing there, what made you decide to work together as a couple? Like, how long did that decision take to happen? And what were the conversations that went on around that?
[00:02:57] Speaker A: I think it was mainly around what we wanted to achieve in our life, what kind of outcomes we wanted to have in terms of flexibility and also the lifestyle. And after looking at that, we determined actually working from home, having our own business instead of having a corporate job in the city, or both of us having different jobs and having to juggle, having a young baby and the duties. With that, we decided if we could, we'll try and work together and have a lot of flexibility, and that's what we decided to do. So it was really just about creating the lifestyle that we wanted to make. And obviously, running your own business, it does have a lot of flexibility, has a lot of stress, obviously, but we've been able to manage and improve over time.
[00:03:37] Speaker C: Now, Brett, it was your. You were running the agency and nginette joined, is that right? Jeanette, what were your hesitations or concerns before you made this decision?
[00:03:51] Speaker B: I think my main hesitation was just working with my husband, and I did not know what it was going to look like. And by all means, I do want to do anything just to hurt our relationship, because that is the most important thing for us. Yeah. But a turning point was I was at a corporate for a couple of years, and I can see sometimes it take ages to make impact because there are so many layers, and I'm always up for something that's a bit more entrepreneurial. And at the time, Brett was running stone jingle for three years, basically by himself. So I thought that's the perfect opportunity for me to being part of something a bit more fun. Yeah.
[00:04:36] Speaker C: I've been trying to get my wife to come and work in my business for the last ten years, and she keeps saying to me, we can work together or we can be married. What would you like to do? I'm choosing the relationship and the family, of course.
But I think what we've identified, that we couldn't work together because unless we were in completely different parts of the business and we never spoke to each other, which is possible, that could also work. I'm curious about the.
How did you put boundaries in place? Maybe I'm assuming all sorts of things here. Maybe you don't have boundaries. I mean, did you talk about work over dinner? Do you talk about work 24 hours a day? How do you switch off?
How do you be a husband and wife and parents, and how do you manage all of that? Because I imagine, especially working from home, it must kind of infiltrate the living space and the preparing the dinner and talking about what happened with this client, and then how do you have anything to talk about at the end of the day? Because you both know what's going on in the business, right?
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Exactly.
There's definitely some things we've learned to add some boundaries and to make the working relationship a whole lot better. Definitely. I would say the first 612 months were a really big struggle and we were making a lot of mistakes and it was really difficult. And, in fact, seeing, I think, a counselor kind of actually helped a lot. And one of the key things I learned from doing that is that I kind of needed to, like, view Jeanette as my business partner. So instead of seeing her as a team member, that I should just micromanage or give tasks. In fact, she has ownership as much as anyone else, as much as me in the business. So that was a key mindset change that I think was really important. But of course, theres very practical things as well. Yeah, I think we do try and avoid to talk about work after 05:00 p.m. and 06:00 p.m. etcetera.
What do you think?
[00:06:27] Speaker B: We try? Yeah.
Yeah. So I can give a few examples. For example, Brett and I, we generally, we work from home, but we generally work in the same space. So as you can see, I'm in a different part of the house, and Brett has his own office. So that's one thing each time, Brett. And now when we have a meeting, we try to do it on Google Meet. We don't really meet in person. I know it probably sounds a bit awkward because we're so close to each other, but I. But that's just one of the things we identify that will help us to do a better meeting.
And also if we plan to talk about something more high level, strategy level, we try to do it outside of house. For example, we'll go to a cafe, talk about the plans for the next quarter. We try to avoid it to do it at home because it's a bit hard to talk about the business. Think about how little things while there's a house chore mental load going on. Oh, who's doing the ditches? There's still things on the floor, dining.
[00:07:29] Speaker C: Tables covered in laundry.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So these are some of the things that we've come up with also, from five to eight. We do not. In the evening, we don't really look at our funds. We don't talk about work. Our focus is family, and that's the reason why we set up this business.
[00:07:47] Speaker C: So, yeah, you know, I didn't know this. I didn't know the answer to these questions before I asked them. We didn't really have a chance to talk about this in detail at Mavcon. But what I love about this and what I really admire and respect about this is how intentional you've been about this. The fact that you said that, you know, you've got some help from a counselor to help figure out how to manage this. You've put some. Which I think is super smart, by the way. I'm a big advocate of getting as much help as you possibly can in every part of your life. You know, I've had personal trainers in the past. I've had lots of therapists help me. I'm still seeing a therapist at the moment to help me deal with my old wounds and help me manage my triggers and manage my big feelings, because I'm a boy, and I'm not very good at managing my big feelings.
And I think it's super smart as a couple who want to have a great life, who want to be great parents, who want to be the best version of themselves to get help in areas that we're not equipped. We don't learn this stuff in school. Right? And we don't. And a lot of us don't learn this stuff from our parents because our parents didn't learn this stuff from their parents. And so massive, massive props to you guys for being really intentional and not just winging it, but actually thinking about some of this stuff in advance and putting some of those parameters in place. I have absolute respect for you both doing that. Well done.
How's Keaton? Your little boy? Keaton was at Mavcon a couple of weeks ago on the Gold coast and stole a show. He was the center of attention. He was so cute. How old is he now?
[00:09:11] Speaker B: He's turning two.
[00:09:12] Speaker C: Just turning his.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:13] Speaker C: Such a great age. And, uh. And how. How's he doing?
[00:09:16] Speaker B: He's doing pretty well. Yeah. Um, it has been. The past two months, he's been pretty good. No sickness. That's pretty good. We sent. He started daycare about a year ago, so I guess all parents know how hard it, you know, it was at the very beginning, basically getting sick every second week, of course.
[00:09:36] Speaker C: Yeah. And also the separation, it's all, it's like I remember dropping our kids at daycare for the first time and the separation is like not just from them but as a parent I would walk out, I'd have to ring my wife and I'd be in tears and I'd be like a little piece of me just died because I'm leaving Oscar with someone else. And it's a massive transition and a massive adjustment. So well done for navigating that.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Yeah. And I would say Daycare had a big impact on the business as well because after we enrolled him in Daycare and he started going to Daycare, I remember one of the coaches in Mattcon, he said to me, get ready to vomit after we started taking the Vegas daycare and I thought that was such a strange thing to say. I'm like, how could you say that? But literally within a week or two, I believe I had Crazy Gastro. I was out for a few days and yeah, we were sick a lot and have been the past year because of Daycare. And that's been a big part of what we needed to change in the business, that we could be a little bit more off the tools, we could take time off and the revenue will still come in and the work will still get done. So that's been a big impact and the whole influence of Keaton, our baby on the business as well, having him has transformed our business because we want to basically make it so it can rely a little bit less without us. So that's been a big thing. Yeah.
[00:11:00] Speaker C: I've said they're the ultimate, they're the ultimate disrupter. Children like you have this life thats just going along and everyones cruising. I remember one of the first days we took Oscar out for breakfast after the first couple of weeks of just staying home and just going what the actual hell is going on here? And then we got the confidence up to go out and have breakfast and were walking home at 09:00 in the morning because of course we were out at breakfast at 730 because Oscar was awake. Were walking home at nine or 930 and I was watching these younger couples kind of spill out of their apartments with hangovers from the night before and they were kind of making their way down for a late breakfast. And I remember thinking to myself, you have no idea what's about to happen. Have some children, you won't be sleeping until 930. They're the ultimate disruptor and you know, the most challenging and the most rewarding thing you'll ever do. So well done for you guys for navigating, working together, having children, being parents, it's, you know, it's the full catastrophe and, and you're doing a great job. So let's segue a little bit towards the business. Tell us, what is Stone digital? What are the services that you offer and what does the current team look like these days?
[00:12:13] Speaker A: Yeah, so Stone Digital is a. So we're a custom web design and development agency, so we're specialized in doing websites and in particular, very well equipped to do pretty custom bespoke websites and custom integration.
So that's our kind of focus and our specialty. I started as a kind of freelancer and then eventually grew up to being a busy freelancer with project contractors on work and then eventually turned it into having full time team members, which is a very new development. It's kind of a development that's gone alongside being a part of Maverick's club. So, I mean, I was looking at it recently, a year and a half ago, I was still basically a freelancer with project contractors. And it's only really in the past year that I've had full time team members. And yeah, the past year has been really crazy in terms of growth and development. So right now I think we have eight, including us two. Wow. Us two here in Australia. And then we've also got another kind of Australia based project manager who's in Perth who's helping us. And then we must have, I guess, five full time team members overseas.
[00:13:25] Speaker C: Wow. Fantastic.
And how, what's your role in the business, Jeanette?
[00:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah, so basically I'm actually a project or manager in the business. I mainly look after projects. Our typical package, a website design and development. So that's basically what I do. I also handle quite a significant amount of the client communications, involve a bit of HR and BD. I guess that's what happened to a lot of a couple of businesses. You're just being a bit of all rounder.
So that's basically what I do.
[00:14:01] Speaker C: And also small business, I think a team of eight, you're typically going to have people who are doing multiple. You're not quite big enough to have specialists. We're a team of 14 or 15 or whatever it is now, and we have people who still have hybrid roles that do a little bit of this and here's the main focus, but they're still doing a bit of this and a bit of that. Just because you don't have a team big enough to really be specialist, which is fine. Theres nothing wrong with that. You just have to be aware of it.
Hows your role changed, Brett, over the last 18 months since youve grown the team?
[00:14:35] Speaker A: Great question. Well, basically its gone from every hat to a lot fewer hats, which is amazing. I cant believe all the different hats that I had to wear when I was being a superman freelancer.
And im just so happy about that. Know, talking about Jeanette's role in the business, like her coming into the business at that time was like totally what the business needed as well. And it was totally beneficial for the business because at that time I was just so busy. So I was the bottleneck for the business and I really wanted to offload the project management hat. Just basic communication with the client, updating on things, interpreting that feedback. I really didn't. I think I really wanted to offload that.
And Jeanette came in and did an amazing job and it was exactly what the business needed. It was the next high that I wanted. And the other amazing benefit of it all is that she cares about the business obviously because were both partners and she has an amazing sense of ownership because we are business partners and theres a lot of practical benefits in that. Were obviously distributing the profits. Theres no kind of like large upfront wage payments I need to do each month. So yeah, I feel having to come on board as a business partner and helping with project management really helped the business and what we needed at that time. So that took one hat off and other hats have been taken off as well. Over the past 18 months.
[00:16:00] Speaker C: Whats been the most difficult?
I have conversations all the time, as you would expect. Im very visible and active in a lot of Facebook groups and people reach out to me in messenger all the time. Its pretty much my chosen platform. Im not on any other platform really except YouTube. But I hear this all the time. People say I've tried to hire someone to do the technical stuff right, I've tried to hire a developer, I've tried to hire a designer, I've tried to hire a copywriter, I've tried to hire an SEO. They don't do it as good as me. I've had to micromanage them, I've had to fix their work. It takes too long to train them how to do it. I may as well just do it myself, which is a false economy because if you do everything yourself you're going to stay stuck at a particular level, which there's nothing wrong with that. It just means that you can't go away on holiday because if you go on holiday. There's no one else there to generate revenue and to deliver the value for the clients. What's been, I guess from a mindset point of view, because, because I think most of this is just a decision, right. You just make the decision that we're going to hire a developer and that they're going to succeed. So what's been the mindset change that's had to take place? But then also, what have you done from a practical point of view, to make sure that you've hired people who can succeed in that role so that you don't have to spend your life fixing mistakes or micromanaging or putting out fires or doing QA work?
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
The key is absolutely being able to recruit a player talent, and it's taken us a while to learn that.
We've learned that process and learned so much from being in Mavericks club that has enabled us to basically recruit a players in a repeatable way. Right now with the team we have, they are a players and they're doing such great work. Like those pain points that you mentioned of, like constantly having to micromanage them or check their work.
We don't have to do that, really. They're doing better work than what I would have done. And they're based overseas, but their communication is amazing.
They're really top tier in the industry and we're really happy to have them, but it took ages and took a lot of effort to learn how we find those types of people and a lot of failures along the way. You know, I like to think that when it comes to recruitment, we're probably going to. Whenever you're new to recruiting or new to recruiting a particular role, you'll probably fail the first four or five times before you actually figure out how to recruit consistently for that role.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: And usually it's, it's got less to do with them and more to do with us. Right. Because, because I, you know, I was, I mean, I still think I'm a terrible manager, right. I think I've become a good leader over the years. I wasn't. I think leadership comes naturally to me, but it took a long time for me to own that. I think I was very self conscious and very anxious about leadership in my earlier days as an entrepreneur. But I think it does come naturally to me. Managing doesn't come naturally to me at all. I hate managing. I don't like being managed. I don't like managing people. I would just rather employ grownups and everyone get on with their job.
But it's my, the first half a dozen hires that I made ultimately failed because of me. Not because of them, but because I had no idea. I didn't. I mean, I was terrified, absolutely terrified of leading people and trying to rally the troops and get them moving in the right direction and absolutely petrified and. But it's very easy to blame them and go, well, it's their fault. It's, you know, they're not as good as me, and then I'm just going to do it myself.
Why?
What made you guys so determined to keep, you know, because it would be easier just to shrink and go, well, there's, you know, we'll just do everything ourselves. What made you so determined to break on through and to keep pursuing the recruitment path until you found the right people?
[00:19:49] Speaker A: It goes back again to the family situation. So we're kind of, we're in Sydney by ourselves. We don't have any family support here. So when we had a baby, we had a lot of things to do and we were very busy. And I was realizing that, yeah, things were just breaking in the business. Things were grinding to a halt because I was too busy. We were too busy. And because of that, and because of a few, you know, you know, crisis outcomes that happened because I was just totally missing in action and busy. We decided I need to get off the tools. We need to separate the business away from me, which is a key reason why we needed to help. And we look for help, which we found in Maverick's club.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: I think the other perspective is that we look into how the clients see us, because if it was just me and Brett, and obviously we are parents now, so we're going to get sick or there are times that we won't be able, for example, to get back to the clients on time on certain things. So if it's just twelve us, there are all these breaking points that they probably won't have that continuity of the service. By having a team, it just means that we have multiple people, developers, to step up when it's needed. So that's also one of the benefits we see to have a team, so the client will see that continuity of service from us.
[00:21:12] Speaker C: How I love my team, and we have a team of a players now. We've had a bigger team in the past, we've shrunk, we've moved things around, we've restructured, we've changed the business model. My team, our team. The team. Not my team, the team.
I mean, I just couldn't imagine. I don't wake up in the middle of the night worried about losing clients. I wake up the middle of the night worried about losing team members. Right. Because without the team, I couldn't do.
I mean, I just couldn't do it. Right. There's no way I could go back to doing this on my own. What are you doing? If anything, what are you doing to, you know, remote teams are hard because we end up communicating with each other through devices and through screen. What are you doing to kind of foster and nurture that sense of camaraderie and teamwork and culture with your team members?
[00:22:03] Speaker B: I think there are a few aspects that we, when we look into retaining top talents, I think, number one, we want to make sure that they are properly remunerated. So we want to make sure that the offer we provide to them is competitive in their local market. So that's the very first thing. And we also have a pay rise scheme that we recently come up with. So we do reviews every six months to look at the team members performance and to see where they are on the scale. So obviously if they're doing really well, they will get relevant base. So based on our research, this is quite frequent in the industry. So that sort of served in a way to motivate our team members to continue strive for excellence.
The other thing is that we invest in that personal growth as well. So for some of our team members, we have a UI designer. He's super young, in his early twenties, really talented. He's very interested in attending different UI and design related conferences. We sponsor him to go, we encourage him to go because we just want to make sure that he will learn as much as possible to grow. I guess these are the two main things we do.
And yeah, we also talk about personal things on the call as well. Like recently, one of our team members baby, so we send congratulate message to him. I shipped some. So I also sent him like a baby, like a parcel for baby items to him. We want to make sure, you know, even they are so remote from us, they're also part of a team I want them to fill. They're part of our team. They're not someone just based remotely. So, yeah, so basically that's some of the things we do.
[00:23:51] Speaker C: Love it, love it. I want to, you know, hiring is scary if your cash flow is lumpy. And I know you guys have had a big transformation in your recurring revenue over the last 18 months or so. What's been the key? Because, you know, let's face it, if you've got recurring revenue, it just gives you a little bit of security so that you can hire a team member and know that you're going to have cash flow coming in. Right now it's not guaranteed, but at that's better than just surviving on project revenue. What's been the key for you guys to grow your recurring revenue?
[00:24:23] Speaker A: So the key to growing our recurring revenue has been basically promoting it and pushing it. Before this, we did not have it on our radar at all.
Of course we have mechanisms to promote it and make it seem and just promote it in a way that, you know, makes sense for the clients, et cetera. And through paid discovery its a good way to sell onto subscription revenue. But before this we just did not have it on our radar. Its thanks to Mavericks cloud that we kind of had this revolution of thinking, hey, we should get people into the subscription revenue because before this we were basically starting from zero each month and having to estimate with clients. Oh, I think well estimate itll be this amount or only doing fixed fee. And then it just became very uncertain and we had a lot of months during that time where it was very lumpy and uncertain and you're not quite sure what revenue you're going to get with the subscription revenue. We've loved it because it does have that stickiness to it, that predictability. Of course things can change, but it's a fantastic base to stand from and it just happens automatically and you don't have to manually set up invoices and negotiate with the client, etcetera.
[00:25:38] Speaker C: Yeah, it removes a lot of admin if you're not invoicing and then chasing money now, there's a lot of benefit. There's so many benefits to recurring revenue. I've been a recurring revenue business model since 2013, I think 2014 and there's definitely no going back.
But what I'm curious about here is that a lot of people think that in order for a digital agency to offer something on recurring revenue that they need to be doing ad management or SEO or marketing services. You guys are predominantly a design and development house, right?
[00:26:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. So we still definitely do have project based fees, so fixed fee projects, but we definitely have also, yeah, tried to morph a lot of the projects into kind of monthly payments over a twelve month period. So we definitely do have website projects that come to us and instead of doing a fixed fee project, 50% on commencement and 50% on launch, we add a little bit extra to the overall fee and then just spread it over a twelve month period. So it's almost like a payment plan with additional services and the total ends up being larger because we're providing more services, we're providing support and minor adjustments after the launch. But the clients are happy to do it because it's very cash flow effective. They can plan it well in advance and they know there's not really going to be any surprises outside of that monthly fee that we've discussed.
So that's one way we've approached it, as well as doing pretty standard retainers of having an approximate amount of hours that we're doing each month for a particular project.
But for those projects we also try not to get too focused on the hours. We basically want to have a roadmap of their features that they want to have over the next six to twelve months. And the idea is that we want to package together a monthly fee that should cover that roadmap.
So thats another way that weve built subscription revenue. We build out the digital roadmap of features they want for the next six to twelve months. And we basically say for that theres a monthly advanced website support plan we have which can cover that. If there's anything major outside of the roadmap that's outside of scope, we might have to discuss it. But we do always try and go above and beyond anyway to provide value to the client. But that's some of the ways we did subscription revenue.
[00:28:04] Speaker C: I think this is a really important point because a lot of people think that in order to sell a growth plan or a retainer or whatever you want to call it, that you need to be offering marketing services, because the only thing that a client would pay for ongoing is marketing services. And it's not true. I would happily pay, you know, and in the past have happily paid, you know, up to $3,000 a month for non marketing services, right. For people to do things that are a core function of the business, that are not related to marketing. And, you know, I'm not the anomaly, by the way. There are plenty of clients in businesses that look like me at our level that will happily pay that for someone else to solve a problem that we don't have to think about or that we don't have the capacity to do with our internal team. And you're not alone. I know there are several agencies in agency mavericks who don't offer any marketing services. They just do web development or web design and they are rolling out these recurring revenue packages because I think one of the things it gives everyone more time. You know, the old days of let's charge 20 grand for a website and try and get it done in six weeks and then everyone sprints like crazy to meet a deadline. Deadlines, you know, invariably get missed because clients don't provide content on time or something. They move, you know, scope creep happens throughout the process and its a panicked kind of relationship. And then you launch the website and then we expect that were never going to see the client again. I would much rather have 69, 12, 36 months to work with a client to help them achieve their objectives. And part of that might be rebuilding them a new website. But if you think about what is building a website, its a series of smaller projects, isnt it?
Contact form automation and follow up. It's a landing page, it's a services page, it's a category page, it's some CRO, it's eventually a homepage, which is a landing page anyway. So it's a series of smaller projects. And I think spreading that out over a period of time, thinking about, you know, adding a case studies section to your website or adding a gallery or a portfolio to your website, this is going to happen. It can't happen now because we don't have the images. It's going to happen in three months time. Spreading that stuff out and breaking it down into smaller sprints, if you like, and spreading that out over a payment plan makes a lot more sense for us as an agency to manage it and for the team to manage it and for the client to be able to get what they need to us in a timely fashion and manage their cash flow instead of everyone just being overwhelmed for six weeks and kind of sprinting to meet this deadline that, you know, that was kind of set arbitrarily at the start of the. At the start of the project.
Well done for being one of those agencies that's managed to do this without having mark or without feeling like you needed to add services in order to charge recurring revenue. Because I know that's a big misunderstanding a lot of agency owners have, is they? I need to add services to be able to charge recurring revenue. Jeanette, quick question for you. What's your learning curve been like? Because you don't come from this background, right? You don't come from. This wasn't what you were doing in corporate, was it?
[00:31:06] Speaker B: No, I was in finance and communication. So this is something complete different from what I was doing. Yeah. So very different. Yeah.
[00:31:14] Speaker C: And how have you gone about learning?
Because obviously the project manager team, to do these things, you need to know enough about what they're doing so that to make sure that they're doing the right thing. How have you skilled up in the technical side of the business but also the business model itself.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: Yep. So I guess now I've learned pretty well how to navigate the WordPress dashboard. That's probably the only technical side that I've upskilled pretty well, I would say. My key learning is back to what Brett mentioned about recruitment is to have eight players. I think for me in particular in my situation it's very important to have eight players, top developers, top talent. So we work together to deliver really good outcome for the clients. So that has been our learning curve because we had a few ones that, that we were not necessarily, you know, I could not be so not necessarily that me and the developer could be in a very good team, but now we have really good team members. So yeah, so that has been I guess the biggest alarmy and it's been going pretty well so far. Yeah.
[00:32:25] Speaker C: Awesome.
What are you guys most excited about over the next 90 days? And I probably do need to ask also how is, how are you getting your head around the AI avalanche of stuff that's coming down the pipeline?
[00:32:40] Speaker A: Yeah, good questions in terms of the AI question. So we're all in. We're doing everything we can to get up to date with the latest tools to help enhance our work and improve it. And everybody in the team and the company knows that if there's ever an AI tool that can help them with their job, we want them to experiment it, experiment with it and we want to hear about it in the next team meeting. Whats good about it? Does it help? Etcetera. So I would say every team member has been experimenting with AI tools to help with their job.
If they ever need an AI tool through any subscription that they want to try, were happy to do it.
Team members have gotten in touch with us and said hey I want to try GitHub copilot, I want to try a different thing. Were all for it. We want to enable any other team members that want to try that as well.
Of course I'm using AI all the time, chat, GPT for rewriting things. Jeannette is as well. So we're using it a lot. I don't see it as any huge risk. I think it's just going to enhance our work and make us better developers and designers and a better web agency. That's the answer on the AI.
[00:33:54] Speaker C: Cool.
And what are you most excited about over the next three months or so?
[00:33:59] Speaker A: Okay, what Im excited about over the next three months is we are consistently achieving pretty impressive growth. Were hitting pretty amazing revenue numbers over the past few months and I can see thats going to continue to happen.
Yeah, I think were going to achieve a pretty amazing revenue number over the next one year. So the next financial year already last financial year was above what we had aimed for. So we did a really great job and were continuing to grow. And also the leads in the pipeline are really high quality, high value clients that I can see once they convert, its going to really help with that revenue growth as well. So Im really excited about that point and what that unlocks for our business because I feel like were probably going to have a lot of capacity to hire extra people, whether it be offshore or maybe even in Australia.
So I'm really excited about that. It's going to be a challenge. It's going to be an adventure. But that's what I love about having our own business. There's always a new adventure, always a different challenge that we have to tackle.
So that will definitely be one as well.
So I'm very excited about that, but also excited about some upcoming travel that we have. So we're trying to travel interstate as much as we can to visit clients that are overseas and kind of loop it together with a holiday. So we've got. And of course, recently we went to Mavcon and I think that kind of inspired us, to be honest, because we went to Mavcon, we did some work. We had our baby there as well. And we've made some great business contacts while we were there. Caught up with agency contacts that we've met through Mavericks Club. And it was just really amazing and we loved it. So we're looking to do more interstate travel and connected with work.
[00:35:45] Speaker C: And I think once you do that with a two year old, you kind of get your confidence up and then you want to do it a little bit more. And I remember Oscar by the time he was 19 months old, I think he'd had 19 flights. It was ridiculous. It was kind of crazy. Interstate, Thailand, New Zealand, Thailand for one of our events. And then of course, Covid happened and we had Goldie. So Goldie didn't go anywhere for the first two years of her life because we were in lockdown.
But I think, yeah, once you kind of break the seal and you get your confidence up, it's like, yes, we can travel with kids. Then it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. And this is one of the things I love about the agency business model, too, is that you can work from anywhere, right? You don't have to be stuck at home. You can take the laptops with you. And if you've got that remote team, you can get work done no matter where you are.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: And another thing I just thought of that we're definitely excited for is if we continue to hit the goals and the growth that we're hitting, we are definitely going to have a kind of team retreat in Thailand.
We'll kind of get all the team together in Thailand. There's other agency owners in Mavericks club that we've definitely been inspired by for this and we've learned a lot from their experience and it just looks like a lot of fun and really beneficial for the company. So that's definitely something we've got on the radar as well.
[00:37:03] Speaker C: Awesome.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: Love it, Jeanette.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: That's going to be great.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: Very much looking forward to it. And also currently we're working on some quite profile websites. So that's basically elevation of what we were previously doing. So I'm very much looking forward to launching this website. So hopefully that will serve as a bit of marketing tool for us to let more people know about STEM Digital. What we want to make sure hopefully one day one client knows they're working with Steel Digital. It's something they're proud of. Our team members they'll be proud of working for. Still, if they're no longer with us, people know about, they have worked with a really good brand and that will be our end goal.
[00:37:48] Speaker C: Great. Love it. Well, again, thank you so much for joining us here on the agency hour and sharing your story with us. Just massive respect to couples like you who managed to work together and I parent together and be together. And I think it's a. I mean, I've, you know, I was just on a podcast this morning, I was on the funnel vision show this morning, which is the Funnellytics podcast. And Mikhail, the CEO and founder of Funnelytics, he said to me, what's your kind of humble brag moment? And I said, well, look, the cold, hard numbers would say that across our client base and the agencies that we help every year through our, the free templates that we give away and our online courses and our coaching, we know that we help generate somewhere between 50 and $100 million a year in revenue for our clients. And while that's nice, the thing that's really humbled me over the years is meeting the agency owners and seeing the impact that we have on their lives.
And for whatever reason, we just attract a large number of family based businesses that are run by a husband and wife team. And this is a really common story. I mean, Amber and Chris Hines were one of the early episodes of the old WP elevation podcast, and Amber was growing her agency. Chris was working in restaurants part time at night, and eventually he quit that job and came home and worked with Amber full time. And then they took the kids out of school and drove their rv around the country for a year and homeschooled their kids in the van while they ran their agency. And I mean, what. What a story and what an opportunity that that family has had to spend that time together because of the agency business model. And, you know, we've played some part in helping them do that, which is incredibly rewarding. So I want to thank you guys for joining us here on the show and sharing your story and look forward to hanging out again at our next Mavcon with you all and seeing Keaton grow up over the years.
[00:39:34] Speaker A: Definitely looking forward to it.
[00:39:36] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Thanks for having us.
[00:39:40] Speaker C: Hey, thanks for listening to the agency hour podcast and a massive thanks to. Thanks to Jeanette and Brett for joining us. I'm really looking forward to catching up with them in person again at our next live Mavcon event. Speaking of Mavcon, our next live event is happening in San Diego in October, and you don't have to already be in Mavericks Club to attend.
It will sell out. So if you would like to get a taste of Mavericks Club and what it's like to work with us and you want to tap into our amazing community of agency owners and mentors, then check out the link in the description and book your ticket to Mavcon before we sell out. It is October 14 to 16 in downtown San Diego. Ok, folks, remember to subscribe and please share this with anyone you think may need to hear it. I'm Troy Dean, and remember, Cap'n Crunch's full name is Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch.
