Introducing Todd Jones

Todd is a content consultant, a WordPress fan, and native Arkansan. He likes everything from art to dirt track racing, and from rasslin’ to college football. He loves stories of entrepreneurs.

Show Notes

Website | grafixcatmedia.com

Twitter | twitter.com/tejones

Common Grounds book landing page | goancil.com/cgb/

Episode Transcript

Liam: This is Hallway Chats, where we talk with some of the unique people in and around WordPress.

Tara: Together, we meet and chat with folks you may not know about in our community.

Liam: With our guests, we’ll explore stories of living – and of making a living with WordPress.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 24.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we’re joined by Todd Jones. Todd is a content consultant, WordPress fan, and native Arkansan. He likes everything from art to dirt track racing, to raffling college football. He loves stories of entrepreneurs. Hey, Todd.

Todd: Hey, guys.

Tara: Hi, Todd, nice to see you.

Todd: Hey, Tara.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. Let’s start out with you telling us a little bit more about yourself, a little introduction to who is Todd Jones.

Todd: Well, I guess, maybe the first thing is that I am from Arkansas and probably one of the smaller states in the union. Most people think about Walmart or Bill Clinton, they think about Arkansas. We’re a beautiful state so I hope that you guys come sometime. I mean, I got into WordPress probably 10 -12 years ago, actually, with a football site. I actually wrote an article about that for Opensource.com and I just live in a small town called Conway which is a home of Kris Allen, who’s one of American Idol winners. That’s our climb to fame here, I guess, we’re about 25 miles west in i40, and in the Central Arkansas area. Grew up in Batesville, which is a home of Mark Martin, if anybody out there knows about NASCAR, you’ve heard of him. Beautiful town up in the north -central part of the state. Those things are true, I do like those things. I like art, and wrestling, and I like the stories of wrestling. I grew up watching dirt track racing. My dad actually announced as a public dress announcer at the local tribe, so it kind of got into that. Don’t see it as much as I’d like to but again, I keep up with it and it’s a unique sport in that Friday and Saturday nights across the whole country, somebody is driving a dirt race car, some oval in the cornfield or rice field somewhere. [laughter] And there’s probably millions of fans. What’s really cool about dirt racing at that level was that it might be your mechanic driving, you probably know these guys, and it’s the epitome of the side -hustle. We talk about the side -hustle in our own world. Maybe my side -hustle dial a local news site here in town, these guys, they do it because they love it but most of them, it don’t pay their salary. They might be a mechanic and they work at auto park store, they may just be a garage junkie. It’s a unique sport that way. And wrestling, I like the stories and athleticism, The old – – I think people stopped doing this, but you’ll hear, once in a while someone will say, “Don’t you know wrestling is fake?” And you just roll your eyes. It’s not really fake, it’s staged but the stories are fantastic, and I remember watching as a little kid back when we didn’t know wrestling was fake. Now it’s the best -kept secret, but it’s entertaining. I do like art, not necessarily great at it but I have enough art to be dangerous. Actually,