Hallway Chats

Birgit Olzem says WordPress is her passion. She is the mother of five, granny of one, a coach and a trainer. She loves to connect people in the WordPress ecosystem and she advocates for mental health awareness and inclusiveness.

Website | CoachBirgit

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.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 82.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we are joined by Birgit Olzem. Birgit says WordPress is her passion. She is the mother of five. Granny of one, a coach and a trainer. She loves to connect people in the WordPress ecosystem and she advocates for mental health awareness and inclusiveness. Birgit has been playing with WordPress since its first release. Welcome Birgit!

Birgit: Hi Liam. Hi Tara!

Tara: Hi! We’re so excited to have you here today Birgit. Thanks for joining us. Can you tell us more about your story?

Birgit: Oh yeah. My signature story is the story of the year 2018. When I started using WordPress I didn’t expect that it went this way. So yeah. I am a mom of five as you introduced me, right? I am a Grandma one awesome grandchild. My oldest daughter gave birth in April this year. Over the years I taught myself developing and building websites. I’m an explorer. I’m always curious about how those things are working. That’s what led me to this point today. I have grown up in the countryside in Germany near the border of Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and France. So when I sit in my car, I am one hour away and in a different country. So it’s pretty awesome.

Tara: That is pretty awesome! So you have been working with WordPress for a long time. How did you discover it? What were you doing before you discovered it?

Birgit: I was originally more of a mother so I couldn’t finish my school education. I finished, but not really higher education. I wanted to do it but I got pregnant when I was 17. So I was in the early stages and so I changed my life into being a mom and a wife. I was a waitress but I was always curious about computers. I have played around with building websites and it was my hobby when my kids were sleeping, or at playtime with others. I used to sit on the computer and teach myself building websites and designing something like that.

Tara: Wow! What did you find to be the resources that were most helpful when your were learning? What were you relying on? Videos or books?

Birgit: Yeah. There were some websites in the early stages. There was a German website, telfhtml.de. It was most researchly and user groups, mail user groups and some firms where I learned a lot about php. I learned about that, About b2b, coffee lark, Joomla, Drupal over the years. I also learned about the user groups and about WordPress when it was released. I played with one of the first release versions.

Tara: Great! Can you talk to us a little bit about a talk that you have given about WordPress? What WordPress has meant in your life?

Birgit: Yes. I shared my story on how WordPress literary saved my life this year at several WordCamps. Through some strong connections within the WordPress community I was able to make my living but also to overcome a really really hard time in my life through the friendships I made in the WordPress community. In 2018, I had the chance and also the courage to talk about that hard topic in public. I learned that I can give more inspiration about that because I got so much feedback about how much courage I had to share the story. Yeah! Through these connections with the people I met in the WordPress Community, it helped me to stay alive (or to choose to stay alive) because of some hard life struggles in the past seven years with a lot of downs and some bright ups. But it was like ping-pong. When I had an up, I also had a direct down afterwards. So it was a hard time, but it made me stronger and now I choose to take this signature story to help other women or at least other people who struggle some days with their passion or something like that. Also with life to say hey! Even if you have a bad time you will get any solution somewhere just by asking.

Liam: Birgit – Thank you for sharing that. I have not had the pleasure of seeing your talk. I imagine that a number of the people listening to this conversation won’t either. Would you be comfortable maybe sharing a little bit of it with us here to maybe give us some insight into what those ping-pongs were for you?

Birgit: Yeah. For sure. Unfortunately is not published in English yet. Only my talk in German is published on WordPress TV. It was mostly about how I decided to leave my husband, the father of my five children, in 2011. In 2009, my mom died suddenly from cancer. We didn’t know. So in 2011, I decided to leave my husband because the situation wasn’t good. He was a truck driver and never really at home. I was mostly the mom who raised the children alone. And in late 2011, my best friend died also with cancer. I really did not have a lot of money because my husband or ex-husband decided not to pay any money to me. I only had the federal for children care money (around €500 or €600) so that was the only money I had to buy furniture for the new flat, to fill the fridge and to pay my bills. So at that point, I was as self-employed but as a side-job only. Always over the years I did it as a side-job.

Liam: Grocery money and not rent money kind of thing.

Birgit: Yeah. So I was not only trying to survive financially but also emotionally because I had to be strong for my children because my four youngest children were living with me. The struggle with their father and where they should live etc., was worse. Yeah, divorce times are always the worst times. Then at my friend died, and I really had no support from my local friends. Some friends, yes but not that big community behind me to help me. But thankfully through connections within the local community of WordPress (the WordPress community in Germany) I had some good connections to get employment in 2012 which brought me into the active community of WordPress. I translated WordPress into German. I maintained and released the packages for the German version of WordPress over several years. I was a trainer for WordPress. I specialized as a trainer because it made a lot of fun. Always today it makes me happy to teach people something they don’t know, but afterwards they are happy to do that. So it was always a roller coaster to find a job and take some money, but then I got seriously ill through these struggles with the divorce, with the childcare, and not having enough money. So I burned out. That’s what cost me my employment. It really wasn’t successful so I struggled with finding jobs. I let them know and had only a one year contract. Afterwards it stopped because of some kind of thing. Yeah, it was not the best fit for both types for long-term unfortunately. It was mostly because I was looking for something that I can put into my value. My value was not really credited so I got frustrated. With a mental issue and behind, it’s not that easy to stay strong with a job part.

Liam: Sure.

Birgit: I had one situation when I was really ill. I had a virus infection which caught me where I could not stand up out of my bed. On top of that, I was really tired. The muscles were painful and every step was painful. I was in the situation where I thought okay. I have an option to sit in a wheelchair, or you quit your life, or something like that. I had some conversations with friends in the community. Always when I had chance to visit a local WordCamp I got enlightened afterwards because a strong connection with like-minded people was so helpful for that moment. The biggest moment for me in that situation was going to WordCamp Europe in Paris in 2015. I was on too many WordCamp Europes, so…

Tara: I think 2016.

Liam: I think 2016, yeah.

Birgit: I guess 2016 yeah. I couldn’t afford to go to Paris at that moment. So, it was really hard for me not to go. I tweeted a lot about that. If there is a miracle happening that I can go to WordCamp in Europe in Paris, it would be awesome. On the same day I got a message from a good friend of mine in the German WordPress community who had a spare room because he overbooked a hotel room in Paris and couldn’t cancel it. He offered me this room for free. He also offered me to take the long distance by car, so we joined in the house of my hometown (100 km or so). He came from the south of Germany, so on the rest we traveled together. This generous action was so delighting for me. I thought okay, that’s really great stuff – it’s worth it to stay alive, and come back into the light, and don’t suffer anymore, and in the grief and in the feeling of not being worthy (or something like that). That’s why I always try to to stay connected within the WordPress community. The WordPress community helped me, contributing to WordPress but also do training. It’s something that helps me to fulfill my purpose in life in someway. That’s a long story, short.

Liam: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.

Tara: It’s a wonderful story.

Liam: It was clear to me because we were streaming video as we were talking with together, it was clear from your face, your eyes, and your emotion that I could see through the video that as you watch yourself through the story, this is very real for you. The hard times are still very much in your head and in your heart. When you talk about the happier times and the connections through WordPress, your smile comes and your eyes light up. This is real stuff right here. So thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Birgit: Than you also for taking the chance and sharing my story.

Tara: Yeah. I think we started this podcast to get to know people who have maybe not as dramatic of the story as you have, Birgit. But who have felt the impact of the WordPress community and WordPress as a way to make a living. For me also, I found the community to be the best part of it. The work is interesting and I love what I do. I think hearing your story is a really extreme example (extreme example is the wrong word but I don’t know the right word.) It’s an excellent example of what the WordPress community means. I don’t know how it happens that this group of people who are like you said, sort of like-minded and support each other is really exceptional. I love hearing how this has changed your outlook on your life and helped you get through hard times and that has inspired you to help other people too. That’s just wonderful. I really appreciate that. I am going to ask you a question that we ask everyone that may be significant for you after that story. How do you define success? What does that mean to you?

Birgit: At first it means staying alive. I am not kidding. I really celebrate every day that I am alive, to be honest. Then, success for me is to have the flexibility to manage my family, and to take care of my family, but also to work in a section to bring value and to relieve stress for other people. I define success when I can see the sparkling in the eyes of others in the face to face action. I am struggling to find the words. English is not my first language.

Liam: We know what you mean. We know where you’re going. When working with and the family you are supporting. Their eyes are smiling. We get it.

Birgit: Yeah. I’m always looking for a smile on another’s face. That for me is success. On the financial part to say okay, I have enough money to pay my bills and have something to save a little bit for some bigger things I want to buy or achieve or travel (something like that). I’m pretty low in my goals of being successful. It’s mostly the small parts. It’s not having a big car, a big house. A nice car is not how I have defined success. The small things like having time, drinking a coffee or reading a book.

Tara: Yeah. Being grateful for those moments and just for being alive. That’s actually a big thing. I think success is a word that a lot of people associate with financial rewards and we’ve yet to meet someone on this show who defines it that way.

Liam: Financial awards aren’t going to help you when you’re sick. They might get you medical treatment but if the medical treatment doesn’t bring the health (especially the mental health, right?) It’s hard enough when our back is in pain or a knee twisted, or our arm is broken or something like that. Even if our child is physically sick or impaired in some way. But to see the light at the tunnel growing darker and the light around us getting darker all the time is very, very hard. To see successes… just being alive…that alone just as a goal is fantastic. It’s just wonderfully simplistic – in a positive way – wonderfully simplistic version of success. Life itself is valuable. Full stop end of sentence. Then to tie your definition of a wider success of the smiles and the happiness on the faces of those with whom you’re interacting with is in my view very reflective of the value put on life itself. Life is not overly well-valued in this day and age. So thank you for sharing that with us and for holding that belief.

Tara: It’s welcoming having the perspective that you have. I think definitely impacts your definition of success. Birgit, I got to meet you in person in Nashville at WordCamp US. Was that your first time at WordCamp US, or in the US? Have you been here before that?

Birgit: This is my second time in the US. I attended WordCamp San Francisco in 2014. The last WordCamp San Francisco that way. I had a scholarship to join the community summit. So it was really good for me to attend. This was my first WordCamp US.

Tara: Okay. You actually were able to get to the microphone during the State of the Word and ask a question. Can you tell us a little about what that was like? Can you tell us about that?

Birgit: It’s kind of a running gag between Matt sometimes. I try to find a way at every Q&A he gives to raise some questions. I think it’s important to discuss in public. This time I asked the question because it affects my life also. I am a long-term contributor to WordPress. Since 2012, I have been really active. I have a big interest into the five for the future idea that Matt shared some years ago. We have so many people in the WordPress community who are giving more than 5% of their time and money to contribute to WordPress in several various ways. A lot of them are not supported by an employer or a sponsor. I was asking about what can the WordPress community or an entity like the WordPress Foundation do to support such people who invest so much time contributing to WordPress more than the 5%. Unfortunately, the answer Matt gave on stage wasn’t really clear. I guess he wasn’t really aware about the impact that question had. Afterwards we had a chance to discuss it and he apologized to me because his answer wasn’t really good. There was one part when he said when you’re not getting hired by a company for your contributions you are not worthy like that content. That wasn’t what he meant. He only said okay. I think his impression was to to say okay, show your value. Find companies who are interested to support you, But that’s pretty difficult when you go to a company and say hey okay! I’m translating WordPress in German. Are you interested to sponsor my working time in that? Or I am currently leading the Marketing Team for the WordPress community in Germany. I can tell you I contribute over 15 hours a week at least only for WordPress. So it’s my working hour as a freelancer that’s not supported by any big company or something like that. There are so many people who are investing more time. My intention was to have an entity where a high volume contributor gets support in someway, financially or something like that. So we have some kind of diversity sponsorships like Yoast does, or like Ines van Essen with the Donate WC Campaign, where some hosting companies who are supporting people but there’s so many people under the radar. They don’t get seen because they are working hard and not working on marketing themselves. So that’s the issue I saw. I would like to raise more awareness also for that. That’s why I was asking that question.

Tara: That’s an interesting and complicated question because WordPress is open source. Typically people are not hired to volunteer, and  it’s their choice to do so. But I wonder if the conversation with Morten and Rachel Cherry are starting will encompass any of that? This a global…

Liam: WordPress Governance Project.

Tara: Thank you!

Birgit: I hope that it will helpful for that. I know we have some kind of foundation like the Mozilla project in the Drupal community. In Joomla there are entities who are supportive for such people. I guess there are existing models. I think if they are not an existing model yet, the WordPress community is so big and so strong. Why not create a new role model for that? WordPress runs over 32% of all websites so we have with our community a big voice, a strong voice, and a big impact. I think we should create something helpful for such high-volume contributors.

Liam: It’s a really interesting area of thought exploration because you noted that WordPress powers over 32+ and change percent of the Internet. Often times we can focus on the numbers of that, right? How many websites and that kind of thing. We tend to get focused, or risk getting focused on what is the website functionality delivering. In my mind and certainly hearing your story and from the other stories we’ve heard here, it’s the community around it (the people around it) are of greater value really than the software itself. It is very difficult to quantify that. So I’m very interested to see where this goes and to see how we can as a community create the systems that you are talking about. But Birgit, I want to ask you something a little bit different now. It’s one of our more regular questions here. It’s about advice. It’s about advice that you’ve received or have been given, or discovered or shared and worked successfully into your life. What advice have you been given or received or read and worked successfully into your life?

Birgit: Um… I will try to translate it into English.

Liam: You can say in German. I am sure we have some German listeners.

Birgit: It’s in every situation you face has a good or a bad side. You can always choose to stick in the bad experience or you can choose to make the most of that experience and move forward. Never stand. Always keep moving. That is the advice I got a lot from my own mom several years ago. Yeah, it’s my inner motivator to move forward.

Tara: Yeah. I’ve been and listening to some podcasts and doing some reading about different thought models and the idea that your thoughts control your feelings so you can look at the day and say it’s raining outside. That’s a fact. Then you can say your feeling about that or your thought about that is that it is going to be a bad day because it’s raining. Then you feel bad. Then you behave in a way that reflects your feelings, which is that you’re sad. Or you can look at the rainy day which is the fact and have the thought that this is a good day because I can snuggle up under a blanket and watch a movie or some other thing that’s good. So it really is good that you can look at it good or bad and you can choose that. That will affect how you feel. That’s great advice.

Birgit: Exactly. It’s practicing mindfulness. It has helped me a lot also to overcome that situation. Being thankful and practicing a thankful behavior on daily basis is really helpful to survive.

Tara: Thank you for sharing that. We are going to have to wrap up this podcast. We appreciate so much you being with us and wrapping up the year. It sounds like it was a good year for you. I am hoping that all the good is what is emphasized for you next year. Would you share with us where people can find you on line?

Birgit: Yeah. You’ll find me always as coach Birgit. CoachBirgit.com. Twitter as CoachBirgit.

Tara: Great. Thank you again for joining us.

Birgit: Thank you for having me.

Liam: Thank you again for sharing your story yet again. It is never easy. Even though you’ve chosen to do so, I appreciate that it’s never easy. It may still bring value, but it’s still a walk through painful territory. Thank you for taking the time to do that for us today.

Birgit: Thank you.

Tara: Thank you so much. Bye.

Birgit: Bye.

Liam: Bye-bye.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Susan Walker is a web developer at Rutgers University Camden where she manages the WordPress multi-sites. She’s a co-organizer of the Philadelphia WordPress meetup, has been a WordCamp Philly co-organizer, and has spoken at WordCamp US.

Website | susanwrotethis.com

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.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 81.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Susan Walker. Susan is a web developer at Rutgers University Camden where she manages the WordPress multi-sites. She’s a co-organizer of the Philadelphia WordPress meetup, has been a WordCamp Philly co-organizer, and has spoken at WordCamp US. Hi, Susan. Nice to see you, today.

Susan: Hi. How is everybody?

Liam: We’re doing very well, Susan. Thank you so much. Great to see you again. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, please?

Susan: Well, I live in Haddon Township, New Jersey. That’s about 15 minutes by rail from center city Philly. You mentioned that I work at Rutgers Camden. My official title there is web developer but that only is a little bit of what I do. Not much to tell about myself personally. Single, no kids, right now no pets but looking forward to getting a house fairly soon, and I will probably get myself a couple of little guinea pigs.

Tara: Oh, guinea pigs. Have you had guinea pigs before?

Susan: Oh, I have since I was a little kid.

Tara: Great. Do you teach at the university or do you run their web stuff?

Susan: No, I do no teaching whatsoever. The closest I ever come is pulling aside the content people, we call them ninjas and train them on specific things such as building web forms. But I do stay out of the classroom and that’s probably a good thing for both me and the students.

Tara: [laughs] So how did you find WordPress and get into web development to begin with?

Susan: Oh, gosh. That’s two different stories. Starting with WordPress, I was actually hired by Rutgers Camden as a Drupal developer and I don’t think that they had fully worked out the plan of what they were going to do with me once they got me onboard. They put me in an office and I basically sat around for four weeks and then the department head came in and said, “Well, we’ve decided you’re not going to do Drupal. You’re going to be doing our WordPress. And they had never actually asked me in the job interview if I knew anything about WordPress or done it before.

Liam: That is awesome.

Susan: Yes, I think about a week and a half into trying to figure out how to build a theme, I was just kind of sitting there crying because I knew that I was going to get fired once they figured out I had no idea what was going on. But it did work out and with a lot of time on Google and a lot of patience, I think about six months after being told that, I had built my first plugin and my first theme and we were starting to get things on the right track.

Liam: Can I ask, were you a Drupal developer at the time or were you a developer generally and you were going to dig into Drupal? What was the hiring process and where were you in terms of your development career with respect to getting hired in the first place?

Susan: I had started working with HTML about the year 1999 and that was because I was a public information officer at a two-year college. They told me that I would be working with the IT group on setting up the course catalog and I wanted to get ahead of the curve on that and figure out the conflicting information that the IT group told me, and found out that I enjoy doing HTML a whole lot more than what I was doing for living. And I was pretty good at it, that’s how I made the transition then. I spent about two years after that just kind of learning on my own, and then my first really full-time job doing web was in 2003. I won’t mention the company name but I was working for a Fortune 500 company that provides IT and consulting services to universities. I was based out at Sul Ross State University in West Texas where I was working on a classic ASP and SQL server-based content management system. It was starting to die out so I started researching other CMSs and that’s how I picked up on Drupal.

Liam: cool, thank you. That’s–

Susan: A very long way around.

Liam: That’s a story right there.

Tara: Yeah. There’s a lot of activity these days in the higher education component of WordPress. I know, I believe it’s Rachel Cherry who runs WordCamp S and there’s a lot that goes into university website systems. Can you talk a little bit about that, and if you’re involved in that community at all?

Susan: I do attend all of their events virtually. I’ve not had an opportunity to be out there yet or be as deeply involved simply because I’m so involved in the Philly WordPress community. There just becomes a point of when you can’t do everything. I think one of the things that you’ll find with the education community is that there is an awful lot of multi-site and multi-network installations, probably compared to the way that WordPress is used in other areas. And I think a lot of it is instead of the idea of, you have a client, you build and you deploy and maybe you provide support after that, but you really don’t have to deal with it actively. The whole concept of multi-site and really you’re talking about managed hosting and you’re talking about sustaining the ecosystem and optimizing it for your particular kind of user instead of just the +do it and then you’re done with it’.

Tara: What is your biggest challenge in running this multi-site at the university, would you say?

Susan: Manpower. For us, when I started out, it was a single multi-site that was really struggling to find its purpose. There were maybe 30 sites on it, only two of which were departments. It was pretty easy to get a grip on but we were so successful with it that by various measures, the growth of the system in the seven and a half years that I’ve done this has been 2300%. We still have myself and the sysadmin.

Liam: 2300% growth? Wow. That’s really interesting, thinking about multi-site for a university. And I’m just thinking aloud here is that it could be for the department of history, it could be for the sub-department of modern European history, it could be a multi-site for one modern European history professor and all of her students to have it. I could see very easily how, “Well, can’t you just give us another website?” Suddenly becomes 17,000, at least started and often abandoned blogs.

Susan: Ah, yes, yes, yes. Actually, one of the things that I’m proudest of having worked on this is with a multi-site of any kind, you need to think about an exit strategy when things fail. Specific sites or blogs, people want the space, they set it up and then it sits there for all eternity. I wrote a script that we named Alice, and Alice’s job is to check every night for the sites that have not launched yet. We know that whether we’ve got a domain name mapped to them. Then it will check the date that the site was registered. And if it’s been out there for a year, then it will automatically archive that site and it will give the content providers warning 30, 60, and 90 days out before that deadline. But it basically serves them notice that this can’t sit out there indefinitely and it does a great job of keeping things cleaned up but taking the politics of it.

Liam: that sounds like a good idea. It’s always good to steer clear of politics. Then I want to ask you about your involvement with the Philadelphia WordPress community. For the edification of those listening, you and I have been on the organizing team for WordCamp Philly the last couple of years together, and it’s been a real pleasure working with you. But I don’t know the story of how you got involved with the community. Certainly, you shared with us about your abrupt introduction to WordPress itself, but hopefully, your introduction to the community was a little bit more in your own hands and more enjoyable. Can you talk us through that?

Susan: Yeah, in 2012, the sysadmin mentioned to me, “Hey, there’s this thing called WordCamp coming up in Philly, and you might like to go to it.” They paid for my registration and WordCamp Philly 2012 was my first event in the area. And I had the great good fortune to sit in on a presentation, and I wish I could remember their names but they were from the tri-college cooperative with Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore and Haverford, and they had two of their people talking about the challenges of WordPress multi-site in education, and it was just this amazing moment where I thought, “Yes, these are exactly the challenges that I’ve been running into.” And I actually found myself ahead of them on a couple of strategies getting help with.

Liam: That’s always fun.

Susan: Yes, it really was such an affirming moment that I did my best to try and get out there. I think it was actually maybe 2013 and it was, in fact, a presentation that you did for WordPress Philly, it was ‘Advanced Custome Fields’.

Liam: Ah. [laughs]

Susan: I remember it was the University of Pensylvania.

Liam: Yeah, it was at U Pen.

Susan: So I started looking into that a little bit and we actually went with toolset types and views to do a lot of the same things but it was a better fit for us. Then I just tried to make it every time I could and at some point, Regusto noticed that I was there a whole lot and thought, “Well, maybe she’d like to talk one time.” And he invited me and I did a thing about multi-site back in 2015. And from there, it just kind of snowballed. I talked at a WordCamp and I got invited to be a co-organizer for the meetup, and then a co-organizer for WordCamp, and here I am.

Tara: That’s a great story and a great trajectory and pathway, I think, an example of a great way to get more and more involved in the community. Yeah, I’ve got a long history there. Susan, can you tell us about your definition of success? How do you define it personally, professionally, what does success mean for you?

Susan: You know, I saw that question and it is such a whole meaning of life thing. How do you–

Tara: Yes, it is. That’s why we like to ask it. [laughs]

Liam: Yes, you’ve called us out rightly so.

Susan: [laugh] And I think in the grandest sense, one of the things that I’ve read along the way was I think from a Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde’s definition of happiness was being in harmony with your surroundings. I think that in the grand scheme of things, that maybe once you’ve got your basic needs met, you’ve got your bills paid, and a roof over your head, and you don’t have too many economic worries and you’re a little bit beyond that. You’re making your little corner of the world a bit tidier in some way without sweeping the dirt into somebody else’s. And you found that harmony. And I think that’s just probably the greatest success there is because it’s your scale of who you are and what you do.

Liam: Oh, I love that holistic approach to it. That can be on many different levels, individual harmony and being at peace with who we are and where we are and what we’re doing. And then, you know, I love that you said you’re tidying up your little corner of the world without sweeping dust in everybody else’s. Again, that has meaning on many different levels. It’s not just being friendly and neighborly, but it can be looking out for people less advantaged than we are, or pick a venue or a situation and that kind of being in harmony inevitably means compromise and support and generosity to self and to others. I love that, Susan. You’ve struck a chord with me with that definition. Thank you.

Tara: I agree. Thank you for sharing that. What are some of the things that you do toward that idea of success, maybe outside of your WordPress stuff?

Susan: Yeah, and some of it is just having a sense of who you are or at least who you’re not. Sometimes, figuring out who you’re not is one of the most important things. And I think for me, one of the things people don’t know about me is I’m actually a service brat, my father was coast guard. I lived in nine different states and–

Tara: what’s your favorite place that you’ve lived? Sorry to interrupt you.

Susan: Oh, here, definitely. For me, and this is a very specific thing that obviously I can’t recommend to the rest of the world, is find that community where you felt like you are a part of it and try and come home to it when you can. Though I would also add that if you’re already there, don’t isolate yourself in that community, get out and see the world and try and spend some time in it.

Liam: So, find your home but don’t be afraid to leave the home, too?

Susan: Right, right. And it’s really interesting coming here and I think one of the things that I always loved about the Philadelphia area is it has what I guess I would describe is an educated working class. You’ve got very much people who are in day-to-day jobs but they seem to have a higher level of interesting surroundings and in learning and in growing. I often wondered if maybe that has something to do with the quicker routes of the community here, and some of the philosophy has rubbed off on the culture in interesting ways. I do know that a lot of the people who most epitomize that are actually Swarthmore graduates or there are circles in their families.

Tara: Yeah. I think also that there’s a great tech community that’s really growing in Philadelphia and it seems to be a very socially-conscious community as well, very progressive, I’d say, in how the tech world interacts with each other and diversity and all of those things, I’ve noticed a lot of conversations in that Philly community about that kind of stuff. I think that’s a great thing about the Philadelphia area, too. If that’s true, that’s my perception.

Susan: It really feels like it’s a lot more inclusive than a lot of places, and I would also add that for the arts community here which I have the pleasure and privilege of knowing a lot of people from and it is just a very welcoming and very diverse group. And I’m glad that the tech community is also doing that.

Liam: Yeah, it’s a great little community to be a part of and it’s wonderful to see. When you said educated working class, what is it Susan, something like over a 100 universities in the greater Philadelphia area? Maybe not over a 100 but certainly more than I could count. It would take the better part of the morning to Google them all and find them all. It’s a lot of universities, there’s so much education here. Susan, I want to spend a second here before we move onto other questions to take you back, because in your introduction, we mentioned that you spoke at WordCamp US. And I was privileged enough to be in the audience for that talk. And you were talking about some of the challenges of website administration within a university environment. Just given the size, and the scope, and the scales, and the competing needs that a university has. One of the slides that you shared with the people in your talk highlighted, and referenced and detailed something that you have, I’m going to say affectionately referred to as the Walker Principle. That has stuck with me and caused me many a laugh. And also, I find great insight in it. I wonder if you can share that with us? I also would love to know the backstory of how you came to discover that principle?

Susan: Walker’s Principle is dysfunction in your organization will manifest itself as dysfunction on your website.

Tara: I like that.

Susan: Everybody who hears that seems to be laughing and nodding their heads and recalling their favorite story of something that didn’t quite go according to plan because of the organizational structure and there’s just so many ways that that can possibly happen. In my last job, I started out actually as a web content technician, rapidly became the web developer there. And just like I’ve been pretty much a single person with a department at Rutgers Camden, it was a very similar situation there where honestly, the administration was thinking that the whole web thing was kind of a fad and that it was going to go away. Of course, this was 2003 so they never really fully bought into it until they realized that maybe it would be useful for marketing. But one of the things about working at a very small university is you can see all the different parts moving, and get a handle on it in a way that you can’t at an ivy league school or a big ten university. You can see the very specific cause and effect of things and why they’re not working out on the web. Of course, in the broad sense, I don’t pursue it as a hobby anymore but I was actually looking into physics as a career path at one point. Second law of thermodynamics, which is basically entropy over time, systems are going to fall apart if you don’t put energy and effort into them. It’s pretty much the driving force behind any website any time ever. And a lot of what I’ve tried to do is one person usually trying to handle too much web presence is to try and plug the holes in the system and make it the closest thing to being a self-sustaining machine that you can possibly make it. Because the less effort that you put into a website, the longer it can go without things starting to fall apart on you.

Tara: Interesting. I’m thinking about that as, from your perspective, a part of the organization, so you can have an impact on the dysfunction or function level of that organization. For those of us who run agencies and do client work, that’s not really something that’s in our control. And I think sometimes organizations pull in agencies outside people to come in and build their website and don’t understand that the website is dependent on that Walker Principle, right? On that idea that their organization’s level of interest, involvement, and function or dysfunction is going to have a proportionate effect on our ability to create a great website for them. And I think that that’s a really interesting way to look at it as well. How do you approach that if you’re internal versus external and how do you create a great website and have an impact on the level of functionality of that, of the organization itself? A really great question, a great thing to ponder, I think. I like that Walker Principle, I’m definitely going to keep that in mind. I wonder if I can put that on my website somehow. [laughter] That’s really interesting. I’m going to take that as an opportunity to transition a little bit because what you’re sharing with us is along the lines of advice in a way. And we always ask our guests to share with us advice that they have received in their life and implemented something that’s had an impact on you. Is there any advice that you can share with us that comes to mind?

Susan: One of the things that I have always enjoyed was a quote. And I think it is from the movie producer Arthur Freed who said, “Don’t try to be different, just be good. To be good is different enough.” And I’ve tried to live by that and do well in a small way. When you’re working on web design and web development, it’s very easy to get distracted by all the things you can do. The bells and whistles and the shiny objects and so on. I think to try and stay focused on what the actual purpose is and who are you serving by this, and placing for me the web visitor first, and then the content providers, and then everybody else. And strive for the best that you can possibly do there, and just being successful in any way at that is a great thing and a different thing.

Liam: Be you and be the best you.

Susan: Mhm.

Liam: Yeah, the simplicity of that, I think is really important and we always talk about in business anyways, what’s your differentiator, what makes you better, what makes you unique, to the point of the advice that you just shared, just do a good job as often as you possibly can, do a good job. That alone is a fantastic differentiator, I love that advice. Thank you for sharing it.

Tara: Yeah, I think the temptation to stand out, be different, be unique is maybe, in this community where we have so much of the same in terms– websites look the same, all those things, how do you stand out and be different can distract you from being good, I think that’s important to keep in mind. Absolutely. What is your favorite thing to do, Susan, in your job at the university? What’s the favorite element of your day-to-day work?

Susan: Oh, in work, I love doing development. I like to think of it as puzzles to be solved rather than problem problems. And when I actually managed to solve one of those puzzles and especially when I managed not to break something else when I do it is a wonderful thing. I do because my scope is actually beyond WordPress. I am the department comms person. I keep the Twitter account going, I do the graphic design work. I love to be able to shift gears and work on some of the message boards and graphics work and so on where you can be cute or funny or whatever. It really helps to clear the clutter out of your head so that when I come back to the next puzzle that I need to deal with on the development side, it’s just really refreshing like I’ve had a nice long nap and I’m ready to go.

Tara: That’s right. Great. How about in your non-work life? Tell us about that?

Susan: Theater, absolutely. And I don’t know where in my family this comes from. We are not a particularly arts-oriented family in any way. My mother came from a bunch of science and math nerdy types. I’m actually like the third generation of women in stem on my mother’s side of the family. And on my father’s side, I have no clue whatsoever. But apparently, I just was born with this where I love to create shows. And when we lived in West Virginia, I would round up the neighborhood kids and direct them in fairy tales. Then we would do a production on our front porch and we would charge the family members each a penny to get in. My mother was telling me when I did this, I was all four years old. [laughter] I first got involved in theater sometime in between fourth and sixth grade. Starting in high school, I was a regular in community theater productions and I’ve been a community president for a couple of years. In this area, I’ve performed with Shakespeare in Clark Park and most recently, got to workshop a show that Team Sunshine Performance Corporation is hoping to be able to stage in 2020 or 2021.

Tara: That’s great. Do you attend a theater as well?

Susan: Oh yeah. Unfortunately, not being a millionaire, I don’t get season tickets to everything. I just have to kind of pick and choose.

Tara: Do they have any same day type things? I know at our theater sometimes they have same day, you can show up like an hour before the show and if there are seats, you can get them for a discount.

Susan: That is the sort of thing you usually get more at the Broadway level and I actually cannot see so many of mainstream productions. So, no, you don’t really get the discounts like that in the Philly community. One great way, if you are in the area and you’re interested but can’t afford it, is if you volunteer to usher, you can go see the shows.

Tara: Great. What’s your best or favorite performance that you’ve done, that stands out for you?

Susan: Oooh. The most challenging that I took on just because I had so many lines in the show was a production of Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero, and that was back in another era. I was really excited, not this past summer but the summer before, I was in a production of Coriolanus and got to work with actual theater professionals. I had two lines which is like, there is no other way that I would ever be able to do Shakespeare like that. That was fantastic.

Tara: Fabulous. Wow. Well, the curtain is closing here, on the theatrical note. We are out of time, Susan. It’s been such a delight to meet you a little bit more. We’ve met before, but to meet you here and learn more about you. Thanks for sharing your story and where can people find you online, Susan?

Susan: My website when I actually show up and post something out there is Susanwrotethis.com. It’s sort of like a bus driver’s holiday when you go out and work on it. And you’ll find me on Twitter at @susanwrotethis, and LinkedIn, and GitHub.

Tara: Great.

Liam: Susan, thanks so much for joining us here today, it’s a pleasure to see you again, as always.

Susan: Oh, thank you for having me.

Tara: Thanks, Susan. Take care, bye-bye.

Susan: Take care, everybody. Bye.

Liam: Bye.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Max Rice is the CEO and co-founder of SkyVerge where his team builds tools for e-commerce merchants, both large and small. Beka Rice is the head of product at SkyVerge and manages Jilt, an email marketing tool for e-commerce, along with over 50 WooCommerce plugins.

Website | Jilt

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 80.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Max and Beka Rice. Max is a CEO and co-founder of SkyVerge where his team builds tools for e-commerce merchants, both large and small. Beka is the head of product at SkyVerge and manages Jilt, an email marketing tool for e-commerce, along with over 50 WooCommerce plugins. Hello, Max. Hello, Beka.

Max: Hi.

Tara: Hi, welcome. Glad to meet you and see you here today. Can you tell us more about yourselves? One of you can start.

Beka: Sure thing. I’m Beka and I grew up in the Philadelphia area. Liam and I chatted at our local meetup, which is how we met. And I’ve been working with WordPress since I think 2009 or so. In college, I used it for some school projects. I have started using it for work for about four years now, getting into WooCommerce, which is what got me actually into developing things for WordPress. These days, I spend a lot of time in the WooCommerce admin, but in the Shopify admin as well working with a lot of e-commerce merchants.

Max: I’m Max. I grew up in Philadelphia area as well. CEO of SkyVerge. Our team is about 20 people these days. We started around six years ago, 100% remote. I got started with WordPress I think back in 2009 as well. I was first building a real estate website for a local real estate agent and just sort of got into it and started working with it and then later got into WooCommerce and we’ve been doing development for that for a number of years, did a little bit of core development and it’s just been a wild ride.

Tara: What is it about WooCommerce or what attracted you to WooCommerce and e-commerce in general, I guess?

Max: For me, the company that I was working at, it was a local pharmaceutical company and they asked me to redo their e-commerce website. So I was looking around for what is a good platform. At the time, WooCommerce had just sort of came out. It was maybe six months old. I could either do a totally custom e-commerce build. It would have been like 45,000$ or I could do it with WooCommerce and it would have been maybe 500$ in extensions. As I was talking to my boss and he was like, “Well, this is an easy decision.” I was like, “Yeah, cool. So we’ll start building that.” And at the time, there wasn’t an extension for Kissmetrics. I had a little bit of development experience from college so I built the extension, put it on WordPress.org, got a little bit of interest and then Aidy from WooThemes reached out to me and said, “Hey, this looks really cool. You should put it on our store.” Like, “Wow, yeah, that sounds great.” And put it on the store, and this was like, July 2012. It had two sales the first month and I was like, “This is amazing. I didn’t have to do any work for this.” After that, we just started kind of doing more, and more, and more, and here we are today.

Beka: Building a WooCommerce extension empire. [laughter]

Tara: Yeah. Well, it certainly seems to be a big focus when you look around in social media about WordPress. There’s just a lot of activity around WooCommerce. We’ve talked to some people on our show who don’t want to touch e-commerce. It seems like there are people who either love it and want to do it, and there are people who don’t want to deal with it. It can be very complicated, I think. There’s a lot of balls in the air. The fact that you’ve jumped in and become a big name in that space is great. Jilt I’ve seen a lot too, and that seems like a product that’s becoming more and more important and talked about. Can you tell us a little bit about that product?

Beka: Yeah, sure thing. From my end, managing products for all of our extension. A lot of what I do is customer research and customer development interviews and trying to talk a lot to people what are the challenges that your business is facing. And one of the most common things we heard over and over and over again was, “I’m not sure how to get traffic to my store and I’m not sure how to make a use of this traffic. How should I be marketing to those people? I know email is effective. How should I be using email?” For us, we’ve built a lot of tooling and a lot of plugins that would let you export orders and add notices on your site and do all these things with your site. But we hadn’t done a lot in the marketing side of things and we felt like this was a problem that these people in e-commerce were underserved. They have a lot of tools that are built to the generic email marketing solutions and nothing that was really tailored for an e-commerce experience that was also easy to use and help people not only send emails but understand how to have an email marketing strategy. That coupled with Max’s experience in working with a small e-commerce store, we sort of said, “This is a problem we can solve.” And Jilt kind of came out of that frustration that we felt from a lot of merchants in terms of not having a solution that was built for them.

Liam: That’s almost like the retail brick and mortar where they can put up their products on their shelves and rent the retail space and throw the sign out front that says, “We’re open.” That’s well and good but when you show up to connect, for example, the payment for the till, they say, “Well, that’s great. But how do I help people? How do I actually sell things? I’ve got people here.” That’s interesting. You make software, you’re not a marketing consultancy. I don’t think either of you mentioned any kind of marketing background or interest in a professional way. But there you were delivering software solutions to address that exact need. That’s really interesting. What was the ramp-up time on that? At some point, somebody on the team said, “This is probably something we could do.” And then the decision was, “Yeah, alright. Let’s do it.” Then what happened?

Max: I think it’s something we had in the back of our minds for a while. And one of the ways that we grew as a company was acquiring a lot of other products from the developers. We have done quite a bit in the WooCommerce space about half of our portfolio or 60 was probably acquired over a number of years. And we did a bunch of that in the Shopify space as well. We’ve always sort of kept our ear to the ground for different opportunities. And one of the opportunities that came up was Jilt and this was in late 2014. Originally, it was just sort of an abandoned cart platform for Shopify. And the developer, we had talked to him for a number of years and said, “Hey, if you’re ever interested in selling, let us know.” In late 2014, he reached out and was like, “Hey, I’m shutting it down. I have some technical issue with it and I’m just not interested in running it anymore.” We acquired everything from it. All the IP and the customer base and everything like that. It was originally just for Shopify and then we immediately saw an opportunity where we can take this and we can expand it into WordPress space. We can bring it to WooCommerce with our experience there. And we started down the path of making it cross-platform, it started growing. And it’s turned into quite a bit more these days than what it did originally.

Beka: And to add to that, it ended up being perfect timing because we were like, “We really need to move into this email space.” And we’ve kind of looked at this app in the past to acquire it but didn’t really move into it seriously. For us, we knew we were going to build it anyway. So we ended up actually rebuilding the app completely as soon as we acquired it. But what it did give us was an existing Shopify app posing in a customer base that we can then continue to talk to and do interviews with, so that when we rebuild this app, we have a really great understanding of what we were going to be building and what needs this app is solving already but what other things these customers wanted to do.

Liam: That’s neat. I just want to touch on buying products because that’s so not what I do. Tara and I are both service providers, we’re service consultants. Certainly, within the WordPress environment, and I know nothing about Shopify so I’ll just focus on WordPress. There’s a lot of plugins, a lot of plugin businesses that are side gigs. So somebody works full time or 30 hours a week for this agency or that agency, or maybe they work for themselves but their plugin gives them 8, 10, 15, 30,000$ a year but not enough to really pay for everything. And I wonder with your experience of buying plugins, is that mostly your experience as you were looking about the marketplace and acquiring, were you mostly acquiring from, I’ll call it, part-time product shops? Or did you buy up products off of companies that just didn’t want to carry on with that? What was that experience like?

Max: It was definitely the former. A lot of, I think, freelance developers and designers, especially things that came out of client projects. Or client says, “I want to do integration with this thing or this sort of idea.” So they would build, especially in WooCommerce, they would build that product and then put it in the marketplace. Over time, we would just reach out basically to everyone in the marketplace, whoever would listen to us and say, “Hey, if you’re ver interested in selling, if you’re just not interested in maintaining it anymore, let us know, we’d love to buy it.” And that strategy worked really well, especially in the early days when people didn’t think of WooCommerce that seriously, they didn’t think it was going to be a serious thing. There’s certainly an element of luck there that we just chose correctly that WooCommerce would turn into a much bigger thing. And the strategy just worked out really well for us.

Liam: That’s neat. And I wonder about the purchase of– where you’re not just buying the software, maybe with Jilt where there is an IP and there is a client base and there is a– was that like, “Hey, we want to buy this company. We should probably talk to a lawyer that we buy everything that we need and that we don’t forget, for example, the IP or whatever that other thing is like, oh, yeah, we need to go back and buy that, too. I hope they’re still around.” What was that like?

Max: It maybe wasn’t as rigorous in early days as it should have been. You sort of learn some of the stuff as you go along. Or you go to your attorney and you go, “Hey, by the way, we bought this.” He says, “Where’ your agreement?”, “What do you mean agreement?” We got a little bit more sophisticated at it over time. I think, especially in the WooCommerce space, we never had too many concerns because the people that we were talking to were developers we were working with everyday either on the core or we would doing– whatever it was. We never felt like we were going to have issues there, sort of just a friendly, “Hey, they don’t want to deal with the maintenance, deal with support every day.” And we’re like, all about doing that sort of thing. A lot of times, it was a really, really great fit, and sometimes, they didn’t want to do WooCommerce work anymore. They were going to go work on some other types of project. And so they might have a handful of extensions and we’d say, “Well, we’d just buy all of them, whatever you have, we’ll buy it.” And that turned out really well, too.

Beka: I think that what sort of forced that rigor for us was when we started to do larger acquisitions. When you’re acquiring a plugin that someone’s selling and it’s got a couple sales a month, you’re not talking a lot of money. It’s like, I’m going to send you a few thousand dollars in cash for this plugin. That certain degree of flexibility where it’s not a big deal and it’s more of a handshake thing. Once we start to get into acquisitions that were much larger, five and six figures, then it became like, “Maybe we should be really serious about this and go through a few rounds of ensuring we’ve done our due diligence here.” In terms of the way we’ve analyzed the net value of this acquisition as well as the contract and the purchase agreement around it.

Max: Yeah, and I definitely think we got more comfortable over time. So the first one we did was maybe a 1000$ or something like that and we sort of built that over time, a couple of years in, I think the largest one we did was maybe a 110,000$ or a little bit more than that. And by that point, we were more sophisticated, we had known some of the things we should ask and some of the things that we should look at. Definitely not something– if I was going to do it over again, I wouldn’t try to start at the higher end. It helps to start kind of do something small.

Tara: I’d like to switch gears and ask you about your working relationship. You run this company together and you’re related to each other. [laughs] How does that work out? How did that develop and how does that work for you?

Beka: We never intended to be a working couple. Some people think, “Oh, you work with your spouse, that’s great.” It’s definitely not all sunshine and roses and you have work arguments and it’s like, it then continues to spill over dinner. “I think this was stupid. We shouldn’t have done this.” I would say it’s not for everybody and we didn’t intend to do it at all. I have been teaching full time at Exeter High School in Reading. For me, I used WordPress for our softball website and my classroom website. When Max and Justin, who’s the other co-founder, had been building all of these extensions, we’re not great at writing documentation and telling people how to use them. We’re great at writing code and turning out a good product. Since you know to use WordPress and you know how to install plugins yourself, why don’t you play with this WooCommerce thing and write documentation that tells people how to use this? For me, I kind of reluctantly got roped into it, and at that point, grew from the point where I was doing just documentation and I was like, “Great, you have the documentation. Now you can answer pre-sales questions. Now that you’ve been answering pre-sales questions, now you can help with support.” It got to the point where we have dipped our toes in and it was working pretty well. I was essentially doing two full-time jobs. Max started to leave his full-time job and kind of transition full-time into SkyVerge. It’s harrowing to have both of you working in the same company as a startup and it feels pretty financially risky as a couple to do that. But we had saved up emergency fund and things were going really well. Given that we could have this kind of remote work lifestyle, it was pretty important to us to do that. That was when we decided to actually jump fully in and say, “Okay, you’re going to be employee number one and we’re actually going to do this and not just moonlighting nights and weekends.

Max: I think we had a lot of practice, too, doing it over the years. Stuff like day one, I wouldn’t say was wonderful and sometimes you’re in situations where you work all day and then you start to talk at dinner and you start to work on the evening. You sort of have to analyze how are things going. maybe we should make more of a separation there or we get an office, whatever it is. We’ve experimented quite a bit over the past couple of years and kind of gotten into something that works well for us.

Tara: Do you do anything to attentively separate work from your relationship? Is it something that you tend to or is it natural, does it happen sort of naturally to talk about dinner conversations and that type of thing? Is it something that you work on or is it just kind of organic?

Max: From my perspective, maybe Beka will surely disagree with me on this one. It feels organic to me. I think it’s natural if we were going out to dinner, for example, whatever. It’s natural to maybe cover something that we were thinking about during the day or whatever, and then just swap over to something that’s totally different, talk about family or whatever it may be. We talk quite a bit during the day and it’s funny, Beka’s in the other room next to me, but during the day, we very rarely actually talk to each other in person, mostly over Slack. I think part of that comes from being a remote company and that’s sort of just how we do things, but it definitely feels organic to me.

Beka: The thing that people sort of ignore is that you talk to your spouse about work, even if you don’t work together, you ask how are things going or whatever. We do have some of that that’s “outside of work”. But especially during the day, we try to make sure that we’re not in our bubble and then we’re communicating about things and our team’s not doing that. We actually try to push a ton conversation into Slack and our team really tries as a default to use open channels we don’t use a lot of like locked or team channels in Slack. We try to push a lot of conversation into a public sphere. And then from a personal perspective, you can call time out and say, “I just need to get away from this for a while.” But for the most part, I think you get kind of similar balance to what most people would be. Which is like, “Oh, what were you working on today? How is that going? Whatever.” And kind of the similar things that everybody else does with their stuff.

Liam: I really like that timeout practice and that’s something I needed with my wife as we were going from dating to married to married longer and longer. My wife is very, very smart and intellectually very quick on her feet. I’m pretty thick on my feet. Conversations didn’t end well because I just couldn’t keep up. But the ability to say, “Hey, you know what? This is important but not right now. I need time. We’ll talk about it Tuesday when we both get done for the day.” So it’s a real time, it’s not just an indefinite, “We’ll get to it, leave me alone.” That’s an important kind of pause button to be able to have that.

Beka: Absolutely. It’s just one of those things that you learn over time. At first, it’s like you realize you’re driving each other nuts and then after a little while, you learn how to kind of have these cycles that you go through.

Liam: Since we’re talking about you and we’ve spun on from talking about business and we know a little bit about how you both got into where you’re at today. I’d like to ask you about success. I wonder– and you can answer to this collectively, if you prefer to answer it individually. What are your definitions of success, maybe personal, maybe professional, maybe a mix of both?

Max: I think for me, from a personal perspective– something I thought a lot about. I don’t have a great answer maybe. But the way I’m currently thinking about it is just enjoying what you do every day. Sometimes, that can mean work, sometimes that can mean a hobby or whatever it is that you’re doing. But it’s not maybe so much driving towards pure happiness or a state of happiness but it’s just really enjoying in being engaged in what you’re doing every day. That’s how I currently define success maybe from a personal perspective. Professionally, I think I spend a lot of time thinking about how we build a company that can last. I really want our company to be around in five years, and ten years, and 15 years, and trying to take that long-term perspective and think about, okay, what are the factors that are involved in that? That’s what success is and what we do today to influence that, and I think that for me means a lot of work on our people and sort of making that the team is really happy to work on this stuff, they’re really excited to come into work. Customers again are trying to evaluate the product and we’re just really sort of excited as a company. There’s a whole ton of stuff that we try to do around that to be successful in that way. That’s how I think about it.

Liam: Beka?

Beka: For me, I think there’s personal successes in terms of where I want to be with my work and what not. One of those is that I feel the need to constantly be challenged. So having come from a background of athletics, I’m super competitive. And if I’m working on the same thing every day for five years, I’d be bored. There’s easy jobs and I’d be great, and I can’t do an easy job where I just come in or I do the same thing every day and I go home and disengage. I look to constantly have problems and constantly be solving things. For me, the stuff that we do with software is why I love doing what we do because it’s constantly changing, you constantly have to evolve your thinking and sort of thinking first principles and like, “We do it this way. But should we do it this way? Why do we do it this way? There are better ways we could do this.” As a company, I see it as sort of an extension of that base class, if you will. If that drive is something that is important to me, I think that that extends it into products to constantly say, “We’ve done it this way and this is the way this worked but can we make it better? Can we make better decisions for our users? Can we pull something that’s more fun to use. We spend a lot of time trying to be in that space to be successful with products, we want to make things that get out of people’s way, that you don’t think about using it because it’s intuitive, it feels right. And it’s sort of a nebulous thing but kind of going through that inner process of constantly breaking down, are we doing this the best way? I think that helps to drive the success for what we see with our products.

Tara: Yeah. As it relates to your products when I look at your website on Jilt, you talk about an ROI, so like in a very tangible level, you’re dealing with success in a monetary way every day with the products that you’re selling, which are really focused on how to measure that success. Looks like you have some great statements to make about that with your product that you have in terms of the ROI that you suggest. I guess how do you measure that in the less tangible way? Your definition of success?

Beka: Yeah, I think for Jilt, the ROI that someone gets from it, it has to be very clear. It’s like, if I send these emails, what kind of money is it going to drive for me. I think that’s a great hook to get people in. And certainly, it’s one thing to care about initially but on an ongoing basis, there are different needs. You have this kind of pyramid of needs that you have to hit with a product. That initial justification of, “Why should I pay for this?” Is a really early one. But over time, for us, success expands on that and it’s not just the amount of revenue this drives. But we also evaluate, is this building better relationships with your customers. Internally, we try to look at when you install Jilt, what was the average number of orders per customer versus over time. Has that increased as you’ve been using Jilt? Your customers reply to the emails that you send to them. For us as a product, there’s a relationship component to this that’s very important to us, from merchants who are using it to build their relationships with their customers. Because many of them are small businesses, niche businesses, so this relationship is their differentiating factor, their USP versus some faceless thing. These days you can’t get a hold of someone really easily. You used to be able to, not as much anymore. But then from us, looking at our product, that drives success for our merchants. Our success is when we look at our merchants and the way they use it. We do a lot of feedback and watching high chart recordings and trying to see how people are using this product, because the success for us is– are they being successful, is this meeting their needs, but then is it also something that when we watch them use it and when we get feedback from them that they enjoy it. I think it’s pretty rare for someone to say like, “I like to use this.”, “Oh, it does what I need and it has these features.”, “But do you like to use it? Does it meet those needs and it’s something that you feel like is clear, you feel like it does what you want, that you can bend it to your will without having to learn it or force it, it sort of understands what you want out of it.” It’s not something that’s easy for us to quantify but that’s why we’re trying to have really great feedback with some customers for us. We know we’ve made a good product when someone’s like, “I love using this. It’s awesome, it does what I want, and I love to use it.

Tara: Right. That’s a good element to get into. I’d like to ask about Max’s definition a little bit and that he thinks far down the road. I want to talk a little bit about WordPress and what role WordPress plays. I know that you don’t only work with WordPress but there is a big community in WordPress and that’s how we have encountered you guys. So we like to touch on the WordPress community and what that means for you guys, how you’re involved in it, and I guess relating to your success definition, how you see that fitting into your long-term with all the changes that are happening in WordPress?

Max: I think for me, the one thing about the WordPress community that’s always so welcoming, everyone’s so willing to help. Especially when I first got started with it back in 2009 and I really had no idea what I was doing. Sort of situations that I shouldn’t have agreed to build a site because I really didn’t know how to do it but I was like, “Well, I guess I’ll figure it out.” To get the help from the people in the community to be like, “I took on this site to build a real estate site, how do I do it?” And people were just super welcoming like, “Okay, here are some things you can look at, so on and so forth.” And that’s been true over time for pretty much every area that I’ve worked in. As we got more into WooCommerce, being able to interact with the core developers there and just sort of– everything in the community has always been that way. We’ve tried to be the same way when people are– we have a whole bunch of articles Skyverge.com on how to customize different things. Sort of when people are asking questions with comments, we’re trying to help and get people along in that respect. I think that has been my experience. The interesting thing I think over the past year that’s a little bit different that we haven’t done previously is we started to sponsor a lot more WordCamps. We sponsored eight over the past year. Beka and I, I think, attended seven. We just wrapped WordCamp US. That was sort of a new experience for us. We had attended them previously but sponsoring was sort of a very new thing. It was wonderful, it was just talking to everyone in the community and also all the different kinds of designers and developers, just everyone. And all the cool that they’re doing with WordPress, I think that was just a wonderful experience and I’m happy that we sort of– so it’s a little bit of a gamble to say Jilt is maybe a little tangential to direct WordPress. It’s e-commerce so you have to use WooCommerce and so on and so forth. But it worked out really, really well for us. When I think about that long-term, I guess I kind of think back to the different points in WordPress history since I’ve been in the community and sort of the evolution of the platform towards all this different sort of stuff that you can build on top of it. And I know I’m super excited for the future, I think what’s happening with Gutenberg, there’s a lot of cool stuff in bringing sort of the experience along. I think when I’m looking out five, ten, 15 years, if WordPress has been able to kind of evolve from the very early days to now and still be very dominant, very accessible. I think it’s a very good chance that it’s going to be that way in the future as well.

Beka: I think that community breathes that resiliency. It’s changed a lot since we’ve been in it and it continues to change but you have these people who– I’ve seen a lot of it in the past week where it’s like, Gutenberg’s out and everybody publishing these things about building your own blocks. I have one queued up myself because when we go into it, it’s like, “How to build a blog with JavaScript or CoffeeScript.” Which is what we’ve used in the past. Because there’s a lot that’s using ES Next and not vanilla Javascript. So those contributions to the community, from all of these teams working on it, I think breathes that resilience and no matter what amount of changes we’ve had recently kind of helps people sort of weather it and learn and elevate the overall quality of the ecosystem as all.

Tara: Thank you for that. I’m going to ask our other signature question about advice, and that is, if you could share with us the best advice that you’ve received, one thing that you recall being advised and how you’ve implemented that in your life?

Beka: Mine is actually one from Max which I know he’s stolen from a couple of places, that’s helped me as I’ve managed more people on my team, which you can always tell someone to go to hell tomorrow. [laughs]

Tara: I love that. [laughter]

Beka: It’s definitely one that I know that was probably not what you expected. Certainly, a non-centered piece of advice but kind of what we think about with it is you can always tell someone they’re wrong or you can say– if you feel like you’re right about something or you feel like someone’s done something wrong, you can pocket, it will still be there. As a manager, and as I’ve kind of been learning how to manage a team and not just do work but help other people do better work, I’ve drawn on a lot of experience, one being a lot of things I’ve done as a teacher. And it’s very easy to correct people, “I was disappointed that you did this. I don’t think this was the best way to do it. This is a thing I wouldn’t expect here.” that’s an easy way to do it. The thing is, I can tell you that tomorrow. I can tell you that later. What’s going to help you and what’s going to help me is for me to say, “Why did you do this this way? What was the thought process here? Can you walk me through this? Okay, if you thought this, why not this?” Giving yourself that patience I think for me is what it mostly is, a reminder to be patient. But I can tell you you’re wrong later, but it helps us kind of run that mentorship path and learn how we work together better. And then I can only say it later. “I appreciate that you thought of these things but I’m still disappointed in this work.” And I can say that at any point.

Tara: Yeah, holding off on that knee-jerk response is sometimes so hard to do but most of the time, when you do that knee-jerk response, you regret it afterward. So I think that’s great advice.

Beka: Yeah. I think there’s this temptation to be very open and honest with your team right away. It is important to be open and honest with your team. But there is the importance of understanding where they’ve come from when they reach a conclusion or when they do something. So we can still give that honest and open feedback but you can do it at any time. It’s still going to hold true no matter whether you dig into their thinking or their reasoning behind it, so it’s better to hold off on that and do that later.

Tara: Yeah, it probably applies outside of the workplace, as well, I think in personal relationships. It’s also sometimes good to take a breath and let some things settle in before you respond to it. I love the way that you stated it though, I’ve made a note of that. [laughter] How about you, Max?

Max: For me, what comes to mind is something that probably applies to both personal and professional life, and it’s to be generous. You can be generous with your time, your money, your knowledge, and it came from the owner of the company that I used to work for and he was super generous with the team, with the customers. And when I was going to go out of my own and start SkyVerge and we had a conversation. We sat down, he was going through some advice that he had and some of it was super specific and some of it more general. That’s one of the things that he said, he said, “In business, it’s great to have margin.” As he defined it. I think that allows you to be generous and it allows you to do other things. That’s something that we believe in so much that we’ve made generosity one of our core values at SkyVerge. It’s something that we’re always trying to– we try to fall back on that. If you’re thinking, “Can we do this? Can we not do this?” Try to be generous. And I think that comes back to you in all different sorts of ways. It’s not measurable, you’re not trying to do that, just thinking about it in that way.

Liam: I see the two then really just tying in. To Beka’s advice of tell them to go to hell tomorrow, it’s also an opportunity to give ourselves time to assess our emotional reaction. Was it accurate, was it right, was it justified? Setting aside any kind of intellectual, was there a thought process that’s strong as it should have been, but it just allows us to be generous with ourselves as well as with the others. And to come at it in a more rational way. And then to tie that generosity, Max, around to not just financial generosity. “We’re going to give to this charity at this year.” And that kind of thing. But give to our clients, give to our staff, give to our team, give to ourselves. I really like that. I think generosity in the workplace is vastly under-appreciated. Aside from just being nice to nice for niceness’ sake, but there’s a real commercial value to it, and I don’t mean that in a vicious capitalistic way. I know you weren’t saying it that kind of way but the value of that is pretty wonderful.

Beka: We find it a lot with content is a big one. We’ve always tried to publish a lot and share knowledge, which is sort of one of our operating principles that comes out of that. I think that we’ve not done as well of a job as we hoped this year, but definitely a lot of things we’ve done building a company culture, and building a team, and hiring remotely. Things we’ve been trying to share a lot more of, because of that.

Tara: Thank you guys for sharing that with us. I love both of those pieces of advice and it’s been great getting to know you a little bit. We are out of time, but we really appreciate you sharing your story and telling us about what you do, and look forward to meeting you sometime soon at one of the WordCamps that you’re sponsoring.

Liam: Thanks for joining us, Beka. Thanks, Max.

Max: Thanks for having us.

Tara: Where can people find you online?

Beka: Best places to find us are at Jilt.com and Skyverge.com. Often if you are chatting with us via one of those channels. The two of us, if we’re not trying to respond, are usually trying to keep up with all of the things that are coming through, these inboxes and having a good pulse on what customers are saying about our team and products. On Twitter, you can find me at @beka_rice.

Max: And I’m @Maxrice on Twitter.

Tara: Thank you.

Liam: Thank you. We’ll see you guys later. Bye.

Tara: Bye

Max: Bye.

Beka: Bye.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Alastair McDermott is a business strategist and marketing consultant. He helps professional services providers get more visitor website traffic and sell more online. Building websites and software since 1996, Alastair is the author of Running a Website with WordPress: A Quick Guide for Business Owners.

Website | Website Doctor

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Alastair McDermott from Websitedoctor.com. Alastair is a business strategist and marketing consultant. He helps professional services providers get more visitor website traffic and sell more online. Building websites and software since 1996, Alastair is the author of Running a Website with WordPress: A Quick Guide for Business Owners. Hello, Alastair.

Alastair: Hi, guys.

Tara: Hi. So glad that you’re here today, Alastair. Can you tell us more about yourself?

Alastair: Sure. I live in the rural west coast of Ireland and I’ve been kind of geeking out on web stuff for years. My background is originally in software development and back in the day, I used to do stuff on IBM mainframe, writing assembly code. I’m fairly geeky in that sense but I’ve kind of moved now towards the business and marketing end of the spectrum, which I find very rewarding, I think is the right word. So yeah.

Liam: That’s fantastic. We’ve only been chatting just a little bit here, Alastair, out in our virtual hallway and I clearly could tell that you’re from Ireland. I didn’t realize you’re from the west of Ireland. My wife’s family is from the west, right along the Westport – Newport Road. I don’t know how close that is to where you hang your hat every night.

Alastair: Yeah, I’m moving to Westport next week, and I live in Newport, so pretty close. [laughter]

Liam: So I probably drank in some of the pubs that you might have visited over the years?

Alastair: Absolutely. I’m actually originally from Dublin, which is why I don’t really have a strong western accent. I have a fairly neutral accent, actually, for an Irish guy. People sometimes don’t know where I’m from. But yeah, it’s interesting living in a rural area. Much smaller market size for business. For a long time, we had some kind of challenging technology issues with trying to get online. I was very good at diagnosing slow websites because I could see them loading in real time because they were so slow.

Tara: Well, we should note that the last little Irish mention perhaps is that we have Liam, Tara, and Alastair. We have an abundance of Irish happening here in the podcast today. Proud Irish heritage myself. You talked a little bit about your background and you kind of transitioned a bit from the more technical stuff to the more marketing stuff, but can you tell us how you even got started in tech? You’ve been doing it for a long time.

Alastair: Oh, yeah. I guess back in about 1995 when I was in what you guys would call high school, I guess I was a bit of a geek anyway. Like read a lot of sci-fi and stuff like that. But my parents got a computer that wasn’t– because we had an old computer that you couldn’t really do anything with. An old IBM 80808. Anybody knows 80806 but kind of even slower. Anyway, they got a Mac. It was a Performa 630 with I think four megabytes of RAM. I used to play around with that. Basically, I broke that and I had to fix it. That’s how I got into computers and then I went to college and I did software engineering, software development. Yeah, I got into websites around the same time. I had a website on Geocities. That was my first website, kind of old school–

Tara: Yeah, we had a couple of other guests who had Geocities websites and they had some old sites that we could actually see. Like flashing stuff happening.

Alastair: Oh yeah. I’m sure I could dig something up for you.

Tara: How did you make the transition from the software tech end of things to marketing? What led you down that path and into that transition?

Alastair: I guess I was a terrible corporate employee. I probably wasn’t very good to work with. I have since apologized to all my old workmates. I was probably always destined for self-employment because I would be the annoying person at the back of the meeting because I was still smart enough not to get into trouble but I was smart enough to cause trouble. Yeah, I realized I just wasn’t enjoying my job and I needed to get out, I needed a change. I thought back in 2007, I don’t know if you guys remember, the economy was really booming. Things were great in early 2007 so I thought, “Hey, now is a good time to quit my safe corporate job and start a business.” I did that.

Tara: Then came 2008?

Alastair: And then came 2008. Yeah, that was really fun. I had built a couple of commercial website projects at that stage just as kind of nixers what we call it here, small jobs. And kind of side just for pure money, basically. What I did was I was looking for something, what skills do I have that are kind of technical in nature that people would pay me for. SEO was one of those. Back in 2005, 2006 when I was getting into SEO, it was really technical. Whereas, nowadays, there’s a lot more tools available that make it a bit easier. Back then, you kind of needed to be a bit of a techie, a bit of a programmer sometimes to be able to do something. SEO was my route into that whole world of marketing and website. I guess, conversion rate optimization, that kind of stuff.

Liam: So in 2005, 2006 really, there’s still a lot of static sites back then. CMSs were available but still just about every other developer was making their own CMS before some of the bigger open source projects began to get some momentum. When you were doing SEO back then, were you doing SEO on static sites and having to go back in and take technical steps on 87 different pages?

Alastair: Oh, yeah. Of course, I had my own self-built CMS–

Liam: Of course you did, of course you did.

Alastair: Calling it a CMS would be going way too far but yeah, it was basically a couple of PHP frameworks that had hardcoded CSS and things, it was terrible. It kind of worked if you kind of stuck one finger here and twiddled this style over here. It was okay. Anyway, I was doing that and then I realized in, I guess, 2008, I didn’t like selling SEO. I didn’t really like the kind of lack of reliability in terms of what you could offer your customers. I just didn’t like the whole premise of selling SEO, which is basically, “If you give me lots of money, I’m going to do a lot of work and maybe it’s going to work and maybe it’s not.” It’s a bit more complicated than that but that’s effectively what you’re saying to people. I didn’t really like doing that. I had a lot of people ask me for websites so I started building websites and it’s just a much cleaner sale.

Tara: Less pressure. It’s similar to advertising. Before the net, people would spend money on advertising and you can’t really prove that what you’re spending on advertising is really getting you any direct return. With organic SEO, anyway, it’s similar, right?

Liam: It’s such an interesting offering that the only guarantee is that there are no guarantees, and if anybody is trying to sell you a guarantee, you should not buy it.

Tara: Yeah.

Alastair: I did actually do the whole money back guarantee. I was offering a guarantee, which is a money back guarantee, but then people were saying, “If anybody ever offers you a guarantee in SEO, then that means they’re doing something sketchy.” Then I was like, “Well, I actually have to back off on that.” Because people were associating– even though it was kind of a risk-free option for them, people were seeing it as negative.

Tara: I’m going to back up a minute and go back to your talking about how you weren’t really cut out for the corporate life or the corporate job, and that you were troubled in your own way. Can you talk a little bit more about that and what that meant? I also feel like I wasn’t cut out for the corporate world so I’m curious to hear what your take on that meant more specifically.

Alastair: I’m trying to find the right words to describe when I get myself in serious trouble. I guess I was just a bit of a troublemaker. I wasn’t good at being a small cog and following orders. I never would have made a good soldier, either. I’d always kind of strike at my own direction. I find it very constraining and also, because– I was in a very big company, it was in Sun Microsystems. I think at the time, they had 50,000 employees. It was a big, big system to be in and yeah, it just didn’t really fit me because I was doing the same thing. It’s funny now. At the time, I was doing the same thing over and over again. I didn’t enjoy it. Whereas now, I want to do the same thing over and over again and I can’t. Yeah, that’s interesting.

Tara: That is interesting. You struck out to be your own boss and how did you learn how to do that or was that something instinctive?

Alastair: Oh yeah, through trial and error and I was terrible at it at first. That took me years to get right.

Tara: What was the hardest thing?

Alastair: I gave a couple of talks at various different business events and things. I had people coming up asking me to partner with them on projects or come in on startups and things and I said yes. That was a mistake. It was great, it was really flattering and it was great experience, but at the same time, I wasn’t concentrating on my thing and I wasn’t concentrating on my own personal business and moving that forward. I effectively let my consulting business die over the course of three years between 2010 and 2013. I had to kind of resurrect that from nothing. And that was a bit of a mistake because those other projects didn’t pan out for whatever reason, because the odds of a startup succeeding are pretty low. Yeah, like I said, it was really flattering but at the same time, you have to say no to some things and I didn’t. But really good business experience. I had a lot of meetings where I was in a boardroom where the prospective CEO of a company is pitching for VC money and I have to support that with the technology stuff or the marketing stuff. Being in those kind of pressure situations is very interesting and you learn a lot from that.

Tara: Yeah, I don’t think we’ve spoken to anyone who as a new business said no. I think that a new business can’t really say no. Part of learning is that you say yes to things to figure out what you need to say no to. There’s trial and error, as you said. That’s I think a good challenge to have overcome.

Liam: Yeah, I imagine a temptation would have even been more so if you’re spinning out of 2008 and 2009 and somebody in 2010 says, “Hey, Alastair. Want to make some money with us?”, “Oh, yes, please.”

Alastair: Absolutely. Because it was tough. My first year in business, 2007, was really, really good. It was a brand new business and it was a six-figure year. That was really good because my salary in comparison at my previous job had been tiny. To do that, and then 2008, 2009, I was living off savings from the first year of business. And then that stays, then you’re kind of scraping the bucket. It’s like– I don’t know if you guys have an E rating on this but it hit the fan. [laughs]

Liam: Indeed.

Tara: Yeah.

Liam: Alastair, you’ve walked us through a few different career flows and the way to where you got to now. What I want to ask you about is one of our more signature questions and it’s about success. I’d ask you to define or share with us your definition of success. Maybe a personal definition, a professional definition, or a mix of both?

Alastair: I had a think about this because I listened to a whole bunch of these podcasts in the car and I was trying to think what would that be for me. I think that it’s helping people. I’m not a liberal hippie tree-hugger type. But I do like helping people and I think that in general, most people are inherently good, that’s my position, and want to help other people. I think that helping people is success in its own way, and usually, you get a reward from that. I think success is helping people and getting rewarded for it.

Liam: What sort of rewards are you looking at? How do you measure that success then?

Alastair: Ideally, in the bank. That’s the best kind of reward, really. But just when you help people and you can see that you’ve helped them, and they really, truly appreciate it. You can see it in their eyes and they say it. And sometimes, you don’t get a reward straight away, sometimes you don’t get a reward at all. But I believe in karma, it flows back.

Tara: I think that’s true. And I also think it can be true– as much as the bank– I understand what you’re saying, I think being paid for something that you know someone appreciates and has helped them is great, being paid for something where you feel like they were not satisfied and you haven’t helped them is not enjoyable money. It’s still money but it’s not the same thing, right?

Alastair: I think that some people are happy anyway. It depends on your philosophy and your worldview, I think. I think it’s better, it’s clearly better when people truly appreciate it.

Tara: Yeah. If your idea of success is helping people, then that comes hand in hand.

Alastair: You also do need to protect yourself because sometimes people will take advantage of that. Particularly, if you’re the kind of person who volunteers a lot. You just need to put some kind of guidelines and rules around it for yourself. And you get probably mistakes where I didn’t say no enough to some volunteer-type stuff early on. But again, it’s all experience at the same time.

Tara: What do you do toward this idea of success? How are you involved in helping people? Today, you were talking about the local business center that you’re working in. Tell us a little bit about what you do?

Alastair: The stuff I’m in today I’m getting paid for. It’s not very high-rate tier but–

Tara: But you’re helping people.

Alastair: It is paid work but I find this really useful. Today, this is my seventh meeting of the day, I think. Yes, I met with a lot of people today. Small business owners. I got to talk to six different business owners who I was helping with various different challenges with their business. Usually related to website or online marketing but sometimes, again, they’re not related, they’re something totally different. I’ll give you the example beforehand of a guy who thought he had a website problem. And when I dug more into it, I realized that he used to have an assistant and that the assistant quit the job so he was now doing the work of both and he never replaced him, and he was getting totally stressed and snowed under at work because he hadn’t– he thought, “Oh, I have a website problem.” And I guess it sometimes takes somebody external to see that issue. But yeah, talking to business owners about all these different kind of issues. That teaches me what people are looking for and tells me what kind of language people are using to describe their problems, which is really good for SEO, for example. It’s just really useful to talk to people, to talk to your clients and potential clients and learn from them and learn what kind of issues they’re having. There’s a whole bunch of wins there for me in that, one, I’m helping them to get a result. Two, I’m learning what people are looking for and I’m kind of keeping up to date on what people need. I find it really useful. And three, I’m getting paid for it. It’s a big win.

Tara: That’s a really interesting perspective, I had never thought about that before but in helping other businesses and pulling from that the language that they use, that’s a fascinating thing to come out of that type of experience with. That’s really cool.

Liam: Tell us a little bit about The Website Doctor and what that means? It sounds like from what you just shared with us about your conversations today is that maybe website is the avenue in and the backdrop, if you will, but maybe perhaps a wider business consultancy. But you tell us?

Alastair: It’s quite interesting. I was talking to Phillip Morgan who’s a specialization coach, specialization consultant. The way that I feel like my business is going, I’m going down the route where in maybe 10 years time, I’m going to be a manageable consultant and that’s the way it’s kind of bearing. I don’t mind that. I don’t want to get too much away from the original premise of the website doctor because I do find the technology stuff really interesting. I do tend to see a lot of business issues that are not necessarily website-related and online marketing related. I guess I talked to people about those issues a lot. I think that my background in the startups and I’m also a big reader. I love reading books. I think it’s probably the best investment you can make in your business is to buy books, because you get access to the brains of these really great people and you get their best work for 20 books. It’s a crazy deal really. So I read a lot and I find you can get a lot from that. Yeah, I think when you talk to business owners about the issues over and over again and when you’re in these situations like when you’re in pressure situations in a boardroom meeting where somebody is trying to kick you off the board of a business, your business partners want you out and you have to try and handle that situation. Things like that, that I’ve been through, that gives me perspective or a bit of knowledge about the like and then bring to the table when I’m talking to clients.

Tara: Is there a specific type of clients that you like to work with?

Alastair: I struggle with this a bit in figuring out exactly who or being able to nail it down. I like working with what I call b2b professional service providers. The problem with that is nobody who’s actually a b2b professional service provider calls themselves that. They tend do call themselves consultants or maybe it’s a financial planner or it’s an accountant. It’s a whole wide range of people who provide professional services of some kind and ideally to other businesses. They’re the ones who I feel like I can help the most. For example, I know that I don’t like doing retail e-commerce. If somebody sells 20,000 SKUs off a huge e-commerce site, that’s not really my kind of site or my kind of business. Yeah, I do struggle and I haven’t really nailed this down. That’s one of the reasons I was talking to Phillip for example.

Tara: That’s a common challenge that people have is figuring out who their ideal customer is. We have show notes on this so I won’t have you go into it now, maybe you can share with us after, but maybe you could name a couple of the books that you have gotten the most from?

Alastair: Sure. I think that probably the best business book is The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. The premise of the book, I think it’s probably the best business book and the most useful but it’s also one of the worst written. I hate the way that he kind of makes this fake scenario where ‘Sarah gazed longingly across the table at me’ and this kind of stuff. But the material in the book is brilliant and it’s probably the most insightful for me, understanding– it was probably the thing that helped me the most when I started out turning from a software developer or a software engineer into a business owner, in viewing these three hats of the technician, being the person doing the work, and then the manager managing all of the work, and then the visionary, having that future vision. And that as a business owner, we need to swap between those different hats. That’s the crucial message. And then the myth itself is that somebody who’s good at doing something is good at running a business that does that thing. I recommend that book to every business owner, The E-Myth.

Liam: I will add that to my purchase and reading list, thank you. Alastair, I’m going to take advantage of the fact that I’m on the microphone and ask you one of our other signature questions, and that’s really about advice and not so much advice that you might give to your clients and those that come to you for help, but what is the single most valuable piece of advice that you’ve ever received and implemented in your life, in your business, maybe some of both?

Alastair: I think it might have been when back in maybe January or February of 2007, I was back home in Mayo and I was up late with my mom, it was about 1:00 AM and we were both kind of sitting in front of the fire drinking whiskey. I was trying to figure out should I quit my job. She said to me, “What’s the worst thing that can happen if it doesn’t work out in business for you?” And I said, “Well, I’ll have to go and find another job.” And that was it, decision made. If that’s the worst thing that can possibly happen, okay, this is a no-brainer. It was just going through, okay– and that was kind of a crucial decision for me but it made it so easy. So the next day when I went into work, I handed in my notice. That was probably– it may not be the most insightful piece of advice somebody could ever give but it certainly was the most important for me.

Liam: Yeah, that’s really great. “What’s the worse that can happen?” And analyzing that to know what to do is really helpful. I’m glad you shared how long it was before you handed in your notice because that was going to be my next question. How long between the last sip of whiskey in front of the fireplace and when you turned in your notice? That’s pretty quick.

Alastair: I had decided at that point, it was clear for me, the path forward was clear.

Tara: Yeah, that’s a great story. I don’t think we’ve heard that spin on advice before. I love that. What’s the worse that can happen? You take that approach to many things. That’s a big change to make and that advice really seemed to guide you there. Do you have any interaction with the WordPress community in your area? Is there one in your small town there in the west coast of Ireland?

Alastair: I don’t know, actually. [laughter] How do I put it? I used to be big into the WordPress community so I would go to– there was a WordCamp in Ireland a few years back but it’s not something that happens like it does in the States, really often and things like that. I did go to WordCamp and spoken on few events, but what I found was I was writing– back in 2007, 2008, I was writing a lot of blog posts about technical WordPress issues and I was writing for my peers, not for my customers. When I caught myself doing that about five years later, I realized I need to stop writing about things like how to integrate the new WordPress menus and stuff like that that was coming out, because my clients really don’t care about that.

Tara: Yeah, I used to do the same thing.

Alastair: That was the time where I kind of disengaged a little bit from the community because I was focusing much more on my clients and what they needed. It’s not really that I had a problem with community, it’s just it wasn’t my focus anymore. I started focusing much more on what my clients needed.

Tara: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think the WordPress community is peers when you work alone or you have your own business, it’s nice to have that community but it does take your focus away from clients often times, I find the same thing. I find something interesting, I learn something interesting, I want to share it in a blog post, but I’m like, “My clients don’t care.” You’re absolutely right. And probably 25 other people have written the same thing at least about it in WordPress. Point well taken.

Liam: I was going to ask you about what do you do, what do you get up to, what are your hobbies, what do you enjoy when you’re not helping businesses with their business? What do you do? What’s fun for you?

Alastair: I guess I’m a bit of an introvert. I like reading and stuff like that. I don’t seem like an introvert but I am. I’m big into sports, rugby is a fairly popular sport here. It’s a bit like your football without the padding. The hits are a little bit not quite as hard. I played rugby for 20 years and I still go to a lot of matches and things, that’s big for me.

Liam: Who’s your team? Who do you support?

Alastair: I support Leinster. That’s good because they’re doing really well. I live in Newport, but Leinster’s where I’m from so I decided to nail my colors to the cross. Yeah, Leinster’s very good, Ireland are a very good international team. We’re doing very well at the moment. They’ve just beaten New Zealand, the number one team.

Liam: That’s an impressive feat.

Alastair: Yeah, that’s it. I guess I’ve become a bit of a business geek to the point where I’m reading business books for fun. [laughter] But that’s cheating on the question.

Tara: No, that’s good. Thanks for sharing that with us. I think we’re out of time, Alastair. I’m getting a little signal from Liam here that our time is up.

Liam: Can we ask one more question?

Tara: But Liam wants to ask one more question.

Liam: Alastair, you had that conversation with your mother in front of the fireplace that went until one in the morning that you shared with us. I have to ask, do you remember the whiskey and is it your tried and true, was it just what mom had in the shelf, share us with that if you will?

Alastair: It was probably Jameson.

Liam: That’s a fine call.

Alastair: That would be pretty staple, I’d say. There you go. Good question.

Tara: It’s been a pleasure having you with us. Thanks so very much for joining us, taking the time out of your evening over there to chat with us and let us get to know you a little bit more.

Alastair: Thanks for having me.

Tara: Where can people find you online?

Alastair: You can find me at Websitedoctor.com and hopefully, I will have a podcast sometime probably early next year and that will be at Iwillincreaseyoursales.com.

Liam: Fantastic. Alastair, what a pleasure getting to spend some time with you and get to know you a little bit. Thank you for stopping by our hallway.

Alastair: Cheers, thanks guys.

Tara: Thank you.

Liam: Bye-bye.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Cameron Jones is a WordPress developer from the Gold Coast, Australia. He currently works for Digital Makers building websites for enterprise clients, and independently, he develops custom plugins. Outside of WordPress, he’s busy playing for sports clubs and parenting.

Twitter | @cameronjonesweb

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 78.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Cameron Jones. Cameron is a WordPress developer from the Gold Coast, Australia. He currently works for Digital Makers building websites for enterprise clients, and independently, he develops custom plugins. Outside of WordPress, he’s busy playing for sports clubs and parenting. Welcome, Cameron. Nice to see you.

Cameron: Hi, guys. Nice to be here.

Liam: Oh, it’s our pleasure. Thanks for joining us. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself please, Cameron?

Cameron: Yeah. Like I said, I live in the Gold Coast, Australia. I’ve been involved with the WordPress community for a bit over four years now, I think. And yeah, I’ve co-organized WordPress Meetups and WordCamps. I’ve got some custom plugins that I’ve used on more than 30,000 websites now. And yeah, I worked for an agency developing websites.

Tara: Cool. Tell us about the plugins that you’ve developed?

Cameron: The main one is called Facebook Page plugin and it just lets you embed a Facebook page on a website. That one I released April 2015, I think it was. Yeah, it’s used on more than 30,000 websites.

Tara: That’s great. How did you get started with WordPress? I can see you so I can say that you look like you’re a relatively young person. Technology probably is not something foreign to your upbringing. But how did you get started with WordPress?

Cameron: Yeah, I’ve kind of grown up with technology a little bit. Always had an attraction to computers. When I was in high school, I did a class that was doing coding and it was primarily MySQL and that was my introduction to web and coding. Before that, I’ve done some Flash games. I was designing MySQL databases and from there, I went to further study, got a diploma, and that was more website stuff mainly. Yeah, I was interested in doing work, making websites, web design and development. I was trying to find a job and I found most of the jobs were asking for people that do WordPress. So I literally just went onto YouTube and searched ‘how to make a website with WordPress’. That’s how I got into WordPress.

Tara: YouTube, the benefits of YouTube. That’s amazing. What a great story. And you are now employed doing WordPress and you also do some work on the side on your own. Which do you prefer?

Cameron: It’s a good question.

Liam: Given that you are currently employed, I’ll allow you to answer in a very diplomatic way.

Tara: Yes.

Liam: Or we can withdraw the question if you’d like.

Tara: Yeah, we can take that away. Let me change the question. We talked to a lot of people who are self-employed and when we get to the question that will ask you about success, a lot of them say having the freedom to do what they love and those types of things. Seeing that you sort of have your foot in both of those areas, what do you like about working for yourself and what do you like about working for someone else?

Cameron: I enjoy both and they both come with their own different challenges. I enjoy working for an agency and working with other people. As part of my experience working with agencies, I’ve done a lot of digital marketing, SEO, so I’ve learned plenty of things. You get a design from a designer and it’s stuff that I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. So it challenges you and pushes you in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to without working in that agency. But on the flip side of that, I’m very creative person and sometimes that can be a bit restrictive, so yeah, I really enjoy plugin development because I have full creative freedom. I don’t actually do freelance work as such on the side anymore. Because I’m good at writing code but there’s so much more to doing freelance web work than just writing code. You’ve got to be a salesperson and client relationships and all that sorts of stuff that I just don’t enjoy. And a lot of work that came to me was people who outsourced a website for a couple hundred bucks and then they weren’t happy with it and they wanted someone to tweak around it and get it– all the sorts of stuff that I didn’t really want to do anyway. There’s not really a conflict of interest there. Yeah, I really enjoy aspects of both working with an agency and then also working independently on my own product stuff more than client stuff.

Liam: I want to talk to you a little bit about the process of realizing you didn’t want to freelance. And I wonder, was that ever a notable part of your work or your revenue stream? You were relying on some level of income coming in there until you eventually realized, “I don’t like this.” And if it was like that, what was that process like? How did you eventually learn to say no to that? What was that all about?

Cameron: It wasn’t really a path of my– financially, it wasn’t really something I depended on. I’ve got my own registered business but it’s never made a profit so it’s not something that is keeping me up or anything. How it came about that I learned, realized that was in part due to the company that I work for now and that, as you can expect, some– the companies I work for, they’re like, “Yeah, we don’t feel entirely possible with you freelancing on side. We’re not going to say, don’t do it. But we just prefer if you don’t.” Sort of thing. When I was interviewing for working there, that kind of put that thought in my mind. That was there, just in the back of my mind. For quite a long time, my overall goal had been to go freelance full-time eventually. Some of the freedoms that that offered. But then ending up with a kid to look after and having the clients or leads that kept coming to me just were the same sorts of things that I didn’t enjoy, like stuff that I wasn’t even writing code for. And it was just a combination of all those couple of things that don’t show a period of time where it just showed to me that, yeah, it’s not the sort of thing that I have the time to deal with and it’s not like something I’ll enjoy anyway. Yeah, that was kind of how it came about.

Liam: Yeah, I respect that. The idea of working for oneself often seems great on paper but, as you said, all the non-billable work of looking for clients, chasing clients, billing the clients, collecting money. Even if all the clients pay on time, you still got to send them an invoice, right? Someone’s got to generate that and we can automate this and automate that but at some point, we have to look back on that data and see that they actually pay. You know, I respect that. And I want to tie that in because you just mentioned parenting and ‘the kids to deal with’ I believe was your phrase. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about that and kind of where you are in life?

Cameron: Yeah. I’ve got a teenager that I take care of so that’s lots of fun. It’s quite amusing when I refer to him as my kid and people are like, “How old is your kid?” I’m like, “He’s 16.” And people look at me really funny.”

Liam: [laughs] How old are you, Cameron? You’re 23, correct?

Cameron: Yeah, I’m 23. I was only seven when he was born. People get really confused and it’s really funny seeing the cogs stuck in their mind.

Liam: [laughs] People’s face pauses as they’re trying to do the math on that.

Cameron: Yeah. Their face just goes blank and it’s like, trying to compute. I’ve been taking care of him for more than a year now. Last year– he’s a friend of someone close to me and last year, he became homeless and so I took him in and have taken care of him ever since. I expected that it would only last a month or two, that sort of thing, but no, I’ve completely fallen in love with this kid. He’s like assigned to me. And he’s been here effectively for over a year.

Tara: That seems like it would be something– I think it’s probably unusual for someone your age to take on a teenager to supervise and to– being a parent, it’s challenging and the teenage years are especially challenging so that’s quite a commitment that you’ve made to this person and it says so much about yourself that you’ve made this– It’s a sacrifice, I’m sure it’s a sacrifice to do this. I think that’s a good segway into the question that I want to ask you that we ask everyone, which is about success. And for you, with this person in your life, I imagine it might have some bearing on your answer about how you define success professionally and personally in your life?

Cameron: Yeah, that’s a very good question. Almost expecting it because I’m regularly listening to the show. Success for me on a personal level, my mantra for life that I’ve developed over the last, I don’t know, five or so years has been to be the person that I needed when I was younger. For me, success is just being anything that gets me closer to that goal. And work ties into it a bit. I’m very privileged in that I have a very supportive workplace. It gives me flexible working hours and it allows me to be flexible with the leave and that sort of thing. They assist me in being there for him. Just trying to be the person that I needed when I was younger to other people and right now, in particular, to him. It’s kind of like my goal for life, yeah, success is just pretty much anything that gets me closer to that.

Tara: It sounds like maybe you didn’t have that growing up. Where does that come from, I guess my main question is? It’s a void that you had that you wanted to fill or is it based on something else that you’ve seen or friends of yours, and you look at that and say, “That’s how I’d like to be as a parent or a mentor.” Where does that come from?

Cameron: Yeah, just from my upbringing mainly. I certainly didn’t have the worst childhood by a long way but I’m sure anyone who looks back at their upbringing, you see things that your parents did that you’re like, “That’s not a good thing. I don’t want to do that when I grow up.” And that sort of thing. Yeah, it’s just something that I felt strongly about. I’ve wanted kids of mine for as long as I can remember and it’s just something that– and the teenage years, like you mentioned, are a particular challenge. They are particularly challenging for me, too. I don’t want people to feel the way that I felt and dealt with some of the stuff that I did back when I was that age.

Liam: This is really moving in a lot of different ways and I’m kind of struggling to come up with a question that isn’t just, wow. But I’m really impressed by and I wonder about your goal, which is deeply personal and really moving about being an adult that you didn’t have, that you needed. And you’ve been kind of focusing on that for the last five or six years, as you said. And you’re 23. Coming out of teenage, going into young 20s as we try to figure out what in life really matters and where we want to go, and what we want to do, and who we want to be, and where we want to party, right, in a flippant kind of way. It’s not easy for most people to do, especially most people, including people or even people who have a tremendous level of support and community around them. That’s really amazing to me, that you not only set that as a goal, because I can see somebody setting that. If they’ve had a tough background, they say, “This is my goal.” But then being able to be in a position where you are today where it sounds like you’re absolutely delivering for your kid in a way that maybe you didn’t have when you were growing up. That’s really amazing. That wasn’t a question at all.

Tara: Yeah, I know. [laughs] I’m struggling with– there’s so many things going through my head right now, mostly just kind of in awe of this step that you’ve taken in your life and what a lucky kid this is because there are lots of kids who don’t have that kind of support. Do you have support to help you? Is there a community there that you rely on? What kinds of things do you do to be guided in this path and to give yourself some piece of mind? You say you play some sports. What’s the community like there? Is it a small town that you live in?

Cameron: No, I wouldn’t say it’s a particularly small town. It’s a rather large city. Gold Coast is a very broad area with lots of people. The suburb that I live in is the fastest-growing suburb in the state. Not particularly small by any means.

Tara: Is that where you grew up? Do you have family in the area?

Cameron: No. I moved here almost two years ago. And it’s funny. Looking back on all the things that happened when I moved here– it call came together so that I can be here for him. Just looking back and seeing all these things came together just so perfectly. In terms of community. I’ve got local WordPress communities so I go to several Meetups every month, and I play football during winter and cricket during summer. I do have social groups and stuff that keeps me busy. In terms of specifically being a parent or a pseudo-parent or whatever that you’d call it, I don’t necessarily have a great deal of support around that. I do have friends that I talk to and stuff.

Tara: They probably can’t relate to this at all, though, right?

Cameron: No. It is a very unique situation. There are people that do have similar situations like that. I’ve heard from someone the other day who– someone was in their early 20s and they’re taking care of their teenage sibling. That happens more regularly and it’s a fairly similar situation, I expect.

Tara: Yeah, I think also this person that you’ve taken under your wing probably also, it sounds like if he was homeless, he probably also has some struggles himself that you need to help him through and I would imagine that takes a lot out of you. My parents have been raising my niece and nephew for most of their life and they’re teenagers. Similarly, they struggle with not having a peer group that are in the same position that they are. Their friends are all grandparents and don’t have children living with them full-time and teenagers or troubled teenagers, I have somewhat of a picture of what that can be like to feel a little bit on your own as a parent or a pseudo-parent. We can spend a lot of time admiring you today, Cameron, because of what you’re doing. Pretty incredible. Thank you for sharing that with us and I hope that it continues to go well. Is this person interested in WordPress? [laughs]

Cameron: No. He’s not particularly tech-savvy, unfortunately. [laughter] He looks at what I do and is fascinated by it, amazed by being able to write code and that sort of thing. But he’s just not very technically-minded, although we were talking last night like, “I want to be an entrepreneur.” I’m like, “That I might be able to help you with.”

Tara: Yeah. [laughter] “I can build you a website.” [laughs]

Cameron: Definitely. I can tell you how to do marketing and all those sorts of stuff. I’ll give you the right podcasts to listen to.

Tara: That’s wonderful. Let me move on to another question, another topic, and let’s talk a little about advice and what the best advice is that you’ve received and implemented in your life?

Cameron: Another really good question. I don’t know if it’s so much advice. Have you guys seen the movie Robots? It’s this animated movie.

Tara: Yes, yes.

Cameron: one of the characters, Bigweld, one of the things that he says is, “See the need, fill the need.”

Liam: I love that. I thought that’s where you’re going. I love that.

Cameron: Yeah. It’s not so much as someone’s advice or something but that’s something in particular that has stuck with me for some reason. So yeah.

Liam: Yeah, it sounds like you’re doing that. See a need, fill a need. I love that. Speaking of filling a need. I want to circle back to kind of your WordPress involvement with the community. You said that you’ve organized WordPress Meetups, you’ve organized WordCamp– was it WordCamp Brisbane or WordCamp–? There’s not a WordCamp Gold Coast, is there? It’s WordCamp Brisbane?

Cameron: Yeah. There was a Gold Coast WordCamp a several years ago. Hopefully, there’ll be one some time.

Liam: I hope so, too. What I wonder is, how long between that first YouTube video, ‘How do you make a WordPress website’, and getting involved with organizing Meetups and WordCamps, how did that transition? Because that sounds very much like see a need, fill a need.

Cameron: Yeah. I think it would have been about nine months. In a very short period of time after starting to develop sites with WordPress, just learning, I managed to land my first full-time job. While I was working there, WordCamp Brisbane 2015 came along and so one of the people that worked there send out like an email and everyone was like, “Hey, look. There’s this WordPress conference on weekend.” It was like a week before it was on, sort of thing, so it was very last-minute and I had no idea what to expect or anything. I’m like, “Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll go.” You know how affordable WordCamps are. Living in Brisbane, it wasn’t hard to get to or anything. Pretty easy decision to make. Yeah, I went to WordCamp Brisbane and enjoyed it more than most things I have in my life. I was just amazed by all the things that I was learning. Just information overload for your first WordCamp, as I’m sure you guys experienced, too. Yeah, I just wanted more of that. I jumped on the WP Australia Slack and jumped on all the Meetups that I could find and went to as many Meetups as I could and that sort of thing. Yeah, that’s how I got involved with WordPress community, through a WordCamp.

Liam: That’s fantastic.

Tara: Cameron, what is your favorite thing that you do every day? Do you have like a special thing or a ritual or anything like that that you do every day? And if you don’t, that’s okay, too. Maybe just getting up out of bed and having coffee.

Cameron: I don’t like coffee. One of the strange people that doesn’t like coffee.

Tara: I can understand that. It takes some getting used to.

Liam: It does. Once you’re used to it, it’s awesome. Let me ask you this as you’re thinking about that because you said earlier, you’re into sports and you play football. For our non -American listeners, we should clarify that that’s Australian rules football. And that’s not a passive sport. Cricket is very passive in my mind, but there’s nothing passive about Australian rules football. Why that sport? Did you always grew up with it or did you say, “You know what? I need a stress relief and I’m either going to pound on people or get pounded. And that will get the stress out of my life for the day.”

Cameron: My brother got really into it when he was really young and introduced me to it. I’ve been playing it on and off since I was about eight or nine years old. I never played for a club growing up but I did play competitively with school. No I’m all grown up and stuff. I sit at a computer all day writing code for a living and just like noticing how unfit I’m starting to get. It’s like, “Okay, I really need to do something about this.” And I don’t feel particularly comfortable with going to the gym, I’m so self-conscious and every time I think about, “I should go to the gym.” There’s 50 million things that I can do that are quite productive. Writing some code or cleaning the dishes, all this sorts of stuff. I have to do something that I enjoy. I’ve been playing football since I was much younger and it’s something that I really love. For me, getting back into it was harshly for fitness and also just because I love the game. It wasn’t particularly to be a stress relief or anything like that. It’s just, I’ve been playing it since I was a kid.

Tara: That’s great. How often do you play when it’s in season?

Cameron: Every Friday night just about.

Tara: That’s great. And do you go into your office every day or how is that? You work remotely sometimes?

Cameron: Yeah. I go into the office in Brisbane four days a week and one day a week, I work from home.

Tara: Okay.

Liam: And you say that’s not a short commute, right? Are you 90 minutes one way, 90 minutes both ways, 45 in, 45 out?

Cameron: It’s between an hour and a quarter and an hour and a half each way. Yeah, it’s 50 kilometers. That would be about 35 miles, I think. It’s an hour on the train, plus drop into the station, waiting for the train, walking to work once I get off the train, that sort of thing. It adds up a bit. The commute is a bit of a hike.

Tara: Do you listen to podcasts? What do you do when you travel?

Liam: Nice one, Tara. [laughs]

Cameron: I do. Before I listened to podcasts, I listened to music, but yeah, I mainly listen to podcasts on my commute. I find that helps me get into a good mindset for work. Listening to WordPress oriented podcasts helps me get in the zone to a degree. Yes, listening to podcasts mainly and doing some work on my own stuff on my laptop or catching up onto work if I need to.

Tara: Wow, so you can do that on the train, that’s good.

Cameron: I’m on the train for at least an hour so I’ve got plenty of time to kill.

Tara: Okay. It sounds like you make the most of it. You sound like a productivity-focused person from what you’ve described.

Cameron: Not really. I find I procrastinate a lot.

Tara: Ah. Well, you mentioned being productive so it sounds like you have that in mind. We all procrastinate.

Cameron: I try.

Tara: Even the most productive people procrastinate. It’s necessary for productivity, you know.

Liam: I like to think that we procrastinate more strategically than others. That’s what I tell myself when nothing on my to-do list is done yet.

Tara: Yeah. I just tell myself it is part of productivity, the process is having some procrastination and not planned time. That’s good. Having all that time on the train every day, I think it’s important to make use of that time or else you would just kind of feel exhausted. Just the monotony of traveling to commute and it sounds like you make most of that.

Liam: Speaking of time, we are out, I’m afraid. It’s been about a half an hour. Cameron, it’s been an absolute pleasure getting to know you and chat with you a little bit. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Cameron: Thank you for having me.

Tara: Thanks for sharing your story and for all that you’re doing to help people in your world, one person in particular. Thank you so much, Cameron. It’s really been inspiring, I appreciate it.

Cameron: Nice to meet you, guys.

Liam: And before we say goodbye to you, Cameron. Please tell people where they can find you online.

Cameron: I am on my social channels like Facebook, Twitter, and all that, you can find me at Cameron Jones Web. On my blog, Cameronjonesweb.com.au.

Liam: Excellent. Well, thank you very much for your time today. As you said, it’s been a real pleasure. You’ve given us a lot to think about, a lot to ponder, and a lot to be grateful for. So thank you.

Tara: Thanks, Cameron. Bye-bye.

Cameron: Thanks guys. See you.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Svetlana Kouznetsova is a user experience and accessibility consultant who is deaf and works with businesses to make their products, services, events user-friendly and accessible to more people. She is a book author and an international speaker.

Twitter | @svknyc

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 77.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today we’re joined by Svetlana Kouznetsova. Svetlana is a user experience and accessibility consultant who is deaf and works with businesses to make their products, services, events user-friendly and accessible to more people. She is a book author and an international speaker.

A special note about this week’s podcast: Since Svetlana is deaf, we conducted this interview by typing back and forth with each other. We recorded this audio after the actual interview and asked Janet Oak to join us to read Svetlana’s part of the conversation, for the benefit of our podcast listening audience.

Tara: Welcome Svetlana!

Svetlana: Hello! Thanks for having me.

Liam: Thanks for joining us. Can you tell us more about yourself?

Svetlana: I live in NYC area. Originally I’m from Russia and my first language is Russian

Liam: Cool!

Svetlana: If you wondered why my name looks and sounds foreign, that’s why. I mastered English as a foreign language after moving here to the States.

Tara: Is sign language the same in Russian and in English? Or is that a silly question?!

Svetlana: No. Sign languages are different all over. Even British and American sign languages are totally different. Sign languages are in the same way spoken languages are different. There’s no universal sign language in the same way there’s no universal spoken language.

Svetlana: Currently I’m an user experience and accessibility consultant helping businesses make their products, services environment user-friendly and accessible. I provide consulting services, Training sessions, workshops. Sometimes I give presentations at events and conferences. One example is a TEDx talk I gave this year about captioning access. I also wrote a book on this topic.

Tara: I watched that TedX. It was very interesting. Can you tell how got started with website specific work?

Svetlana: My first degree is in graphic design. My masters degree is in Internet Technology. I did not have any plans, I didn’t know what I wanted to do … many 18 year olds don’t! So I just went with the flow.

Tara: Was that in the US or was that still in Russia?

Svetlana: I went to American universities. And graduated from universities here.

Tara: Ah! Were they specific universities for the deaf, like Gallaudet?

Svetlana: No, I went to a regular university. Where I had sign language interpreters and live captioners. I learned English 7 years before I learned American sign language. I could not understand interpreters so I benefited from captions more. Majority of deaf and hard of hearing people use spoken languages and don’t know sign language. American sign language is my fifth language that I learned, by the way.

Tara: Wow!

Liam: Wow! That is really cool!

Tara: So, tell us about what it was like going to university in the US with a new language and also being deaf?

Svetlana: It was very overwhelming with new language and new culture. But I was even more overwhelmed when I couldn’t understand deaf people or sign language interpreters in beginning. I was not aware about live captions until later and I wished I knew about it sooner to make learning easier. Not all deaf people use interpreters. Deaf people are different and use different communication methods.

Svetlana: I didn’t know any American sign language except for fingerspelling even though I could understand English well.

Svetlana: I’ve lived in USA for quite a long time since I was young.

Tara: Can you tell us how you got started with WordPress please?

Svetlana: Sure. I started working with WordPress when I was looking for an CMS. That was easy to learn to use and to build websites with. To learn more about WordPress, I read information online an also started attending WordCamps in New York. Originally they were not accessible to me as a deaf person. So I started advising organizers on how to make their events and media accessible.

Liam: How long ago was that?

Svetlana: Around 10 years ago, I think.

Liam: Wow!

Svetlana: I also attend monthly WordPress Meetups in New York sometimes. I gave a presentation at their Meetup in 2012 on how to make websites accessible. Then gave a presentation at a WordCamp NYC in 2014 on accessibility beyond coding, and then gave a presentation at a WordCamp US in 2016 on accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing of people. I introduced organizers to live captions during my presentation in 2014. And recommended captioning vendors for WordCamp NYC and WordCamp US. That’s how more WordCamps became accessible.

Tara: I have noticed that. I noticed that at WCNYC which may have been that first year you did that.

Liam: I have noticed that too.

Svetlana: I have worked with communication access providers for over 20 years and with event organizers for over 10 years. Now captioning services for media and events are part of my overall event accessibility consulting services that cover accessibility not only for events but also for event websites and post-event recordings. I also advise event organizers about code of professional conduct for interpreters, captioners, and other communication access providers in order for them to abide by so that deaf and hard of hearing attendees feel comfortable attending events. There are some interpreters and captioners who do not follow code of ethics which makes deaf people feel uncomfortable. And many are not aware of the code of ethics, so it’s important for event organizers to be aware of it and to ensure that communication access providers follow it.

Tara: Can you please tell us about those ethics and code of conduct for interpreters and captioners?

Svetlana: It’s a bit long for this conversation, but I can give a link to the page about this.

Liam: A link would be great.

Tara: Let’s change gears a bit. We want to talk about success. We ask all of our guests about success. And so we’re going to ask you about it as well. How do you define success, Svetlana?

Svetlana: It’s a hard question to answer to answer.

Tara: It could be a mix of personal and professional definitions. Your call.

Svetlana: In my experience it’s not letting my deafness hold me back. Many people think deafness as a weakness so I’ve had to prove throughout my whole life that I can do anything as a deaf person. For example, I took a risk to be transferred from a school for the deaf where I could understand everyone in sign language, to a regular school where I was the only deaf person and didn’t have any communication access services. I spent 7 years there, missing most things in classes. I was not satisfied with quality of education in a school for the deaf. That was back in Russia. There was no accessibility even on anyone’s mind back then and Russia is very behind USA in accessibility.

Liam: I love your strength. How old were you when you moved from Russia?

Svetlana: I was a teenager. I still can remember Russian and can speak it fluently.

Liam: That’s an amazing choice to have made as a teenager. What support did you have from your parents and friends for undertaking this big challenge?

Svetlana: Yes, my family support was very paramount. Without them I would not be where I am now. I had support from them at home. Also I had support from teachers during their office hours. They did not have any experience working with deaf people, so I was their first deaf student. They tried their best to help me as much as they could. That was long before accessibility became a “trend.” If I didn’t switch to a regular school, I would not have the opportunity to learn English and now speak to you.

Tara: Are your parents both hearing?

Svetlana: Yes, everyone in my family is hearing. I was born hearing and lost all of it from meningitis when I was 2 years old.

Liam: Meningitis, on a side note, is a terribly quick disease. When I was in university several students died from it in only a few days. It is a hard disease.

Tara: Svetlana, do you have siblings?

Svetlana: Yes, I have a younger sister. She’s an adult now but she’s still a baby to me.

Liam: Ha!

Tara: Did she help you growing up?

Svetlana: Yes, she sometimes interprets orally to me during family gatherings. She’s very easy to lip-read and she can finger spell in English and Russian. My family and I didn’t sign when growing up, due to the old notations by medical professionals that sign language was bad for language development. Then it became a habit. But my family does support sign language and captioning and all types of access.

Liam: So did you grow up lip-reading?

Svetlana: Yes, I can lipread but only to an extent. It depends on who I talk to and it’s easier for me to lip-read people I know and one to one . I cannot follow group conversations. So I have someone to summarize to me what’s said.

Liam: How did you communicate when you were young?

Svetlana: I communicated verbally and in writing. When growing up, I learned sign language at a late age. I learned Russian sign language at the age of 7, when I started a school for deaf in Russia. I didn’t use sign much after I switched to a regular school and then I learned American Sign Language at age 18 when I started university. By that time I already knew English.

Tara: Wow! Let’s get back to the idea of success. Do you run your own business? Or do you work for yourself, that is?

Svetlana: Yes I am an independent consultant.

Liam: So, I’m wondering about the relationship between being a business owner, but also seeing success in the evolution in this country and in the web world generally, particularly as it comes to accessibility.

Svetlana: It’s a bit challenging, but it’s getting better with time. It’s great to see more organizations to care about accessibility.

Tara: I would think seeing progress – however small – could be satisfying. And that might also affect your business.

Svetlana: Yes I’m glad to see progress. There are still many misconceptions about accessibility though.

Liam: Do you want to talk about some of those misconceptions?

Svetlana: Sure, like when it comes to accessibility in physical spaces everyone assumes it’s for wheelchair users only, or when it’s web accessibility it’s only accessibility for blind people based on coding only. Those are a few examples of misconceptions. And non-disabled people make assumptions and decisions for disabled people without asking them for advice. That happens quite often.

Liam: Yes, yes it does.

Svetlana: Even if they care about accessibility and think they are doing a favor.

Tara: Do you think that is changing?

Svetlana: Slowly but surely.

Tara: How does WordPress measure up? Both as software and as a community, would you?

Svetlana: You have probably heard about Gutenberg?

Liam: Ha! What’s Gutenberg?

Svetlana: I’m not very familiar with all those issues in detail but I do hear about this.

Liam: It was well documented that the head of the accessibility team for Gutenberg recently resigned as leader as result of the lack of attention to challenges around Gutenberg.

Liam: Let me ask you if you interact with many other tech communities to address accessibility needs of their CMS, maybe like Drupal or Joomla?

Svetlana: Yes, and not just technical communities. Also user experience communities. Accessibility is not just about coding, which is one of misconceptions.

Tara: Yes, I can see that.

Svetlana: Accessibility needs to be everywhere

Tara: Are there many consultants who do what you do?

Svetlana: Yes, there are many accessibility consultants. Accessibility is a very huge field. So it has specializations.

Liam: Specializations like?

Svetlana: For example, special education is also part of accessibility. It’s outside of my scope, for example. My specializations are web accessibility, accessibility for deaf, disability awareness, and such. And accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing people which also includes captioning consulting. There are different types of captioning access so I advise on this topic a lot.

Tara: Do you advise captioners in that case?

Svetlana: No, I advise media producers and event organizers. And I have my subcontractors to provide different types of captioning services when needed.

Liam: What do you do when you are not working or attending conferences? What keeps you busy and interests you outside of work?

Svetlana: So many things. Spending time with my family and friends, watching a good movie with captions, reading a good book, doing yoga, learning languages, traveling, meeting new people.

Liam: I see from the books on the shelf behind you that you read a lot!

Svetlana: Those are old books, ha-ha! I no longer read paper books.. all I read now are e-books.

Liam: I like flipping pages. Let me ask you about languages, you have talked about languages a lot today .What language have you learned most recently?

Svetlana: I have been trying to master Chinese on and off in the past few years.

Tara: Wow!

Svetlana: It’s hard to master languages if I don’t practice them or use them regularly.

Liam: Where would you say you are on learning Chinese? How fluent are you? And are you learning Chinese sign language?

Svetlana: I’m still on very basic level of fluency. I learn more of spoken and written languages.

Svetlana: I also took French for 4 years in middle and high school. And German in university, but due to no practice I don’t know German much except for greetings. And I know basic French.

Liam: To be clear – Russian, English, German, French, Chinese, ASL … what else?

Svetlana: Just a bit of other languages when I travel, very few words.

Tara: Is it easier to learn a language when you don’t speak or hear it?

Svetlana: What do you mean?

Tara: You don’t have to learn to pronounce the words.

Svetlana: I just like learning languages, and I do need to learn how to pronounce words. Otherwise I cannot memorize them.

Liam: So, like auditory memory? But no … I’m confused.

Svetlana: More of phonetic memory. I just learn how to pronounce, but I don’t know what it sounds like.

Tara: So like read and red?

Svetlana: [nods] There are sound transcripts in writing actually. That’s how it helped me learn to pronounce English and French, then I get feedback from hearing people on pronunciation.

Liam: Like the pronunciation guides in dictionaries?

Svetlana: Yes. Dictionaries have them – foreign word then sound transcript then translated words. I don’t know how other deaf people do it. I only speak for myself

Liam: Excellent answer!

Tara: Now, some deaf people speak. Do you speak at all?

Svetlana: Yes, I can speak. I was taught to speak and lip-read when growing up. I can speak here but I don’t know how intelligible my speech is for you.

Liam: I am going to swing towards advice. We ask people about advice on our show. What is the best advice that you have ever received and successfully worked into to your life?

Svetlana: I’ve gotten many different pieces of good advice. I would share one that I’ve gotten from different sources, is to take good care of health, because health is wealth. Without health you cannot be productive

Liam: … Hence the yoga

Svetlana: Yoga does relax me.

Liam: Have you tried goat yoga? Where people do yoga and baby goats climb on them?

Svetlana: [smiling] I have heard of it but have never seen it. I do regular yoga. Similar to hatha type.

Tara: They probably have goat yoga somewhere in New York City because they have everything in NYC!

Svetlana: I’m not sure if goats are roaming in New York though! LOL.

Tara: I wouldn’t be surprised. I’d like to go back …when we started, we asked about success. You said “Not letting being deaf hold you back.” How has “not letting being deaf hold you back” changed for you over time? Especially as accessibility and disabilities are increasingly accepted, understood and respected … Although, of course, with plenty of room for more acceptance and respect. How has that changed over time, if at all?

Svetlana: That definition has not really changed much. I just need to be persistent and not to give up when facing ongoing challenges and barriers. When people with disabilities face barriers, it’s mostly man made. There would be no barriers if society removes them in order to make the world more accessible to everyone.

Liam: We had a panel at WordCamp Philly about autism and getting people with autism into the workplace. A few of the panelists noted that the barriers are not those people with autism, but those without autism who don’t work to understand the different needs.

Svetlana: I agree. Disabilities are as much a part of diversity and inclusion, but sadly people with disabilities are often excluded from that equation because there’s a notion that disability is a pathological view.

Liam: You shared a number of really impressive feats that you have achieved and challenges you have overcome. Can you share with us what would have been your biggest and one of your biggest challenges – how have you or are you overcoming it?

Svetlana: My stubbornness helps me overcome them and support from my family too.

Liam: Maybe persistence over stubbornness?

Svetlana: Being stubborn is not bad in my opinion. It helped me get where I am now, and I’m an Aries by horoscope by the way. Not that I believe in horoscopes.

Liam: That is very impressive. How did you decide to become an accessibility consultant vs. being a graphic designer or something else that would have interested you professionally?

Svetlana: Because there’s a lack of awareness about accessibility. People with disabilities make up the largest yet the most ignored minority. They make up 1.3 billion of people worldwide. That’s the population of china! Plus they control over $4 trillion dollars worldwide. It’s the market that cannot be ignored. People with disabilities are even excluded from the diversity and inclusion equation. I’ve often experienced being excluded from diversity events, even denied sign language interpreters by people who talk about diversity, or videos not captioned on those topics.

Tara: Hmmm, that seems almost ironic.

Svetlana: So there’s still a lot of work to do to consult more organizations on the topic of accessibility.

Liam: Agreed!

Tara: Are you hopeful that progress will continue to be made?

Svetlana: Yes, I’m confident about this.

Tara: If you publicize the dollar value of the disabled community more support might be made available! Haha! … I joke sort of.

Liam: Yes, joke and a bit sad too.

Tara: Before we wrap up, can you please share where people can find you online?

Svetlana: I can be found via Twitter – @svknyc and my AboutMe page that we can link here. It has links to several other websites and other sources

Liam: We’ll put those links in the show notes! Thanks so much for joining us!

Svetlana: Thank you for having me.

Tara: We’re so grateful for your time and for you sharing your story and for continuing to educate us about accessibility.

Svetlana: It was a pleasure chatting with you.

Liam: Bye!

Tara: Thank you!

Liam: Thank you, Svetlana!

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Dave Smith is the founder of Gravity Wiz and a Rocketgenius developer since Gravity Forms’ infancy. He is a fun, friendly guy who enjoys being productive just a little too much.

Twitter | @spivurno

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 77.

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

Liam: I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Dave Smith. Dave is the founder of Gravity Wiz and a Rocketgenius developer since Gravity Forms infancy. He is fun, friendly guy who enjoys being productive just a little too much. He says he is still working on that. Hi Dave!  Welcome to the show.

Dave: Hey Liam and Tara. How’s it going?

Tara: Good! We’re so glad you’re here with us today. Can you tell us more about yourself?

Dave: You know? I’m just a regular old guy who’s been working in the WordPress space for a while and like I said, I really enjoy working and really enjoy meeting new people in the community. So let’s chat.

Tara: Alright. Well start by telling us how you got started.

Dave: So basically my experience with WordPress kind of begins with Rocketgenius. We all worked at a company together before the day. Those three guys over there Carl, Alex and Kevin. They left another company called Channel Blade and started Rocketgenius. Then, maybe a year after they started that (this was before Gravity Forms this time) I got laid off of from Channel Blade. As soon as they found out, they called me up. They were like hey! Do you want to come to work with us? We’ve got this really cool product that working on there’s lots of really cool stuff you could do here. I said of course! I don’t have a job. I’m willing to do anything!

Liam:  That’s a timely offer.

Dave:  Yeah. So I got over there and basically it’s just been WordPress and Gravity Forms ever since.

Tara: Well I know that I have used Gravity Forms for just about as long as I have been in WordPress. While we don’t endorse products, I will admit I am a fan of Gravity Forms and enjoy using it. Tell us a little bit about what it’s been like being there since it started and seeing the evolution of Gravity Forms and other form plugins coming into place  and how that has been for you.

Dave:  It’s been a lot of fun. Just kind of taking a step back from Gravity Forms itself, just working at Rocketgenius has been an experience. They really take a lot of pride and care in their employees. Then again, I have been friends with these guys for a long, long time as well so that adds another level of intimacy to that working experience. Anytime you’re in a company that basically is family (again, I’ve known these guys for 12 going on 13 years now) it’s fun! It’s just like every day you go in, it’s like a second home going into the office. It doesn’t feel at all uncomfortable there. It’s great. We just get together and we really ironed out some productive working patterns. We all know each other’s personalities now. We know which hills to fight and die on and which ones where you ask you know what? I want to pass on this one. Of course, like when I first started with them way back when I was 18 (I am 31 now) I have matured a lot and they have also matured. So it really is (like I said, I will probably keep beating on that motif) it really is like family. When you grow up with somebody you know? So it’s been awesome as far as seeing Gravity Forms itself also grow in that kind of setting. We brought a lot of new people on the team now so that dynamic has definitely changed a little bit. I think you lose a little bit of that intimacy when everyone’s local and every one is in the same office and everyone has known everyone for so long. But then it’s also nice because it adds like so much (I don’t know the word is) but you just get new perspectives and new opinions and new blood into an old body. It comes alive again. So you kind of see these resurgences of ingenuity and motivation when you bring a new exciting employee on board. Especially in a small company like that where I’ve seen an employee have a huge impact. So yeah. As far as how it’s done in the community as a whole? You know you’re probably going to hear me talk about this too. I have really liked pulled back from the community so I really don’t actually have a great perspective. I kind of adopted like five or six years ago, I kind of adopted this idea that I didn’t want to be too distracted by what everybody else is doing. I knew what I wanted to do with Gravity Forms and my own thing. I just found myself like kind of get into that comparison game a little too much. I was like you know what? I’m just gonna ignore everything else. I am going to do what I’m really enjoying and what feels good to me. I’ll leave Carl. Carl always is the one with his eyes on the community. He’s always like watching what plays people are making and who’s moving which pawn pieces. So I can let him do that. I’ve just been along for the ride. I’m working hard and enjoying it.

Tara: I think that’s a good answer to the question. That’s how you have evolved and responded to the environment that you are in. What a great testimonial to your workplace and the environment that you are so enthusiastic about your coworkers and the team that you have.  It sounds like it’s really, you’ve been there long time. You don’t see people staying 13 years or 12 years that you’ve been there? That’s a long relationship. So you have your own side gig related to Gravity Forms. How does that work alongside your employment with them?

Dave: So it is interesting and people are always like okay so let’s talk about the elephant in the room here, like the conflict of interest there. I’m not sure that you could do that in any company. But I think there is a certain amount of luxuries of being a family is that there is a lot of trust there on both sides. Me: that they’re not going to eat me up. Them: that I’m not gonna do anything to hurt the company. So when you have the idea that I’ve heard expressed internally is Gravity Forms just really wants to encourage the third-party ecosystem you know? Whatever they and you know we can do to allow that ecosystem to blossom we really want to do. I am not sure if you’re familiar that we actually just released a new community section of the website which includes a directory of add-ons as well as new forums that are unofficially supported. We don’t provide official support there but we’re still keeping an eye on it. We’re trying to encourage people. But the idea is to encourage the community to have a place that you know we’ve officially endorsed to go and communicate. As long as our end goals are aligned and that everyone involved wants Gravity Forms to succeed, then there really ends up not really being a big conflict of interest. I learned early on to talk to Carl. He’s pretty much like the project manager I guess you could say of Gravity Forms. I would just talk to him early on. Like now, whenever I have a new idea for an add-on for our plugin for Gravity Forms, I’ll just talk to him. Like Hey! This is what I was thinking. Where is this on our internal roadmap? He is always very forthcoming. He wants you to do the things that internally we’re not planning pursuing because again, it helps the community.

Liam: Just to clarify for listeners, Carl is Carl Hancock of Rocketgenius for people who don’t know who he is. That is really interesting that supporting the wider form ecosystem, Gravity Form ecosystem and ensuring that Rocketgenius doesn’t pursue an avenue of development or functionality, that if somebody else is willing to explore how to make that happen that it sounds like it’s more just more than just a high-five. You probably have some development ideas where you can get the assistance with that too.

Dave: Oh absolutely. Carl is definitely a thinker you know? He’s like one of those guys that when you pitch an idea to him, he’ll come back to you with honestly, sometimes more than you are really looking for. But it’s all good. It’s all good feedback. You’re just like ah Dang it. I didn’t really think about that complexity you know?  He has already thought through it for you. You’re just like Dang. Now I need to go back to the drawing board and rethink this original core idea I had.

Liam:  Yeah, I get that. You’re just want a little like yes or no. Oh wow that’s not gonna get done this weekend is it?

Dave: People want to do that? He’s like yeah these are all the use cases. I’ve seen it. I am like wow! So it’s pretty awesome. He’s definitely one of those people you typically don’t want to go to him and surprise him with an idea. He’s like yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. I’m like oh, ok.

Liam: That’s awesome. So let me ask you little bit about success as we’re talking about having a productive enjoyable workplace and a business on the side. Then I’ll ask you to tell us about your business little bit more later in this conversation. I want to ask you what is your definition of success? How would you define it in a personal way or in a professional way. Maybe the two overlap.

Dave: Dang! Good question. I think most people would agree, success is like a moving target, you know? I think it’s human nature to never be completely satisfied with where you’re at and always to want more. But I think that for me now I really have measured especially in  the last few years, I measure success by being able to do what I want to do rather than in a mile marker you know? I spent a month in Croatia in 2018. It was just an incredible experience. It was one of those moments where you are just sitting back on a Croatian beach sipping a Croatian beer and you are like wow! This is a good life! Instead of chasing a certain amount money or a certain amount of sales, it’s like my lifestyle or my business and everything that I am doing for work allows me to do this. To be clear, when I was there, I was still working on Rogetgenius. I was still working on my Gravity Wiz stuff. I felt very successful. I think that they do overlap as far as the personal and the professional. I think that kind of comes with the idea of when you, even though I work for Rocketgenius I still very much work for myself with the Gravity Wiz thing. Working for Rocketgenius is more or less working for yourself because it’s not like a don’t look over your shoulder at what you’re doing. It’s very much ok. This is what we need you to do. Just get it done at such and such date. Outside of that, if you want to come into the office, come into the office. If you don’t want to come into the office, don’t come into the office. So it’s a very casual work environment where I think that with most people you would have the same struggles that people have with working remotely anywhere and working for themselves. You have the same struggles with Rocketgenius because of just how casual it is.

Liam: So that success is a moving target and success is being able to do want you want to do. I want to circle back to the way that we introduced you. It was an introduction that you helped formulate with us. It was about being overly productive or too focused on productive. I guess that probably means you set goals for yourself maybe around the business or around personal hobbies or around travel or whatever it may be. Sometimes you lose the forest for the trees or you get so busy trying to make that goal happen that the enjoyment and the fun of it is lost because you’re sweating the deadline of the detail of whatever the work is. Is that accurate? If so, talk us through that. How do you balance that? How do you say to yourself or learn not to be overly productive?

Dave: So I’m definitely in the position now where a lot of my struggles with work are no longer deadline oriented. Even my personal deadlines of oh! You have to have this certain project done by such and such date. I think most of my stuff now is (especially with selling a product online) there is a certain grind to it, you know? You get really excited when you open up like a fresh notepad and you’re about to start your first email or your first newsletter or whatever you’re doing. It’s the same thing you know when you start an actual software project. You open up the file, you have your nice little filename and your about to start writing code. It’s so motivational at that time point. Once you’re like (I think we’re 6 or 7 years into Gravity Wiz now) there’s a point where your grinding it out, you know? You’re just like ok. I’m not incredibly motivated today but I need to do this work. I need to get it done. I think to some people that might sound like, I don’t know like sad or it might take a little of the sheen off of an otherwise that sounds so awesome working for yourself and having your own business. I think that anything worthwhile in life is going to have it hardships as well. I don’t remember if you guys are married Liam and Tara, but it’s the same deal with marriage. It’s not always easy. You’re not always in the honeymoon phase. I think the best managers are the ones that really put in the grind work day in day out. Like waking up and saying hey! I’m going to keep doing this marriage. I feel the same way about business. You just keep doing it even when it gets tough.  It’s cyclical. You’re going to go through phases where you are just as excited as the first the first time you started that project.

Liam: Yeah. Absolutely. I can say that Tara and I are married, but not to each other. We have both been married for a number of years at the very least. I really do appreciate that cyclical nature of whether it’s lifework, newsletters, marriage, or parenting. Being a parent is awesome and great but there are some days where it’s a challenge. It doesn’t mean that I love my children less on those days. If anything I love them more because I force myself to do what needs to done or at least I listen when I get told to do it and I go and do it anyway even though I don’t want to in the moment. So yeah, I get that. Your analogy around newsletters was great because I use that a lot with my clients. I say hey! We should have a newsletter. Newsletters are really fantastic and everybody loves doing them until the fourth issue.

Dave:  Oh yeah.

Liam: Like what else are we going to say? That’s good, I like that. I like that kind of perspective.

Dave: If I could, I’d like to tie this back into the actual, original question which was like the balance aspect. For me, that grind is about setting limits on how much I will grind, you know? One of the big things I’ve been dealing with right now is support. It just never ends. It’s always coming in. So I had to make some commitments with myself as far as what I would actually do for support. One of those is, I’m not going to do evenings anymore. I am just not going to work evenings because I want to have more time to do things that aren’t about WordPress, aren’t about Gravity Forms, and aren’t about sitting in front of a computer. And evenings just seems like a very natural time to go out and be social and do fun things. So get up early and work hard all day long but once I’m done with my Rocketgenius day that’s it. I think that has been a really healthy but challenging limit that I’ve been placing on myself. So if you guys see me providing support in the night, don’t judge me.

Tara: Yeah.

Dave: I’m still a work in progress.

Tara: I was going to ask if that’s hard because people who like to be productive and who work for themselves (as you’re defining it, right) there’s really never an end to the support tickets. It’s a bottomless, endless thing. There are always more coming it. You’re never done.

Dave: Right.

Tara: You’re never done so you have to be able to call what the end of the day is. I have a hugely hard time with that. I’ll find myself procrastinating through the day and it’s 5 o’clock and my list is still pretty long. I know I can just keep going, right?

Dave:  Oh yeah.

Tara: I think that’s a real struggle even if you set that as a goal for yourself; sticking to that goal and shutting off when you say you’re going to.

Dave:  Oh yeah. Not only shutting off like the computer but shutting off your mind after you’re away from the computer. That’s been a real struggle for me my entire career. I would turn off the computer and then I would still be sitting on the couch thinking about the problems. You know?

Tara: Then you have to get up and get on your computer because you don’t want to forgot. I have gotten up out of bed. Oh my gosh! I forgot to change the settings on the site I just launched today to allow it to be searched by Google. It’s some silly thing like that that pops into your head that you need to go take care of right away.

Dave: Absolutely.

Tara: I want to ask you a little bit more about that Croatia experience that you had and what that took for you in terms of (I want to use the word courage). It takes a little bit of gusto or moxie or whatever the word is to actually pick up and do that. We all dream about it and talk about it, especially as we get to a certain point where you’re comfortable where you are. Making a move like that as exciting and awesome as it is when you’re there, I think motivation to do it can sometimes actually be hard. Was it hard for you or am I making that up?

Dave: No. I completely agree. It was definitely one of those things or  ideas that sounded like a good idea when I signed up. The closer I got to it, the more I was like dang! Why did I sign up for this? This is going to be so intense. It’s going to be so grueling to try to get all my work done while I’m in a different place with a completely new work set up. Yeah. It’s like one of those things, once I got there it was like this is not a big deal. Then I realized I made it up. Beforehand, it’s all a mental game. I’m actually going to South Africa in January.

Tara: Oh cool. I was going to ask if you were going to do something else like that.

Dave: Yeah. I went with an organization which was one of those things that made it a lot easier to pull the trigger on it. It’s called WiFi Tribe. What they do is basically just get a bunch of remote workers that have their own remote work and then invite them to come to such and such place. They have a whole list of chapters. That’s what they call each destination they have. So you just go and sign up. Then you show up there. Like I didn’t even know where I was going to be staying until three days before I got on the plane to fly to Croatia. But you get there and they kind of give you a real quick like hey! Welcome to Croatia! Here’s where you’re going to be staying. Here are the 19 other people that are kind of in your group. We will meet you guys in a week. Every week we will touch base with you. We make sure that you’re enjoying yourselves. Other than that just live your lives here and have fun.

Tara: I just pulled up the website. Oh my gosh! This looks amazing. How cool! What a great thing to have discovered.

Dave: Yeah. It’s funny because I was actually reading an article when I discovered it. The article was actually bashing the idea of doing this. It was saying all the bad things about it. I was like this sounds awesome! What are you talking about? This sounds like the perfect way to travel.

Tara: Yeah. The photos on here…wow! Very Cool!

Dave: You meet some really awesome people too. I think that if you have the interest and the courage to go and can make that jump, you can imagine the other kinds of people that have that same interest and courage.

Tara: Did your wife go with you?

Dave: No. Oddly enough I am divorced.

Tara: Oh sorry!

Dave: Which is…no…I’m not sensitive about it all. That’s how I knew that marriages took a lot of grind work. But yeah, so it’s been like five years. It’s not a sensitive subject at all. That was part of my like hey! I’m getting old and I want to make sure that I look back and feel like I did something that I’m proud of and that I experienced life. Again, I was really glad I went. It was definitely really an awesome experience.

Liam: Awesome! That is really neat. I like that. I like that. You already covered the question that I was going to come up with. It’s logistics and how did you decide where to stay and where to go. It sounds like all you to do was go on the website and pick.

Dave: That’s right.

Liam: That makes it logistically easy.

Dave: Beautiful.

Liam: Having moved internationally a couple of times, it’s not very easy when there is more than one person involved. It gets even harder when you start to have children moving too.

Dave: Yeah. I can imagine.

Liam: If there had been a WiFi Tribe when I wanted to move from wherever I was, it would have been a lot easier. Dave? I want to ask you another one of our big questions if I can. It’s about advice. What is the single most valuable piece of advice (it may be personal or may be professional) it may be both that you’ve ever received and successfully implemented into your life?

Dave: I am going to loop back to kind of what I was mentioning earlier when Tara asked me about  how I thought about the community with the other add-ons around Gravity Forms (not add-ons but actual plugins and other forms plugins). There is value in knowing what your competitors are doing. It can also be just incredibly disruptive and distracting from what you actually want to do. I think a lot of time, people talk about when how the iPhone came out it was at this revolutionary product and then you know in the years that followed pretty much all other phones became iPhones. I think to a large degree like I just really come to value just focusing on your own vision and trying to not be so heavily influenced by what other people are doing. You know, obviously stay in the loop. Don’t completely seclude yourself from the community. But at the same time develop some convictions about what you want to build and then just dig deep and build it. I think that you’re going to feel so much more satisfaction in that then just trying to play feature tag where if they do this feature then we’re going to do that feature. If they do that feature then we’ll do that feature. What do you want to do? OK, now do that.

Liam: Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. I’m no part product owner or product developer. I’m a services guy (as is Tara). She’s a services woman. But that whole point of yes it matters what our competitors or other people in the community are doing, I don’t even use the word competitors, I don’t see other agencies and providers as competitors. But what others are doing because we don’t want to be out of touch but I also want to run my business the way I want it to run so that when I have to grind, it’s something that I still want to grind about so to speak.

Dave: Absolutely.

Liam:  Cool! I like that. I’m going to ask you another question unless Tara there’s something you want to jump on about. Dave? I want to talk to you about challenges. Maybe I’ll even focus it a little bit because you haven’t shared much about Gravity Wiz yet. I would like to hear about that especially as we’re not that far away from all the the holiday season here in America…things like Black Friday and Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday and there’s got to be a Wednesday at some point coming up. What’s been with respect to Gravity Wiz (you said it’s been going about 6 or 7 years now) what has been your biggest challenge to date and how did you overcome it? Or if it’s a current challenge, how are you working on it? How are you trying to get over it?

Dave: Honestly, I think it touches on pretty much every single thing that we talked about today. I think that just historically the biggest challenge I’ve had is when you’re doing something alone, you have no support system to lean back on when you’re just…when you’re done with the grind. You’re over it. You’re exhausted. When you’re going solo there’s just nothing to fall back on. So then what happens is you fall back on nothing. You just stop for a little while and then you kind of get back into it again. I think one of the best things I ever did was I brought my brother and a guy named Clay Griffiths on board as partners. That definitely helped with the motivation so much. Just like you know on the days that you’re off they’re on. It’s just encouraging. Also, just knowing that ok like this at this one really big challenge you’ve got to to work on. Just knowing that you have somebody that you can reach out to and just get that assist with is huge. Then the other challenge I really have Gravity Wiz was it was definitely a very very slow start as far as getting the return on investment. So at the beginning there were definitely like a lot of times where I was like  comparing myself to how successful other products have been. I’ll just look at it and it would just discourage me so much. I was just like wow! This product came out and it made this much in the first year and I haven’t even made you know that much in the first two years. So you know you can really internalize those feelings if you dwell on them too much. That was around the same time where you know what? I am going stop looking at what other people are doing. Again, I think some people aren’t as susceptible to that. I think I’ve grown a lot since I started this policy of not comparing myself. Now I can look at some other person’s success and not feel threatened by it and feel a little bit more like celebratory for them. I’m glad you’re successful. I think that also ties into what I was saying earlier about how I measure success now. I measure success by am my living the life I want to live rather than is my product or business making the right amount of money? It’s so arbitrary. It doesn’t really matter. I want for nothing right now therefore I should be happy. I think when you start to embrace that idea you just become happy.

Tara: I like that. That you want for nothing and you’re happy. You were always kind of looking for what’s the next thing.

Dave: Yeah, absolutely.

Tara: Being where you is a great realization to come to.

Dave: I think of that comes with age as well. Like you just get a little older and things just don’t matter as much as when you’re younger you know?

Liam: Different things matter.

Dave: Yeah absolutely.

Liam: But that comparison circle that am I doing as well as the next team. Am I making as much money? That’s something that we measure by in modern standards. Well at some point money becomes important because it’s hard to pay bills without it. But yeah if our needs are simple then $100 goes a lot further than if we need the latest and greatest of everything.

Dave: Right?

Liam: I imagine I can tell just from to chatting with you that you are not an overly stressful guy (at least in this conversation here). I imagine the lack of that constant stress, worry, or recurring stress and worries are probably worth a fair amount of money. It hard to put a dollar amount on it. But yeah, I don’t need the extra money if I can avoid that worry or stress.

Dave: Absolutely! I made a lot financial sacrifices in order to get rid of stresses. I got rid of my…in 2017 I actually spent an entire year as my New Year’s goal…I’m going to get rid of everything in my life that causes me stress. The biggest thing was I actually had a rental property. It was on the advice like (I love you dad if you ever hear this) but my dad had gotten me to buy this or he encouraged me strongly to buy a house when I was really young. I bought it and the market crashed. I was just like man I’m going to landlord it now until after the market crash and I make my money back. Eventually I just realized (again in 2017) like this house is causing me so much stress. So I took a huge hit to get rid of it. But I have never been happier to just get rid of something. It was such a relief. It was one of those things I didn’t realize how stressful it was to me until I was actually rid of it. Then I was just like oh wow! I can live the rest of my life like this?

Tara: That was a big step.

Dave: Yeah.

Tara:  Yeah. It’s hard to make those decision sometimes. I think you are right when you look back. It seems easier because you realize

Dave: how well it has panned out.

Tara: how it resonates In your life.

Dave: Yeah.

Tara: Yeah.

Liam: This is awesome. Dave? This has been a fantastic conversation. A half an hour has come upon us way to quickly.

Dave: Yeah. It snuck away from me too. I was like Dang! Is that countdown right?

Liam: So before we say goodbye to you please share with us and actually you didn’t really even get into it. So can you in about 30 seconds or so tell us who Gravity Wiz is?  And as part of that or maybe when you’re done with the 30 second overview, tell us where people can find you online.

Dave: Absolutely. So Gravity Wiz is just the company behind our plugin called Gravity Perks which is just a suite of just really solid Gravity Forms plugins and our biggest thing is support. We support the heck out of these add-ons you know? You’re not going to find any Gravity Forms add-ons that are supported as well as these. You can find us at GravityWiz.com. Actually, that’s part of my year of stress. I actually got rid of everything except for Gravity Wiz. So that’s the only thing I do now besides Rocketgenius.

Tara: Great. Thank you very much.

Liam: That’s awesome.

Tara: Thanks again for joining us.

Dave: Thank you Tara. Thank you Liam.

Liam: We’ll see you soon.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Chris Jones is a digital marketing strategist and blogger, and founder of socialbawse.com. He’s a big fan of all things Apple and loves WordPress for blogging and websites.

Twitter | @realchrisjones

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 75.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam: Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Chris Jones. A digital marketing strategist and blogger, Chris Jones is a founder of Socialbawse.com. He’s a big fan of all things Apple and loves WordPress for blogging and websites. Hey, Chris. Welcome.

Chris: Hey, how’s it going?

Tara: Hey, Chris. Welcome. Glad to have you here. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Chris: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I’m from Houston, Texas. I’m 36 years old. I’ve been working with WordPress now for over 10 years. I can remember when WordPress was some of the earliest versions of it and that. It sure has come a long way.

Tara: Yeah. How did you get into it to begin with?

Chris: Well. I’ve always really been into computers. I always was really obsessed with the internet. I can remember when AOL was around and then Netcom when you could log into the internet. I just became obsessed with that stuff and I really wanted to build a site for myself, plant my flag, so to speak. I started messing around with Blogger, with Google’s platform, and then I discovered WordPress and just basically taught myself WordPress from the earliest time. It just became something I fell in love with and I’ve been doing it ever since.

Tara: So you started as a blogger and now would you consider yourself more of a content person, developer, where do you fall on the spectrum of WordPress people?

Chris: Yeah. I consider myself definitely still a blogger. I blog about social media, and digital marketing, and WordPress. And I like to do listicles and I like to review tools and things of that nature. But then I also build WordPress sites on a professional level both for myself and the clients.

Tara: Okay, so you are a unicorn, I guess in sorts, as they say. [laughs]

Chris: I’m used to wearing a lot of hats.

Tara: Tell us a little bit about Social Bawse.

Chris: That’s a site that I founded. I worked for a number of pretty good-sized agencies in Houston and in Austin. And I recently decided to kind of go and do my own thing. I had done that for a while and now I decided to go back to the agency world. And now I decided to start Socialbawse.com as kind of a– well, it’s part of my design agency but it’s really about content marketing, but it’s really about providing value for people. It’s not about selling anything to anybody, I’m not selling anything. All I’m doing is providing good valuable information to people about digital marketing strategies, about WordPress, about how-tos for beginners who are just starting out with WordPress. Tips for bloggers about how to do SEO, all kinds of things like that.

Tara: What’s your favorite part of your new project? What drew you to it and what are you enjoying the most?

Chris: I really get a kick out of providing valuable content to people and not asking for anything in return. I mean, it really works. What I discovered is, if your intention is not to make money from it and it’s really your passion, and you’re just putting stuff out there to try to help people, and because it’s something that interests you, you want to talk about it, it just sort of becomes successful because there’s nothing behind it. It’s interesting. It’s something I kind of– you hear Gary Vaynerchuk talking about this, and he’s so right. It’s like, if you provide value consistently to people, you’re going to get out there.

Tara: It’s funny. You should use the word successful because that’s something we talk about, success, a lot here. Since you brought it up, can you share with us how you define success? What that means personal and/or professional, or professional and/or personal?

Chris: Yeah. It’s definitely something that means different things to different people. But I would say, for myself, success both professionally and personally would be if I’m achieving my goals, and most importantly, if I’m happy.

Liam: Achieving goals and happy. Talk a little bit about that, how does that play out? Work goals, I get it. You’re launching the client’s website, you’re launching this new business, you’re blogging at a certain rate, et cetera. But how does things slightly less tangible, how am I happy at work, how am I happy in my personal life? How do you measure and set goals around that?

Chris: For me, being happy, as far as work is concerned, if that’s something I love and I’m passionate about, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s not something that I dread doing or I’m like, “Oh, man, it’s Monday. Can’t wait until Friday.” It’s not like that, it’s something I enjoy, I look forward to it. It’s something I have to try to turn myself off at some point in the evening so that I don’t keep doing it because this is not something that I just like doing. Having that good work/life balance I think is very important as far as happiness and as far as the way I look at success. Because you could be successful professionally in that you’re making a lot of money and you’re doing really well with what your business objectives are, but maybe you’re not spending enough time with your family and maybe you’re doing all that at the expense of your kids. And sometimes you’ve got to do these things but I like to try to have as good a work/life balance as I can, and be happy while also enjoying professional success as well.

Liam: Work/life balance is something we hear a lot about from our guests and a lot of them, like yourself, want to maintain that. But it can be a challenge and if we kind of accept that some weeks, it’s more work and other weeks, when on vacation, it’s more family. I want to ask you about the tactics that you use to make sure that kind of day-to-day, week-to-week when it is just kind of like a nine-to-fiveish period. I’m not saying that you necessarily work nine-to-five but it’s not an overwhelming amount of work at that point in your production schedule. How do you balance that? What kind of systems, or tools, or mentality do you take?

Chris: Well, sometimes you have to work late and you have to go– it’s funny you say nine-to-five because, especially in this business, you can kind of be all over the place. If it wasn’t for having a family and things like that, I can easily work way late into the night but it’s something that as I’ve gotten older, I have to measure that out and I have to say at some point, there’s got to be a time in the evening that I take some time and stop working for the day and focus on the other things that matter in my life. You can’t always do that but it’s something that I try to make a conscious effort of doing.

Liam: Cool. The other thing that you mentioned that caught my attention was around how much you really enjoy giving out free content, knowledge, information, and how that, if that’s done in an altruistic way, inevitably at some form will come back to you in a good way, in a productive way, whether that’s karma or a project from clients or what have you. Which makes me wonder a little bit about your involvement with the WordPress community. Are you involved with your WordPress community locally, and if so, how?

Chris: Yeah, we have meetups, WordPress meetups that we do, and then I’m on Wp.org, I’m a part of most of the big WordPress communities on Google+, on Facebook, pretty much everywhere. But as far as locally is concerned, yeah, we have WordPress meetup that we go to once a month.

Tara: Yeah, that’s something we talk about also. WordPress meetups and WordCamps are a place where we can act with other people who use WordPress but also lots of times, people like you who are running your own WordPress business. Have you found support within the community as you’ve branched off and started this new venture? How did you sort of learned your way, found your path to running your own business and running your own website?

Chris: I started out running my own stuff when I first started out in this over 10 years ago. And the money was so good as far as the offers I was getting to come work at some of these big agencies that I decided to go ahead and do that for a few years. I really enjoyed that, it was really cool, plus I got to work with so many different types of client, of all different sizes, with all kinds of budgets. And I got to work with some really amazing people who had all kinds of talents that maybe I was weaker on and I got to get better at graphic design. I got to really enhance the stuff that I wasn’t necessarily good at or had the opportunity to work on. Then I decided to go back and start doing all this with all the knowledge that I had gained over these years. I felt way better equipped to go ahead and do my own thing now because of all the years that I spent watching the people that I work with and seeing how you would structure it and all the way down to understanding how to have the right accounting software, all that stuff.

Tara: Has it changed? Since you did this before and then you worked for someone else and now you’re back to working for yourself again, the pros and cons of that and how has that transitioning gone for you?

Chris: It’s much easier to find clients now than it was when I first– because there are so many more avenues. LinkedIn is just amazing. Before, it was mostly Craigslist and stuff like that. Now you’ve got all these ways, paid or organic as far as LinkedIn is concerned. You have Quora, which I participate on quite a bit and I answer questions. And then, of course, through my own blogging and guest-blogging. There’s just so many ways to get your name out there. I’ve really been putting a lot of emphasis on Instagram lately. I’m trying to build a significant following on there. I’m not that far into it at all. I wish I would have taken it more seriously earlier. I just didn’t realize what kind of organic engagement was going on there.

Tara: I read something about Instagram Stories and I still can’t figure out quite how to do them. But apparently, they get a lot more views, a lot more exposure than Instagram posts.

Chris: So the new thing, if you have an Instagram account for business, once you hit 10,000 followers, a bunch of new tools unlocks, and your Stories, they have a ‘swipe up’ now on Stories for everybody that has 10,000+ visitors or followers. You can do a story but then you can say, “Swipe up.” And link directly to that blog post. When before, if you have less than 10,000, you can only put that one link in your bio. My goal is to hit 10,000 because I want those new tools. Because that’s a game changer to be able to put a link into every single Story is phenomenal.

Liam: Chris, what is a typical project or client project look for you? It’s really interesting, the way that you’re bringing in work. What comes in the door and what does that mean for you project-wise?

Chris: Well, I would say a vast majority of my business is rebuilding Wix sites.

Tara: Well, there’s a niche. Not many WordPress people want to tackle that. [laughs]

Liam: Doing them in Wix or moving them to WordPress or Squarespace? What are you doing within Wix?

Chris: Taking them off of Wix and putting them in WordPress. All these victims of those bad commercials about how you can build yourself a website in 15 minutes. No, you can’t. So they start their business and then they have that Wix site, and then they come to me and say, “Well, I did this in two hours and it’s not getting anywhere.” They’re usually not even listed on Google because they don’t have the right title tags, they don’t have anything. Billion people start it. Thankfully, Wix alone can keep me in business. Same for GoDaddy Page Builder, all that stuff. All the ‘do it yourself’ stuff.

Tara: So you find these people that need this help on social media mainly?

Chris: Yeah, a lot of Facebook. Facebook Groups is huge. Facebook Groups in my local area is huge, I find lots of clients on there. Also, I do email marketing as well. I’m always building my email marketing list.

Tara: You sound like you must be really busy, Chris. How do you manage your time? How do you split your time up, tools?

Chris: It’s all about the tools. That’s why I’m always beta testing new tools. Because if I can find a new tool that’s going to help me work smarter and work more efficiently and improve the quality of what I’m doing, I’m always down to do it. The latest tool I started using is Meet Edgar, it’s my favorite tool right now. Love it. I did a review on it. They’re so nice over there, too, everybody over there on the team is great. So I’ve been using that in conjunction with Sprout Social, that’s the social media management platform I use. And then I use Buffer as well.

Tara: I love tools.

Chris: I love testing them.

Liam: I can just be quiet and let the two of you talk tools for a while if you’d like that. [laughter]

Tara: I don’t know if everybody would enjoy that as much as we would but–

Liam: Chris, I’m interested in kind of a conversion and relationship development. I get you’re joining a Facebook group or you’re answering a question on Quora or you’re connecting on LinkedIn. But then at some point, it has to be, “Hey, I want you to do A, B, C, and D.” You can say, “Well, okay. I’ll do A, B, and C. You’re probably not ready for D but let’s do A, B, C. I want this much money for it and I’m being blunt and quick because we’re on just a conversation here.” How does that work? Do you then transition to email? Are you Instagramming back and forth? Are you just eventually have them pick up the phone? What’s your process once you’ve made the connection and they’re interested and it’s worth you investing some time in that conversation. How does that progress?

Chris: So it usually starts out like you said, with texting or responding in Facebook Groups or whatever, then I’ll go to Instant Messenger and then I set up a phone call. That’s my next step. Always set up a phone call and get the person on the phone, figure out what the scope of work looks like, what their expectations are, what their goals are, what is it that they’re trying to achieve. And then I lay that out and once we hang up, I’ll send them a follow-up email basically rehashing what we talked about. And then I’ll send them an official proposal outlining everything with a line-by-line, what it’s going to cost. Once they sign off on it, then they’ll get sent an invoice and we go from there. And the way I work on payment is 50% up front and 50% upon completion.

Liam: Yup, that sounds interesting. So a lot can happen with social media. “Hey, can you help me fix my website?”, “Sure.” And they’re thinking 10 bucks and you’re thinking 1000, and I’m just making up numbers but that total difference, how do you filter so that by the time you decide, “Yeah, I’m going to pick up the phone with this person.” And invest that kind of time, talk for 15, 20 minutes, write an email follow-up. Where does that happen? Because I imagine with social media, everybody is click, click, click. And then it’s your version of a lot of money is quite different than my version of a lot of money. Client to provider. Where do you start to look for money in the conversation standpoint so that you don’t have to respond to everybody?

Chris: First of all, it depends on what kind of business they have. I’m usually pretty good at screening the people who are serious. It’s a numbers game, like anything else. You’ll have the people who say they want to do X, Y, Z, then when it comes down to it, they start dragging their feet and all that kind of things. Then you have people who are serious and ready to start making moves and, “Let’s get it done.” But yeah, from the phone call, once we start talking about what they want. I let them know fairly early on– here’s kind of ballpark, this is what something like that is probably going to cost you, without being specific. This is ballpark what we’re talking about. And if they’re like blown out of– then you know it’s just not for me. When I first started out years ago, I was doing nickel and dime stuff. I just don’t have time to do that. And God bless everyone that does because those people need somebody who can do those things.

Liam: Well, we all kind of start there, right? Some of that is just learning curve but I don’t know–

Chris: But it’s gotten to now where you’ve got the Fiverr, you’ve got the whole gig economy thing. I can’t compete with those guys anyway on that stuff. Because the guys in India and the guys all over the place, I just leave that for them.

Tara: Right, right. I’m going to back up a little bit because it does sound like you’re more than a unicorn. You’re doing a lot of different things in a lot of different directions, it sounds like, with social media and all the things you’re managing with that. And finding new clients and building websites, and rebuilding Wix and all those things. Going towards your goal of this work/life balance, what is the most important thing that you do every day to help ensure that you are working to be successful in your own definition?

Chris: That’s a good question. I have a list sort of in the morning, I get up pretty early and I put out a list of things that I want to accomplish for that day or the things I need to do, and I always feel good at the end of the day that that list is close to being finished as it can be. That’s kind of the way I handle that.

Liam: How do you decide what makes it onto that list? How do you balance enough things on the list so that you don’t get to two o’clock and say, “Okay, now what?” But also, how do you get it so that at the end of the day, you don’t say, “Crikey, I put on 15 things here and I only got to four.”

Chris: Well, it’s all based on what the most important– most important down to the least important. And the stuff at the bottom is the stuff I’d like to get done but it’s not critical. And the stuff at the top is the stuff that’s absolutely got to be done because there’s timeframes, there’s time involved with that stuff. And there’s expectations and if I told the client something’s going to be done on Friday, then I need to have it done on Friday.

Tara: I’m going to ask you about advice. What is the most important/useful, impactful advice that you’ve received and how do you implement that in your life?

Chris: I would say the most powerful advice would probably be something along the lines of tune out the noise and other people telling you what you need to be doing. If you’re confident about something and you feel confident that you’re going in the right direction, keep doing that and stick with it. Because especially in this day and age, and social media, and all that stuff, the way– especially with blogging. The reason most people are not successful as bloggers in a sense that– of course, success, everybody measures it differently. But I mean by success in the sense that they burn out and they quit blogging. I would say that’s not successful. The reason that is is because they approach it the wrong way, they’re not passionate about it, they don’t pick the right niche. The advice that I always tell bloggers is, if you’re trying to pick a niche– because people want to do content marketing, it’s huge. You need to write about something you’re passionate about. You’re going to be able to write about that subject better than anybody else. Don’t pick a subject because you think it’s popular or it’s going to get lots of clicks, because if you don’t like that, you’re going to burn out on that and you’re not going to write as good as the guy who’s getting all those clicks because that guy loves what he’s writing about. You don’t care about that, you’re just writing about it because you want to get clicks. Write about what you love, whatever that is, and you’re going to write about that better than anybody else, and you’re going to make the best content about that.

Tara: Yeah, that’s good advice. I wonder how that translates for somebody who is trying to gain a following. If you’re writing about something that’s not as broadly marketable, if it’s just what you’re interested in. What do you think about that idea?

Chris: No, because that’s the thing. Everyone wants to glom onto this thing that’s really popular. But the internet is so vast, there’s a bunch of people who love whatever it is you love, I don’t care how weird it is. Or it may seem not mainstream to you, or no one can possibly like that. No, no, I assure you there’s people out there that like that too, whatever it is. If you write about that, you’re going to find your little niche and you’re going to be more successful in that niche than maybe the guy that’s writing about the real popular stuff, or so-called popular stuff. You can gain somewhat of a larger audience in these smaller niches because it’s less competition, there’s less voices in that area.

Liam: Chris, you shared about tuning out the noise and stick with what you feel confident and what you know, and hit on that and try not to let people dissuade you. Within the WordPress community, a significant number of people, whether they’re self-employed or in the employment of others, work from home. And don’t have agency partners at the water cooler, at the coffee machine. Just say, “Hey, I’m thinking about doing this. How does it sound to you?” Within that environment and I imagine that this is something given your experience of working for yourself in the past and again, today, you can share some light on this, how do you go about making sure that you are confident and you have a great idea on a Saturday afternoon while you’re cutting the grass or something like that. And then you do some research on it and you roll that out, how do you maintain that confidence when you don’t have a professional team around you or necessarily a professional support network? How do you know that the noise around you is just noise and not actually that they have the truth and you don’t?

Chris: Well, I still stay in touch with all the different guys that I used to work at the agency with, I’m good friends with them. We’re on instant message all day long, in the corner of my screen I’ll be chatting about stuff. We talk on the phone. I have a couple of different text chains that go on all day and all night throughout the day. I have to sort of keep that under control, too, because I can end up going off on that thing. But yeah, I bounce ideas off people but I also do my research and there’s certain people in the industry who inspire me and who– I tend to– when I have a good idea and it makes sense to me, I don’t really doubt it that much anymore. And I know because I listened to some of my peers and I know within the community that this would be a good idea. And I’ve seen it implemented successfully elsewhere. That’s the way I look at that.

Liam: Thank you. Let me ask you about challenges. You’ve shared with us about your career, about starting your own business, and going to work for other agencies. You’ve talked about working on very big projects, on very small projects, you’ve talked about work/life balance and as you’re starting your new business again, maybe you can share with us what’s been your biggest challenge to date?

Chris: That’s a good question. My biggest challenge to date? Professionally or personally?

Liam: Well, I’ll leave that to you because sometimes they intertwine and sometimes they don’t. But I guess I’ll keep chatting to give you some time to think. And maybe while you’re thinking about the challenge itself, it’s how either have you overcome it if it’s something in the past, or how are you currently working on it if it’s something that’s ongoing?

Tara: We try not to make people cry so you don’t have to– [laughs]

Liam: A lot of people do cry.

Chris: Right. This is going to turn into Dr. Phil up in here?

Liam: I don’t know about that.

Chris: Biggest thing I had to overcome? I don’t know. I guess making the decision to leave the agency life again and then doing something on my own was a pretty big decision because my family’s involved, and things like that, so I’ve got to make sure I do what’s best for them. I guess that’s probably, in recent memory, I guess, that would be a pretty big decision. I, thus far, don’t have any regrets about it. It’s been a good decision.

Liam: That’s great. How long did that process take? I’m always interested in that. So you’re thinking, “Maybe I should go work for myself.” As you’re cutting that grass on Saturday afternoon. Cutting the grass is your philosophical time. How long does it take before you decide to do it and the last day in the office of somebody else’s office? How long did that take? Talk us through that process.

Chris: It took a few months. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about because I constantly have to have ideas about stuff I want to do and it’s just like I don’t have the time because I’m always working on other stuff at work and that kind of thing. And I was still able to work at home three days a week, it’s not that big of a deal. But I wanted to really focus on the stuff that I wanted to accomplish for myself. It took a few months and it ended on a super great note. I can come back any time I want, it’s not a big deal. But it’s just something that I really wanted to do. And knowing everything I know now, I’m able to get just enough clients and set the right price point that I don’t have to be swamped with client work but I can really do that and easily finance what I want to do as far as my own stuff, and get that off the ground and keep that going. That’s kind of what I had envisioned and thus far, it’s been working out really well.

Tara: Excellent. That’s great. When you blog, are you blogging at all about that process, about your transition that you’ve made and running your agency or are you targeting people who are trying to learn how to– what are you blogging about, I guess I should say?

Chris: So I blog about tips for beginners in WordPress. I blog about interesting social media news developments, if Instagram adds some new features or things like that. I also blog about SEO tips for WordPress or SEO tips for bloggers. And then I do reviews of tools. I talk about the tools that I like and why I like them. I talk about my experiences using different types of tools and the ones that I use and why I use them and for what purpose. I kind of just blog about all types of things. It’s usually either social media marketing related or it’s either blogging or WordPress related. To answer your question, I have not talked about that. That’s actually I had thought about doing. I think it would actually make an interesting series of posts. Actually, the newest project that I’m working on right now. I’m actually partnered up with my friend, and we have been partnered up years ago. We created a social network that was very similar to Facebook but it was exclusively for the fresh produce industry. And the purpose of it was to facilitate buying and selling of produce around the country and the transport of it to make it easier. Because the produce industry is very antiquated, they’re still living in dinosaur times. They still use fax machines, it’s very strange. Bringing these guys into the modern era and how I even got into that was because my buddy, he owns the largest produce company in Texas. He’s really plugged into all that whole world. We did this some years ago and it turned out to be very successful, it was a startup we did together. That’s when I left the agency world, started that with him, then we ended up selling it to a big produce media company. Then I went back to the agency world. And now that I’m doing my own thing again, we decided to get together and start another secondary agency that is focusing on building websites and doing marketing just for the produce industry. We’re partnered up on that so I’m excited about that. It’s called Produce Game Changers and we recently launched a podcast, too, so that’s something I’m excited about.

Tara: Another thing you’re doing. I don’t know how you find all the time for that.

Chris: I don’t either.

Tara: I was trying to think of something to say and I can just say, “That’s bananas.” Get it? Fresh produce?

Chris: There you go, exactly. Well played.

Tara: I think on that really bad note, not a fresh note.

Liam: That was such a corny thing to say.

Tara: [laughs]

Chris: It worked though, I mean, it did.

Tara: We need to wrap this up before we get really ridiculously silly. Chris, thanks for joining us today, where can people find you online?

Chris: You can find me on Twitter at @realchrisjones, you can find me on Instagram at @socialbawse, you can find my blog at Socialbawse.com and you can find me on Facebook at Social Bawse, Snapchat, you name it, all pretty much the same. If anybody has any questions or needs coaching and help with anything, feel free to reach out.

Liam: Chris, thanks so much for joining us on this show. It’s been a real pleasure.

Chris: Appreciate you guys having me, it’s been great. Thank you.

Tara: Thanks. Bye-bye.

Liam: Bye-bye.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Lindsey is a WordPress pro by trade and a political junkie at heart. When she’s not traveling the world with her husband and two tiny humans, she can be found creating magic for customers at Liquid Web on the Managed WP team.

Twitter | @LindseyMillerWP

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 74.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Lindsey Miller. Lindsey is a WordPress pro by trait and a political junkie at heart. When she’s not traveling the world with her husband and two tiny humans, she can beat down creating magic for customers at Liquid Web on the managed WordPress team. Welcome, Lindsey. Glad to have you here on Hallway Chats.

Lindsey: Thanks for having me here today.

Liam: You’re most welcome. Thanks for joining us. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, more than what Tara just shared, please?

Lindsey: Yeah, absolutely. I found WordPress through the guy that I was dating at the time and now I’m married to, Cory Miller. He got me into blogging right away. And at the time, I was a political consultant focusing on fundraising for political campaigns. I tried to be an expert at both of those things, and eventually left politics and now just focused strictly on WordPress.

Liam: I want to ask a quick question about that. “He got me into blogging right away.” First date [laughter] or once there was a relationship and you started to dig into it? I feel like I need to hear more about this if you’re willing to share?

Lindsey: You guys know Cory Miller so I’m sure you can imagine. One of our very first dates, he said, “I need to hire you. You need to come work for me.” I looked him straight in the eyes and I said, “You can’t afford me. I will never work for you.” Eventually, we got married and I did start working for him. [laughter] And for free no less. Apparently, I ate my words. So politics, especially how I was doing, and I think it’s changed in the last eight or nine years, was still very traditional. You had some people who go get a website, they’re starting to take donations and having email lists. But no one was blogging about it. No one was really talking about it. So we started a blog called Call Time Blog and I started writing about fundraising and tips and tricks that I wanted to share with people. And for about three or four years, if you Google anything about political fundraising, that little blog on iThemes theme called Bonzai would be one of the first things that popped up. It really helped me being confident in what I was doing. Yeah, he encouraged it very early on and I’m glad he did.

Tara: Yeah, that Call Time Blog that you had. It was tips and tricks for political people? Was it a partisan type of thing or was it just general information on how to do political fundraising.

Lindsey: It wasn’t partisan, it was just general information and things that I did, and ideas that I wanted to give people. Consultants are expensive so it was kind of like, I always believed in people voting and running for office no matter which side of the line they were on. Although, of course, I have my own interest. I think that our country is better by more people being involved in the process. It was sort of the way to put something out on the web to help anybody running for office. It turned into something called Political Headstart which is still out there. And I do what everybody does these days. It’s a course on how to raise your first five, ten, or 15,000 dollars to then go hire a consultant.

Tara: That’s really interesting. It’s still around but you just changed the name of it?

Lindsey: Yeah. I moved all the content. I don’t blog on it as heavily as I probably should, to be honest. We all know what to do. I also didn’t update WordPress core and I got hacked a couple of months ago. I’m all of the reasons and examples of what you shouldn’t do.

Tara: Now you have another job with Liquid Web so the blog is now sort of your side-gig.

Lindsey: Exactly, I’ve been a little busy with other things.

Tara: I know that you and Cory are sort of a WordPress couple and we see you on the web and at conferences and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about what that’s like for you? Especially because Cory is one of the, I would say, leaders in WordPress and that he has a large company that he’s had for a long time and has really made a lot of changes in the WordPress space and what he’s built and developed. So I know a lot of people follow him and look up to him. And he’s also doing some great things with mental health in the WordPress space. I’m just curious to hear a little bit about what it’s like from your seat in that relationship and how you guys approach that?

Lindsey: Yeah, I think that’s a great question and I’m going to get a little warm and fuzzy. Because I think at the core of it it’s– okay, it sounds cheesy, but it’s a love story. When we met, it didn’t take long. We knew we found our person and so we were pretty much inseparable from the very beginning. We started dating, we were engaged four months after that, and married within ten months from meeting. It’s been nine years now and going strong. We just enjoy each other’s company and being around each other. And I find him intellectually stimulating and he does the same with me. It was just a natural thing to do work together as we were doing life together. It’s been really fun, getting to see him, talking to people and just how much he cares about strangers and friends. And everyone in the WordPress community just makes me love him even more. So I relished the opportunity to be able to be with him at WordCamps and watch what he does even on Twitter and how he reaches out to people. It’s just that he’s a very, very special person so it’s been nice to be able to do all of this with him.

Tara: Yeah, I agree. I just saw him speak recently and you can really tell he’s really genuine in how he reaches out to people. And he speaks about you a lot and you can tell from what he says as well that your relationship is really important, valuable part of not just a relationship with each other but how you relate to other people, which I think is really great. And also, I know your kids, too, are big part of what you guys talk about and share. Thanks for being role models in terms of having a relationship that works within the WordPress space as business people, as well as how you pull that into your personal space and how you share that with us. I think that’s really cool. I’m going to ask you a question we ask everyone. And this may relate to what I was just saying, which is, what is your definition of success, Lindsey? Personal, professional, a combination of the two. Wherever really you want to go down there?

Lindsey: I was prepared for this, you guys, because I listen to the podcast, obviously. I’m a huge fan, and so I knew it was coming. I have to go with my original answer, the first time I thought about it. For me, it’s two parts. I am an achiever at heart, it is one of my defining moments of myself. Within any day, I make a checklist. I have my daily version of success, and then I have the monthly, yearly, life-long version of success. My daily is simple. I have to check my things off my list. And my achieverness is quite serious. If I forget to get the dry cleaning or I don’t have enough time to get that done, I really do feel like I failed my entire day, even if I completed 25 other things. I really like to check off all of my boxes and feel good at the end of the day. And then the other part of that, which is probably more in tune with who I am as a person is what does success like over my life, over a year, over five years, for a longer period of time. And I think that comes down to just doing good in the world. So at some times when you can get down in this granular level you can say, what do you do work for? If you do work for good, for purpose, you do work to pay the bills, that type of thing. And I think I’ve always done– I’d probably work for free if I was doing good in the world, rather than working to pay bills. I’d rather have a not new car, and a smaller house, and second-hand clothes, than just chase after the almighty dollar, so to speak. Or if you’re able to marry those things together, that’s even better. For me, it’s just about doing good and feeling good about myself on making the world a better place. And that’s where success is for me.

Liam: I love that definition. It’s very both practical when we hear it now and also really thinking about the wider purpose. I guess I have two follow-up questions. The first is a run of your daily definition of success. If taking everything off is such an important factor to your success rate, if you will, how do you manage knowing how many things are right to put on the daily checklist? Because I have a daily checklist of about 97 things and I get to about four of them every day. And I don’t stress anymore about moving it over the next day. I used to but I wonder about that. I really wonder if you do have any advice and guidance how to make sure that my daily to-do list isn’t 97? And then to kind of balance that with your wider definition of success and doing good in the world, getting back to checklists. There’s doing good in a gentle way, giving your husband a nice hug in the morning and saying good morning, or making your children breakfast is good. There’s good in so many different levels. There’s feeding the hungry at your local food shelter, or doing something at your church. How do you approach doing good to make sure that the good you’re doing is the kind of good you want to be doing at the level you want to be doing it? And that’s a big question so sorry for just throwing that at you.

Lindsey: Now I’m going to answer over the next hour and a half. [laughter]

Liam: Sorry, sorry. I went deep fast on that one.

Lindsey: It’s good, it’s good.

Liam: You can start with the first one and give yourself some time to think about the second. How do you work with that?

Lindsey: I did not say that it was one that should be emulated by any means. [laughter]

Liam: Thank you.

Lindsey: Yeah. It probably drives my husband crazy because there are days where I’m just like, “Oh, my god. I didn’t get everything done today.” And we have to kind of sit down and talk through those feelings. But I feel like what I do is I prioritize them. Any time that I’m looking at my day, I kind of say, “Okay, here’s what I have to absolutely get done today and so I try to do those first.” But I also try to do some big ones early in the day. If there’s just a simple email that I need to get sent or a media that needs to get scheduled. I’ll try to kind of inter-mingle those so that I can be like, get some easier stuff done, add my little checkmark and move on. But yes, if there were 97 things on my to-do list, that would be a lot of unhappy Lindsey probably going on. That’s probably– I will schedule things out as well. I’ll say, “Here’s a really big task and I just know that I have to get little pieces of that task done up until Friday at noon or something like that. That kind of helps me manage that as well.

Tara: I’m a tool person and do you do this all hand-written on a planner? What do you do?

Lindsey: I have a little notepad and it says like, “Do it now. Do it later.” And then I put dates and stuff next to everything at the end. I should probably be more savvy.

Tara: No, I have to handwrite them, too. I use a lot of tools as well, but when it comes to the day-to-day, it’s very satisfying to check that off. Just wanted to ask you what your method was. Go ahead.

Tara: To circle back to the second question is, how do you think about an approach doing good on the many levels and causes that pull at your heart and at your mind?

Lindsey: For me, I think you’re right, it can’t be as simple as doing something nice for a neighbor. We had a neighbor who recently lost her husband so I tried to make a real effort to– when we make a bigger meal at our house and we make containers and send it over. One of my very dearest friends in the world chose a path of single motherhood and found someone to be the father of her child. I’ve been trying to co-work from her house and do good. And it’s also on a greater scale, too. I started some non-profit boards and tried to make donations to charities and I definitely have those heartstrings. There’s something that’s going on. I try to give more of myself whether financially or time. And to do things very purposefully towards that end. There’s always one cause or another that I’m fundraising for or working towards, or on a pick-up line with all of those things. I just try to get out of myself and try to put others first as much as I possibly can.

Liam: I like that. Let me change gears a little bit with you then and talk to you a little bit about as you transitioned from politics to tech, you were a political consultant focused on, it sounded like, helping grassroots campaigns get off the ground. And now you’re working with a website host and that’s different. Talk us through that transition.

Lindsey: At the core, I teased that being a partner manager at a hosting company is kind of like politics without some of the drama because it’s still relational. It’s about relationships and it’s about getting to know people and their businesses, and what they need to find success and helping them do that. But the transition, and I think that’s actually I’m talking at WordCamp DFW next weekend about this, about a career reboot and saying how can you take politics and turn it into technology with a little stint of a stay-at-home mom in there, by the way. At the core, I think I owe a lot to Chris Lema, my supervisor at Liquid Web for seeing skills in me that I didn’t even know that I possessed. It’s funny, we still have talks sometimes. He’s like, “I need you to create this list and whatever.” He puts it in political terms and I’m like, “Oh, yeah. I can totally do that.” He’s like, “Yeah, I know you can. That’s why I hired you and that’s why I brought you onboard. I know you can do these things.” Having him on my side, and obviously, again, Cory encouraging me all the way really helps me take this knowledge by osmosis, if you will, of WordPress, and turn it into a real career like I have at Liquid Web. I definitely have the support team around me to help define that a little bit better.

Tara: Yeah. So you went to this job from stay-at-home mom?

Lindsey: Yeah.

Tara: Talk a little bit about that transition as well and about the challenges of still being home. I think you are working from home most of the time with your kids. How do you manage that?

Lindsey: Working at Liquid Web is so much easier than staying at home with my kids. [laughs] That was a tough job. I’ll be honest.

Liam: There’s no break.

Lindsey: No. They’re awesome. I love my children, but I was really excited to go back to work. It reminds me, years ago, I saw that cartoon and it was like a duck getting off the elevator, going to work, and he had like the briefcase, and it’s like coming to work on Monday after the weekends and he’s just like, “Oh, why am I here? It’s a Monday.” And then next frame was the same duck going to work after the weekend when you have kids, and the duck’s like, “Yes! I’m so excited to be at work.” Right? [laughter] That totally defines my decision to go back to work. I was the duck going, “Yes, I need a little bit of a break and I’m so excited to go to work and use my brain and come up with new ideas and clever tactics and all that kind of stuff.” I was just kind of putting a little bit of feelers out saying, “Hey friends, I’m thinking about doing this and using my skills.” And Chris watched John immediately and was like, “Do not talk to anyone else and I have a thing for you.” I was really his first hire at Liquid Web after he took the VP spot.

Tara: Yeah. And they were starting new step, too, so you were kind of growing with them as they developed this. That must be a good evolution for you because they were setting things up and you were involved in that process, I believe.

Lindsey: Yeah, absolutely. It was like, he hired a lot of us that had been entrepreneurs in our own sense. If you look at some of the team that he’s built, a lot of us have done that before. So he went, “Okay, I’m trying to build something. I need people that can be self-motivated, and creative, and hard-working to do something brand new.” And frankly, enter a managed WordPress space that was already quite crowded, right? And come in and say, “We don’t necessarily need to be number one, but maybe we can be a solid number two or a number three choice.” That’s what we aimed to do.

Liam: I was intrigued when you talked about Chris framing this project that he wants you to address or lead under that project by talking about it in terms of relevant and struck a chord with you talking about political this and political terms down rather than using technology. That’s really interesting, that choice of communication. Because in effect, the work’s the same. Whatever it is, it’s put on advantage, get new clients, it’s bring money into the organization and in some way but framing it in a way that empowers you to say, “I totally get what that means. I know how to do that.” It’s a different playing field, it’s technology, it’s not politics. That’s really interesting.

Lindsey: He’s really helped me grow a lot in the last– because I’ve almost been there two years now. So he’s really helped me grow in that way. Yeah, I owe him a lot to be able to do that.

Liam: Sounds like it. Let me ask you this before we move too much further on. We’ve talked a lot about transitioning careers, we’ve talked about starting new relationship, we’ve talked about motherhood and getting back into the workplace. What’s been your biggest challenge to date and how have you overcome it, or if it’s ongoing, how are you continuing to address it?

Lindsey: My biggest challenge– I have to take it immediately to personal level. I’m going to do this whole Cory Miller thing, just throw your heart out there. But I lost my brother last year, my little brother passed away after a long illness with multiple sclerosis. Really? You guys are really going to make me cry and have the moment.

Tara: Cory cried when he talked about this in Baltimore, by the way.

Lindsey: Oh, he talked about this in Baltimore? Okay. [laugh] I’m just kidding. Yeah. That has definitely been the biggest struggle. He was diagnosed when he was 15 and my father also has multiple sclerosis. There have been a lot of challenges with both of their health and watching them go through it. But in some way, it’s made us all really strong, and closer, and made me a better person, to be perfectly honest with you. But his death has been really tough. I mean, my son is one of the kindest, hardest souls on the planet. He had asked, “Daddy, why mommy was sad?” And he said, “Well, you know. Uncle Chris, he’s passed away and he’s gone.” And so, Caloway comes up and puts his hand on me and says, “It’s okay, mommy. I’ll go get him and I’ll bring him back to you.” Yeah, that’s been the hardest thing. It’s still a struggle. It was just us. Yeah, that’s definitely the hardest thing and I don’t know that you ever get over it. It’s still– and my friend said– she lost her daughter when we were in college. I was a president of the sorority and so I got to know her parents really well, she was one of my sorority sisters. And her mom and dad came over to my house and just as we were talking and she said, “It’s like walking around with a rock in your shoe. It’s always there. Some days, the rock kind of moves around and it’s easier as you’re going down the road. You know it’s there but you’re walking around and you’re still having a good time. But sometimes the rock hurts so bad you just have to stop and put your feet up.” I think that summarizes exactly how I feel. Some days it’s okay, and some days I just have to stop and take a break.

Tara: That’s a beautiful analogy, really. I’m so sorry, I followed your story a bit and can relate to it as well. We lost a brother at too young of an age, as well, when my children were small too. Their perspectives are heartwarming and they’re a treasure, and I can say that as they grow up, Chris will still be part of their life and their picture and their view of the world. It has dramatically impacted the kind of people that my kids have turned out to be to have that as part of their life. There’s grace in it but – okay we’re all going to be crying now!

Lindsey: I know, right? Thank you for sharing that. Absolutely. That’s something we can all understand, I think. Loss, we’ve all experienced it in one form or another. It kind of brings us together in a weird way, doesn’t it?

Tara: Yeah, unfortunately.

Liam: We all have that experience and it hits us all differently and through different people, at different times and different ways. That community of, “Yeah, I get that hurt.” And Lindsey’s hurt is different than Tara’s and different than mine but there’s a commonality there. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Tara: Yeah, the rock in the shoe.

Liam: It’s not easy to do publicly so thank you very much.

Lindsey: Absolutely.

Liam: Maybe I’ll ask you one more question and we’ll see where you take us. It’s about advice. The question is what’s the best advice you’ve ever been given or you’ve ever received or maybe you got from a book and have successfully implemented in your life?

Lindsey: I always have to take it back to Cory, don’t I?

Liam: Maybe not. If he’s not listening, you don’t have to.

Lindsey: Right? It shows you how integral he is to my life. He said something to me one time that’s always stuck. It’s, “Your amount of success is determined by the number of hard or difficult conversations you’re willing to have.” It kind of came up in regards to going back to work and me being really scared and it felt different. Again, going back a little bit to politics but I felt really comfortable giving advice or speaking up at a table with people because I knew that I knew my stuff. And then kind of go into this new world, I would have a lot of self-doubt. I was losing my confidence and still kind of struggled with that sometimes. But he said, “If you want to be successful with this, then it’s okay to have difficult conversations. And the amount of those that you’re willing to do will have a direct impact on how far you’re going to go.” Yeah, over the last couple of years, I have had to speak truth to power, so to speak, in my own little way at Liquid Web and be a little bit braver than I wanted to be in some of those situations. But it has had a correlation in how well I’ve done. I guess the fact that I still get paid and I still have a job there helps solidify that feeling a little bit.

Tara: Does mindfulness come into play with that at all, I would think? When you’re having those difficult conversations, sometimes we have knee-jerk conversations and then we have the difficult conversations that we really think about a lot before embarking on them. Do you differentiate between those?

Lindsey: I don’t know that I have a lot of difficult knee-jerk conversations. That’s just not my sale, I probably would be more of like, “Okay, I’m going to think about this for a couple of days and write notes.” Probably, if I ever have to have a tough conversation with you guys, I’m going to come with an outline. Because I really want to make sure that I think through it and I expect what rebuttals are going to come my way and have answers for those or examples for my point. Yeah, I don’t have many knee-jerk– at least in work. I’m more careful.

Liam: I think courage is a big part of that, right? We know the answer, we at least know the problem, we might not know the answer. It’s, do we have the courage to find a way to pipe up and say, “Here’s what I think the problem is. Here’s an answer. Here’s a solution. Or here’s a fault and you’re making it.” And to do it in a way that is constructive and supportive and ultimately toward success and not just throwing mud or throwing rocks over the wall. Yeah, I like that.

Lindsey: Absolutely. And it’s also not keeping it inside. Not letting it fester. You know that there’s an issue and, “I know how to fix that issue.” It doesn’t help to just tell your spouse and your friends about it, right?

Liam: It does in short-term, but in the long-term, it doesn’t resolve it.

Lindsey: [laughs] Exactly.

Tara: I think sometimes, those difficult conversations take a while to resolve. For me, personally, I sometimes have difficult conversations and feel very self-conscious about them until they have completed their process, if I’m making any sense. Are there times when that difficult conversation– when you wish that you didn’t have it, I guess is what I’m trying to ask? Even if you thought it out and outlined it and everything?

Lindsey: I don’t think so. You guys can probably tell just from the few minutes we’ve spent together today. I’m definitely one of those people that would rather get my feelings out and say the things that I want to say rather than holding onto it. And if I’m wrong and if that difficult conversation doesn’t go my way. I’m probably learning something from it. So I try to approach it that way.

Tara: Good, thanks for sharing that perspective.

Liam: It’s a skillset to learn how to talk about contentious issues in a way that enables us to share candidly but without attacking a person. And also hearing constructive feedback or even just straight up negative words that are intended to hurt and just not being hurt by them. They’re just not in a good place right now. And speaking of learning to speak tactfuly, I’m going to tactfuly share that we are out of time.

Tara: All done. You did a really good job with that.

Liam: Lindsey, this has been an absolute pleasure, thank you so much for your candid sharing with us. Before we say goodbye to you, will you let us and your listeners know where they can find you online, please?

Lindsey: Absolutely. I’m on Twitter at @lindseymillerwp and if you want to talk about anything regarding Liquid Web, it’s [email protected].

Tara: Thank you very much. Appreciate you being here today. Also, I want to acknowledge that Liquid Web has been an early supporter, and you specifically, an early supporter of this podcast and we’re really grateful for that. Thank you for being part of Hallway Chats since its very first episode.

Liam: Here, here.

Lindsey: My absolute pleasure.

Liam: Thank you. The trust has been wonderful. Thank you.

Tara: Thanks so much.

Liam: We’ll see you soon.

Tara: Bye-bye.

Lindsey: Bye.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Sal is a WordPress developer who has contributed to WordPress core, Genesis, and is the author of the Bootstrap Genesis Theme. Along with his volunteer work in WordPress community, Sal has spoken on variety of topics at many WordCamps.

Website | Sal Ferrarello

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 73.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Sal Ferrarello. Sal is a WordPress developer who has contributed to WordPress core, Genesis, and is the author of the Bootstrap Genesis Theme. Along with his volunteer work in WordPress community, Sal has spoken on variety of topics at many WordCamps. Welcome, Sal. Glad to have you here today.

Sal: I’m happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Liam: You’re most welcome, Sal. Speaking of speaking at WordCamps, we’re at a WordCamp this weekend, we’re at WordCamp Philly. We’re all gathered around the same microphone in person which is a lovely treat for us. But with that, tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Sal: I am a WordPress developer. I live in Reading, PA with my wife and my two boys. Reading appears on the Monopoly board, though it is often mispronounced as the Reading Railroad, but we are the Reading Railroad. Now when you play Monopoly, I hope you’ll pronounce the railroad correctly.

Tara: I’ve always pronounced it Reading, somehow I knew that.

Sal: You’re ahead of the curve, Tara.

Liam: So when we’re reading it on the board, we should be reading Reading?

Sal: That’s true.

Liam: But if we’ve already done it, would we have read Reading?

Sal: Nope, it will always be but it does get confusing.

Liam: Thank you for clarifying.

Tara: So we’re here at WordCamp Philly. Why don’t we start by sharing what you talked about here this weekend?

Sal: This weekend, I got to do a talk on an introduction to post meta. Post meta being the extra fields in WordPress where you store data.

Tara: Have you spoken on that before?

Sal: I did. I presented that topic very similarly last year at WordCamp DC. It’s a neat talk I really enjoy sharing with developers because when you first get into it, it’s not always intuitive, the way the information is stored there. Once you get past it, then it’s powerful and used a lot.

Tara: Great.

Liam: In a simple way, talk about the type of data that might be stored on post meta. How would that work out? I know we’re not a tech show so we don’t want to get into the ins and outs but what’s a pretty simple use case?

Sal: Sure. A setback, I think the term is actually a little confusing and it always has been for me. Because when I hear post meta, my brain automatically goes to post as in after, like post-apocalyptic being after the apocalypse. But when we talk about post meta, we’re talking about post as in blog post or WordPress post. Then meta information is information about something. Met information about me would be my height, my age. The idea is that you have this information about posts, that it gets stored somewhere. Where that comes up a lot is with different plugins. For example, if you’re running an SEO plugin and you add in additional information, a meta description there. That would get stored in post meta. Often times, if you had add-ons that bring something extra to post, maybe a field that wasn’t there previously, something like that.

Tara: Yeah, I’ve been learning about SEO and it comes up a lot there. I’ve got a better understanding of what meta does by studying SEO and how Google reads the code in the page. It’s an important thing to understand, not just from a development structure of the website but also from a marketing standpoint, too, that’s important, right?

Sal: Right. In that case, you’ve got the meta information that’s being output. We were really talking about in my talk sort of how WordPress stores that information behind the scenes, which in many cases is then used to output meta information on the back-end, so there’s kind of two different metas going on there.

Tara: Cool. That’s the depth of our tech for today. Let’s back up and talk about how you got started in WordPress and in development?

Sal: I always loved programming. When I was a child, we got a Commodore 64 and I used to write some basic programs on that. And then I kind of stalled on that for a while. It was something fun that I had done. When I was in junior high, I had a good friend who needed help generating bunch of– it was generating website markup for one of his family sites. And it was very repetitive and he wanted some help doing that. And at that point, QBasic was a basic program language on the PC and I ended up diving into that and helping him crank that out. That became a real love, something I really had a lot of fun doing. So I’d spend a lot of time programming that. When I went to college, I actually majored in computer science and then when I got out, I sort of found the web and started playing around with it. I took kind of a roundabout path, but when I got back into programming again, I got a job at a local agency helping them build websites. Initially, they were not doing WordPress but the developer I was working under eventually moved us to WordPress and things really took off from there. I’d say that’s when things really locked in and really started working well. I felt good about what we were doing and kind of been running with it ever since.

Tara: I know you’re active in the WordPress community. Tell us a little bit about when that started and how you got started with the community?

Sal: Absolutely. I’d say I really got in deepest with the community in about 2014, which is when I left the agency job that I had and I started my own company. I do development under the name Ironcode Studio. At that time, I really wanted to look at marketing myself more and I felt that getting involved with the community and putting out content to help people was a great way to market myself, and learn, and better myself, and help others who were doing the same kind of thing. It’s been this great cycle for me. I feel it’s really helped drive a lot of my business in what I’m doing, but at the same time, it’s something that’s so rewarding for me, working with other people, and it really drives me to make myself better at the same time. It’s kind of a win all around.

Liam: That’s a really interesting perspective and I think it’s one that a lot of us who have been in the WordPress community consider to go back and forth on and kind of debate. The balance between giving to the community for this community’s sake, but also reaping some kind of reward on it. Talk to me about how you maintain your own mental perspective? What’s your philosophy on that and how do you walk the balance between giving in a way that you find rewarding as giving versus marketing, which ultimately tries to lead towards some kind of your ability to pay your rent and mortgage, and food bills, and all that?

Sal: Absolutely. I think that I probably don’t think about the marketing aspect as much as I should. A lot of it is personal gratification probably in almost a selfish way. I enjoy doing that. Growing up, I was involved with theater and I enjoyed being on stage and performing. Speaking at a WordCamp for me scratches an itch of being up there and presenting. There’s a lot of that behind it when I’m doing it. But along with that, there’s this added benefit of I get to help people. And from a marketing standpoint, it does help me. I think I’m very fortunate that I’m doing things I enjoy that happen to market me well rather than really focusing on and saying, “Hey, I’m going to market me.” At some point, I may have to get smarter about that, but–

Tara: It’s working for you.

Sal: So far, so good.

Tara: Yeah. That’s a good way for us to talk about success, which is one of our favorite things to talk about as it turns out, and how you define success. That may segue into that a little bit because it sounds like you are achieving– we talk about the societal view of success being money, and rich, and fame, being rich and famous. We never had anybody define it that way really but certainly, being able to pay your bills is part of being successful. But it sounds like you’re merging that with something that you like, so I’ll stop talking and you can tell us. [laughs]

Sal: No, it’s a great question and I always enjoy hearing that question from the other guests. It’s interesting. It’s such a big question when I look at it. I find that it’s easier for me– much as in programming, when I’ve got something big, I do much better when I focus on one small piece of it. When I think of success, I like to think about small success. For me, on a small scale, I’d say it’s the lightbulb moment, that understanding, both for myself when I figure something out and it finally clicks, and I say, “Oh, wow. That makes sense now.” But also when I can share that moment with other people. Yesterday, when I presented on the introduction to post meta, there was one particular audience member who I just happened to spot, and this person, I could see on their face this click of, “Oh, post meta makes sense. I see what’s going on with this table.” That’s phenomenal for me. I really love that. It’s interesting to think about why I love that, right? To get introspective there. Why do I love that, and I think I love to be helping other people but I think there’s also this selfish feeling of wizard power where I’m changing the world and I’m affecting your perspective and helping you understand that. That lightbulb moment, I think is a success for me.

Tara: And that’s a good motivation behind teaching and speaking and doing those things. How does that transition into your personal life? You have children I think.

Sal: I do. I’ve got two boys, seven and ten. So it’s fun when you can share something with them and help them get that ‘aha’ moment. Of course, I think that as a father, sometimes I’m a tough person to sell that to them. Parents, or at least my boys are very independent in their thought and don’t always look to me for it. But it’s so much fun to watch them come to their own discoveries. The other day, one of my boys said to me, “The blankets on my bed don’t make me warm. They just hold the warmth in from my body.” Which is such a small thing but he had such joy in telling me that and I love that. I love that idea that we’re thinking about things and understanding more.

Tara: That’s a great thing that you remarked on. I hope you write that down or something because kids say those little magical things sometimes and they grow up so quickly that it’s fleeting but it’s great for you as a parent to notice those little lighbulb moments in your kids and to make note of them. Are either of your boys interested in tech, do you think? Are they too young to do that?

Sal: We really try and dial back our boys. We do 30 minutes of screen time a day. There’s a balance there with technology and how much we’re doing it. We try and get them thinking about technology and doing things without actually getting them on technology as much. There was a great game that we played with them called Robot Turtles, and Robot Turtles is kind of board game programming. You set up the pieces and then they have to create a program for it to run to get the goal that they want. That’s been a really neat thing in giving our boys a chance to get this programming idea. We play lots of other games, too, that go along with those kind of ideas. I’m hoping that we’re setting the foundation. I think it’s also tricky because of the dad factor. Dad does all this computer stuff. Clearly, that’s not cool. [laughs]

Tara: Yeah. I’ve talked to a lot of people who have that. They think their children would be super interested in it because their parents do it and it’s the opposite. Yeah. I think also, I had a conversation with someone yesterday about their children’s interest in games and Fortnite is the big game, apparently. And that kids think–

Liam: Fortnite is awesome.

Tara: [laughs] You’ll need to dance for me at some point.

Liam: [laughs] I have practiced it.

Tara: There are multiple. But the translation of kids who like to play games but are not interested in tech or who think that they want to go into computer science because they think that it’s games and how you direct your children with your experience and their passions in games. I think there’s a hard discovery process for kids these days because they are in front of technology so much that maybe they’re not going to go into technology like your generation, my generation did because it was newer.

Sal: Yeah, it’s interesting. I think that there are a lot of families I think I’ve seen where you have children growing up and they spend so much time with technology. And then we have sort of this assumption that based on this, they’re going to use technology and engage with it, and program, and do these things. It’s like, well, that’s a different jump that you have to make that conscious decision to do. I think, as a society, we could probably do better with introducing students to programming and encouraging them that way. There’s some neat stuff out there now, I think, with games where they’re allowing children to use programming to interact with the games and to extend them. I think there’s a big opportunity there. Hopefully, one day, my boys will do that.

Liam: Yeah, it raises a really interesting issue because I have no data, but just thinking about this, that our children growing up, there always was a screen in front of them. They didn’t start on Pong, where it was *ding, ding*. They had these amazing graphics and amazing user interfaces. If the program isn’t intuitive, that program doesn’t get the kind of exposure bandwidth, traffic, and usage rates that maybe we dealt with growing up, because we had no other option. You played that game or you used that program because that’s the one that was available. And then the disconnect of, well, if you want to make that game, actually, you open up basically a computer typewriter and type a bunch of words, and numbers, and letters, and characters, and it doesn’t look like a cool video game at all. And the user interface is not some slick button. And then there’s different parts of making all that game but to the conversation around, “I want to make games.” The biggest part of the game is all the code that makes it run really fast. Something like Fortnite where it’s online constantly and it’s always being updated, and it’s gotten millions and millions of users, that’s programming. The graphics are important but they don’t happen if the code isn’t there. I wonder about it, love to keep an eye on that.

Tara: Sure.

Liam: We’re getting into the meta of education.

Sal: I think there’s an opportunity though, that I think parallels WordPress. When I look at WordPress, I see lots of people who have a WordPress site. And then they want to do that little bit extra, they want to tweak it, they want to add that plugin. And I think we’re seeing more games now that have sort of that ability that you can interact with them with code and maybe create your own plugin. Hopefully, that can work as a same gateway that I feel like we see so many WordPress programmers take.

Liam: Yeah, I think that’s true. Fortnite doesn’t have that yet and we’re just using it so I’m staying there. But the ability that it’s not just a shooter game, it’s a shooter game where you have to use building skills as well. And kind of the real-time interaction of building and– It’s not just get across the bridge, it’s, do I get across the bridge or do I make a decision to build a little fort and hide in the fort and shoot or jump or make myself a wall so that I can run to the bridge? That’s what I like about it as a video game, it’s not necessarily the great graphics. At some point, great graphics are a dime a dozen these days. But it’s the interaction and yeah, it’s cool. Anyway, I’m getting us totally sidetracked.

Tara: No. I think it’s hard to separate, too, the fun use of technology versus the work of it. For me, it’s fun for me to build websites. I don’t need to play games on my computer.

Liam: Speaking of fun, and work, and games, and enjoying things, Sal, tell us a little bit about your business, your practice. You said you’re a developer, you work for yourself, what does that mean, what does that look like Monday through Friday?

Sal: I work out of my home office. I’m the only member of my company and I have clients all over the place, and almost exclusively, my interaction with them is online. Even mostly text rather than phone calls. I tend to try and steer my clients that way because I find it helps keep us focused and moving.

Liam: You’re just being written versus– they’re not paying your phone, right?

Sal: Right, yes. Usually, we’ve got– [laughter]

Liam: Emails, ticket notices, and that kind of thing?

Sal: Yes. Most of the time, I try and steer them into some kind of issue tracker which gives us that history that we work off of. That’s where we interact the most. Sometimes Slack or something like that.

Tara: Are you mostly working with agencies that know how to use those tools or your clients are one-off? Are they small businesses or a combined combination?

Sal: It’s kind of an interesting mix right now. I’ve got some larger businesses. Overall, I’d say I work with pretty tech-savvy clients. Usually, if you’re not comfortable sort of running your own WordPress site already, then I’m not the best person to help you along with that traditionally. It’s usually when you have a deeper need. It’s kind of like, “I’d like you to do this. I sort of have some idea about this, but I really need some help executing.” Often that’s something like an agency or something like that. But sometimes, it’s individual users who are maintaining sites. I’ve got a couple of schools that I help out where they are doing that. So they pull me in for a little work here and there. A lot of different kind of tracked things.

Tara: How was the transition for you to working for yourself?

Sal: It was an interesting transition. I was very fortunate. The agency I was at, I was lead developer and I had number of developers underneath me. When I told them I was leaving, I offered to come back part-time on a contract basis. And they took me up on that for a little while, which was nice because I had that sort of fixed work set there. And at the same time, I could start growing my other clients. It made for a really nice transition.

Liam: And how long did that last? Was that three months, six months, was it a year?

Sal: That was probably about six months, I’d say.

Liam: Yeah, nice little mix. Your cash flow immediate needs a little easier, and it gave them the assurity of all the intellectual knowledge and leadership hasn’t just left the building, it’s going to come back two days a week or something, and we can transition to the new team to make sure that they know.

Sal: Right. It was nice having that runway and helping the other developers grow into that role that they were taking on.

Liam: Yeah. One of the questions that we dig into is advice, and not so much advice that we want to give, but advice that we’ve been giving or received, or come across, and successfully implemented in our lives. With that, what has been the most valuable piece of advice that you’ve ever received and implemented?

Sal: I think the most powerful piece of advice I’ve gotten is that the person who cares the least has the most power. Sometimes, that’s called the principle of least interest and it sounds very Machiavellian when I say it out loud like that. I think it is absolutely a principle that can be abused, certainly in inter-personal relationships and things like that. Where I find it really has value in my life is in business and being able to walk away from a project or some kind of work that’s offered that doesn’t fit me right. I’ve been fortunate that I grew up very cheaply with money. My father is quite stingy with money and I’ve inherited that. But next to him, I look like I’m spending all kinds of money. Anyway, I don’t like to spend a lot of money, I tend to keep my cash flow reserved there, which then works out that I’m more comfortable saying no to projects and letting them go by if they’re not a good fit for me. The idea that when I’m talking to someone about possibly working with them, that I’m okay letting this project go really puts me in a very comfortable spot in the conversation. Really, I hope that I’m helping them as well, right? To give them the option to go somewhere else and I’m happy to point them in a direction and hopefully, give them some ideas that will help. But to not have that feeling of, “I really need to chase this project because I need to land this one in order to make this happen.” That mindset has been very helpful and I guess I had that In me before I started. So even before I had a lot of clients coming in with this idea and having this idea that I was comfortable saying no helped a lot. Even when it was a little scary at times, overall, I think it’s been better.

Tara: So you came to that on your own, it wasn’t that you had a bad experience and you decided from then on, you would say, no? This was just a mentality that you’ve had based on this advice that you heard?

Sal: Sure. Working in an agency like that, I didn’t have control over the projects that we said ‘yes’ on or ‘no’ on. It sort of came up and came to us and it was time for the development team to make the rubber meet the road. And the team I worked with was great and they would rise to the occasion and make things happen. But as an individual, I get to say, “Okay, maybe this isn’t something that I want to tackle here.” Or if it is, “Yeah, this is going to take a bunch of time to really get up to speed on.” And then I’m comfortable putting a large price tag on this. And maybe you can go somewhere else and get it cheaper, and I’m fine with that conversation with a client. There may be somebody out there who’s really focused on this and does it all the time. “I’m happy to work with you but it’s going to take a little bit more. This is what we’re looking at.”

Liam: It’s a mindset of detachment, isn’t it?

Sal: I think that’s probably a good point. Yes. Being detached from it, not feeling that everything needs to be something that I’m digging into and grabbing onto.

Liam: Right. It’s holistic. At one point, yes, the money has to be there. But maybe for the right cause, the right organization, the right charity that you want to support, the money doesn’t have to be there. It’s a holistic thing. I want to be personally satisfied, professionaly satisfied, an engaging challenge, a realistic time table. What else is going on in our private lives at the time, are the children okay, is the family in a good spot? This kind of detachment of, “I’ll take that which is best.” Value all around enables you to not focus just on the money. I’m like, “Well, that would be a nice deck.” But it’s not the only consideration.

Tara: And having the frugality that you mentioned that you were raised with, too. I’m going to assume then that you have a good handle on what your financial situation is so you know you’re not desperate to take any dollar that comes your way, that you have a good handle on what your situation is. That gives you the confidence to be able to say ‘no’ or ‘yes’. I know when you’re starting out a business, at least for me, I didn’t say ‘no’ to anybody because I really needed that income. People have those decisions to make and depending on where you are in your financial lifetime, I guess it affects that.

Sal: Absolutely. And I’d love to say that I have it all figured out and everything, but certainly, when I was getting started, I had those projects that I did say yes to that really, in retrospect wasn’t smart, it wasn’t the best fit. Hopefully, I become better at this detachment over time.

Tara: Sure. It’s nice to get to that point in your business where you can do that.

Liam: I think it also takes time as a business or even the small businesses that we have, is you want to do development, I want to do design and marketing. Tara wants to make websites. But what does that mean? What kind of projects do I actually like and differentiates me from anybody else or my business from somebody else’s? Sometimes, it just takes some time of getting out there and it’s like, “Okay, we’ll take that project on.” You kind of get through it like, “Oh my gosh, we are never doing that project ever again.” Now, I know that’s not the kind of project I like. And after a period of time, we know that we have better ability to discern what’s a good fit and what isn’t, and then we can maintain that sense of detachment because we can discern it a little bit more clearly.

Tara: Identify red flags. We talk a lot about red flags that you learn how to spot now after dealing with a few tricky situations or tricky clients–

Liam: I think it’s also identifying green flags, right? Maybe there’s little red flags but that green flag is proportionally a lot bigger. So if we can address those in conversation around the red flags, “Hey, prospective client. Here’s some red flags, how do we want to deal with that?” To your point, communication and making sure everybody understands where we’re going.

Tara: What’s your favorite thing about what you do? I know you talk about the lightbulb moments and helping people. But in terms of your day to day, what’s your favorite thing to do?

Sal: Sure. My favorite thing to do– in my personal life, my favorite thing to do is family game nights. I have a large family in the area and I grew up with a lot of relatives, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. About once a month, we would get together and all sit around the table and play games, and eat snacks. It’s a great memory I have and I love it. It’s amazing now having those same events and watching how excited my boys get for those events and how much fun they are.

Liam: So you’re bringing cousins over and the like and just having a big old–?

Sal: Yes. Actually, my boys don’t have any cousins so most of the group is older, adults and things like that. But even when I was growing up, it was interesting, the numbers were certainly skewed towards adults rather than kids, which I felt was really valuable for me, actually. I really enjoyed interacting with adults like that and I think it helped me a lot in life and I think it’s great for my boys, for those family events and having them, and playing games I think is a great way to spend time together.

Tara: What’s your current favorite game?

Sal: My current favorite game is– right now, just recently, we started getting our boys into cooperative board games. There’s some great games out there that I’ve been introduced to where you play as a team, and hopefully, you win or lose as a team, which is really neat. There’s a great that our family got started with called Forbidden Island. And there’s a couple of different ones, Pandemic is the latest cooperative game that we’re playing like that, that I really enjoy. Often at family–

Tara: Sounds scary.

Sal: It’s a scary premise, yes, great game. Often with our family, we have larger groups who are all playing together. A game like that is maybe for four or five players. But with a larger group, often we play cards or something like that. Those are great games for when we have the whole crew.

Tara: Those are fun. We had Jeff Large on our podcast and he used to have a game, didn’t he used to have a game thing going on? Board games, he talked a lot about board games.

Liam: He had a whole wall of board games on the column behind him.

Tara: I think he had a website about board games or something, anyway it just reminds me this is our second game conversation on this show. That’s great, that says a lot about your kids and your family that they enjoy being in a room full of adults playing games that are not screens.

Sal: Well, they love their screens, too. But yes, it’s nice.

Tara: That’s good, thanks for sharing that. Very cool.

Liam: Sal, we’ve got a few minutes left here so I’m going to circle it back to the WordPress community. You talked a lot about the joy that you’re getting sharing with others. You’ve talked a lot about the joy that you get in presenting. You’ve talked about the different ways that you help. You and I have known each other probably since 2014 when you first started getting involved locally because I’m in suburban Philly as well and Reading, from a cosmic sense, is practically suburban Philly. It takes on different kinds of people in the WordPress community to make it move forward. For somebody that is new to a WordPress community, maybe WordCamp Philly this weekend is their first one. What would be a, “Hey, give this a try. Have a think about this. Welcome to the community.” And what would you share with them?

Sal: So sort of how you get started? When I think about that, I think local meetups are a great opportunity for that. And thank you for the Philly burbs one that you run. Indeed, that was one of the first-

Liam: That’s not where I was going but thank you. [laughter]

Sal: – events, yes, that I started getting into and meeting people. I also find that Twitter, for all the negative things that Twitter has. I really appreciate Twitter in connecting and letting me follow a lot of people in the WordPress community. It’s been a real gateway to learning who these people are and reading articles they write, and growing knowledge from them. That’s a great thing to do. And then one of the tail things that came out of that then is the opportunity to contribute back, particularly to plugins. People in the community will often put out things to help other people One of the little things that I think is a great way to help is when you’re reading articles by people that you enjoy and like, and you catch a typo, to shoot him a message and just give him a heads up on the typo. I’ve made connections with a number of people in the community just because I did that a bunch. And it’s important to phrase your typo very politely when you’re given a heads up, but it’s nice to send that message that says, “Hey, I’m really enjoying this. Just a heads up, I make plenty of typos myself. This phrase here, I think you have a typo in it.” And in that small way, you’re helping improve that article that other people in the community are reading. And then beyond that, if you contribute to the code on GitHub, if you can do a pull request and help them out with something. But that’s sort of next level. Yeah.

Liam: That’s a good answer. Thank you for sharing that.

Tara: Yeah, I think you made a correction on one of mine, once, as a matter of fact. [laughter] I appreciate it.

Sal: And look, now here I am, so thank you.

Tara: I’m still speaking to you. [laughter]

Sal: I am certain I make far more typos than I have ever pointed out to anyone. My typo count, I’m definitely in the lead.

Tara: Well, we’re all human. I think we are out of time, speaking human. Thanks for joining us today, Sal. Can you tell everyone where they can find you?

Sal: Thank you very much for having me, I am @salcode many places, including Salcode.com. On Twitter at @salcode, on GitHub at @salcode, @salcode. [laughs]

Tara: Alright.

Liam: Excellent, Sal. Thanks for joining us.

Tara: Thanks for joining us.

Sal: Thank you so much for having me.

Tara: Alright. Bye-bye.

Sal: Bye-bye.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.