Last Friday was published the interview that Jesús Nuño did with me, in his program regreso a Takedao.
I share with you the result.
Transcription
.Back to Takedao, episode number 22. Today we talk to David Perez. Very good morning David, how are you, how are you? How are you?
How are you?
Good morning, very nice to meet you. Must go here to your postca. thank you for coming thank you very much for coming I was really looking forward to you coming I was really looking forward to you coming I was really looking forward to you coming I was really looking forward to you coming and talking here for a while and asking you some questions that by the way we have two audience questions that we will see later but today but first of all I want you to introduce yourself today I want you to introduce yourself David come on come on come on come on well I am the director of an agency together with my partners we are running a marketing and development agency and well we do mostly WordPress webs, we are very specialized in that platform that surely you will talk a little bit and well, we take to digital marketing, well, we take what is the digitization strategy of the company in the Internet world, then from what is its visibility on the Internet, from what is its proposal on the web and what is then its own internal operation because we also enter into issues of CRM processes, automations and all this that is now very much in fashion too. Okay, okay. Listen and ask, tricky question, tricky question. The day I want or need any service from a marketing agency, why choose Close Marketing and not any of the thousands of others in Spain? Well, it is true that there are many agencies, the offer is quite large, what makes us different are mainly, well, we say, our people tell us, we are good people, that is, we are very honest and we never try to cheat or sell great results and smoke that can be achieved, of course, but we do try to be very transparent and be very consistent in what we offer to the client and reach some goals together with the client. It seems unbelievable but it is one of the parts. Then we call it the whole strategy, all of it, complete and very specialized. We have specialists in each of the legs, we even manage to provide hosting, that is to say that the agencies often get out of the subject. We have our own servers. -Look. -Yes, because we have always been concerned about providing all the service and, of course, we make a very fast website. We don’t use Elementor, I’m telling you. -Good, good. -And of course, people who don’t understand that, what does it mean in the end? Well, at the end of the day, they are websites that are fast because we provide maintenance. That is, we make one if necessary, we renew the web and of course, and then we have to maintain it, many agencies stay with that, I give you the web and then you just take care of it as best you can. Then we do the strategy and the implementation. We are the traveling companion, let’s say, with the company’s director or with its marketing team, and Marta obviously uses digital strategies. Okay, okay. Hey, and how did you… did you study something related to marketing or did it come to you out of passion? Well, the truth is that in terms of studies I have done a potpourri that at the beginning could be that it has been a little more decentralized, but then professional life has served me a lot. I say this because I studied statistics, I did a diploma, then I was a year of Arambo doing the third year of statistics and then I did a degree in marketing fourth and fifth. And now I work in programming, that is to say, I also did programming before. So, in the end I have a fairly broad knowledge of development that I try to combine with marketing, that is, not only what to do, that is, not only how to do it, but why, right? And where to go, right? And many times we advise people to do things that maybe they had not thought about. So, to me and to my clients… Well, I have a client that I did a consultancy and he already says “Look, David, I want to see you every month”. And well, that’s it. Well, let’s meet and talk about your digital strategy. But in person, right? Well, yes, online, you know that nowadays… Okay, everything online, but yes, effectively, from Valencia, okay, okay, perfect, listen, I want to ask you some internal questions to see what you can tell me, but there is someone here who has another agency and so on, and I wanted to ask you about client management, for example, what do you use for client management? What app or what software do you use? Yes, yes, well let’s see, yes, yes, yes, I don’t have any problems, I count my work. Let’s see, we pay a lot of money for tools, yes, it’s true, I have sometimes made an invoice and I say “shit the most”, but of course it’s like the one I say, who has a warehouse or a factory, he buys the machinery, we have to work with tools, we work with several tools when it comes to doing the complete process of a client. To manage customers we use Clientify, in fact we are ProPanner, which is a CRM to manage customers, well, a normal CRM plus the marketing automation that comes with it. Then we use Plan Business to manage healthy projects, which allows us not only to have the vision of each project and have everything in charge, but to have a slightly broader vision and see a set of projects and a set of objectives at the end to guide the team to one side or the other. And then I use it a lot and well, I trained it, we did a training last year and this year I was giving it a lot of strength, putting all the protocols of the company, from how to publish a website, which everyone says, well I give it to be visible in google and that’s it, we do a process there of a lot of things and we have a knowledge database that in the end what we want is that it is owned in the company and that in the end, if there is a team that has to come, then at the end it will be with a knowledge and how are we going to see, if the bug has fallen there. Sorry to the listeners. Well, listen and Clientify, why Clientify and not others? Well, in the… There’s a lot of them out there. Yes, yes, yes, yes, I was there before I went, well, I told you about my study, I have been a marketing technician for a long time and then I was marketing director and well, I had different responsibilities and as I have always had the technological side, I always tried to coordinate teams, so since 2010 I was in a team of marketing managers and I put a cerremera sugar cerremes that now was community before, which was open source and now it’s a bit of a hybrid. So the CRM at the end is a little bit to manage customers that when you have work to do, let’s say that people come to you from the internet, then of course manage them to not lose that pulse with the customer to be able to sell your service to other products, then of course I remember that I had a team of 8 people and I told them if you could tell me that when you tell a customer that in two weeks I will see you more if you can promise me that you remember or it is not necessary to use the tool and in the end the one who entered in that workflow of everything that is to carry the CRM the management of clients in what you are with him and all this when already a letter of clients from 20 30 clients because to know that you have let’s say in portfolio is fundamental. Of course, I learned that a long time ago and I worked with many CRM, then I made a plugin that I imagine we will talk about plugin too, WordPress that was very well known that connected the forms to the CRM so you did not have to pass them by hand to the CRM and well I have worked with VTiger, with VTE also, with Bitrix, with a lot of Microsoft Dynamics, all these I connected and in the end works with many tools in the end in CRM. But of course, when we recently got to know a tool through a client, which in fact we implemented without knowing it, here we get into gardens, the one that we are interested in the gardens and if we are not interested in it says “come on then let’s get into it”, we lost hours but we gained a very important knowledge of the platform and in the clientify song because it has, it is a CRM like any other, that is, customer sales management and all that, but it has the marketing automation part, that is, a marketing work with sales, both. So, in the end, what the marketing team does, which is advertising campaigns, internet presence, customer acquisition management, together with the flow to the commercial team, is to see what happens with the customers it generates. Many times it happens that, hey, I generate customers and what happened? Oh no, I’m going to call them for commerce? or I don’t know what. So here you have the whole team looking at what is going on and what we are doing. So, the truth is that they have felt very good. Perfect. And of course, because I wanted to tell you that after a certain number of clients, it is impossible to remember everything, so you have to have a client and sales people, you have to have a team of 5 or 6 sales people and 20 or 30, whatever it is, or you yourself, just one, just one and reaching your portfolio. and also for example the email marketing campaigns are done by the CRM itself, so email marketing has always been a very good strategy to attract customers and well, it allows you to have a marketing and sales strategy at the same time and I think that nowadays it is fundamental and let’s see because right now you are in a process of expansion of the agency because how many employees do you have right now? Well, we are 15 plus two external ones. 17 ok mother of mine so today you are taking clients outside Granada? Yes, for some time now we have been working a lot in Barcelona, we also have a lot of clients there, we have a few big clients in Madrid and Valencia and then through the plaques we are going out a little bit from… that is also our idea of Spain, so we have to sell very specific products, there was a sale of an American Indian, I don’t know what I remember, the sale came in there. Look, these are markets that are not… that as an agency, as a company it is very difficult to enter, you have to make many trips, get to know the companies that know you and all this is a more laborious job and it changes with the plans because if you make a need you fit it and offer it to the market and from that part they come from everywhere and in that time it is an effort that we have been making for some time and this year we are going to give it a bigger push. The commercial portfolio, that is to say, the commercials that you have now are going through the work camps… We have no commercials. You have no sales representatives, none. None. Viso and I are the most commercial ones. We don’t have a commercial figure. So you are only the visible heads. Of course, we do not sell churros and the voice of a salesperson selling something that has to be adapted to the customer is complicated, which is not a strategy, which in the same proposal that the salesperson makes, he is already giving a bit of advice and consultancy as to where it has to go and so on, and of course in this process we do not always do any work and the teams we have are marketing technicians and of course they make some proposals but most of them we make them on our own. We do not have sales people and it is true that a figure that does not fit in the company, it is like a friend, we do not have a friend, that is to say, we have to have the subject contraliado but we have never had a friend, we have had everything very automated and they are figures that we do not understand here in the company and we see more a marketing technician, I mean, I had a person, Irene, who is in charge of Key Digital, but she is not a salesperson, that is, she does not sell, that is, she sees what the client needs, she advises him, she takes the proposal and makes it. It is different, we do not sell churros, you know? So, it is complicated, I know that there are agencies in this sector that have a lot, they have sales people, but of course, when you… I don’t know, that is my assessment, I say here all my personal opinions, but when you go into detail with the sales person you can see that they do not have deep knowledge and of course that feeling has given me a bit of a strange feeling, right? to be talking about a person who maybe does not know the subject well, right? so, I don’t know, our philosophy never fits that profile and that is why we have not had it. Okay, so what you have is of course the developers and the designers. If we have, well, if you want I can tell you the whole team, we have a team of, well, the number is four developers, three designers and the rest of the marketing team, and then I’ll take out the marketing team. We have a lot of marketing team, we have a lot of maintenance, proposal of social networks, like NANA, and then we have a development team which is quite large for a marketing agency and then apart from those three designers who are mostly web designers. we have a corporate designer who also does corporate video but you can see him and Alvaro is a designer as well. Okay, okay. Hey, what I’m going to recommend to those who are listening is to visit your networks because I really like the videos you make. Thank you very much. I really like them. Look, the philosophy of our communication, for example, no, I don’t go out dancing or trending, but hey, it has its audience and we don’t do tic-tac-toe, but tic-tac-toe.I don’t know that I totally respect it, there are people from other agencies that make jokes and so on and they get a lot of notoriety but I don’t want to be known for doing something I don’t know, I don’t know because it’s not my job, I don’t know that I don’t want to say that I’m the accepted one but it’s true that I want to be known for my work or for my objectivity or for my objectivity or for the fact that I’m not the one that’s accepted. my work or for my objectivity or for the way I do things no no if I dance I don’t dance whatever it is I don’t dance but it’s true that there are many agencies that get trending and hey they really get authority and the videos have a lot of visibility but we like to give tips on marketing advice on how to improve your visibility, I don’t know, that we are known a little bit for that objectivity, for the knowledge we have of marketing and digital plots. Okay, perfect. How many years has the agency been open? Well, well, the agency is another of the issues that I have my partners, it is another of the issues that we do not know when to put the anniversary because Club Marketing itself was born as a brand in 2006 as a blog, then in 2009 I dedicated myself to do freelance together with a job as marketing director of an agency that knew Sacra that had it from Vicaria and that was 2010-2016 and in 2016 we started already, no 2015 we started in September to work as freeman the two of us and in 2016 the company was created that is to say I have been working since 2009 with club marketing and as a company since 2016 the company has already seven years and dedicating to this for almost 23 that is to say not 13 years ago, well 13 14 years ago we always have the thing when we celebrate anniversary, when I created the first blog entry was in December 2006, of course I can not say that I have been dedicated, but if it is true that 2009 I have been dedicated to club marketing has been a consequence, a path that we have been taking and that well now already made a company for some time quite consolidated and well there we are working. Okay, great. Well, look, now I want to move on to Closed Technology, which is a brand that you created recently, not long ago. Yes, relatively recently. And you are dedicated to the part of your company that is dedicated to the creation of plugins. Yes. Okay, to go first, how many What else insta-net saga have you already published in the repost? Well… Well, we have… Let’s see… If Kloste didn’t read a little bit the consecu… I mean, Kloste Mark… Let’s see… We Kloste Marketing have always made plugins. And we have always… So, well, a marketing agency that makes plugins. A custom-made one, right? Custom plugins for… Custom plugins for clients and then more… Yes, more universal plugins that can be used by clients of any kind. So of course, for needs, a year and a half or two years ago, no, no… Well, a panel told us “hey, why don’t you present yourselves as Clos, whatever, other than marketing? Because we’re going to introduce you to a lot of marketing agencies.” And it’s a bit weird, it’s true, because we are marketing agencies, but it’s true that we have a pretty important development kick. So it’s a little strange that we introduce you to another marketing agency that you do development. Look, because more than an important client, I say well, seeing it clearly we are going to take out another brand so we take out the Clos Technology brand and we combine everything we already had from Clos Marketing in development to that brand of technology and currently we have three lines of plugin development, well, listeners I imagine you know what plugins are, but plugins are extensions that make your own CMS website management that do something added. So we have three lines of connecting forms with CRM, with different CRM and there we have with Inmovilla, with Odoo, with Clientify, Clientify itself. We work with elements but if they are asking us to connect the forms of elements with different terremes that we are. The second line is to connect stores with ERP, right now we already have for sale the connection with Holder, the connection with Bartolomé, which is called Neo, NeoTPV and now we are working on the one with Odoo. Odoo is a well-known repeo pensor that many companies have and it is a bad decision to put everything, that is to say that Odoo can make you web page but it is a bad decision. Just, having your online store connected to Odoo is quite interesting, is it for POS or store management? Yes, basically when an order comes in, which generates the invoice, Holder already does that. In other words, in Holder there are usually several problems in the stores. First the stock, second the products and third the orders. It is true that we are in a very important digitalization process, but then we have manual processes that are very absurd. I mean, in many stores they generate the orders and they have to go right away, they print them on paper and I have seen that, they go to… – On paper. -Yes, yes, or well, they must have removed the access paper some time ago, they see it in the mail and they go and create that order manually in the PR, in the company’s management system. Of course you say, well, let’s see if we are in a likes store that is all digital and I have a PR that is all digitized, because I’m going to make that connection by hand. So we already did it with Holder, they also have a native plugin, but well, obviously we have done more things, for example, the issue that when you enter the order generates an invoice that goes correlative with the invoices that you already have in this and that the PDF that generates, that is, does not make you generate it on the website, but that your PR generates it and adjusts it in the order. Okay. That kind of thing is quite interesting and we are promoting that line now. As I said, we are going to take Odoo out, we are also going to connect the store with Clientify. In short, there is a line of exploration of rp connections that we see as interesting. Of course, because with the stock, that is, having both the store and the web connected to the stock and having the stock up to date in both places is very basic. If you don’t have that, don’t open directly. Yes, yes, yes, yes, or the prices. Of course, the customer is used to change their management system, because there you also have the sales people making estimates or you are selling directly on the invoice. Of course, he has that up to date but he has no other. And the issue of going online, updating all that, of course, is a job and a lot of administrative work, today we are already seeing it, we have to optimize our processes a lot because the market is demanding it, so that work is already absurd today, so it is true that we have these three, but we also make adaptations to people who tell us look, make me the one for this topic. A lot of time ago with BlueCommerce, with stores. Yes, yes, with BlueCommerce. what would you say, let’s see if you are going to tell me, what would you say that some plugin, because we are talking about WordPress here always, okay, some plugin or something that goes well to send the data to the carrier or to connect with the one that is a question does not work none well is one thing if a bg ls has its purpose they have their own plan and look for example corti if I have references because charges jose jose corti jose conti that but corti had mixed it with another Jose Conti has a plugin made of Seur. I who am now involved in the issue of WordPress plugins, I say that it would be easy if you put it in the official WordPress repository, what happens is that as they have to program well, because that is the requirement that is made before putting a plugin, because of course, always all the plugins of the couriers that are called, You have to ask the commercial, the commercial warns you, I do not know what and when the easiest thing would be to put it in the official WordPress repository. But of course, they do not program it as they have to program it so that it is in the WordPress. You don’t do it right, if they’re software computer scientists and of course, I was used to thinking that you see everything. Other things. Of course, then of course, you see the intimacies, then of course, you see everything, then of course, that’s why today I think it’s safe because jose conti service has warprey plugin but hey it doesn’t cost that much and hey we can’t charge that we are doing for many brands but also to other companies hey bet on warprey leave the internal IT and subcontract it to publish the plugin in official replacement because besides it opens the market for you because you tell a client to go for warprey and look for it, it gives a very important reliability and then of course it requires you to maintain that plan that WordPress requires you to upload your plugin to the repository to see what those things are, well first I’m going to give you some news so we’ve talked about it off the record if last June 30, I was appointed plugin team review, that is to say within the global WordPress team. Within the WordPress team there are some collaborative teams and there are some more delicate than others, for example core is very delicate, of course, everything in core that goes to millions of webpages, imagine, and there is a plugin team, that is, people or companies who want to publish their plugin is reviewed by a team. So, that team, this and me in, we’ve already passed the sieve, we’re in. So, congratulations. Thank you very much. And then, now I’m reviewing plugins from companies, people, freelancers who send plugins to be published for free in the official WordPress repository. What happens? Of course, we do a process that was already done before my fall that was already done before and that has been improved by the team to make a process of reviewing all the code and see what the standards are all almost all 90 95% fail in three things that you say well if they are simple if they are simple but you have to do it and are very very simple security holes. Above all, security holes, the most important thing is… Yes, yes, there are… well, we explain it in a very simple way so that the audience can understand it. When you send information in your plan, in your website extension, you can send or receive information. Wait a moment, I am a little late and wait, I found it almost now when I found this. [Applause] Sorry for the nonsense. Thank you very much. Yes, yes, very well. The truth is that it is a responsibility, but I am very happy, really. Okay, so, let’s see, the most important thing is the security issue, which is the most… Yes, the security woman. When you, for example, receive information that comes to you from somewhere, you have to, as they call it, sanitize it, make it a process that WordPress has internally so that all the information that has been sent to you does not send you code because normally those who know how to hack web send you code and if you do not clean it, then that code is executed inside your web page, which means that it gets infected. You can receive it as well as execute it, because maybe you have infected the database, you tell it to come and show it to the page and it can be showing malicious code. So those two, both input and output, WordPress has some functions that clean whatever it is and if it is a normal text, it will come out the same normal text, but if it is a text with malicious code, obviously the normal code is not code because it will not save it there, the malicious code is not executed, it is cleaned and well it has other processes to clean your web page but at least that your extension is not a process of being moving through all this effect all over the place. So those two checks, I can almost tell you a very very very very high percentage, fail. And in fact the team is working so that those checks are done before sending them, so that our process is less automatic. I mean, right now we pass the process and we send it to them as is, because of course we say look, this was wrong, and go more into plugins than “hey, look, let’s see what you have here, let’s check it and all this”. Well, in the end it is a process, therefore, very common and that guarantees the code of the extension, that those that we see in repository have a review process, that this came from the couriers, that many companies are not, let’s say, willing, I do not know, well, is that really the reason, I do not know, I would like to sit down and say, hey, why do not you adapt your plugin to the WordPress Science Force repository? Either because they don’t understand it or because they don’t want to go into the review process, they don’t want the code to be seen, it’s silly because in the end the code, even if you give it one by one, you’re going to get it all over the place, I mean, that’s, that’s really a very curious issue of why the company hasn’t put it right. I think the… I think it’s mainly a lack of knowledge, not knowing well. Because when I have published plugins to clients, you say “ah, but you can publish and everything”, yes, yes. And I did a little bit of Simi like mobile applications. When you send an application, Apple reviews the code, they review it so that it is not malicious and does not do bad practices to users. Okay. Hey, and you at the agency, what do you use for programming? Well, we were very surprised because Microsoft has changed a lot in recent years and is carrying a number of projects thought very good and the truth is that we were super plugged. For some time Visual Code, I worked with different editors, what happened is that I did not have everything integrated because when you work with an editor because you have the terminal usually to make commands, you have the version control, which is where you upload your code and all that was not integrated, I used another general editor, I do not remember, and when I saw Visual Code, which had everything integrated in the same place and everything so, I say, against, this is wonderful. In fact I have an extension made that I usually recommend to do programming in WordPress with Visual Code and in one jump you can make a post-it, you can do anything. I have a talk out there, lost of that of a half of Malaga. So, we use Visual Code, we use Gija, we are working with GitHub Copilot, what is GitHub Copilot, what is it exactly? Yes GitHub Copilot is the artificial intelligence part of the GitHub code repository that comes to suggest code to you when you are writing in the editor itself. which right now, well, there it is. There are times when it gets it right one out of 6. You have to be careful. Of course, the exercise has a danger that if you don’t know the code it gives you, you execute it and many times it is lost. Other times you say “Contra! How has it been invented?” and also many times you take the same code from the repository itself and it suggests code. Okay, it’s still in its infancy, in my perception it’s in its infancy, it’s very green, but well, you have to start. I already from our team of four, well two, that is me and my partner Alex, we are working with Gizaco Pylos and well there are things for example, as I did the standard coding of WordPress, that code, that is, WordPress has a series of, this we talk about programs well and all this, well WordPress has a rule of how to code, this is clear, this is a computer scientist, I was talking about this company, that they tell him how he has to write and he says, look, give him black pudding, I make the code as I want, of course, as it is a project pensor, it is also very important how he writes the code so that it is understandable to other people and that they do not understand, So, then, we have been using Coding Standard for some time now, integrating the code editor itself. We use Warp Coding Standard. So, one good thing it tells you is to document every function that you do. And I will be very well that the utilicación is difficult to go to do it because there is a little roll, you have to be writing. Well look, this function serves for this. This variable is an object, this variable is an integer, this is a string variable. and then the parameters of the function itself. And that would be good that the Tecnicecial because it really has the function, it has the name and it has the parameters, because it doesn’t do it well. It gets it less than half right, I say another one, but if I’m giving you the code of the function and you already know a little bit, then one thing that would be very useful would be to document well the Tecnicecial. It does not do it well, it does it half of the times. Many times it copies the code of the documentation of another function and you say well if it has nothing to do if it has nothing to do with the function it would be enough, but there is a little bit of a problem we have not that it follows the thesis of building has come to help us to work more efficient and more productive but there are still many things left and for nothing I see that it will make us more efficient but no no no well for today it will not replace our work because they do not know how to think for that it still has much much much much more to do and then but to program based on WordPress, you take the WordPress with Visual Studio and you change whatever it is, right? Well, what I do if you want I’ll explain the process. What I do is, I use local WP, and then I install an installation of the client and I download the client’s database with a WP Migrate plugin, I download the client’s configuration and I download it to my local. What we do is a plugin, we work with plugin and in that plugin we have the configuration of what is the theme, what is the design and we also have part of content configuration, post-it and all that, we make a plugin. Then, in that plugin is the one that we put in the official repository and is where we carry all the code management. So, for us, what we really do for the client is to deliver a plugin. And we do version control, we release versions and in big projects, we go… Version 2.4.0 I’ve released this and this and this. We replace it with production. Well, for large projects what we do once, we have a mirror version where we can test a second time before going to production in case something happens and then we go to production. So that whole process of version control flow so we carry everything. Okay great and I wanted to ask you before we move on to the next section, I wanted to ask you about the employee management issue of how you guys work internally. You mean, for example, for communication between you guys, do you use the same Asana or do you use something else? Yes, what we do is team by project. It is true that we have, as we said, marketing technicians, account marketing managers, graphic designers, developers. So, at the end we do a project, well, look, this is going to be the developer who is going to lead this project, this is going to be the marketing person’s technician, the marketing professional and this is going to lead this developer, the designer as well. So, each project has its own configuration of people, so each person has his or her own tasks that are from different projects, he or she is taking different projects over time. And then, there we have all the communication even with the client. The client keeps the project with us so that he knows a little of what is being done and if there are doubts, if there are things about execution programs, then we have all the conversation there. And then, with the team from a long time ago we work with Slack. Slack, so that you don’t know it as a vitaminized WhatsApp and what it allows is automations. I like a lot of automations. So, in fact there are notices, for example, the monetization of all our websites we take them to Slack. When a website has a problem, something, we are the first to find out again from Slack. And then we get a notification like that. Or for example in very large websites, because they have product synchronization processes and all this very large, because they send me a notification by the LA if there was a problem or if something has been synchronized. For a long time now, it has had this difference that it can vitaminize it, it can also, for example, put interesting blogs that interest the team, so we put it in a channel. And well, this was fundamental for LA at the time with the pandemic because it was for us really, well I think for, it was not Friday I left the office and on Monday we were working all our house with all our flow as we did not change anything, that is the only thing that changed was the online meetings, many of these meetings are much more reductive, faster and that is the only thing you can never say but it is the only thing that we have left after the pandemic that is quite beneficial, that we no longer have to move to make a meeting, that is, we see each other and obviously the presence is very good to establish relationships, loyalty, but not for the day to day work, to carry out tasks, projects, etcetera. Okay, and that other thing I wanted to ask you about the remote issue, that is, to continue working remotely, do you go back to the office and work there or how do you do it? Well, in the end I have reached an agreement among all of us to make it a hybrid. Okay. Teleworking is very good because it is true that you can get up later and you do not need to travel, but it creates less daily contact and the truth is that for any of us it is true that we are 100% digital but not to know what situation a person was in, if he was in a meeting, if he was not, I was working at home for a long time and the truth is that I like the office to a certain extent because I telework too, we all telework, even Sacre and I telework, for example I telework in the afternoons, I telework in the evenings, I work at home but for tomorrow I like to be with the people, listen to how this is going like this is very fast and then they also give that closeness to see the problems and see them a little bit, we have a girl who is teleworking 100%, because of personal circumstances she asked us and we said no problem and the girl works very well, of course she is teleworking but she loses closeness a little bit, So I like the face-to-face work because of that, because in the end we are a team, we are a team working together on the problems and it is because I see the person, so in the end we have made a hybrid, so we do some days face-to-face and other days at home. Hey, and how do you make the agency known then, if you don’t have sales people, how do you make the agency known through events, I imagine. Yes, we have a presence in many events, our own sacramental visibility brings us clients, in the end it is often that they know us, they know what we can do for them. Also the social networks have a lot of presence and well, the website and all this. So, of course, in the end, and for us, well, our audience has always been a company, right? And wherever that company is, at least we want them to know about us, to know what we do and how we can help them. And we have never had a very commercial presence of “I go everywhere with the card”, we just go around talking, meeting people. Hey, what’s your problem? So and so, recommending them without any problem and “oh, well, what do you do?” so and so, that is how a lot of opportunities have arisen. We also have collaborators who recommend us, that… Word of mouth is very important, yes. We, many big clients have come through recommendations to do joint projects, for example, we work with Javier Casares in many projects and I pass projects to him, he passes them to me and we do things together. By the way, Javier Casares was here, it was in number 6, if I remember correctly. Yes, yes, yes, yes, very good. Listen, and let’s go on, let’s change sections, okay? And you will forgive me, I have only recently discovered this new thing about sounds and I am like a kid with new shoes. Very good, very good. We have to experiment. And then here I am going to give way to the “Questions from the listeners”. I don’t like this today, well, another one for another time. Time for listener questions. And we have, there are two. Let’s see, they asked, Jose asked, what are the next steps for Close Technology, I would say also for Close Marketing, but yes, he asks specifically for Close Technology, what’s the next thing you’re going to do? Well, our idea is to internalize it more, that is, we also have a project which is UWP Autotranslation, which I forgot to mention the third leg. -Let’s see, let’s see, comment. Yes, the third leg of Clog technology has a part of self-translating web pages through multilinguals into pré and the self-translation, but well done, that is, it self-translates, don’t kill me Jesus, it self-translates and then a person, a person reviews it and this is a way of facilitating the work. So, our leg is our first international SMA. In other words, our project is to make the…. let’s say, Cloud Technology, the name itself is in English, but well, to make a domain only for the foreign market and try to move in the more American foreign market and see what products we can offer them and from these three lines that we say of form, store and self-translation, see how because well, it is true that self-translation is more popular here in Europe, but yes, our purpose is to be more international, to be known for our products and also not only to be known, but also to see what products we can offer to this international market. We also have several projects for… well, there was a piece of another law, that is a product and it is a project, product, all together. then it is sold with its web page, its own these and we also have several projects that will come out that well right now as they are very alpha we cannot say it but they are products that we want to take out that are monoprojects, that is to say that I make the web page for that project with its planning or its sale and its own clients. But the next steps are to internationalize and bring out specific products with needs that we understand that can be accepted by the majority. Perfect and then Marta told us when she asked you, what can we expect? It’s very well very much the case, what can we expect from WordPress in the coming months? I don’t get that. Well look, one thing that I loved, well you were saying about the events, we are in WordPress events and it turns out that they do quite a few events in Spain, now in October will be Seville, then in November Madrid and Valencia and well we go to the national ones but also more bad international ones. For the last two decades, I have been participating as an organized committee in the organization of the World Can Euro. I was in Oporto and now in Athens, which has been recently, in June. My goodness, what has it been like. Now I am going to ask you how you do it, but well, finish, finish. Okay, okay, how do you hold it. Well, in that event we were in Athens, which was phenomenal, I had the opportunity to talk for a while with Matias Ventura, the Lead Developer of Gutenberg, the new WordPress editor, the native WordPress editor, rather. And he told us one thing that I stayed, that I’m going to explain very simply, is the custom fills, custom fields that have always been, it has been plugin field, well ACF which is very well known and some of these. We make it native, we make our plugin, that one that I was saying, we make the custom fills, the custom fields. So the editor itself is going to have a paragraph, a simple field, you can tell it that it’s a custom field. And I will say, well, what is this for? Well, you could put together a pattern, for example, a book. You could create a pattern of a cover page to the right of a series of fields, or your Gutenberg, you could leave that fixed for all products, and then those fields would be stored on a differentiated data base. With which, then in the search engines or in filters, or even to now show any information, you would no longer have to rely on a developer, that right now is the field of … We, custom fields have to go through development. And that, shortly, that’s going to be removed as well. So, it was and I said, I say, “Gee, Matias, this is really fat.” And he says, “Let’s try, let’s try to get it out in August, now in 6.3.” I see it and I’ve talked to… I don’t know, I don’t think it’s not going to be enough time, or if they release it, it will be a very alpha version so that people can start experimenting with it. But that’s a… That’s it, come on. In the end, well, a little bit as a summary so that everybody understands, is to remove things that were in the development field and that needed is to take it to non-code tools, that is to say, that you can act without having to make code. That’s perfect. Hey, so… But here comes a little thing. They open little things and the question that is never answered is the translations for how long, the multilingualism for when? It is always asked all year to Matt Mullenberg, the co-founder of WordPress and this time I will see it again, when it was multilingual. It is assumed, well, I don’t see it, that this year they want phase two of the native editors project, the collaborative editing, which I didn’t think was so necessary, obviously they will have seen it necessary for teams of work tone in which you can edit at the same time several people an own entry, that for press, very corporate blogs, that are very large, because it can be interesting. And that phase 2 in which we are, because it is supposed that in theory they would finish it this year and next year they will start in January but I don’t think we will start to see some news of multi-language in the middle of next year so there is still a lot of great work to do but there is still a lot of work to do so it happens that the Americans as everything is in English so we don’t worry so much and one of the keys that WordPress has had in this time and that from the Spanish team, Jesus Amiro, there are teams, the issue of making WordPress multi-language for everything that the play, the translation and all that, makes it much more accessible to everyone. Okay, general well look now we are going to move on to the work-life balance and remote work section, okay I am going to ask you some questions about these topics, let’s see how you organize yourself, let’s see for a moment. [Music] Ok. So relaxed music, right? Yes, because stress, you know, stress. So, and that’s the first question about stress, stress. Living with stress? How do you deal with stress when it comes? I have to say that this year has been a crazy year of stress because we have always had a lot of work in the company and we have managed it very well but this year the Quid Digital has come and we know that it is something very temporary because it has an expiration date which is the end of next year so of course when all of a sudden you are working with I don’t know what you are working with, you know, you have to deal with stress because you have to deal with it. suddenly you work with I don’t know two or three I don’t know to say something two or three clients a week to say something suddenly you get 20 and you say against and it is not a type of work that you have to be careful because of course it is a project that can take you six months or eight months to be paid after it has been executed, so of course you can’t oversize your team for that work that will take you eight months to be paid, so it is a complicated issue, so this complicated issue at the end that I have not made us all work much harder and work much more than we are used to and we are all looking forward to relax a little bit and this year we have a lot of work, a lot of work, a lot of work, a lot. And how I manage it, well, with a lot of patience and with a lot of stubbornness to get things done because in the end, one thing that I have and that I always tell my clients when there is a more difficult situation, I focus on the problems, I spend a minute to know what is going on and I automatically move on to the solution. Some people like it and I try to cut it a little bit for those who want to recreate themselves in the problem. Of course, this problem is not created. Well, okay, there is this problem, we are going to solve it. We always have a lot of initiative in the sense of saying hey, we are going to focus on the solutions, we are going to solve it, we are going to take it forward and we would be very cautious in getting things done. There is a lot of stress, but well, as it is healthy with pleasure, we like it so much, well, of course, we say well, let’s see if better years come and we can be calmer because this could not take many years, but well, well, that is where we are. Listen, then, how do you manage your work, being in so many events, going to so many places, trips and so on, and then at the agency and then going with the family? Well, I have to respect a… Yes, of course, I have a family, I have two beautiful children and there is 13, my Nacho and my father and then a wonderful wife too. Well, my wife my wife has a lot of patience because it is true that this year has been difficult and at times when I should not be working because I have had to work and there I have to say that the conciliation has been little and but since it is something temporary we know that it has to be like that for a while but well I am freeing myself from projects that before I could not even work on weekends but of course when you have the ball you have to get it out because if you don’t it becomes a bigger ball then the ball gets bigger and the workload gets bigger. The sooner you catch the ball the better if you catch it down it already defeats you and everyone else, so corruption is a conscience, well then try to keep a schedule in which you have it with your family and then at certain times at night when everyone is already asleep and working, there are special situations and special times, so we are there and we are doing it. Okay, great. Physical exercise, do you have time or no time for… Well, look, I have been going to a gym for two years now, you ask me that question, but you will see that it is something more fundamental, all full of girls, I don’t care. And it’s funny because it’s a gym that is now called a lot, which is a mix between personal trainers and group gym. So, group activity. So, it’s not the group activity of the gyms where there are 30 or 40 people and the guy doesn’t really get to see you, the trainer, you have to go find him. And neither is it between two people that you have one person there all day, hey, this is something that I also find very boring. So, it is very good value for money, we have reached a gym, I go three times a week, which is training, I don’t know what they call it, to be honest, but it is strength and interval fit gymnastics and I don’t know what the story is, and they do it in groups of 10 people. So, you do circuits and you have the girl who sees you from time to time, she is Sirvia, and you say, look David, “Have you done this better?” or you say “Look, today my knee hurts a little bit, look, what should I do?” “Ah, change this exercise”. You have the person who from time to time looks at you, keeps an eye on you and is not as decentralized as in gyms, where he/she will do a number and that’s it. And it’s also not the person who’s in your day and, “Hey, David, how’s it going?” You know? It’s a little more obvious. Sure. There I have set aside three hours a week and I try to respect that and on the weekend a little bit more. Although it is true that I should take care of my diet much better, but well, at least I should buy a little bit of sport. Of course. Well, hey, and what would you have done there, Frendez, knowing what you know now? Uff! What a good question. Of course, the issue… we, well, my Acra partners have always been very conservative, we have always been taking small steps and getting to where we are now, because we like to consolidate, to be very serious with our people, they have never had payment problems or anything, there have never been any bumps in the company, obviously, but nobody has noticed and, well, your question has already gone. What would you have said? Yeah, I would have said, but so, you’re right. I would have done the same, the truth, because it is true that as a developer I have evolved a lot and now at the level I have now, well obviously I was not the one I was when I started, because I remember when I started I was selling cool pages and you can’t even see them being made, but well there I was on the street. and I don’t know, I would have done the same thing, the truth is that there are consequences that obviously now we know many things that we would not take the step to, but for example, some examples, for example the intranet issue, for example, is not helping a lot to have very well documented the processes of the company, to have it documented and you know what to do and all that, well hey, I would do it from the first day, which more or less I was already doing it but not as structural as I have it now and really internally we work the same as always with our project object, our client object and well and it has always been like that, I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you very little, now with more experience it goes to clients that you know that they are doing a little bit better, right? And they know you better. More prepared, right? You are more prepared, yes, also. Of course. Listen, we have already exceeded the hour of the interview, so let’s go to the last section. Let’s go to the last section. [Music] Well, the last section is the short questions, right? It’s asked at the end which are short questions that people say are the most difficult, which I don’t understand why, but well, there they are. Yes, more philosophical, more you have to answer it fast and you don’t know how to do it. Well, let’s try the first one, let’s see how it goes. Dabai, can your favorite book be fiction or non-fiction? Well, look, I like it very much, and I always like it… I can’t remember the name now, how bad that is, but it’s one that… about organizing oneself to… ah, organizing oneself to achieve success. I don’t like the so pretextual topic of achieving success, but it is true that… how to fail in almost everything and succeed. I also liked it a lot, but I loved Organizing for Success. I read that book about four times. And I was telling you a little bit to have everything very well organized. I mean, I write down everything since I met him, I program everything and well, and the truth is that for me, I don’t know if it’s… it’s a big book in paperback and I don’t know if it still sells. But well, on my personal website you have a little summary that I made myself and I use it from time to time on davidperegar.com and there you can take a look at it. Okay, this is… Stephanie Winston? Can it be? Yes, yes, yes, exactly, Stephanie Winston. Yes, yes, yes, yes, nice to meet you. Okay, the secrets of successful managers. Well, okay. Very salesy, isn’t it? To sell. Yes, they always put their… In the end it helps you to organize yourself a little bit, doesn’t it? It is quite important. Of course, organization is basic to anything. Favorite movie? Can it be any genre? Whichever is your favorite? I’m an Iron Man fan. So, any Iron Man. Yeah, yeah, I like, not what Tony Stark’s attitude is like, but the whole thing about having technology, reusing it, doing whatever you want, flying with it. I love having an assistant that helps you and talks to you and understands that Siri never understands you. Since we would really like to have a Siri that works. Indeed, I love it because of the fact that you can apply technology to your day to day life and it can really help you. That’s cool. Hey, any athlete or team in any sport and why? Well, I really don’t like to watch sports live, obviously, and look at soccer, I don’t like it, I don’t watch it, I mean I watch it when there are finals. It can be any sport. I always like Rafael Nadal very much, I see him as an example as a person and as… I don’t see him much in tennis but I really like his way, his attitude towards life, towards problems, he has always been an inspiration when he speaks, I love it, come on, our biggest reference in Spain and he will continue to be even if he is less physically possible now but he should do it, I don’t know how the big brother has to really give it or something very important in Spain because he really is a person who has done a lot in his work, in his sport and then I love the way he speaks, I love his philosophy. Great, favorite streamer or content creator? Oh, how difficult. When I watch YouTube, I’m looking for things of mine… unit testing, I’m looking for things. I don’t subscribe to anything. It catches my attention I was saying in Ibai but I don’t really watch it much but I like it because against how it calls me a lot the figures in the sense of what they have been able to do and attract so many people and I don’t have it as a favorite streamer because I’m not looking for specific things. I understand. Well, I recommend, sorry, I highly recommend the YouTube training stuff because there’s a lot of very YouTube specific stuff and WordPress TV of course. And you can find anything effectively. And it goes looking for micro learning of very specific things. Let’s see, a place to eat and what to eat in that place, it can be from Spain or abroad. Well, look, I love, well, what can I say, in Granada, actually there is a restaurant that you go up to the mountain called Las Perdices and they make a very good arroz campero, that is the best rice I have ever tasted. Las Perdices, so I recommend the rice and it is delicious, spectacular. Well, I’m in, I’m going to go. And then it’s relatively good, so your wallet doesn’t suffer, but not too much, so okay, okay, okay, favorite destination or one that you want to go to and why I really want to go to Italy, I have had clients in Italy for a long time and in fact I knew Italian, they spoke Italian, I understood it and I would like to go with the family, well, recently they were in Athena and I would like to go to Athena or Italy, but I would like to go with the family and see places and see that and America is that America attracts me a lot, we were there when I got married, I went to New York, but if it’s true, I’d like to go to New York, I’d like to go to New York. to new york but if it’s true that I said it brings in the end but well in order of preference by proximity italy athena and then america because if perfect california the biggest mistake and the biggest success you have had in professional life the professional part well the biggest mistake is that in the end you have to make the mistakes are not mistakes in themselves fat but never found a good partner for because marketing as I said I was freelance and collaborated with people and had partners and until I found SACRA was a freelance project and was when I had …. so my mistake was not… well, but I didn’t have to comment on the mistake until I found a partner of… well, with SACRA she is a phenomenal girl so there is a trust that… and we have the same philosophy on things, we are conservative in certain things and there is a total trust. So, the truth is that it is difficult to find that. So, if I have had different partners, we have not become partners at all because in the end I don’t know… Let’s say, the relationship does not become partners, but mistakes because you don’t find a suitable partner as you like until now. Well, you have to make mistakes, don’t you? Of course. And the success? I don’t know, I don’t know. Right now, look, now as recent as, I don’t know, the Klaus brand, in the end we are Klaus. We are with the marketing that we have obtained, well, that’s all, and it is a success because it is true that we are still seeing the fruits for that, the truth is that we unite the brands on a father or mother that is Close and from there I think that we will be better interpreted, that is to say that we are different legs of work, service and product. Where do you see yourself five years from now, or how do you see yourself five years from now? They always ask that question when they do a job interview. I do it, I didn’t like it when they asked it. Now I understand because you know a little bit where things are going. I think we will continue in the agency, God willing, if everything goes well, and for now we are very happy with the results. We will continue to grow as a team, for sure, because with the challenges we are taking on, surely we won’t need more team. And I think that I hope to be more consolidated in the market and well trying to get out a little bit of, I think I hope, internationalized with some more product, plugin product that we are looking for the unicorn and I do not hope we find it but at least it will give us a line of business to even have dedicated teams just for them. If I would like to have people dedicated to a product for example, a WordPress plugin and a that I see that more scalable. That I would like the agency to follow obviously and have some specific product that would at least have a sufficient level. Okay, okay. I’m left with one question that I have here, of all the tools that you use, if you only had to keep one, which one would it be? Asana. Perfect. Well, Jesus is coming out, I have an acquaintance here, he’s been interviewed. Of course he is. He’ll be here. Jesus is the hell of Asana. I mean, no, for me it’s everything. I translate everything into Asana. I have client meetings, boom, Asana into tasks, micro-tasks. In the end, what I tell the client is the dinosaur to cut it into small pieces or the giant piece cut into small pieces and then I would always have a round, in fact the interview with Jesús and it is number 2, anda leche, if I have listened to you, yes I have listened to you, but but but round, look, it jumps to my friend, to Jesús and to Javi. As I have listened to him a lot, yes. Normal, normal. Well, listen, and what advice… I have three questions left now. What advice would you give to someone who is starting to work on the Internet? Well, first of all, start by concentrating very well on what you want to do and that it is not the fruit of one day to the next, but that you have to work a lot. It happens to us that, hey, look, as there are also many ads and there are many, well, it is called sell-umo like that, of people who succeed and sell I don’t know how much in two days and so on, of course, they are really products that do not even know how they are made and have many problems afterwards, you don’t tell you that. What I would tell you is to work, work hard because it is like another store. If you set up a store where there is nothing to collect, then you have to open in the morning, work on products, improve their files, want it as much as if you had it in the physical part, right? And explain a lot. Yesterday, for example, I had a conversation with a colleague who is a coach and I told her, I said, if what you have to tell is your success story, tell how you do your training sessions, your team management sessions, tell it. Yesterday he was with Alsao, with a large company, so tell it, tell it, tell it, in the end the success stories that are for service issues, it works very well for anyone, look at the lawyer who tells a specific case obviously without putting details but you tell hey what challenges you had for this project, what you had to do and that the cases work very well then for those professionals who sell services, a way to make it tangible is giving examples of how they have done certain jobs. They do very good, to what this is very typical, for example, done and everything. In short, explain well what you do and give examples. Yes, let people see publicly what you do and how you do it, well, now it’s time for you to nominate someone to bring it here, to bring it here, yes, well, my partner sacra sacra sacra sacra, if the other day, or so much, because it seems to me that it’s close, but well, I’ll call SACRA for the season, right? Yes, yes because she is a female entrepreneur and how she manages her work-life balance and everything, I think it is interesting, isn’t it? And her role is different, we, within the management of the company, are more involved in project management, team management, team management and more in human resources and all this. I am more technical, I am more oriented on how to do things and well, in the end it also brings its own challenges. I think I nominate her. Perfect, great. Hey, where can we find you? Web pages, social networks? Well, you can find me at davidperegar.com which is my personal page, personal, the website that you have already said is close.marketing, close.technology and social networks, the truth is that I consume very little, autistic consumption, all these short videos get you hooked as if it were nonsense, there is no time there totally but that I publish because I do twitter a little from time to time, twitter and LinkedIn, LinkedIn is the most… Come on, in fact I have a lot of contact there and there is a network that I see it as quite important. Perfect, hey, and to finish, the last thing, the last thing is really micro-open for you to say what you want before we go. Well, as this is one of the last chapters of the season, I would like to wish you a happy summer. Yes, happy summer. May you rest, we will try. I am very difficult to disconnect. The other day I was listening to another podcast about an agency and the girl said, “I don’t disconnect, but I don’t like to disconnect. I’m always connected to the company, to count and it’s hard for me to disconnect but it’s true that I should do a little more, that’s going to be my intention this summer but I do want to rest and we’re going to do everything in September, to close July that we haven’t finished yet and we’re going to do it all in September. Perfect hey thank you very much for stopping by David, it really has been a pleasure to be here chatting a dish with you and let me remind listeners to please subscribe if you liked the interview and give it like and leave your comments that will help us a lot to reach more people so thank you very much to those who are listening to us since and see you next week see you later David, bye bye, thanks [Music] okay for the…
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