when I'm do it so we got the intros the
extras and a couple other minor bits in
here so that uh like I said it's
recorded live to tape
cool all right we're live all right this
is a bit of a pre-stream everyone
welcome to the show i've got Phil's
story here but we got full intros coming
in in just a few minutes and it will be
a very entertaining show and since we're
rolling up to time a little bit of music
carry us up to full showtime the days of
thunder we're going to make time stand
still a quarter after
midnight and I'm watching the
wall sometimes I feel so
uptight i just can't sleep at all
every day doing the same old thing we're
losing
time the weekend comes we got to have
some fun and
rewind these are the days of
thunder we're going to make time stand
still we got to feel the hunger hanging
over the edge just to taste
the I feel the rope
tightening choking up our
air we need to grab some
lightning friday's almost
here caught in a web we need to cut this
thread we're hanging
by where is it said you have to be half
dead to
survive these are the days of
thunder we're going to make time stand
still we got to feel the hunger hanging
over the edge just to taste
these are the days of
thunder we're going to make time stand
still we got to feel the hunger hanging
over the edge just to taste the thrill
these are the days of
thunder but we're going to make time
stand still we got to feel the hunger
hanging over the edges to taste the
B these are the
days there we are it is time ladies and
gentlemen it is time for WordPress
plugins A to Zed not Z H welcome to WP
Plugins A to
Zed it's episode 68 glow behind the
globe phil stories journey to SAS
success and we're
off wordpress the king of content
management systems powering the web with
over 80,000 plugins to choose from how
do you sort the junk from the gems
welcome to WP Plugins A to Zed where
we've been keeping the pulse of
WordPress alive for over 16 incredible
years join us every week for an
unrehearsed real talk breakdowns of the
latest and greatest plugins developer
and community member interviews some
weeks Amber and I team up to dig in
others I'm flying solo unpacking
WordPress news demoing a standout plugin
or sharing tips to power up your site no
scripts no fluff just the good stuff
from A to Z so plug in and let's get
rolling good morning good afternoon or
good evening wherever you happen to be
hiding out there on the globe today
coming to you direct from the brewery
overlook in beautiful southern Vancouver
Island i'm John Overall and in today's
show we're journeying through the
radiant WordPress cosmos with a true
innovator who's transforming how
agencies agent
agencies shine phil Story the founder of
Glow joins us to share his decadel long
enterprise and WordPress agency support
and maintenance we'll dive into his
insights on building reliable
reoccurring revenue streamlining
processes educating clients crafting
price strategies and delivering real
value through care plans lessons honed
from years of speaking with agencies
about what truly works plus we'll
explore Glow's origin story and Phil's
vision for his future whether you're a
plug-in enthusiast or WordPress agency
owner this episode is packed with a
glowing wisdom you won't want to mi miss
welcome to the show Phil i hope that
wasn't too much for you no that was
great thanks John thanks for having me
i'm loving the amount of glow puns you
managed to get in a couple impressive i
only tripped over one or two
no it's good to be here mate thank you
thank you for having me excited to uh
Yeah to uh Yeah to be on the show well I
was glad when you reached out to me and
when I looked into it and it's like wow
okay this is kind of cool because I've
been working myself trying to get my
agency moving forward in the right
direction and you've been doing a lot of
things you had a few suggestions on
things you want to talk about here and
you know there's just some really great
stuff that is happening and WordPress
itself is moving in unique directions
right now nobody knows absolutely what's
going to happen and how it's going to
flow but the software itself I believe
is not going anywhere and the way it's
going to be managed is going to change
so tell us a little bit about who Glow
is and where it came from
yeah sure man um so I mean you mentioned
it briefly in the intro about my career
so yeah just just over 10 years really
so I actually have a degree in
construction so like it was a completely
like unrelated I mean a lot of people
have done that right they have a a
degree that's got absolutely nothing to
do what they're actually doing now right
so uh yeah a lot of money spent a lot of
time spent at university to end up
basically doing absolutely nothing to do
with what I spent all that time and
money on but you know that's life um but
it ultimately you know that change of
direction for me did did lead me to to
today you know and and and running glow
so yeah I mean I guess a little bit
background would be that I ultimately
sort of stepped out of that construction
world after university and and taught
myself you know HTML and CSS right there
was a really good website you may you
may have come across it yourself at some
point John or anybody listening it was
called linda.com
i do remember that one yeah I think they
were based in I think they were
California based and I think LinkedIn
bought them in the end actually
um but it was just like an amazing
resource of of tutorials and and videos
on like how to do and you know how to
start uh you know careers in in web and
graphic designs and video production you
name it kind of they had everything on
there and that was really my sort of
starting point uh into the world of of
web design this is obviously before I
set my business up but it was there that
I came across WordPress for the first
time and that was yeah it was around
sort of 2010 2011 and up to that point
I'd kind of been building sort of you
know as you do when you start out a web
design business building websites for
like your family members in the local
town the local area um but they were all
sort of static HTML and CSS stuff so
when I came across WordPress it was kind
of a bit of a an eye openener for me
really and that really began like I said
yeah sort of a 10-15 year career of of
of running a web design agency part of
that on my own with a small team part of
that in a partnership with somebody else
who we ended up splitting right we had a
a team of about seven or eight of us at
one stage there but um but a big part of
what I've always done in my web design
agency career is offer an ongoing
support and maintenance service so we we
always had that as a service offering
right um and throughout that time used
kind of a different combination of tools
which ultimately led me to starting Glow
because we could just never quite find
one that did exactly what we needed it
to really we were sort of always mish
mashing other ones together um so really
Glow started originally as a as
something for our business we just
wanted to create something that we could
use for our business internally and then
of course we realized the opportunity to
expand that a bit further and maybe you
know other agencies around the world
might have also wanted that so uh I'm
pleased to say we've been proven right
about that of course yeah that's um yeah
a bit of an intro I guess into kind of
where we where we came about well the
maintenance part of WordPress is partly
what kept my business going during the
slow periods
you know yeah that and of course my big
thing when I got into this was web
hosting which I still which I still do i
still run a boutique hosting service
with you know a few servers and limit
the clients I get but the maintenance
was also a major component you know
especially after you spend a lot of time
creating a website for a client and
everything then you want to keep them as
a client and make sure they always have
that fantastic site you just built
yeah exactly and that was that was
probably something that I got into it
was maybe like a year after I set up in
business um you know obviously very new
to business generally i can actually
remember vividly still remember uh
sitting in my parents' kitchen talking
to them about my web design business how
it was going and I remember saying to
them you know it's going quite well like
we're getting you know project work in
i I' I'd joined a local networking group
and it was just amazing for generating
new clients but I didn't have that
recurring revenue you know and as you
were saying how that sort of saved you
on a you know more than one occasions in
in sort of quiet periods of project work
i didn't have that at that point and I
knew I really needed to create that
recurring revenue to sort of you know I
guess future proof the business in a way
for for for exactly the sorts of
situations that you described there so
yeah that was something I I guess I
managed to get into sort of setting up
fairly on in my my career in my journey
as running a running a web design
business so yeah I think it's a an
absolutely crucial part of any web
design business right is that is that
ongoing support revenue that you can
create so talking about that what would
you say could be some of the biggest
mistakes you've seen WordPress agencies
make when setting up their support
maintenance plans for their clients
it's a good question
um well not selling them at all that's a
that's that's a that's a major one yes
not selling them yeah I have I have come
across that more often than you would
than you would think and actually with
Yeah and and with agencies that are I
mean I don't have any data on this but
if I was you know finger in the wind I
would say that the smaller agencies you
know the the oneperson operators small
agencies
have it together better with the whole
support and maintenance offering than
the than the sort of the larger agencies
and that again like I said no data to
back this up but just my experience of
talking to hundreds and hundreds of
different agencies over the last few
years I often come across those who are
very established agencies doing very
very well they offer you know like a
plethora of services so they got the
full digital offering of SEO PPC social
email marketing you know and web design
and kind of support is just kind of one
of the services that they might offer
but typically speaking to a lot of those
they've sort of spent their their their
years as an agency building sites and
hosting them you mentioned hosting a
minute ago they obviously they always
sell the hosting but I've I've spoken to
so many that never just never never sold
the sort of the ongoing and support and
maintenance and not only that not only
did they not sell it whenever they then
got asked to do any of that work by the
client they just did it for free so you
know and it's quite amazing because
honestly like you talk to some of these
agencies who clearly they've got their
you know [ __ ] together generally because
they you know they're an established
agency but they're miss I mean some of
them I mean they could be missing out on
you know 10 15 20K a month some of these
agencies you know they've got hundreds
of sites that they've built over the
years right and never sold this this um
this this support package so so that's
one thing not selling it is obviously a
you know a miss um I think that the
moment in which they decide to try and
sell it would be another mistake so
commonly um agencies will kind of leave
the conversation of maintenance and
support to to to after they've built the
site and if you think about that from
the client's perspective all along the
journey you've been telling them we're
going to build you a site and it's going
to cost you $5,000 or whatever it is
right
um no mention of maintenance and support
you know and it's a 10-week project and
you get to the end of the 10 weeks and
the agency goes to the client uh right
you now need to choose a maintenance
package it's going to be $100 a client
goes whoa well you you didn't tell me
about this before we started working
together right so I think naturally that
then becomes a harder sell right because
it's you're sort of surprising the
client with it i mean you may obviously
convert some still if you do a good job
of it but you're going to you're going
to have a much better chance of
converting that client onto a
maintenance package if you talk to them
about it upfront and you put it in your
proposal and you you know you tell them
about the quality of your afterare and
show them some reviews from customers
who love your support service and that
sort of stuff so I think there are a
couple of key ones really John in terms
of Yeah absolutely that that sounds like
a big one there that is to make sure you
you know approach them while you're in
the middle of the project to Yeah get
them used to the idea of hey yes it's
costing this much to build it but
there's ongoing maintenance it's like
having your car you've got to change the
oil fix the tires you know you've got
you've got the house you own but yet you
still got to occasionally clean the
plumbing you know and you know mow the
lawn you know the maintenance the stuff
that just goes because Well it's not so
much that websites wear out it's that
technology advances too fast and if
they're not keeping up with the website
quits
functioning and Exactly and that car
analogy is one that I used to use quite
quite often actually just to try and
help particularly the the the least
technical clients kind of try and
understand a bit more about it but often
you didn't you didn't even need that
really if you did just did a good job of
explaining why the support and
maintenance package is needed afterwards
if you did a good job of that in the
proposal stage up front it's quite an
easy sell really because even for those
smaller clients that don't have much of
a budget most businesses as long as
they're you know they're you know
they're a decent business and they're
making some money they can afford $50
$50 a month right to make sure that
their website is protected right and
then you can obviously upsell them onto
higher packages if they want some more
support or it's an e-commerce website
that needs more mate or whatever you
know well so also one of the nice things
I found is a client that starts small as
they grow their needs increase and you
just you just increase the cost to them
appropriately as their needs increase
yeah yeah precisely and it's obviously
very easy to do that isn't it so um yeah
I think there's yeah there's almost sort
of no reason you know why you wouldn't
sort of sell a supportive m maintenance
package i think and and that whole you
know when to sell it thing is such a
crucial part of it because you know
those those larger agencies that I
described earlier who you know they've
been established for 10 15 years they've
been building websites and hosting them
but not maintaining them i've spoken to
plenty of those now and they're kind of
like well we get it um but how do we now
go back and sell maintenance to these
websites where you know we've been
hosting it for $300 a year for 10 years
and now we're saying it's going to be
$50 a month for maintenance as well you
know that's hard right that's very hard
to do that's a tough one yes i I It's a
tough one been down that road myself
yeah yeah i did in the early days as
well but it's No it's a tough one i
think I think you can always start now
though with obviously with new projects
so you can just say and I know a lot of
agencies now they just mandate it so
they just say you know if if you're
coming to us for a proposal on your
website you will be going on to a
maintenance and support package after
we've built this website if you want to
work with us yeah um and if you don't
take that you you're not working with us
kind of thing you know good luck
the way to keep them the way to keep
them there and keep them uh doing what
you need to do yeah yeah it is for sure
so you had mentioned before you know you
were interested in talking about setting
up efficient internal processes what do
you mean by that
this will be on the application that I
put on to show wouldn't it it would be
which is about two months ago i'm I'm
I'm pull I'm pulling notes from
everywhere you know sometimes internal
processes yeah i mean it's not the most
exciting topic in the world is it as as
a headline but it's important right in
in any in any business um I think if I
if I'm sort of relating that directly to
running a web design business which
obviously I did for for many years and
I'm sure quite a few people listening to
this um might be might be in the same
position um I think for me it's it's one
of the most important things to make
sure that you do well right to help you
grow the business is have efficient
systems and processes um it's one of
those things that I remember when I was
starting out in business whenever I used
to attend like local networking events
and anybody used to stand up and talk
about systems and processes I'd always
think
yeah not that important you know I'm not
going to speak to those guys and that
you obviously that was silly of me to be
like that but that's how I was in the
early days i was more sort of we need to
get the sales we need to you know we
need to get clients that you know that
was the big focus which obviously is
important as well but uh yeah if I could
wind the clock back there to my sort of
day one in business I would be setting
up Yeah systems and processes that have
you know detailed you know written
explanations of how we do everything in
the business it makes everything easier
right it makes customer support easier
customer success easier it makes
onboarding new members of staff easier
right because everything's documented um
but I mean yeah I mean it's such a big
topic i mean obviously generally it
could also include the actual software
you use right
that but let's let's break it up just a
little bit then yeah sure when you're
when you're talking about say you've got
a business either you've been going a
while you haven't done the internal
processes or you're starting from
scratch where would be the beginning
stage
of beginning to create the internal
processes what would you do
i would be personally I would document
what you do every day so I mean again
I'm not sure exactly who's listening to
the show it might be if it's if it's one
person operators this is going to be
easier for me to explain if it's teams
of teams of people then it's different
but I imagine the same rules apply
generally it's a little bit of everyone
who listens to the show yeah okay we got
we got your very beginning WordPress
listeners and we've got just a few
agencies that listen to us okay cool
cool i think just I mean just
documenting what you do would be an
obvious first step right
so this is this is nothing new right
that I'm that I'm explaining here either
i'm sure we've all heard this many times
before from different places right but
literally you know if you've got nothing
in place at the moment in terms of
internal systems processes documentation
I think for the first week or two or
three it's just writing down literally
what you do each day yeah so today might
be you know appear on John's podcast and
tomorrow you know and uh respond to
emails and then uh uh uh update the
accounting software and then talk to the
developers about the new feature
whatever whatever that might be open a
spreadsheet in Google Sheets and just
write it down monday I did A B CDE E and
just for now just create a list yeah so
then once you're sort of two three weeks
in you're probably going to be repeating
stuff you've already written down yeah
because there's only a certain amount of
things that we do right in running a
business so I think once you've then got
that initial list it's then going a
level deeper and writing down you know
what not just what you did but how did
you do what you did yeah so you could
use a tool like uh notion or Google Docs
or anything really i mean notion is very
good in how it brings things together
actually i think and it is something
that we use having previously tried to
do it in uh docs but um you know you can
set up a free notion account and split
your business into the core areas and
then write down you know the the extra
detail of that list that you've created
for two or three weeks so you can split
your business into you know the
marketing function sales uh operations
product and services
um yeah keep it to those broad
categories and then go into each one of
those and write down the relevant things
that you do and
Yeah you know if you're off sick or
somebody comes in that's new or you've
got a new support person or a customer
asks a question about you know how do I
do this or a client says you know what
did we agree here or or how can I do
this with my website everything's
written down yeah and you don't have to
keep coming up with the you know
different answers each time you just go
and pick that answer and give it back to
the client so like I said it's a very
broad topic right and that's an example
of what you could do to sort of start
getting a little more efficient if you
don't have those things in place uh
already and then obviously another part
of that whole thing is the actual tools
that you use right so the software that
you use each day to help you I don't
know automate a process that you're
doing manually at the moment or save the
business some money by using one tool
that does the same as three different
ones that you're using at the moment for
example so um I think it should be
something that just as business owners
generally we should just review on a you
could review it monthly or you could
review it quarterly or every six months
just do that little internal review of
systems and software and processes in
the business and can you make any cost
savings or can you make something take a
bit less time or all of these little
gains just ultimately help you run a
more efficient business and a more
profitable one as well oh absolutely and
that's the one thing that's important is
to make it a more profitable business
thinking thinking of profits you've
you've also made mention in that little
thing you sent me talking about setting
up pricing strategies client education
you know um pricing strategies for uh
web design agencies what's that did you
say pricing strategies for for web
design agencies well for web design
agencies you know delivering well uh
value through support care plans
oh specifically related to care plans i
see yeah um I think yeah I mean it's
just something I've been focusing on
quite a lot in the last few months um
I'm creating um like a document at the
moment on kind of pricing generally in
the WordPress care plans uh
market because it's a question I guess
get asked a lot on on LinkedIn so I'm
very visible on on LinkedIn i post very
regularly always talking about WordPress
of course very often it's WordPress uh
support and maintenance stuff that I
talk about um and I often get people
commenting or sending me a message in in
the DMs you know about pricing you know
how do I set up pricing for my website
support business and what should I
charge clients and again you would be
surprised at the size of companies that
get in touch and ask this question you
know there are some decentsiz agencies
that ask this so you know it's not just
um you know people are just getting
going and just setting up a web design
business it's kind of larger more
established teams as well so it's a
common question it's obviously one
that's quite important to make sure that
you know you're charging the client the
right amount of money but also the right
amount of money in terms of being
profitable for you in the business so I
think there's a few ways that you can um
you know ensure that you're sort of
ticking ticking all of those boxes i
tried a sort of a various you know uh
array of setups for for pricing for the
support and maintenance stuff over the
years you know sort of changing the
number of plans that we offered
certainly changing the kind of price
that we offered changing what we
included in each plan you know so an
example of that was that in the early
days we included website hosting as part
of our support packages uh and later
down the line kind of remove the hosting
out and charge that as a as a as a
separate amount so you'd sort of get
that annual hosting revenue from the
clients and then also the monthly
support and maintenance because I mean
they are different effectively right the
hosting is we all know what hosting is
right we know what that is and then the
support and maintenance is more of the
ongoing care and maintenance stuff so we
use them differently and of course then
they are different revenue streams at
that point they absolutely are two
different revenue streams yeah yeah yeah
nice to hear nice to hear you're in
agreement there John well you know I
I've got a fair number of clients on on
just plain hosting i've still got
clients on hosting and maintenance and I
think I've got one or two clients that I
strictly just do their maintenance
because they're hosted somewhere else oh
yeah okay yeah that's that's another
another thing i mean I do see quite a
few few agencies who don't take that on
right if they haven't built the site
they're not doing the maintenance but
yeah everybody's different I guess with
that you Well you know just a choice
isn't it a lot of mine are a lot of my
clients I've had for eight plus years
and some of them came to me back in the
day when they preferred to stay with
whatever hosting provider they were and
it's like okay fine I can work with this
hosting provider because they're very
similar to my server setup some there's
been a couple of hosting providers they
want me to said you know what unless you
move I'm not touching it yeah because
it's just so different
because anyone who knows anything about
hosting realizes that every server is
set up just a little bit different yeah
yeah yeah exactly it's not worth the
risk either usually right for one for
one client you know um most of the time
at least it's not uh it's not worth
taking it on and then some kind of issue
happening in you not having a clue how
to resolve it for them right just that's
only ever going to reflect badly on you
isn't it so
yeah yeah absolutely so a piece of
advice you could give a WordPress agency
just starting to offer maintenance
service what would you give them to help
ensure long-term success
oh good question uh a couple of things
make sure you charge the you know the
right amount of money now obviously
people are in different parts of the
world listening to this uh but I think
just don't just don't be cheap right
because again I have I've seen this i
mean I start by the way this is all from
experience and learning myself so um
what you're offering the client there is
a very valuable service very
valuable number one just actually being
there to help them when they need it
that is immensely valuable because the
amount of web developers out there who
build sites for clients and then
disappear and the client can never get a
hold of them there's unfortunately still
too many of them mhm so the fact that
you are offering this service and saying
look if you need us we're here and you
can reach us you know Monday to Saturday
you know 8:00 a.m 5 whatever it might be
and really just giving that quality
afterare service that is extremely
valuable alone that's extremely valuable
but then add on all of the other stuff
that you're doing for them from a
maintenance perspective you know keeping
things backed up monitoring uptime
updating plugins monitoring performance
what whatever those things are checking
for security vulnerabilities and fixing
them proactively when you think about
the client their website very often is
like should be best salesperson for a
start so it's very often like their
livelihood particularly for these
smaller smaller clients that you know
lots of us have had and um having it
very well looked after is a massive
thing you know in ensuring the success
of their business so if you rock up and
you say "Yeah it's£10 a month for me to
support and maintain site." It's like
well it's so much more valuable than
that the service that you're providing
so that's number one is like think
carefully about your pricing and make
sure you charge you know a good amount
of money obviously you don't have to rip
them off of course I'm not suggesting
that but just don't don't make it so
cheap that it's you know you're kind of
shooting yourself in the foot really I
guess from from day one right um so that
would be number one charge them the
right amount of money i think number two
is always always add it to your
proposals of of web design projects so
um if a client is coming to you and
you've got to the stage of writing a
proposal for them whatever your process
looks like for sales it invariably comes
to a point where you write a proposal
for them so in that proposal always add
a section i mean you might have it
templated right but so all in that
template make sure you have a section
for um care plans or supported
maintenance packages or whatever you
want to call it list your plans list the
prices of each one and and and what's
included in each one and then when when
you are then presenting that proposal to
the client on a video call or in person
or
whatever spend some time in that during
that proposal presentation on support
and maintenance and explain to them this
is what's included this is how we're
going to look after you this is how you
can get hold of us this the here are the
plans for you to choose from and and
here's you know John from you know X
company who absolutely loves our support
service and here's what he said about
that spend time on that now obviously
you're trying to sell them a new website
so that will form the majority of the
presentation but don't miss that support
and maintenance bit because it's an easy
part to sell and it's the right time to
sell it and when the uh project comes to
an end it's just okay which of the
packages do you want to select and it's
not a surprise because you've already
talked to them about it so I could
probably go on forever John about that
but I think they would be my two my two
uh yeah two main ones really that's
quite all right well that leads us up to
talking about Glow itself and what Glow
offers because I to be honest until you
reached out to me I hadn't even heard of
you okay so I did do a little research
down into it and wandered through your
website a little bit and I found okay
it's a a it's a
WordPress maintenance uh forget the term
platform platform for people agencies or
whatever managing multiple sites to be
able to manage them in one area but you
have some features that I've never seen
from any of the other offerings out
there such as WP Manage and there's a
dozen or more of them doing this yeah
there's a few these days yeah well I
I've seen a lot of them come and go over
the years um yes true true as well yeah
but you've got you've got options here
such as a support ticket service you
know client reports backups um uptime
reports you know timeline multiple sites
uh
uh team there was another couple items
in there that I thought I saw such as
some stats and other things so tell us a
little bit about Glow and what your
offerings are from that
yeah sure so so um I I briefly mentioned
at the start how how Glow came about
without adding too much detail at that
point but um just to put a kind of a bit
of a story on it so when I was running
my agency in uh in the UK
um we had diff different systems coming
back to systems we had different systems
in place for for handling support and
maintenance so um with every supporter
maintenance package as the name suggests
you've got the support element and
you've got the maintenance element right
so you've got the support bit is clients
reaching out and saying "Hey Phil the
contact form's broken on our website we
need a fixing please." Or "John's just
joined our team here's his headsh shot
and his bio please add him to the about
us page." Or whatever those fixes and
content changes might be you've got the
support element that you're charging the
client for and then you've got the
maintenance element where you're
updating the plugins and you're taking
backups every day and you're monitoring
uptime or you know whatever that
whatever that might be and then the
third element is the reporting yeah
you're showing the client you know for
that $100 a month that you're spending
with us on sport and maintenance here's
all the stuff that we're doing Mr and
Mrs clients here's all the value that
you're getting for that $100 uh every
month and we just had we just had
everything disjointed we were trying to
handle support requests on email which
works to a point if you've got a few
clients you can do it on email as soon
as you get over certainly into double
figures you need some kind of ticketing
system to help you do that better even
more so if you've got a team of people
email's an absolute disaster that's
exactly why ticket systems exist uh in
the first place um and just to labor the
point I guess a bit on the support side
that is the most important part of this
service that you're providing to the
client by a distance when you
consider client retention so if you want
your client to remain a client for a
long time you better do a really good
job of providing support to them when
they need it right um every client in
the world understands the difference
between good support and bad support
yeah oh yeah if the support is really
good yeah if the support's really good
they're getting fast responses the
team's empathetic in replying to you
you're you're not going to leave yeah as
a client you wouldn't leave there's no
reason for you to leave if you if the
support's really bad and you can't get a
hold of the agency or they don't reply
for a week or they're really slow or
they don't answer your request
properly it doesn't matter how good that
agency is at updating plugins and taking
backups none of that matters because the
support quality is so bad so the client
leaves so when we were obviously running
you know when I was running my agency we
were analyzing all of that we realized
that we couldn't stay with email forever
to handle support requests so we got a
support ticket system was it was it was
called Fresh Desk actually you've
probably heard i remember that one mult
multi-million dollar company it's an
amazing ticket system so we were using
that and we were using uh manage WP
which you mentioned before um they were
the first in this space of WordPress
management tools they got purchased by
GoDaddy a few years ago um and that was
great you know it was great for a time
um it helped you know when going from
nothing to using manage WP was very was
very good but we still had things
separate and ultimately we wanted it all
in one place for efficiency of our team
they kind of line around one login one
dashboard one source of truth for
everything for all the sites that we're
managing including support so support
maintenance and reporting and it didn't
exist John and you've sort of
highlighted a minute ago really that
you've you've come across features of
Glow that don't you've not seen anywhere
else in these platforms before and right
that's because they still don't exist in
in any of our competitors uh products
either so yeah that sort of marriage of
support maintenance and reporting in one
dashboard is really I guess our USP uh I
suppose um yeah but it's really about
that sort of productivity and efficiency
of teams being able to just Yeah one
dashboard one login and they've got
everything they need to kind of run that
support and maintenance service in the
in the agency yeah i haven't had a
chance to test out your software yet but
one question I've got is for example the
clients trying to reach out to you know
you're supporting them can they do they
do they reach out to you through the
back end of their website dashboard are
are you talking here about as in if you
were an agency your clients or customers
of Glow yeah your clients my my clients
because I'm using your service to
service my clients and my clients need
to reach out to me is there like
something in do I put because I know
this would be put as a plugin onto their
site I assume that's right that's
correct and then from there they log
into their website to do whatever their
weekly updates or their changes or
whatever for their content or their
products but is there a link right there
that they go "Oh I need to reach out to
my support."
Good question there's two ways that the
there's two ways your client can raise a
support request to the agency yeah so
number one is just by sending an email
so the the the agency who of course is
the is the Glow customer yeah they have
the Glow account they are able to set up
a couple of white label features but one
of those is a is a support email address
okay okay and and what that means is
when your clients then email that
address that email then gets forwarded
into Glow as a ticket okay okay so for
the agency to manage internally from
their Glow dashboard it's just there as
an inbox of tickets in Glow all the
client has to do is just fire off an
email well that that's the important
thing is it's easy for the That's the
important thing exactly
uh they can log into kind of their view
of Glow as a client and raise a ticket
from the dashboard but I this is off the
top of my head the last time I checked
the the stats it was something like 94%
of tickets raised are by email yes so
that kind of gives you an idea of what
the client wants to do yeah they don't
really want to log in they just want to
send an email so you have both of those
options the one you described is one
we're looking at actually John so okay
um a link within the WordPress dashboard
to raise a ticket as well for the client
um it's not something we've added yet
but I'm sure will be something that we
we add in the future it's just it's just
one of the ways I think of doing things
it's probably because I spend so much
time in a WordPress dashboard yeah no it
makes sense that you're not the first
person to suggest it either so yeah I
think uh yeah quite so basically the
clients reach out to you through a
standard email address that you've set
up pop into Globe okay exactly exactly
right yeah yeah all right now some of
the other items you've got in here your
client reports you know you briefly
touched on that what kind of reports
does it generate for for you to give
your clients and you mentioned white
labeling is it all white labeled so it
doesn't carry Glow's uh logos or
anything when you submit it to your
client yeah exactly so um I always say
if if I was an agency signing up for a
Glow account the first thing I would do
is just add my you know my brand my logo
and color scheme and that sort of stuff
um because you only have to do it once
and then it's done forever basically so
whenever you create reports uh inside
Glow which you can automate by the way
so you should just set them up set them
up once and then they can run on a
schedule so you know send a report to my
client on the first Monday of every
month for example and then Glow will
compile and send it every month mh um
and it will come from you know an email
address of your agency as well it won't
say that it's come from Glow right it'll
say it's come from you know my agency or
whatever it's called um but in terms of
reporting uh it's a very sort of slick
smart modern looking report it's easy to
understand it's easy to create and
customize uh by the agency fully
customizable you can change the page
order you can change the language you
know if it needs to be in Spanish or
French or something else you can you can
do that as well um and then it obviously
just sort of compiles the information
about that website from your Glow
account based on the work that you've
done and the support that you might have
helped the client with um the time that
you might have spent on on various
activities that could all be recorded
and added in there okay um but that
automated feature is really nice because
it basically just means you just set it
up once and then it'll do it so there's
components inside Glow account itself so
I'm working on a client site i make
notes inside a glow account and it
compiles it for whatever client is
that's right on that and then that's how
it generates the reports so exactly
right so let let's say you excuse me
let's say you update 10 plugins for
clienta a.com and you do that from the
glow
dashboard for each of those 10 plugins
that gets updated it just fires a little
note to that website within the glow
dashboard so you could then go to that
website within glow and it will say you
know John updated Yoast SEO to version
25 and Phil updated you know advanced
custom fields to version five or
whatever it might be okay and it just
keeps that little um you know a bit like
an activity log plugin sort of similar
to that it keeps that little record as
well well the activity log is very
important um I've learned I've learned
that one not quite the hard way but it
saved my butt once when a client went in
and updated stuff they broke the site
then blame me and when I pulled up the
log it's like "No you did this." And
they're like "Oh Glo." Yeah yeah glow
will do the same glow will tell you
again any actions that happened in
WordPress it will record okay so Glow
records them if someone makes the
actions in WordPress correct ah see that
that that that was the key I was getting
to was to make sure it not only records
them if you do the actions in Glow but
it goes back the other way okay yeah it
and it tells you who did it as well
which obviously an important piece of
the puzzle it's a very important piece
of the puzzle when something breaks it
is it is mate yeah no so it kind of Yeah
runs runs two ways like that now for the
for the time being in terms of recording
actions from WordPress to Glow it's only
actions related to core plugins and
themes so updates activations
deactivations installs deletes yeah at
the moment it's um it doesn't include
sort of you know edits to pages or
deleting a post or we've had a few
requests for us to to add those things
so we may well do in the future but no
at this point it's just core plugins
theme there's there's other there's
other tracking plugins that you can use
to to track that information very true
yeah every site I build gets one of
those so that I know who's doing what
yeah yeah very useful indeed yeah yeah
learned that one the hard way years ago
is to not just because something goes
wrong you're the one that gets blamed no
matter who did it yes indeed yeah well
you're the the first port of call aren't
you
so you've got other little pieces into
the site here such as performance you
know what is the performance function
here for it it's an integration with
Google page speed insights so it's just
an automated daily scan of all of your
clients websites and then it gives you
just a nice little sort of neat daily
history of those uh those performance
scans so across desktop and mobile we
we've all run a Google page speed
insights report before on a website I'm
sure so you'll you'll um you know you'll
see that sort of um opportunities
section I think they call it uh you know
that sort of tells you to I don't know
eliminate vendor blocking resources and
update this and change that and this
that and the other so you get that each
day um and then in terms of the report
uh that goes to the client it will just
sort of aggregate that performance
information so if you're sending monthly
reports it will show the client you know
the average load speed in this month or
the average performance score out of 100
for desktop this month or whatever so
yeah um yeah there's kind of nothing for
the agency to to do with that particular
feature because it just runs fully
automated in the background but we get a
lot of nice feedback about the history
section of that so So it sort of shows
the dayby-day um yeah uh difference in
in performance scores it's quite helpful
right because I don't know if you see
that today the performance score is 30%
lower than it was yesterday that tells
me that something's significant has
probably changed on the site right you
might want to do something about it and
check it over so it's quite it's quite
helpful dig into it and find out what's
up all right so you've been emphasizing
you know the real value of the of
support and yeah can you share a success
story where an agency using glow
significantly improved their uh client
relationships
I can't I can't name names
Um but we had we had a an agency that
managed about the last time I checked
about 350 websites based in the UK in in
uh north of England in Yorkshire and
they firstly were not using any
maintenance system beforehand
uh which is quite amazing on that wow
that's impressive with that many
websites yeah yeah um but they were
using email for support and as their
team was growing they were just running
into issue after issue pretty pretty
much every week so they had uh emails
marked as red that should have been
unread because they hadn't been dealt
with and the other way around they were
having to sort of forward emails on to
other teammates for them to deal with it
and it was just a mess basically so uh
moving it into this one unified
dashboard with Glow has saved them hours
and hours of time uh and really their
big reason for doing it apart from the
saving of the time was their sort of
client uh contract renewals on a they
they run renewals on a 12- monthly basis
and they have a meeting with every
client every 12 months to say this is
what we've done this is why we want you
to sign up again this is how much it's
going to cost uh and Glow's reporting
has been massive for that so not only
the reporting but the logging of what we
were just talking about there so the
logging of any activity that's taken
place uh in WordPress because um they
have I think about 95% of their plug-in
updates on auto update in WordPress now
a lot of agencies would never do that
you know as long as they as long as they
live uh but these guys do because they
pretty much build every single website
in pretty much exactly the same way same
template same set of plugins yep so it's
very uniform so they they have faith in
the plugins they use okay precisely um
so what they really needed from Glow as
well was this ability to make sure that
Glow records all of those automated
updates in WordPress mh because they
didn't want to have to go and add them
in manually for the reports for 350
websites right so that that that that uh
uh feature we were talking about a
minute ago where it logs all of that
stuff into our timeline feature is a is
a big massive one for them so yeah it's
been a big one for sort of streamlining
their support operations saving them a
lot of time and then helping with those
uh yearly contract renewals as well with
clients so yeah that's a good one but we
have agencies managing you know five or
six sites we have agencies managing four
or 500 sites so it's Yeah yeah but you
have a nice variation across the board
of what it is i think it's a good
representation of the WordPress
ecosystem really isn't it there's lot
you know there's lots of us little
little guys out there and then there's
lots of you know very established
agencies building amazing sites really
with it as well so it's there is there
is and over the years I've seen seen
them grow and come and go and seen some
go from I've seen a few go from next to
nothing to highly successful yep you
know so pretty quickly as well yeah and
yeah the WordPress community and
WordPress uh ecosystem has been quite an
incredible journey because I joined it
back at WordPress 2.0
okay wow so well in the beginning it's
still going pretty strong really it's
still going very strong i was I was part
of the uh teams that helped mix the
Kool-Aid to spread the WordPress world i
was in the early word camps i I created
I created courses and I used to teach it
at night school here in my local
community to people on WordPress so cool
in fact I still have a couple three
clients I got from that time period too
wow that's a that's a long-standing
client for sure i mean that's the reason
it's so successful well a huge reason
for why it's so successful the whole
community aspect is incredible really
the the whole community aspect is
incredible and where it's been going has
been quite interesting especially the
last year as to Yeah indeed yeah what I
what I've seen in the last year myself
with it is I've seen a re a resurgence
of excitement in WordPress again
something I haven't seen since the
beginning and partly what I see is I see
a younger generation coming into it you
know the the millennials and the zoomers
that are starting to enter into the
internet field i mean there's some
amazing products being built for it as
well at the moment kind of extending
that whole you know uh that whole
ecosystem that there really is um
every seems to be every sort of month
that you know if I get an update from
the WordPress weekly newsletter or WP
founders or whatever there's always
something really cool that someone else
has built you know which is which is
great and you know is a huge part of us
keeping the whole ecosystem going you
know against
um you know the threat of competiting
you know competing CMS systems but the
last time I saw some results on you know
the uh market share and that stuff it
was still impressively strong right um
despite all of those new modern it's
it's holding in the 40% range is where
it's holding and precisely you it's
really hard to get much past the 40%
range unless unless you happen to be
like Google Search who managed to get so
far ahead but for everything else 40% of
the market is a massive chunk of the
market which means there's lots of
opportunity for anyone who wants to
enter that market you know all you got
to do is find your particular niche of
that market you want to go after that's
right that's right yep yep millions and
millions of people literally quite
literally on all of that well that's
been all great Phil i appreciate you
coming this is the point where you get
to tell everyone where they can find you
what they can do and uh Oh nice
no it's been a it's been a it's been a
pleasure mate sorry I just cut I cut you
off there but I'll I'll continue and and
and if you've got another question feel
free but yeah uh best place is the
website right you know for glow
generally um so you could Google Glow WP
for example and would appear nice at the
top there the website itself is
getglow.io so ge tg g l o w.io
uh you'll find a lot of the stuff that
me and John have just been talking about
there and then as I said before I'm very
I'm very active on LinkedIn so if you
just search Phil's story on LinkedIn
hopefully I'll appear fairly high on
that list of people but um you've you've
seen my face here on the video as well
so you'll notice me there on LinkedIn
for my profile as well but yeah like I
said always very active on there always
talking about WordPress support
maintenance stuff so feel free to sort
of say hello there as well if you're an
agency and you're you know uh managing
multiple sites and you want to do a bit
of a better job and you know
particularly around support stuff uh
yeah always always happy to chat yeah
and for those of you listening in the
download for the podcast you can go
watch the video where I've been sharing
the screenshots of everything we've been
talking about while we were while uh
Phil was talking awesome so you can go
check out some of the stuff that was
highlighted and pointed out on the Glow
website with all of that being said
we're going to let our girl take us on
out of here don't run away on me Phil uh
we'll be right back after the credits
here reminders for the show all show
notes can be found at
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A to Z john can also be reached at his
website
johnoverall.com or email him directly
john@wpro.ca
ca thanks for joining us and have a
great day
thanks for listening to the show this
show is copyright by
johnoverall.com so until next time have
yourselves a good morning good afternoon
or good evening wherever you happen to
be out there on the globe today
okay we're still live on YouTube just so
you know and uh this is a point here
where if we have any last minute things
to babble about um about the about your
offerings or anything we can share it
with those that hang around on the
YouTube channel so thanks everyone for
showing up uh thanks again to Ryan from
InfluenceWP for popping in the show
making a couple of comments ah cool uh
yeah I spoke to Ryan a few months ago
actually yeah he's uh I interviewed him
um Yeah I saw that yeah back in the back
when I first started doing my interviews
again he was one of the he was the first
interview I did when I started bringing
him back oh nice oh yeah he says "Tell
Phil to quit dodging him."
Sorry Ryan
well I mean I it is true i did speak to
Ryan a few months ago but if I forgot to
reply I apologize sir i will be uh I
will be in touch
no it's it's great and uh so I I do like
what's happening and I do like some of
the changes and I do like what Ryan is
creating over on Influence WP that's a
quite the system there
yeah if I remember right it's a there's
a it's a well part of it is a directory
right of um it's a big part is a
directory but it's a place where a place
where people can actually recommend
stuff and his directory is more about uh
the business offering a discount not him
collecting it as a uh affiliate
he's not using affiliate links the
business is offering a discount that
they don't normally offer to anyone else
it's a unique discount that's only
available there so that's right yeah
yeah and it's becoming quite I have now
been Yeah no that's good that's good to
hear i have now been uh well and truly
reminded to get back to get back to him
yeah i put I put I put my web hosting
business up on that one so that and my
that and my podcast so to get a little
more know
but at any rate what'll happen here is
uh I will email you and let you know
when the regular part of the podcast the
just downloadable goes live but the
YouTube version is live now and once I
finish this it'll just continue on for
everyone else we managed to hit some
decent views so it's all good all right
well thanks everyone on YouTube we're
going to cut the stream