In today’s episode I finally make it around to inviting my good friend Jake Goldman on to the show. If you don’t know Jake, he’s running one of the largest WordPress agencies on the planet.
If you’re looking to scale your own shop, we talk about some very important steps starting with recruiting the right people to offering more than just web development.
Jake Goldman founder of 10up.com
Listen to the audio version
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What’s going on at 10up?
You might recall I recently did an e-mail interview with Jake covering seoslides.
More recently he and his team launched a new product called PushUp a plugin that will enable you to push notifications to a reader’s Mavericks desktop. In fact, if you’re in Safari now, you should have been prompted to subscribe to my site.
However, today’s episode will focus more on 10up the agency, as Jake promises to return to chat about the product side of things at a later date.
Growing an agency
One of the most important elements to a successful agency are the projects and accounts they work on, however, this should not overshadow the importance of hiring great people.
Jake shares his thoughts and process on hiring great WordPress developers and embedding them into the 10up culture.
Another important note, which I learned early on as well, do not stop at just web development.
Sure it’s going to depend on your goals and resources, but if you’re just pumping out projects and not building multiple revenue streams of support and strategy — you might find it difficult to grow.
Growth doesn’t seem to be easing up for 10up as they recently announced a new CEO.
Finding the right client
Another equally important note: find the right client that wants to scale.
Jake admits that early on, you have to take what you can get to pay the bills. I agree with this, so long as you know that you have a preferred client in mind. Client’s that want to sign support contracts or retainers because they have a need to scale and they want you to be a part of it.
Let’s hear from you
What were your thoughts on the interview?
I’m going to have Jake back to talk about his products and I’d love to gather some listener questions now. Post them in the comments below.
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