Kevin McMakin - Current

Chris LaFay: Kevin, Good to see you, sir. Oh, hey. You're muted, by the way.

Kevin McMakin: Helps when you can understand how technology.

Chris LaFay: Hey, right. It's easier said than done. So, yes, I've been with all this, like, AI stuff. I have a lot of AI things running on my computer and wrecks my browser a lot. And it's a common occurrence now. Like, it's. Everybody knows that this thing exists, that when you're tools and then you have Google Chrome open and you have a lot of tabs open, both of those things in combination just suck all the juice of a computer. And I can't tell you how many times in the last month where I go screen share and that additional juice that required the screen share crashes out everything. And I'm. I'm the web guy. Like, even though technically this is like IT hardware technology, it feels web e. And I'm like, I restart. I actually restart my computer every day now because it has to flush all that out. Get in it still. It's still. I'm like, apparently I need to dump like $6,000 into a computer that has, like infinite resources so that I can look not like a caveman on phone.

Kevin McMakin: And then. And then it would still mess you up.

Chris LaFay: I actually did. So I have. I've always had two computers. I've always had, like a laptop for mobile and then Mac Mini.

Kevin McMakin: Okay.

Chris LaFay: So that I can kind of separate different types of work. And I went ahead and bought a new, like, MacBook Pro recently because my MacBook Air was just not having it at all. Like, I would do two things on it. And it just said, you know what, Chris? I'm done. I can't do this anymore. And so I bought a legit MacBook Pro, spent a little bit of money on it, thinking that that might solve my problems also with things crashing and you know what? No dice. So it's basically spend $7,000 or bust and look like a sometimes. So cheers to that.

Kevin McMakin: Yeah. Well, at least it's sometimes for you. For me, it's mostly all the time. Right. So. So at least you got sometimes in there.

Chris LaFay: My batting average is a little bit higher by. By a smidge. So.

Kevin McMakin: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Oh, man, the joys. So we left off talking about website stuff. I walked you through some base, like some baseball pricing, some basic pricing when we chatted a couple weeks ago. And you've had some time to think about some things. So questions, thoughts, ideas.

Kevin McMakin: So the. Right now 25 is a bit more than what we can. We can drop on a website just because right now. And two is I didn't realize that website redesign was that expensive. So I went into it with a little bit, a little bit of a different thought.

Chris LaFay: What, what budget were you thinking to be around in combination for both sites?

Kevin McMakin: That's the big question right now is I guess I have to figure out, like I said, the 25 grand and then I have to go back and fight for it because this was not in the budget.

Chris LaFay: Yeah.

Kevin McMakin: Until I started talking about it. So I'm trying to figure out when I kind of went back with the initial. They were like, my boss was like, whoa. I think she realized that it was going to be expensive. But I'm just have. That's, that's going to be my hold up right now. Just to be honest and open with you. What number, what number it looks like that, that be. I, I have to go back and kind of fight and figure out what, what that looks like. But just being transparent, I don't know how to do anything else other than be honest with you.

Chris LaFay: No, that's perfectly fine. I would much rather know that than get zero emails back from you from like three months and wonder like, where the heck did this guy go? Like, that's fine. And so just when you're, when you're having these conversations, talk to me about it because there's possibly. What I don't want to do is make wrong assumptions on what's important versus not important and then be like, here's what a reduced scope could look like and it not be the right hit. I would rather, I would rather you say, what if we did this is the number that we're looking for. That would make sense. And then I can then go and figure out how we can change the scope around, change deliverables around to make some things work because that doesn't have to be a final price. This is part of the reason when doing websites, part of the reason why I built my website the way I did is that everything is on there. But I also know that until you start talking about pricing, most people have no idea. And rather than spending a lot of time on building these like longated proposals and spend two or three hours on them and sweat and blood, sweat and tears over them. Everything on the website's there. It's all malleable. And the danger about putting pricing on the website is that it looks like it's locked and loaded. It's not. Everything is custom at the end of the day. So if you tell me what your rough budget is for both of them, I do think there will Be efficiencies doing both of them at the same time. Like, I'll give you that like bullet to have because we can build one of them, duplicate it, swap the colors around and things like that, and get a second sight out of basically the same development effort. Okay. So there will be efficiencies doing both of them back to back simultaneously and not waiting six months to do one versus the other. So doing them together will help and will save you money. How we define that exact scope is definitely malleable at the end of the day. So let me know what that looks like, what they're, what people's thoughts are and things like that. We have a couple of projects that may or may not be getting started in the next couple of weeks. So from a general timeline perspective, if you were to figure out within the next couple of weeks, we would be able to start pretty quickly. If we go into like the middle of June for a start date, we might be starting around July. We might have to have like a couple of weeks buffer because I think I have a feeling we're going to get a couple of things rolling here shortly. I don't say that in terms of pressure. I don't really do this whole sales back and forth thing. It's not my cup of tea. I, that's, that's just me. Like this is what I see. And so that's just what it is.

Kevin McMakin: Go ahead. I'm sorry, no floors.

Chris LaFay: Basically, we get started kind of at the beginning of June or we get started at the beginning of July is. So that middle ground is going to be tough to, to deal with. So.

Kevin McMakin: And that's good to know as well from a, a planning point because obviously this has not been a priority for anyone up to this point. So I don't think even if we go further out than July, I don't think it's going to be a big issue. I think we're gonna, we leave ourselves open to losing money if we don't do something soon or losing customers rather, which ends up losing money. But either way. So I think in the long run it'll be vital. I just owe you that budget piece to try to see where we can and can't go.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, that all sounds good. Do you have anything on the schedule right now for conversations about that that I should know of or is it all just kind of up in the air? Currently?

Kevin McMakin: It's, it's kind of up in the air and we're, we have a, a monthly exec meeting where we kind of discuss things and that's where I kind of brought this number up initially, which was again it's, it's, you're the first one I'm really talking to about money portions of this. So it's like this is roughly where it's going to be if not higher for both websites.

Chris LaFay: The, the general lay of the land. So I fall to kind of give you an idea. I kind of fall mid in terms of range of scope and pricing. I kind of fall mid to mid to low tier. Got your lowest tier is going to be basically your freelance people to where they're just a one person shop, they have time on their hands and whatnot. And by the way, none of these options are inherently bad. They all have their various different risk pros and cons and risks associated with them. But if you're gonna get two websites done for less than let's say $12,000, you're getting a freelancer that's probably using some sort of template. And a lot of things are done very not when I say handmade. There's a lot of. When you drag a button onto a page, you have to style that button correctly every single time. It's not automatic for you. And again, these are overarching simple statements that might not be 100 true across the board, but it's going to give you a gauge. Then when you start getting north of kind of that on a per site basis kind of north of that 7,500 to 10,000, that's where you start getting into some smaller agency spaces. When you get north on a per site basis north of 20 to 25, you're getting more into a larger agency with full time employees, staff, etc. That may have been around for a while. Okay, so that, and that's all those prices are relative to the, the scope that you have. Now if you said that I have a, I'm building a landing page for two sites, all those numbers decrease some and then you're not building out multiple pages and stuff like that. So it's not that 30, 000 for one site is expensive. If you had a 200 page website with a thousand blog posts, 30 grand for a website to migrate all that stuff in isn't really too bad. So that at least kind of gives you a, a gut check from a random guy in Snowville, Georgia of what prices are. So you take that. You know, I'm obviously very biased. I understand that. I try not to be.

Kevin McMakin: It's hard. It's hard not to be.

Chris LaFay: We all, we all have our Biases at the end of the day. And so that at least gives you an idea, because if you were wanting. I'll kind of give you the. The baseline here. So if there was. If you wanted to get both websites done for less than 15k, working with me, that's going to be very hard, no matter the scope, because you do have enough pages there that are going to require a good amount of design development effort.

Kevin McMakin: Right.

Chris LaFay: If you have less than 15 grand and are wanting both sites done, you're probably best to go the freelancer route.

Kevin McMakin: Understood.

Chris LaFay: If you're somewhere between 15 and 25, we can probably can work on scope and figure out what that might look like. Okay. So that kind of gives you some buckets to. To think through.

Kevin McMakin: Absolutely. And you know, I'm a firm believer that you get what you pay for.

Chris LaFay: 100.

Kevin McMakin: So it's. It's one of those where you. Yeah, you can get in trouble by. By going the lower tier range as well. So.

Chris LaFay: Yes, you can. And so there are diamonds in the rough out there. Don't get me wrong. There's good people out there that are great at freelancing and they're. They do a good job. Are they harder to find? Yeah, they are track records. Harder to pinpoint, but they're there, so. Awesome. Do you have any other questions on how I could help you in the coming weeks?

Kevin McMakin: Not right at the moment, but I'm sure that something will come up and I can reach out. Heck, I'm in Snellville today trying to fix stuff at the house before I go to the office this afternoon. The fun times.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, I'm actually gonna go to Loganville tomorrow. There's a new. I think we might have actually talked about this last time. There's a new coffee shop that opened in Loganville called the Local Bean, and they opened up this past weekend, but my wife and I were up in Indianapolis and I was like, we can't go to the opening. I'm so sad. Like, it was actually a coffee shop within, like, 10 minutes of my house now. Nice. And so tomorrow, my wife is off of work, and so I. We are gonna go to the local Bean tomorrow and spend a few hours there, and I'm gonna get crap done. She's gonna read, probably, and get some dang good coffee. Fingers crossed.

Kevin McMakin: Dang dang good coffee.

Chris LaFay: It's a good tagline. Put that on a shirt. Oh,.

Kevin McMakin: Sorry. I reached over to move the phone and hit the wrong button.

Chris LaFay: Oh, trust me, I. I've done that so many times. So, yeah, that that is the plan because local coffee shops are fantastic and I want them to stay in business, preferably me. So the joys. Well, I'll reach out to you probably in a couple of weeks just to say hey and check in. That's my typical normal cadence of just every or so. Just say hey, see how things are going. If you have any questions, whatnot. But yeah, I'll be out of town middle of June. There's basically two weeks in the middle of June that I'm just gone. So small heads up on that. But I'll check in. And if you have any questions about the in the meantime, holler me and let me know.

Kevin McMakin: Perfect. Thank you so much for your time.

Chris LaFay: Of course, man. Have a good rest of the day. I'll catch you later.

Kevin McMakin: Yes, sir. Have a good one. Bye.