13: How I Handle Work Outside The Normal Scope for Clients on My Care Plan

Keegan 0:37
What’s going on everybody? Sorry for what was a weird break. You know, a couple of weeks ago, I took a vacation, and I completely unplugged. And it was amazing. If you haven’t done that, I highly recommend just unplugging. Even if you don’t go anywhere, if you can go somewhere else, although that is a major, major beta benefits. So, you know, this week, I wanted to get back into the groove, I wanted to start talking through this journeys and things that have happened lately. And really, the core of this episode is how I handle work outside the normal scope for clients that are on my care plan. Those are my premiere clients, my A plus A plus clients. And those are the ones that that really, they get the love, you know, they get all the love, at least that extra love. And so, you know, really I wanted to I wanted to go through some things.

Keegan 1:26
Because what can happen is that scope creep can happen, right? You get somebody on your care plan, you become their trusted go to person, which is awesome. That’s exactly what we all want. And then it’s you know, Hey, can you do this? Hey, can you do that? Hey, can you create this graphic? Hey, would you mind sending me reports from our website on this one particular thing, every twice a week as a recent recent request? And, you know, how do you handle those things. And that’s being really open and honest to saying, you know, hey, I’m more than happy to do that. But under the scope of what we’ve we’ve set, maybe that isn’t part of it. And we would have to adjust terms. If we want to go down that route, which I’m happy to go down, we just got to make sure that each side is taken care of right, like no one’s overworked and no one’s creating something that might lead to resentment, bitterness, or rubs in the relationship, open, honest communication is the way to do it.

Keegan 2:22
And so some things that I’ve done to make sure that the scope of work is not out not continuing to grow. I’m a really nice dude, like, I want to please my clients. And so what I’ve done is started outsourcing some of my work to awesome people. And by doing that, they don’t have the relationship with the client, they just have the work to be done. And what that allows them to do is say, hey, we’ve reached this limit, we’ve reached this point. Anything beyond that is going to cost more. And when it costs me more, it’s going to cost the client more. And sometimes with our time, we’re really free we’re giving we don’t put that value to our time. It’s a mistake I’ve made many times over the few years that I’ve been doing this. Is that I’ll just work and work and work and go above and beyond not track it. And that’s a huge, huge, huge mistake, something that I’ve royally screwed up. And something I don’t want to keep screwing up. So I got to figure a way to fix it. Right. You know, sometimes Another thing is that I’ve really started shrinking my margin so that I can grow.

Keegan 3:26
And how what is how does that really pertain to handling work outside the normal scope for clients is that, you know, it goes back to that outsourcing, it’s just another bullet on outsourcing. If I outsource, I’m going to shrink margins, that’s going to happen. But it puts parameters in place that keep me from overworking and not being paid accordingly for it. That’s really one of those things, you know, also stuff that something you can do to put in place to really keep the the scope creep from, from continuing to creep in, is really managing timelines and expectations, and also automating everything that I possibly can.

Keegan 4:06
So with that, you know, I like to put things on a timeline, I love using Clickup. And I’ll set a set date set timelines that I need to hit to make sure that the projects continue to stay on time. And with clients in their care plan, I will actually track time inside of Clickup with some integrations. And that helps make sure that things stay on time. Make sure that updates for websites happen when they need to happen because I’m reminded, and then I do my absolute best to automate those things so that the reminders pop up on my phone. Those things continue to just move.

Keegan 4:43
To go into a little bit more detail you know, outsource and work to awesome people. There’s a club that I’m in and Josh halls web design club. You’ve heard me talk about it here on the podcast before. There’s some amazing people in that group, some amazing people who are hustlers and who do really great work and this is a perfect example of why outsource and and really networking is crucial. I can find some of them, if I get in jam, if I get in a bind and need work done, I can go to them. And I really have become okay with shrinking margins. And you know, I’m a person who is a business guy, I do that during day during the day, you know, my day job has always been about managing budgets, managing travel about managing expenses, and costs, and driving sales.

Keegan 5:26
And so being okay with shrinking margins is sometimes hard to to deal with, you really want the biggest margin, but to make a little bit of less money in this game, is okay, as long as the quantity of what you’re doing is going up. So if I would rather make a few dollars less per client per month, because I’m outsourcing some of the work while being able to 10x, the number of clients I’m dealing with, because that will allow me to make more money and scale and do all the things that I want to do to become that full time website designer. And they’re managing timelines like things are gonna change, right things will change.

Keegan 6:06
Point in case I gave you an example here earlier, is that a client reached out and said, you know, hey, we’ve got this part of our website that we would love to get reports twice a week on, not anywhere in the scope of the partnership that we have started with. But I’m, again, extremely happy to go and do this for him. Because it’s something else, it’s an added benefit and added service for him. And I’m going to go even farther with what I’m doing for them. The first part I’m going to do is get I’m going to get them those reports.

Keegan 6:37
The second part is I’m going to actually create a video, a training resource so that they can look back at this. And if they need to pull the info, they can pull it themselves as well. And then I talked a little bit earlier about managing timelines and how to automate things so that I get reminders. And there’s a few things I use to make sure automations stay on time. So 17Hats is one of those things that I use a lot of its Automation features for. And mostly, it’s all really all centered around invoicing and payment. So when I set up a project or when I have someone on the care plan, I have recurring invoices that go out. And then I’ll also have recurring reminders. And then I can just go into one dashboard and see who’s looked at it who’s not paid and send them a text message or give them a call and make sure that things are being paid

Keegan 7:31
BaseCamp‘s another one of them, I actually had my in my inbound leads going directly from my forms on our website directly into Basecamp. And that just drops them into a lead bucket inside of Basecamp which allows me to follow up and then Zapier. Zapier is one of those things I’m really starting to fall in love with it’s it’s kind of a love hate relationship, because sometimes they don’t work. And sometimes they work really, really well. But I enjoy using Zapier because it’s one of those things that just connects random things that shouldn’t connect and makes life easier.

Keegan 8:06
So you know, all those things said, one thing I wanted to leave you with in this episode, and I wrote it in the script for this episode is just what I put in here as a knowledge bomb. And it’s that situations will change, your personal goals will change your clients goals will change, and your life priorities are going to change. And that’s okay. I want you to know, like I’m as invested as ever, in my side hustle. You know, last episode, I talked about the promotion and how that stuff was changed or two episodes ago, talked about how the promotion has really shifted things for the moment, I’m still invested in the side hustle. And at the moment, you know, I’ve really got to tighten up my processes, I’ve got to solidify my contract network. And I’ve got to focus on growth in the side hustle in my professional life. And so, and the side hustle and the professional life are kind of tied in.

Keegan 9:01
So I’ve got to continue this journey, I’ve got to continue this process, so that I can make my web design system that much tighter, because my day job will demand more time and more mental energy from me. And I have to be present for both. That’s the that’s the position I have put myself in and what I’m really happy to be in. So with out any further ado, I mean, that’s kind of it. That’s the episode in a nutshell. Definitely, you know, to read to kind of review this whole thing. Communication is is major communication is huge. outsource work so that you can you can have someone else hold the parameters of the normal scope of work for your clients. Keep that tight. be okay with shrinking margins when you outsource. Because that outsourcing is going to allow you to scale and it’s going to it’s going to help you work on the system that keeps that scope of work tighter for your client.

Keegan 10:01
And then automate whatever you can, so that you can, again, continue to keep things square, keep them in that box, keep them moving forward and keep them moving forward really efficiently. And that’s just some of the things that I’ve found to really help me in managing product xpect or client expectations, and just product delivering whenever I’m trying to get a site done on time. I really hope that helps. And if there’s anything that you have questions with, this is episode number 13. So you can always click the link below Keegan linear.com/e13. Leave a comment. Let’s start talking about this. Share with me some things that have happened with your clients, where the scope of work has just been blown to hell. Tell me those situations and what you did to get out of it, to fix it to make it better, and to ultimately hopefully, make your client extremely happy. That’s all I got today. I hope you have an amazing week, and we’ll see you in the next episode.