A life of learning, products, and WordPress

I’ve known today’s guest before I even ventured into the professional WordPress industry.

In fact, it wasn’t his themes that revolutionized my thinking, it was the checkout process. Brian Gardner launched a theme company using a payment portal and delivery tool called e-junkie.

I just checked, they still exist, they were the Gumroad before Web 3.0 was even a thought in Web 2.0’s mind. I couldn’t believe it. Someone could zip up WordPress code, put it on a website, set a price, and someone could buy it?!

I wanted to do the same thing.

But until then, I had an agency to run so I used Revolution Themes, then Genesis, then to the whole StudioPress suite to make that happen. Fast forward, Gardner not only sold SP to WP Engine, but he left the gig shortly after, only to make a return with his latest product, Frost.

Enjoy today’s conversation with Brian Gardner, Principal Developer Advocate at WP Engine, creator of many things and many blogs. Find his newly redesigned blog at briandgardner.com.

If you fancy supporting the show, buying me a digital coffee or joining my fantastic private Discord server, head on over to buymeacoffe.com/mattreport — I’ll shout your name from the Twitter rooftops.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Matt: so many folks who sit on the sidelines and Monday quarterback like me I see folks sell their business and , and they joined the team and I know in my heart that as a builder, as an entrepreneur, , they won’t be there that long.[00:00:14] And they’re there for a year. I think roughly you were at WP engine for a year after selling studio[00:00:20] Brian: press to them longer than that. But it sort of been to which in and of itself as a piece of conversation. Go ahead.[00:00:26] Matt: And then I saw you sort of leave P and L I was like, yep. I knew it. And there’s nothing wrong with that because God that we have such a passion to build something, but I don’t know of anyone who’s who sells it to the company, leaves built something else, sells it back to the company and.[00:00:41] You’re going for a hat trick question, mark.[00:00:44] Brian: No. No. And in fact, it’s, it’s funny, you are the only person who, with the exception of Bob Paul, Lacey, who had months ago made a kind of comment about that. You’re the only person in this round when I got hired and when Frost was acquired to actually have.[00:01:01] Pointed that out. And of course I took that bait and this is why we’re on the show today. But I talked to our PR team and I was like, look, this is just something that could be a thing that people might talk about or in this context. And surprisingly, and that’s fine because it’s really, it really was a news event.[00:01:16] This time around Yeah. I was just like, okay, what are the possible negative reactions? People might have to something like this. And I was like, that’s about the only thing I can come up with. Well, people may point out that this happened and it, whatever, it’s all good. Everyone’s happy. You’ve built a[00:01:31] Matt: lot of stuff from digital products to courses, to eBooks, to blogs, to knit mail email lists and newsletters, like all things that were in some form or fashion, a business, a micro business.[00:01:43] When I saw you. Go back to a WP engine and they had acquired frost in my head. I started thinking, you know wh