Breakdown - A Gravity Forms Podcast

What if you could get an early look at what the Gravity Forms team is building next—and actually help shape where those ideas go?

In this episode, I sit down with Travis to talk about Gravity Labs, where Gravity Forms customers can get hands-on with experimental add-ons, features, and new ideas while they’re still early in development. Gravity Labs is available to customers at every license level at no additional cost, giving you a chance to try new functionality sooner, put it to work in real-world projects, and share feedback directly with the team building it.

We also get into some of the bigger technology conversations happening around Gravity Forms, including AI, where we see it fitting into the product, and how experimentation through Gravity Labs can help us explore what’s possible.

And we go beyond the product itself. Travis shares how he got started in WordPress, his experience working in agency life, and how that journey eventually brought him to Gravity Forms—and now into helping build what comes next.

https://labs.gravity.com

GravityView has always been one of the most powerful ways to turn Gravity Forms into custom applications, and version 3.0 takes that idea even further. In this episode of Breakdown, Casey from GravityKit joins Matt Medeiros to unpack the biggest features in the release, from the new Vantage styling framework and front-end bulk actions to native support for popular page builders.

The conversation also explores how AI is changing WordPress development. Casey demonstrates how GravityKit's MCP integration can build and configure GravityView applications using natural language, opening the door to faster workflows without sacrificing the stability of proven WordPress plugins. If you're building client portals, directories, dashboards, or data-driven applications with Gravity Forms, this episode offers a look at where the platform is headed and how these new tools can fit into your workflow.

Learn more at https://gravitykit.com and https://gravityforms.com

In this episode of Breakdown, Matt talks with Karen from Guppy Fish Web about building websites that do more than just look good—they work hard for the organizations behind them. Karen shares how her agency evolved from taking any client who would pay into a focused practice serving churches and nonprofits, with an emphasis on WordPress, Gravity Forms, and automation that saves time and improves outcomes.

Karen explains why she believes a website should be an organization’s “most valuable employee,” especially for nonprofits where time directly translates into help. She shares examples of using forms, automation, and internal workflows to streamline registrations, donations, staff processes, and follow-up, all while helping clients think strategically about their goals before jumping into implementation.

Timestamps:
00:00 - Welcome and episode overview: building purpose-driven agencies
00:35 - Karen’s background: from table-based sites to WordPress and beyond
01:24 - Discovering WordPress and the aha moment
02:20 - Niching down: serving churches and nonprofits effectively
03:12 - Transitioning from accepting any client to strategic focus
04:07 - Why your website is your most valuable employee
04:35 - Challenges in educating clients about website value and automation benefits
05:14 - Automating nonprofit activities to amplify help and impact
06:01 - Cutting down repetitive tasks: automating in nonprofit systems
06:31 - The importance of training clients on new processes and tools
07:49 - AI’s impact: positives, negatives, and maintaining skill
09:36 - Using AI as a sounding board, not a replacement for your brain
10:08 - Analyzing survey data and meetings with AI
11:29 - Staying technically savvy in a non-technical client world
12:44 - Cross-over elements in nonprofit and church web stacks
13:31 - Common tools: Gravity Forms, email platforms, payment gateways
15:03 - Handling donations: platforms, integrations, conditional logic
16:13 - Navigating existing platforms versus custom solutions
17:19 - Special considerations for church management and giving platforms
18:44 - Flexibility of Gravity Forms for custom donation and event registrations
19:50 - The value of conditional logic and custom workflows in forms
20:16 - The balance between AI, open source tools, and gaining web knowledge
21:39 - Wrapping up: future plans — internal systems and knowledge management ('Marge')
22:44 - Final thoughts: education, learning curves, and embracing open solutions

Resources & Links: 

• Guppy Fish Web
• Gravity Forms
• AI tools for survey analysis
• Planning Center for churches
• East Carolina University

Connect with Karen:

• Guppy Fish Web - Website

What does it actually take to run a healthy WordPress agency in 2026 — when AI is rewriting the rules, clients expect more strategic value, and the "build a site, ship it, move on" model no longer pays the bills? In this episode of Breakdown, Matt Medeiros sits down with Jesse Brede, founder of Austin-based Lion's Share Digital and former fourth employee at WP Engine, to unpack what a modern agency looks like when service and software start to merge.

Jesse shares the playbook behind LionShare's growth: a paid discovery process that earns client trust before a line of code is written, a retainer-first model that smooths out the feast-or-famine cycle, and a custom internal dashboard ("LSD OS") designed to give clients real visibility into their sales, operations, and lead flow. Along the way, he and Matt dig into how AI is actually showing up in agency work — not as a replacement for craft, but as a layer underneath it.

In This Episode

• Why Lion's Share keeps WordPress at the center of its agency stack — and where Jesse thinks the platform still needs work
• The "service + software" thesis: why being just a service agency may not be enough going forward
• Building LSD OS, an internal business intelligence dashboard, as a proof of concept for clients
• How Jesse's team uses Claude, Perplexity, and ChatGPT — and why a human layer still sits on top of everything
• The paid discovery process: 3–5 meetings, real deliverables, and how it filters out the wrong clients
• Why monthly retainers and site care plans were the real turning point for the agency
• Capturing meeting transcripts with Fathom and feeding them back into AI for tasks, scope, and follow-up
• A standout Gravity Forms use case: a scored security quiz feeding gated whitepapers and Salesforce
• A preview of what's coming for Gravity Forms with the new WordPress Abilities API

About Jesse Brede

Jesse Brede is the founder of Lion's Share Digital, a full-service digital media agency in Austin, Texas, where he and his team handle everything from brand strategy and WordPress development to PPC, SEO, and Shopify builds. Before launching LionShare in 2011, Jesse was the fourth employee at WP Engine — giving him a front-row seat to the rise of managed WordPress hosting. When he's not running the agency, he's deep in the electronic music world as a DJ and record label owner.

Connect with Jesse:
Website: lionssharedigital.com

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessebrede/
  
  

In this episode, Amber Hinds, CEO of Equalize Digital, discusses the importance of web accessibility, the role of AI in enhancing accessibility efforts, and the upcoming Global Accessibility Awareness Day. She shares insights on how individuals and organizations can contribute to accessibility initiatives, particularly through the use of Gravity Forms.

https://equalizedigital.com/gaad2026/
https://www.gravityforms.com/accessibility/

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Accessibility and AI in WordPress
03:02 Global Accessibility Awareness Day Overview
06:11 Contributions to Accessibility: How Everyone Can Help
08:49 Using Gravity Forms for Accessibility Initiatives
12:08 Technical Insights: Code and Shortcodes for Accessibility
14:53 Future of Accessibility and AI in WordPress

What if your sales pitch could run itself? That's the idea behind the website audit tool that Logan Greenhaw, Owner of TrailMix Creative, built using Gravity Forms, GravityWiz's API Alchemist add-on, and a handful of clever API integrations. In this episode, Logan walks us through how he turned a tedious manual process — running SEO audits for prospective clients — into a streamlined, AI-assisted lead generation engine that does the heavy lifting for him.

Logan and Matt also dig into the realities of running a full-service creative agency over the past decade: the pressure to say yes to everything, how client expectations have shifted in the age of AI, and why the "anyone can just use ChatGPT" sentiment is both a real threat and a bit overblown. If you're an agency owner trying to figure out how to use smarter tooling to generate better leads and close more clients, this one's for you.

In This Episode

• The evolution of running a full-service WordPress and web design agency over 10 years
• How client expectations are changing as AI becomes more mainstream
• Why Logan built a website audit tool — and how it became a lead generation machine
• Using Gravity Forms and GravityWiz's API Alchemist to orchestrate PageSpeed Insights and IP Info API calls
• Running simultaneous API calls via Cloudflare Workers and posting results back into Gravity Forms
• Tokenized report URLs — how Logan saves audit results so clients can revisit them later
• Using Mailgun with Gravity Forms for reliable transactional email delivery

Connect with Logan:

• Website: trailmixcreative.com
• X/Twitter: @trailmixcreate
• LinkedIn: TrailMix Creative
• Instagram: @trailmixcreative
• Facebook: TrailMix Creative

Resources Mentioned

• TrailMix Creative Website Audit Tool — Find it under the Services tab
• Gravity Forms — The form engine powering Logan's audit tool
• GravityWiz API Alchemist — Used to connect Gravity Forms to external APIs without custom code
• Cloudflare Workers — Handles simultaneous API calls to PageSpeed Insights and IP Info, with results posted back to Gravity Forms
• Google PageSpeed Insights API — One of the two APIs powering the audit report
• IPInfo — Used for IP-based data enrichment in the audit tool
• Mailgun — SMTP provider integrated with Gravity Forms for delivering audit reports via email
• Matt's API Alchemist Overview Video — A walkthrough of the GravityWiz API Alchemist add-on on the Gravity Forms YouTube channel

Is AI quietly changing the kind of websites people need — before it even changes how we build them? 

In this episode of the Breakdown Podcast, Matt sits down with Jon Schroeder, founder of Elodin Design, for an honest look at how the WordPress freelance and agency world is shifting in early 2026. 

Jon shares what he's seeing on the ground: agency work slowing down, mid-range projects drying up, and growing demand at both extremes — simple one-pagers and full-blown web applications built on WordPress. 

The conversation covers AI's hidden impact on search and lead generation, why WordPress remains a powerhouse for affordable app development, and a real-world case study using Gravity Forms as the backbone of a property management application.

Connect with Jon:

• 
  Website: elod.in
• Twitter/X: @jonschr
  
  

Resources Mentioned

• 
  Elodin Design — Jon's web development studio
• Rent Fetch — Jon's apartment rental sync plugin for WordPress
• Brindle Digital — Agency partner for Rent Fetch projects
• Gravity Forms — Form plugin used in Jon's property management app and Rent Fetch integration
• GravityWiz API Alchemist — Advanced add-on for connecting Gravity Forms to any API
• Admin Columns Pro — Used for managing custom content types and CSV exports in WordPress
• Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) — Referenced as an alternative to native custom fields

Standout Moments

"A significant percentage of traffic is getting routed to Google where it never leaves Google. It never comes to your site." — Jon Schroeder

"WordPress can be used for an awful lot of things. It has the authentication layer and all of that baked into it, where a lot of times you can build something that's a wireframe... at a fraction of the price where all of the functionality is actually in place." — Jon Schroeder

"I trust myself more than the AI. And I have built some test sites and some landing pages with AI, but I don't know if I would trust it going live." — Jon Schroeder

What does it take to run a WordPress agency for nearly two decades — and actually enjoy the ride? Toby Cryns, founder of The Mighty Mo, has been building WordPress sites since the days when you had to convince clients that WordPress was a legitimate (and secure) platform. In this episode, Toby sits down with Matt to talk about how the WordPress agency landscape has evolved, why chasing the latest page builder is a trap, and how choosing stable, reliable tools has been the backbone of his business.

In This Episode

• How the WordPress community has matured from a collaborative hobbyist scene into a serious business ecosystem over the past two decades
• The difference between pitching WordPress to small businesses versus enterprise marketing teams — and why it requires entirely different conversations
• Why Toby prefers stable, proven tools over chasing the latest page builder, and how that philosophy protects his clients long-term
• Navigating the page builder landscape: Beaver Builder, Cadence, Elementor, and knowing when to standardize versus flex for a project
• A real-world Gravity Forms use case: building a complex product intake and quoting form for a screen technology company, layered on top of WooCommerce
• Why Toby's team chose Gravity Forms over WooCommerce's native form and extension ecosystem — transparency, trust, and a healthier add-on community
• Gravity Forms as "glue": how its conditional logic and integrations (Zapier, Mailchimp, Salesforce) create flexibility and business continuity even when tools or team members change
• Lessons from the car business: why client experience and proactive communication matter more than any technology choice
• Why Gravity Forms "does things the WordPress way" — and why that matters when you're inheriting and managing client sites

Connect with Toby:

• Website: TheMightyMo.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tobycryns
  
  

Resources Mentioned

• Gravity Forms — Form plugin for WordPress
• Gravity SMTP — SMTP and email deliverability plugin from the Gravity Forms team
• Gravity Wiz — Third-party Gravity Forms add-ons and snippets (including the shop configurator for WooCommerce integration)
• Beaver Builder — WordPress page builder
• Cadence — WordPress theme and blocks
• Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) — Custom fields plugin for WordPress
• WooCommerce — E-commerce platform for WordPress
• Zapier — Automation and integration platform

Matt sits down with returning guest Alex Standiford to talk about a big milestone for Siren Affiliates: it now supports Gravity Forms.

If you’ve ever written off “affiliate plugins” as just referral links and payout percentages, this conversation will reshape how you think about partnership programs in WordPress. Alex explains why Siren is really an incentive program builder, not just “get a link, earn 10%.” The episode gets into practical, real-world use cases like lead-based programs for agencies, revenue share models tied to performance over time, and even vendor payouts routed through Gravity Forms product fields.

They also get into the reality of running a product business alongside consulting, how AI is helping Alex move faster without magically eliminating the need for long-term maintenance, and why WordCamps can feel a little awkward when you build marketing-adjacent tools in a community that values authenticity.

By the end, you’ll have a bunch of “wait, I could do that?” ideas, especially if you run an agency, a course business, or any WordPress product that depends on partnerships.

Takeaways

• 
  Siren is positioned as an incentive program builder for collaborators (affiliates, partners, vendors, sales teams), not just a traditional affiliate plugin.

  
  

• Gravity Forms support unlocks smarter workflows like routing applicants into programs, tracking lead activity, and automating CRM and email list follow-up once someone is approved.

  
  

• You can track actions over time and do distributions (revenue share style payouts) without requiring a direct on-site transaction for every tracked event.

  
  

• Gravity Forms product fields can be used to attribute value to specific collaborators, which opens up vendor and booking-style scenarios, not just referrals.

  
  

• A strong affiliate program looks more like a product with onboarding, education, and touch points, and “10 great partners” often beats “1,200 random signups.”

Important links

• 
  https://sirenaffiliates.com/
  
  
• https://gravityforms.com/
  
  
• https://gravityflow.io/
  
  

Not every WordPress agency owner starts with a computer science degree. Laurie Barron's journey from accountant to agency co-founder proves that sometimes the most unexpected backgrounds create the strongest businesses. With degrees in accounting, computer information systems, and human-computer interaction, Laurie brings a unique perspective to web development: one that values both the numbers and the user experience.

In this episode, Laurie shares how she built not one, but two successful companies: Pursu Agency (with co-founder Betsy) and Simply Styled Sites. After 15 years in WordPress, she's learned that the real value isn't just in building websites. It's in the strategy, automation, and business systems that make those websites work harder for clients. She discusses why AI and page builders haven't replaced the need for expert developers, how to scope projects profitably, and why knowing your "zone of genius" is critical to sustainable growth.

For Gravity Forms users, this conversation is packed with practical ideas. Laurie reveals how she's transformed Gravity Forms from a simple contact form plugin into a complete business automation tool. From content gathering systems that feed into ChatGPT, to support ticketing workflows connected via Zapier, to survey fields that help clients make data-driven decisions.

In This Episode

• 
  Why Laurie's accounting background became an asset when running a WordPress agency
• How she met her business partner through an agency contracting gig
• Why AI and page builders aren't replacing agencies, and why this fear sounds familiar
• Why knowing your core competency protects your profitability
• How to structure paid discovery periods for larger projects ($10K+ discovery phases)
• Using Gravity Forms + Gravity Connect + ChatGPT to automate content creation
• Turning consulting expertise into self-service products clients can purchase

Connect with Laurie Barron

• 
  Pursu Agency: pursu.agency
• Simply Styled Sites: simplystyledsites.com
  
  

Resources Mentioned

• 
  Gravity Forms - The form plugin Laurie has used for 15 years and calls essential to her work - gravityforms.com
• Gravity Wiz - Add-ons and code snippets that extend Gravity Forms functionality - gravitywiz.com
• Gravity Connect - Tool that connects Gravity Forms with ChatGPT for AI-powered form workflows - gravityforms.com/gravity-connect
• Zapier - Automation platform Laurie uses to connect Gravity Forms to other business tools - zapier.com
• Asana - Project management system she connects to forms for support ticketing - asana.com
• WooCommerce - E-commerce platform (though Laurie explains why she's selective about these projects) - woocommerce.com
  
  

Standout Moments

"I feel like knowing how to use Gravity Forms and becoming an expert at it, I can do anything. But I also think I could do anything anyways, so Gravity Forms just helps." - Laurie Barron

"This happened when page builders came out. Everybody said 'anybody can do it.' But there's always gonna be people that don't want to do it. And there's the education piece: do people know how to do it properly?" - Laurie Barron

"You can create a website in minutes with AI, but it's gonna look like everybody else's. It's not gonna stand out from the competition. It might not reflect your voice. What you don't get is the strategy behind it." - Laurie Barron