Episode 123 – Beth Livingston

Introducing Beth Livingston

Beth is a former WordPress designer, developer, turned online educator. She helps WordPress folks learn to get projects completed on time, within budget, with features that meet the client’s business requirements.

Show Notes

Website | WPRoadMaps

Twitter | @WPRoadmaps

Academy | FREE WP Project Manager’s Academy

Facebook Group | WordPress Project Management

Preferred Pronouns | She/Her

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 123.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Tara Claeys.

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we’re joined by Beth Livingston. Beth is a former WordPress designer, developer, turned online educator. She helps WordPress folks learn to get projects completed on time, within budget, with features that meet the client’s business requirements. Hello, Beth.

Beth: Hi. Thanks for having me today.

Tara: We’re glad you’re here. Thanks for being here, Beth. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Beth: Sure. I started life as actually a kindergarten teacher. Well, first grade. And then I went into corporate and started working as a business analyst and training specialist in corporate. I built my first WordPress website around 2009 for a side project. Isn’t this the way that most WordPress agencies are born? Right? You start building a website for yourself, then you start building them for friends and family, and then you think, “Wait, I could do this as a job.” That’s exactly what I did.

I left corporate in 2016, started developing websites for folks. My whole shtick was, “Not only am I going to build this website for you, but I’m going to teach you how to manage it and maintain it going forward” because I just didn’t want to do the aftercare. I’d been a help desk helper before and I didn’t like all of that. It didn’t take me very long to find out that most business owners don’t want to manage their own website. And so what would happen is “Oh, can you just do this for me? Can you just do this for me?”

At the same time, I started going to WordCamps and going to WordPress meetups and realized that so much of the stuff that agencies and individual providers are struggling with are things I have the answer to, I know how to stop scope creep, I know how to get content from the client on time. All that stuff you have to do very early on to make sure that the project runs smoothly. I did my first talk at WordCamp Asheville. I mean, a couple of people actually chased me to the parking lot after it was over to tell me how much I had had an impact on what they do. Then when I saw that same person the next year, she said, “You completely changed my business.” She said, “Now I’m getting paid for everything.” And all I did was tell him how to restructure their payment schedule.

To me, it’s like, “Seriously, that wasn’t really a big thing.” But for her, it really was. That’s when I said, “You know what, I should probably combine my skills. I’m a WordPress person, I have all this project management background, and I’m an instructional designer, so I should probably put all of that together.” My master’s degree is in instructional design,