Hallway Chats

Ian Dunn is a plugin developer who has sponsored to contribute to the WordPress project full time. Most of his work is focused on building tools to support the community, particularly through WordCamps and Meetups.

Website | Ian Dunn

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. And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 62.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Ian Dunn. Ian is a plugin developer who is sponsored to contribute to the WordPress project full time. Most of his work is focused on building tools to support the community, particularly through WordCamps and Meetups. Hi, Ian, welcome.

Ian: Hey, thanks for having me.

Liam: You’re very welcome, Ian. Thanks for joining us today out here in the hallway. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Ian: Yeah, sure. I live in downtown Seattle in a studio apartment. It’s one of those classic older brick buildings, it has a lot of character. If you know anything about Seattle’s rent scene market, it’s also a lot cheaper so it’s very important. I grew up in Ohio and I moved out here about eight years ago. I just kind of fell in love with Pacific Northwest. It’s my favorite part of the country. You’ve got some great cities like Seattle and Portland, but then you’re always close to mountains, and forests, and lots of places to explore. I also work remotely from home and I love that because it just gives me so much flexibility and autonomy and how I structure my day. It just kind of feels like a more humane way to work. So I can’t match never going back to an office.

Tara: Did you use to work in an office?

Ian: Yeah, I think the first– in high school, I started working doing tech support and then up through college in my first job. Probably the first 10-12 years of working was office-based. And since I moved back here, past eight years, it’s been from home.

Tara: In high school, you started doing tech support? Tell us a little bit about that.

Ian: Yeah, my junior and senior year, I did this tech prep program where kind of half the day was like your normal classes like English and whatever. Then the other half was IT classes, programming, and networking, and systems, all that kind of stuff. Part of that, I think it was second half of my senior year was like an internship and I did that at a local community college, just kind of– there’s lots of computer labs and lots of staff and other things. So if the help desk couldn’t solve a problem, I would go out to the person’s office and I would kind of fix it physically. Then after high school, I went to that community college and started kind of doing the same kind of work as a student worker, and then eventually I got hired as a part-time worker. It was all kind of doing the same work, it was just the pay kept going up.

Liam: Right.

Tara: That’s great. Sounds like a great program that you had. So you knew from an early age that you were interested in computers and tech? And you sort of must have to be somewhat self-motivated or driven, or were your parents sort of keeping their eye out for that spark and pushing you in that direction, what do you remember about that choice to go to that school?

Ian: It was more of– this was back in mid-90s, so in hindsight, kind of tech renaissance or whatever had already started. But it didn’t feel like it. It was just always a hobby to me, it wasn’t something that I ever thought would be a career. It’s just a lot of my friends were in that class and it was better than going to gym or whatever. It kind of became a career, I kind of lept into it but it wasn’t ever something that I was real intentional about until kind of later on.

Tara: I think that’s fascinating. So you did that while other kids were in the marching band, and doing theater, and playing soccer and all those things. This was your passion at an earlier age, even when you didn’t realize it was going to turn into your career. Very cool. That’s great that they had that for you in the 90s in your community.

Ian: Yeah, definitely. I was very lucky.

Liam: Yeah, that is really neat. Ian, let me ask you this. You said you moved out to Seattle years ago from Ohio. Out of curiosity, where in Ohio, and was the move to Seattle work-related or you went out to a vacation there and said, “Wow, this is cool, I’ve got to move here.” Tell us about that, how did it come together?

Ian: Yeah, it was Dayton, Ohio which is about halfway between Cincinnati and Columbus. I just kind of moved out here because after college, a lot of my friends had scattered around the country and I just didn’t have a lot holding me in Ohio anymore. A couple of my friends had grown up here and moved back or had been out in Ohio and moved out here. I always thought that it seemed like a great city and was on my list to visit and everything. Having all that happen bumped into the top of the list and I just figured out– I basically sold everything that wouldn’t fit in my car and drove out here and decided that I would give it a shot and it kind of ended up being a really good thing.

Liam: That’s cool. Did you go out with a job already, were you remote working by then so you could have gone to Denver, you could have gone to Chicago, and you just wanted to go to Seattle? It sounds like that might have been where you were at, you were working remotely so you could work wherever, right?

Ian: Yeah, exactly. I think senior year of college, I started my first web development job and I did that for about six years. But it was a few years into that where I decided to move out here. At first, I was thinking that I might have to find a job out here just because the cost of living out here is so much higher. But then I kind of ended up– I sold my car because I live downtown and can walk everywhere, which I love. That saves a lot of money every month. Then I started landing some clients out here which we could charge them more because of the market rates and everything. I guess I never really thought about working from home, it was kind of like, “Oh, I’ll just do this temporarily until I kind of settle in and I can find an office.” But then I just discovered that I really love it and why would I want to go back to an office?

Liam: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I’ve worked from home since 2006 full-time, and part-time since 2004. I couldn’t imagine leaving the house every day for work. That would be a challenge. Let me circle back to something that Tara read about you, is that you’re a plugin developer and you’re sponsored to contribute to the WordPress project full-time. Can you talk about that, please?

Ian: Yeah. For a while now, the WordPress project has had these concepts called ‘Five for The Future’. I think Matt Mullenweg talked about it at one of the State of The Words a few years ago. It’s basically the idea that companies that are really active in the WordPress community or kind of get a lot out of it, it’s a way to give back. The idea is to contribute 5% of your time back to the project. A lot of companies do this. The company that I work for is called Automattic. Basically, instead of working on WordPress.com or Gravatar or all the other things that they do, my whole team and a few other teams as well are dedicated full-time to various parts of the WordPress project. The one that my team focuses on is the community team and the meta team. So the community team is kind of focused on fostering and kind of supporting the community that’s grown up around WordPress, and then meta team is responsible for all of the official websites like WordPress.org and Wordcamp.org. Those two teams work closely together a lot of the time.

Tara: I’d like to talk a little bit more about Five For The Future because I have heard about it but I’m wondering how you get involved in that, how you got yourself in that trajectory and how that relates to yourself as a developer. Because to me, it sounds like you’re contributing but as a community person, maybe it’s not so much code as what you’ve done before. You can clear that up if I’m completely wrong, I’m making a guess there.

Ian: Yeah, I guess I got into it– once I moved out to Seattle, I got pretty involved in the local community here and was kind of contributing in various ways. But I wasn’t too involved in the more global community or the online community. But I’ve always been aware of Automattic and kind of been impressed with some of the philosophies that they have towards work. It never really occurred to me to apply because I just thought– I mean, they have this reputation for being really good in everything. A lot of that is just hype but not seeing inside of that, all you see is the hype and it’s kind of intimidating. I just never kind of thought to apply, but then one day, I just saw this listing for a position that was kind of describing what I do now and it just was like, “This is too good. I’ll regret it if I don’t at least try.” So I ended up getting that position and kind of transitioning into– contributing in a more kind of intentional and focused and full-time way. There were a couple of other parts to your question but now I’ve forgotten them.

Tara: I guess I’m just curious as to what the responsibilities of that job are as a developer, as somebody who’s a plugin developer, defining yourself that way. But you’re working on community, you say you build tools for that. Are you building plugins related to WordCamp websites or what is your role as a developer, as it relates to a community?

Ian: Yeah, a lot of it is building plugins for Wordcamp.org or– for example, there’s some things that are kind of for all the local organizing teams. We have a plugin that lets them kind of build their custom CSS for the website on GitHub and kind of automatically sync it.

Liam: Yeah, thank you for that.

Ian: [laughs] Yeah, people love that one. And the other side of it is things that allow the community team to kind of manage some of the centralized logistics. There’s a tool where each WordCamp can enter its budget and then their mentor can kind of work through them and kind of manage that with them. And there’s some ways to sync– when we reimburse an organizer for expenses that they paid, you can kind of sync that to QuickBooks and to bank accounts and kind of help all the accounting get done efficiently.

Tara: Yeah, I think I’ve seen that. And isn’t there a plugin that does that sort of the whole RSVP attendee list management as well?

Ian: Yeah, we have a plugin for all of the ticketing and it includes a lot of features like RSVPs, and printing Gravatars for badges, and that kind of stuff.

Tara: Okay. Is there anything that falls outside the realm of WordCamps and meetups as it relates to community and development that you’re doing? Plugin or code development?

Ian: Yeah, there’s always random stuff. Most of my time is spent on WordCamps and meetups, but I also every once in a while kind of dabble in core with the Events widget in WordPress 4.8, or the GDPR tools in 4.9.6. Sometimes, I’ll help out on the security teams, just triaging reports. And then just random stuff like the WordPress 15th anniversary this year, I helped build a website for that. There’s always like the core of kind of community stuff, and then there’s always stuff that kind of falls on my plate.

Liam: “Help, we need you over here!” [laughter]

Tara: So we had someone on recently who talked about her recent involvement with Contributor Day, and that it took a while to sort of connect with people in person at contributor day. And I know because WordPress is open-source. There are contributors who want to help and want to do things. How do you interact with them? How does that work? I know sometimes when I’ve gone to Contributor Days, it’s kind of hard to know sort of who’s giving the marching orders or who’s organizing everybody there, and if what you’re doing is actually going to be taken into core or anywhere else. Do you participate in those Contributor Days? Do you get things from Contributor Days that then you need to incorporate, or manage, or vet? how do you interact with those people who are either at Contributor Day or maybe on Slack, in the Slack teams adding and contributing?

Ian: Yeah, that’s a big part of– there’s always contributions coming in, whether it’s from a contributor day or just somebody kind of in their day-to-day life. It’s always kind of a balance of trying to– because I kind of have my own projects that I think me and my team kind of think these are some of the big long-term things that are going to make a big impact. But then there’s also that kind of aspect where we want to be– we don’t want to dictate what happens, we want to be part of the conversation and part of that is kind of– when contributions come in, trying to give feedback and immerse them if we can. Contributor Days are usually very chaotic and it’s hard to– I’ve tried to organize a couple of them over the years and it’s kind of that open-source chaos. There are good things and bad things to it. And there are some things you kind of learn along the way about– like, it’s always good to have somebody at the door greeting people and saying like, “Hey, how are you? I’m so and so. What are you kind of looking to get into?” And then kind of helping them find a table where there are other people working on that thing. There are some kind of technical ways that we’ve tried to make it easier. We have this thing called the meta environment which tries to– if you’re familiar with varying vagrant vagrants – the kind of automated provision local virtual system, we have a thing that kind of tries to automatically provision all of the official websites into something like that so people don’t have to spend a whole day just downloading code and trying to get it set up with a database and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, there’s always lots of challenges surrounding all that.

Liam: I think it’s a very nature of the beast. You’ve got a project that’s been around now for 15 years and some people know exactly what to do and how they want to help, and what they don’t want to do. Other people are brand new and have a range of skillsets but might not know anybody, and it’s trying that, “Are we going to get milestones done today or are we going to welcome new people to the team to grow it, to share the work, to help them enable them to embrace it?” It’s a challenge and it’s difficult to get perfectly right. With that, I’m going to change gears on this a little bit and I’m going to ask you about success.

Tara: Yeah, we need to get away from the talk about varying vagrant because this is not a tech show. [laughs]

Liam: Let me ask you about success. Let me just finish the question if I can. and it’s, how do you define success? It can be a personal definition, a professional, or maybe for you, it’s a mix of both.

Ian: Yeah, I think I do tend to think of them in different ways. From a professional sense, I think I’m probably similar to a lot of your guests that I’ve heard where I don’t really think of it in terms of money or status or titles or anything like that, it’s more about having work that I enjoy doing and work that I think makes kind of a positive impact on the world, even if that’s kind of subtle or, you know. And then on the personal side, I would say it’s probably the two things that I really think of. Building healthy relationships with people around me and then kind of orienting my life around the things that I really value. I mean, relationships are kind of obvious. It’s like, that’s maybe the most difficult part of life but it’s also kind of the most fulfilling and– values is more harder to pin down. When I look at the world, I kind of see a lot of people suffering and whether that’s homelessness in my own neighborhood, or it’s human trafficking on the other side of the world, I mean, there’s human trafficking in Seattle too, but– or malnutrition, disease, extreme poverty. There’s all these ways that people all around the world don’t have the privileges and comfort that I do. So when I contrast that to my own life, it just creates this visceral feeling that there’s something deeply wrong about that. The world wasn’t meant to be a place where some people starve to death and other people drive around in BMWs. And that’s not to shame people who own BMWs, there are things in my own life that are just as selfish and everything. But when I think about what would be a successful life, I can’t imagine that it doesn’t, in some kind of significant way, focus on using my privilege to alleviate the suffering of others.

Liam: That’s a very genuine definition I can tell just from watching you speak and listening to you talk about it, you’ve spent some time thinking about that and you very much believe that. So thank you for sharing that. Given that personal definition, which I think is really powerful, what’s the most important thing you can do every day to achieve that success?

Ian: Yeah, that’s a harder one.

Liam: Yeah, sorry.

Ian: [laughs] No, that’s fine. I don’t know that I have a lot of habits or anything that I try to do. In terms of the more idealistic side of things, like what I try to do to alleviate suffering in the world– the two main things that I always focused on are time and money. Money’s the pretty straightforward one. I’m an overpaid tech worker and I was raised to be very frugal, and I’m kind of a minimalist anyways. I don’t really want a lot of stuff so it’s easy for me to kind of just give a lot of this disposable income to all these organizations around the world that are doing great things. The harder part has always been volunteering and using my time to do that. It’s just been hard to find things that I feel fit and that I can kind of sustain emotionally over the long-term. Lately, I’ve been getting more involved in– homelessness in Seattle is a big thing just because of a lot of different kind dynamics at play. And there’s a couple of different shelters, one in my neighborhood and one in the neighborhood next door that I’ve gotten involved with. I’ve always liked cooking for friends and stuff, so I found ways to get involved with planning meals and cooking and serving. That feels like a tangible way for me to do something to help those things.

Liam: Yeah, that’s great. And I think I’d agree with you that homelessness is kind of an all-encompassing need, right? It’s shelter, it’s food, kind of really immediate real need. But there’s a lot of mental health, there’s a lot of addiction issues, there’s a lot of historical family troubles. There’s a lot of different ways to involve ourselves and to support people on that. I think there’s something very satisfying about meeting a very corporal need of feeding people. The conversations and the human connection that comes through that, especially where you in your privileged state, to use your words-

Ian: Definitely.

Liam: – are serving. You’re not just writing the check and somebody else is getting food, you’re down there and you’re making the food and you’re putting it on the plate, and presumably, you’re helping to clean up too. That’s really amazing, I love that. Thank you.

Ian: Yeah, I think it’s just– it is that tangible thing and then it also has kind of the intangible aspects to it, too. Like, people really notice even small things like using real silverware that you didn’t have to wash afterwards, rather than disposable stuff. That makes it feel– or cooking a meal that’s kind of not just something from a box but really spend five hours to really plan out something in the way that you would do for your family. I feel like people really notice that and it makes them be kind of– world’s values are so upside down a lot of times and it kind of in some ways shifts that around makes people feel like they’re recognized as a human being and they’re kind of giving back some of the dignity that was taken from them.

Tara: Yeah. What I love about this is the fact that you’re here talking about it and we haven’t had a lot of conversations that have gone in this direction on this show, but it’s definitely something that’s very top of mind in our current climate in this country, so it’s nice to hear someone talking about it. I think that we have finite resources when it comes to money and time, so I think for me, personally, and I think this is not unusual, is that you sort of feel– I know the cliche is one person can make a change but it’s really easy, I think, to feel overwhelmed by the number of things that are wrong in the world and a number of people who were suffering, and where do you start, and what’s your one issue, if you can focus on one or do you give 25$ to 50 different organizations, or do you give one big sum, or you’re donating your time to one shelter. How do you make a bigger difference and the line, “If not you, who?” You have to take that one step first, and then when you start talking about it and sharing, and I’m really happy to be doing this here today with you, is that you may inspire someone else and so then it kind of spreads that way, so I really appreciate your sharing that on our show today because I think it’s great to hear you doing whatever you’re doing. Whether you’re serving at a homeless shelter or you’re reading stories to children in an afterschool care place, or helping with the immigrant crisis or whatever your choice is, but there are so many things to choose from. It is overwhelming sometimes so thanks for taking that step and making it important part of your values and how you view success and what’s important to you. I think that’s helpful here and always.

Ian: Definitely, it is like a very personal thing. I think everybody has to find– there’s not that one thing that everybody should do. It’s more like, what are the things in your life that– for me, I live in a neighborhood of Seattle where on the one hand, there are people who live in these luxury apartments that are 2000$ a month. And then there’s also people in the same neighborhood on the same street living in a tent on the sidewalk. That juxtaposition is very motivating. It’s like, I can– but if I were in a different context, it could be something totally different and it’s just about, everybody has to kind of find that part of their life where their talents meet the needs of the people around them, or the people that they can impact.

Tara: Yeah. It’s also a good reminder of the blessings that we have, right, when you see that, too, is to be grateful for the things that we have and to work hard to be mindful of that.

Liam: Ian, that was awesome. I won’t say more. I’ll just thank Tara for thanking you because I echo many of her sentiments. Let me ask you the second of our signature questions, and I’m really interested to hear your answer on this one. What is the single most valuable piece of advice, be it personal or professional, that you ever received and implemented in your life?

Ian: It’s latter part that’s the hard one, implementing. [laughs]

Tara: It sounds like you’re doing some things already, so– [laughter]

Ian: Yeah, I guess maybe to jump back to the professional side of things. I think one thing that sticks out, just recently, one of my teammates told me that– he kind of encouraged me to make a habit of being proactive about mental health and self-care. I don’t do a great job of that, but I think the one thing that I kind of think about, and sometimes I do it, is just going for a walk during the day. After I kind of wake up and I go through my email and Slack and all that, things I have to respond to, then I have the rest of the day to try to build something or whatever. I think if I can kind of take some time after that initial rush of emails and whatever, take some time and just go for a walk and not listen to a podcast, which is what I normally do when I’m walking. But just kind of let my mind wander and kind of maul things over in the background. It’s hard to do that because I always feel like there’s so much work to do and there’s so much work that I want to do. And it’s like excercising in a way, you feel really good when you do it but there’s that innertia that you have to get over it before you will do it. That’s probably the thing that I think would make the most difference if I could make it more of a habit.

Liam: Yeah, I think that ties into what you mentioned when you were thinking about how to give your time in a sustainable way. Something like homelesness, especially when you’re right there and you’re kind of on the front-line, if you will, and you’re seeing people in all their grandure and all their challenges. If you don’t take care of yourself, that can be really emotionally and psychologically overwhelming. Not to paint you into a corner, I don’t mean to say it’s something that will only happen to you, but we can all, if we don’t take care of ourselves, end up right next them in the homeless shelter. To your point, it seems like, “Well, I just really want to help them all the time. No, if I help them all the time, I will end up there and I need to help them in a way that is sustainable. I love that advice. I think it’s really valuable and I like that way that your framed it and positioned it.

Ian: It’s like that old saying about you have to fix your own oxygen mask before you do your kids or whatever.

Tara: Yes, I love that analogy. I think we are beyond time because this has been so enriching. I really have enjoyed this. Ian, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your thoughts and inspiring us to be better people and better members of our communities and of the world. Thank you very much for doing that.

Ian: Thank you.

Tara: Where can people find you online?

Ian: I don’t really do social media all that much.

Tara: Good.

Ian: [laughs] Yeah. The main thing I do is I have a blog at Iandunn.name. It’s just about WordPress development and whenever I can’t find the answer to something that I need and I figure it out, I’ll write a blog post about it.

Tara: Cool.

Liam: Ian, thank you so much for joining us out here in the hallway, it’s been an absolute pleasure. We really enjoyed having you on today. Thank you.

Tara: Great meeting you. Thanks so much.

Ian: Yeah, thank you.

Liam: Bye-bye.

Ian: 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.

Chris Hufnagel is a creative freelancing dad of two. He geeks out about solving problems using design and code. Chris stumbled upon WordPress seven years ago and has been freelancing ever since.

Website | Chris Hufnagel

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: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 61.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Chris Hufnagel. Chris is a creative freelancing dad of two. He geeks out about solving problems using design and code. Chris stumbled upon WordPress seven years ago and has been freelancing ever since. Hey Chris, welcome.

Chris: Hey, Liam and Tara, how are you?

Tara: Hi, we’re good. We’re glad you’re here. Thanks for joining us, Chris. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Chris: Yes, I’m a freelancer. I live in Florida. I have two kids and I build things with WordPress basically.

Tara: Okay. I love that you define yourself first about where you live and that you have kids, that’s important information for one, definition of oneself. Let’s hear a little bit more about what you do with WordPress and why you do it? How you found it and what your background is?

Chris: Yes, I have kind of a very varied background. I got my start into website development back in high school, way too long ago to go into, and I hated it. I had like a web design class that I was required to take and I just hated it. I think it was more the teacher and the teaching style but anyways, 15 years later, that’s what I’m doing for a living. In between all that, I manage restaurants and I did computer forensics for a while. I actually taught pre-school for two years and just done a lot of different things. Eventually, I started making websites on the side and was making more money doing that on the weekends and I just was like, “I should freelance.” That’s what I started doing.

Tara: What is computer forensics?

Chris: I got into that– I did a lot of government contracts where if somebody commits a crime using a technology device, we would be finding ways to get the data off of the computer, the phone, the camera, whatever. Even if it was deleted or they had emailed it to somebody. And use that information to be able to either prosecute them or find more information on the next person that needs to be found.

Tara: That’s fascinating and quite topical in the world today. Did you learn how to do that yourself? I’m really curious about how one chooses that or finds that themselves on that career path for doing that job.

Chris: Yeah, I’m really good at triage and finding information very quickly and knowing what is the most important information when looking at something really quick. I used to create classes around it and teach. We did a lot with NATO and so we would teach them how to look at a phone real quickly and even if it is an operating system they haven’t seen before, nowhere to look for the information that they needed right then, to be able to figure out where to go next. I started working there just as a general manager of some of their employees and I found out that I was really good at the triage part.

Tara: Okay. So you were working for a company that did that?

Chris: Yes.

Tara: Okay, I see, interesting. Do you utilize those skills as a web developer, any of them?

Chris: I do. It was all research-based. I got my start into WordPress because they needed a website and I was like, “Oh, I’ll take a look.” I just kind of stumbled upon WordPress and loved that every time I googled something, somebody else had the same problem and there was an answer. I kind of just taught myself along the way and kept going from there.

Tara: Interesting. You also have an affinity for design from what I’ve seen on your website and how you described yourself as a creative. Where does that fit into the picture? You have a good mixture of code and tech with design? Is that true?

Chris: Yes. I don’t know, I don’t really consider myself a designer. I just have always been very minimalistic and goal-focused so I’ve always found that if I just stay really, really focused on what the website is, the design comes out pretty good anyways. That’s always been my motto, just to stay simple and focused and it’ll look halfway decent.

Tara: That makes a lot of sense. You work directly for clients building websites?

Chris: Most of my work is for other agencies so I’ll take over some of their overflow and try to do my work that way.

Tara: I was going to say that a lot of times that if you’re working directly with clients, I find sometimes that they want things to be busy, and fancy, and moving, and doing all that kind of stuff and sometimes it is a challenge to talk them into that sort of clean simple idea, I think so. Your agencies that you work with, they’re responsible for communicating that to the client?

Chris: Yes. Most of them come to me with a design, some of them I do the design work for as well. But most of the time– there’s always a battle somewhere on how big the logo should be or what size the font should be and all that. But you just got to pick your battles.

Tara: Yeah. Working with agencies and with your background sounds really interesting. I’d be curious to talk to you a little bit about what success means to you. Going back to your introduction of yourself and how you define yourself as being the parent and living in Florida, as your first part of your definition, how would you define success in terms of your personal life blended in with what you do for a living?

Chris: I’ve always tried to combine the two because whenever I’ve tried to separate work and life, I’ve– that whole work/life balance thing has never really been something I was very good at. I find that when I combine them, I do a little bit better. I work from home, my kids are home 95% of that time. My wife works from home as well, part-time for a company. My kids are always around and I like that my life is built that way and that I have that freedom to just take lunch for an hour and go and have lunch with the kids or make them something, or get up and start the day by reading books with my kids. We travel a lot so even with the kids we go all over and just bring them and work from different hotels, different parts. That’s kind of how I’ve defined it and I think I’d define it that way because it’s who I am and I get to say that I’m successful. But I think when we started to talk about having kids, that was how we wanted to build our life, so we built it in that direction.

Liam: The travel aspect of that is interesting to me. You said that you travel a lot. It sounds like you travel for the sake of travel and not necessarily to travel for work or you’re traveling to this family function, but you take the family and go here or go there. Is that stay for the period of time, is it just a vacation? Or you go live in the northwest for two months, you go live in the south for a month, you go up here for three weeks? Tell us a little bit about your travel?

Chris: Yes. In 2013, we sold our house. It was just my wife and me and before we had kids. We packed our Honda Civic with whatever we could fit and we traveled for about seven months and we just traveled up the northeast. My family’s from Boston so we visited them. Her family is in Philadelphia so we visited some of them. We both had remote positions so we just worked along the way, went to see what we want to see. It got more difficult as the kids came along. My son is almost four and we traveled for at least two months out of the year, I believe, every year since he’s been born.

Liam: Consecutively or you’re just adding up two months of travel over 12?

Chris: At least a month consecutively and then we take a lot of little vacations. It’s tough, starting to get tougher actually. He’s starting to want to be home with his stuff, his toys. You can only fit so much to bring with you. I’m just going with the flow at this point. I don’t know how much travel we’ll have in the next few years but we will certainly see.

Tara: Do you find that being in a new environment and working remotely, truly remotely, not even from your home being remote, does that increase your productivity and focus? I know sometimes people say, “Go work somewhere else. Get out of your office and get a fresh environment.” If you’re traveling like that, how do you maintain productivity or is that a benefit of travel?

Chris: I don’t know that it makes me more productive but it makes me more creative, I guess, getting out to different places. I think that it’s just the balance and getting into– even though it’s not always the same place that the routine happens but I kind of have the same routine throughout the day of what I do and when I do it. It doesn’t matter where I am, it’s still the same stuff that I’m doing.

Tara: Okay. Is that hard to do when you’re in a new place, having the same routine?

Chris: It’s not. It’s more of like, I have a certain time each day that I check my emails, and that I’m on Slack, and available for questions for my clients. I have a certain time of the day that I do– if I’m doing my design work, that’s my due design work. I have certain time that I do code. This changes, it’s not like I have this on my calendar from now until 20, 30. It’s more like a weekly thing. I just kind of, “This worked really well last week so I’ll do the same thing next week.” And that plan sort of works.

Tara: That’s great. What would you say is your biggest challenge that you have in your work life as you have it set up right now with your children and working remotely and traveling, what’s your biggest challenge?

Chris: I would say it’s still imposter syndrome. I’ve been freelancing for seven years and I still, every time I submit a design or submit some code or release something, I’m terrified somebody’s going to be like, “This is all wrong. Where did you figure this out?” I think it stands from being self-taught. I never went to school for this. I kind of just kept it all up and as I’m working with bigger agencies and starting to now work with teams which I really enjoyed working with other creators and other developers and designers. I’m assured that one of them is going to be like, “You’re doing this all wrong.” And it all just comes crashing down.

Tara: I hear you. Yeah, that’s a big challenge. How do you overcome it or deal with it if you’re not overcoming it?

Chris: I don’t really overcome it. Still, every single time I send a proposal or I send an email, I just wait and hope that I do actually know what I’m talking about and I guess it’s just knowing that every time that happens, it still all works out. Keep believing, I guess.

Tara: Yeah. Something I find, too, is when you are doing any kind of mentoring or teaching, that sometimes that helps you realize how much you know. I think that sometimes helps a little bit. What’s your involvement in the WordPress community?

Chris: It’s very little, unfortunately. I knew that there was a WordPress community of developers because I’d constantly be googling, ‘white screen of death’, and all those same errors that you’re googling all the time. So I knew that there was other people that use this platform but I really didn’t know how big it was. And then last year, I met the StudioPress team and started doing some work with them. And they invited me to go out to WordCamp and hang out with them while I was there. I remember walking into WordCamp and was just fascinated. I couldn’t believe that all those people were there for WordPress. I’ve been amazed ever since. I’ve been trying to get more involved, it’s just there’s not much for a WordPress community around where I live.

Tara: Good, I’m glad you made it to WordCamp US. That was a great event. When we go back to success and your idea of success, what is the most important thing that you do everyday sort of to work toward that idea of success?

Chris: You guys ask tough questions. [laughter] I’d say I just keep doing it. I think that’s the big thing is I just keep waking up and I keep doing it and keep putting stuff out there. It’s really easy to just wake up and not create anything, not write any code, not make any designs. But to me, it’s just to keep trying because the first ten– I was just going through my portfolio and looking at designs I made just two years ago. I can’t believe the progress I’ve made since then. Just keep creating. Never give up.

Liam: Yeah, I think that’s a good way to address a lot of challenges and a lot of things in life is that we’re never going to get any better if we don’t do it.

Chris: Exactly.

Liam: Even the most talented athletes or the most gifted designers, they put in the time and the energy and they’re doing it. Rarest individual who never has thrown a football and steps up and suddenly wins the NFL Superbowl or something like that. So I like that, I like that approach. If keeping at it, keeping going, keeping trying, keep working is the way forward, what’s your favorite thing to do? You’ve talked about design, you’ve talked about development. You talked about working with StudioPress of late. Talk a little bit about that? What’s your favorite thing to do in the office, wherever that office may be?

Chris: My favorite thing lately has been working with other freelancers that are just getting started, and helping them fine-tune their process and getting their first couple of clients and figuring out how much to charge. I really enjoyed working with other people that are starting their businesses. I wish I had more of it.

Tara: Where are you doing that and how did you discover this forum or wherever that’s happening?

Chris: Yeah, I’ve just been doing it through Zoom meetings, setting up coaching calls with different people that have just reached out to me and ask questions.

Tara: So it’s a service you’re offering through your business?

Chris: Yeah. I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed it until I did the first couple and then–

Tara: Does that help with your imposter syndrome then?

Chris: No. [laughs]

Tara: Oh, darn.

Chris: It almost makes it worse where they’ll ask me a question and I feel like I should know the answer and I don’t. I wish that it did, but it makes me feel good that I get to help other people, but I don’t think it solves the imposter syndrome completely.

Tara: That’s funny.

Liam: That is pretty funny. So you had mentioned that you’re doing work with StudioPress. Does that mean you’re using the framework? Are you working with the organization itself? And you said they invited you to attend WordCamp US, who is they and tell us about that relationship? That sounds interesting.

Chris: They had themes that they released so they had reached out to me, they being Rafal and Brian, reached out to me to do some development for something with themes so I’ve recently been doing those. We released Authority and Essence, and we have some other ones in the works.

Liam: Well, that’s exciting. How did that relationship come about? That’s interesting. Thinking about a freelancer and certain StudioPress and Brian Gardner are not a half-hearted effort at running the WordPress shop. Speaking of imposter syndrome, if you get an email from Brian Gardner saying, “I want to do some work.” How long did it take you to get off of the floor after you read that?

Chris: Pretty much. I’ve been using Genesis pretty much since I found WordPress. And I kind of always just hid in my corner of the world and did my own thing. I actually left a comment on Rafal’s blog about something. He must have read it and started looking into me and then he reached out to me. Yeah, that was pretty much the story of it, and then we just started talking about building things. We’ve had a few other interactions a few years ago, design-type stuff. Just kind of always putting yourself out there, I need to do more of that.

Tara: Yeah, that’s a great team to have experience working with. I can understand having imposter syndrome, more now that I know that you’re working with folks at StudioPress, they do great things and Rafal’s very highly-regarded in the design world especially. I’ve learned from him, too, from his templates and things he shares. He’s great about sharing resources.

Chris: Yes, he is.

Tara: Yeah. Let’s talk about people who have mentored you or advice that you’ve received. You say that you like mentoring other people and you’re self-taught. I imagine there are people along the way who have shepherded you and shown you some things as well. Have you received any advice when it comes to running a business or living life or development, any advice that you’ve received that’s been really meaningful to you that you think about a lot?

Chris: Something that I saw recently and I wish I could remember where, but basically, it’s just a little quote that ‘if it’s not a heck yes, it’s a no’. It’s been something I’ve been trying to do more of is saying no to some of the projects where I’m like– as a freelancer, you kind of want to say yes to everything, especially if there’s a check at the end because you have bills to pay and mouths to feed. It’s really, really tough to start saying no. Just in last year and a half, I started to say no a little bit more and I realized that leaves the room to do the bigger things. I have a whole poster with that in my living room to try to remind me that it is so hard to say no but it’s a necessary thing.

Liam: Yeah, it’s a process: Isn’t it? Learning to say no. I suppose it’s a building process as well to be able to plan ahead to the point where we can say no. It’s one thing if it’s us and we’re willing to eat beans on toast for a few months, but little ones, they need proper nutrition and fresh clothes and clean diapers and the like. Yeah, that’s a challenge, but once you learn to say no, that’s an empowering feeling. Tell us about that.

Chris: I’m still terrible at it and I still get myself in situations all the time where somebody tells me about a problem they’re having and my immediate response is, “Yes, I can help you with that.” And then I go back and I start looking a bit more and while I can help them with that, it may not move me forward in any way. It may move me backwards even. I tried to, instead of saying yes or no right away, just trying to understand everything involved before getting a response. It’s been a process and it still definitely is.

Tara: When I first heard you say that. I was actually thinking about it from the other side, which was if someone doesn’t say, ‘heck yes’ with excitement to me, what they really mean is no. That’s how I heard it and I was thinking, gosh, I wonder if you’re selling a proposal to the client or something and they’re kind of like, “Heck yes.” Are they not really for you? I heard it that way, which probably is not at all– that doesn’t make any sense when you say it that way, when you turn it on its head like that maybe. I don’t know, what do you think?

Chris: Yeah, I never actually saw it that way but I guess it works that way, too. Because basically, it’s not a ‘heck yes’ for them so it should be a no if it’s not a ‘heck yes’ for both people.

Tara: Yes, we’re seeking out the ‘heck yes’ from others as well as giving them ourselves, that’s a high bar to meet at times.

Liam: I think your interpretation, Tara, is more imposter syndrome inducing.

Tara: You are right, sorry. I was trying to help with that, now I’m just going to get it worse. But there’s me revealing my own grips. [laughs] How do you like living in Florida and tell us a little bit about why you’re in Florida?

Chris: I don’t love living in Florida. It’s too hot, it’s too busy. I’m originally from Cape Cod, Massachusets and it’s beautiful there but really expensive to live so I moved down here and I ended up meeting my wife and that’s why I’m still here because most of her family lives here. But that is pretty much– yeah, I’m not a big fan of Florida.

Liam: You’re North Florida, South Florida, Central Florida, Panhandle?

Chris: I’m near Tampa.

Liam: I love all kinds of weather and it can never be too hot or too humid for me.

Chris: Yeah, it’s gross.

Liam: I get that but I absolutely love it. I don’t mind it at all. Tell me a little bit about freelancing there. You talked about some of your bigger clients and I imagine those– certainly StudioPress, I’d call them a national agency if you will. But did you historically just start working with other freelancers, or companies, or agencies in and around the Tampa area, or how did that come about?

Chris: I had actually had three clients total my entire freelance career in Florida.

Liam: Was that to a circumstance or did you bump into them at 7/11 and heard them talking about–?

Chris: It just happened to be that they were in Florida. I got my start, I went on Elance way, way back and I got my first client through there. He actually happened to be in Florida and lived three towns over. We met and he said, I want to give you a full-time position.” And I was like, “Well, I have a job right now but I’d like to just build your website.” We started doing some work together and that was about it.

Liam: That’s awesome. I’m going to swing towards one of our signature questions here and ask you about advice. We’ve talked about mentoring, we’ve talked about sharing but maybe you can have a think and share with us what’s been the single most valuable piece of advice that somebody has shared with you that you have successfully implemented in your life? It can be either personal advice, professional advice, but basically, something that somebody said to you, maybe struck a chord and you now live by that or you live by it for a period of time and it really brought value to your life in some way?

Chris: Just the ‘heck yes’ thing, I wish I knew who said this, or the exact wording. I know who said it. This is by Steve Jobs and he had said that, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Once you realize that everybody that’s creating something is just another person and you can do the same thing as them, the whole world opens up.” I know I’m completely butchering that, I’m sorry. But basically, that told me that when I see things, they’re made by other human beings and I can teach myself to do the same thing and to not just think that they had some special thing about them that allows them to do it. I can do that too.

Liam: Yeah, that’s really insightful in a sense– and I’m going to loop back again because I keep going back to imposter syndrome. Realizing that even a spaceship that goes to the moon, at some point, somebody just broke out the rivet gun and put the rivet and bolted the one thing onto the other. That wasn’t the only bit of work that went into it but if we break the work down, break the process down, break the learning down, you don’t have to learn how to make an entire website. You can learn how to add content, change a theme, customize a theme, build a theme, and so on and so on. Yeah, I like that. I think that’s humanizing the challenges in front of us is very helpful. Chris, you’ve talked about working in design and working in development. You’ve talked about how as you look back over your designs from two years ago, that you’ve made great strides and gotten better at it. And I would imagine that if you looked into your code and the way you approach things, you’d be pleased with that as well. But what do you really prefer to do if you had to, and I’m going to put you on the spot with this question, but if someone were to say to you, “Look, for the rest of your career, you can design or you can write code. You can design or you can develop. Certainly, you can talk to the other half and weigh in on the arguments in the conversation.” But if you only could do one, where would you go, at least where would you go today, and why?

Chris: I think it would be design. I don’t actually do as much design as I do development but I think– that’s a really tough question. I’ve never actually thought about it because I’ve always just considered the two the same thing. I’ve always looked at them as a combined skill set. I think I’m a good designer because I understand the code and I think I’m a good developer. Because I understand the basics of design. I think that the two combined have been why I’ve been able to do what I do.

Tara: In your development process, in your development work, you said that you work mostly with Genesis themes. Are you still doing that or have you looked at other things like page builders and things like that? What’s your process for that?

Chris: I use Genesis because it’s really secure, it’s really well-built. Like, a lot of websites I built six years ago are still going. I think a lot of that is just how clean the Genesis framework is and how unbloated– I build stuff without any sort of frameworks, without WordPress, sort of back-end, I’ve done all that. I like WordPress and I like working with Genesis because it gives clients the ability to make the changes themselves without having to hire me or another developer every single time they want to adjust their phone number, change the copy on their website. That’s why I always worked with WordPress.

Tara: Yeah. What do you think about– I’m not sure we should get into this here but what do you think about the recent change with Genesis becoming a part of WP Engine?

Chris: I think it’s exciting. I think that– I don’t know if you can include all this but I think that it gives them the opportunity. As Genesis developers, we know there’s a very bright future for Genesis. That’s what excites me is I know that they now have a bigger team to help continue supporting it. I don’t know.

Tara: That’s a whole podcast in and of itself, but since you work with them and use Genesis still and have used it for so long, I’m curious to know if there will be a change there.

Chris: I’m not sure that there’ll be much of a change. I think the core people are still there and I think that’s more of– yeah.

Liam: I think I’d agree with that. StudioPress and Genesis framework has an absolutely rock solid reputation. Having the structuring systemization of a WP engine behind it is likely to lead to further and perhaps even greater success.

Chris: You said it better than me. [laughter]

Liam: Thank you. With that, I think we are very close to running out of time and I don’t want to do so without, Chris, thanking you for being on the show and asking you to share with us where people can find you online?

Chris: Thank you for having me. You can go to my website, it’s just Chrishufnagel.com and I hang out on Twitter, just @chrishufnagel, and same on Instagram. Same username, pretty simple.

Tara: Thanks, Chris. Thanks for being here and for sharing your story.

Chris: Thanks for having me.

Liam: Thanks, Chris. We’ll see you soon. Bye-bye.

Tara: Bye.

Chris: 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.

Cathi Bosco is a creative professional, nature lover, and visual communications designer working to make the web a better place for all.

Website | C&D Studios

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: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 60. Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Cathi Bosco. Cathi is a creative professional, nature lover, and visual communications designer working to make the web a better place for all. Hi, Cathi. It’s great to have you here.

Cathi: It’s wonderful to be with you today. Thanks for having me.

Liam: You’re most welcome. Thanks for joining us, Cathi. Please tell us a little bit more about yourself, if you would.

Cathi: Well, I’m 21 years old with 30 years experience, as they say. I’m a mature designer. I work out of Connecticut. I have been self-employed since I was 30. That’s 21 years now. My husband’s also self-employed. We work really hard and fixed up an old farmhouse and graduated from art school and have been real self-motivated entrepreneurs. We’ve had highs and lows with that process. I started full-time on my own to stay home with my dog. I really recommend that as an incentive. If you want to start your own business, get a dog.

Tara: I love that. You and your husband both work for yourselves. Do you share an office or work from home? What is that like, being together that much?

Cathi: He does not work from home. I’m the one that works from home. When I first started working full-time designing and drawing and doing commission portraiture, I worked in an attic, and now I have a studio outside that’s connected to my garage so I have to leave the house to go out to the studio, which is awesome. He works outside the house. He’s a painting contractor so a little bit independent.

Tara: That’s great. Do you both then have a good amount of flexibility that you’re able to sort of pick up and go whenever you want to and give yourselves as much vacation time or is there more pressure when you’re supporting yourselves? You’ve always got to have work and it’s hard to say no to anything so you never take a vacation. What’s that situation like?

Cathi: Yeah, we never take a vacation calm. If we do, we go visit my family because I’m from Colorado. We rarely take vacations. Seems like my busy time is his slow time and his slow time is my busy time. Yeah, with the cost of health insurance and all of that. It is definitely more challenging.

Tara: Yeah, I can imagine that’s the case. I think a lot of people who are self-employed rely on their spouse or significant other to cover benefits like health insurance and it is expensive when you work for yourself for sure.

Cathi: It definitely is.

Tara: Can you tell us a little bit about where WordPress fits in and with your graphic and art background, how you came to be introduced to WordPress and how you use it?

Cathi: Absolutely. My background is in fine art. I’ve always been a visual artist. I started running with a trail running group in Connecticut when we moved here. The leaders of our running group had a little WordPress website. I started learning WordPress on that site. It was for building community and inspiring each other to run further, farther, longer. Some of the people in the group run hundred milers, there’s a lot of ultra runners and things like that. Everybody’s a little creative and entertaining with all of the training that goes into those types of adventures. I learned on that website. And then as an illustrator, I needed my own website. I needed a way to get my own portfolio online. I didn’t start out with my Portfolio on WordPress because that seemed a little bit daunting so I was using things like, oh, you’ve heard of Geocities and those old applications. Learning WordPress was very empowering to me once I got my portfolio moved into a WordPress website. I started empowering others with it. A friend started a craft brewery, I would build a website for them. I just really loved it and I became certified with the Adobe Suite so that I could do all of those interactive types of digital drawings. Because my studio was completely analog, because all I did was draw, and analog photography and film, and that sort of thing. I definitely felt very fortunate to ride the digital wave and to transition into completely– now we’re 1000% digital. But I still draw on those skills and I just love the web so much more because it’s immediately gratifying. You can share it immediately. It’s much more animated, interactive.

Tara: So your preference is digital over analog now?

Cathi: Yeah, I’ve done so many drawings and stuff over the years. We’ve just cleaned out our attic. I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of commision portraitures and I can hardly remember half of them that I’ve done. I know that people cherish their drawings that they do of their kids or their family or whatever we did for them, some sort of memorials. I did a lot of memorials. That was really fulfilling work but it’s just– I don’t know, it feels a little less interactive to me. It was meaningful work but I prefer this now.

Tara: Yeah, and people digitize all of that stuff now. You can now digitize it and perfect it and do a lot more than you could do when you were doing it just by hand. I know, I used to do illustration also. I look at the tools available now and I just think, “Oh my gosh, I would have saved myself so much time.”

Cathi: [laughs] I know, it’s true.

Liam: And you could have one pen.

Cathi: [laughs]

Liam: “Which one of the 87 pens do I want to use? I’ll just this one and change the settings.” It’s just amazing.

Cathi: Things have really changed and I’m so grateful that I was able to change with things because when I was in art school, there were no– it was beta VH 1, Analog Photography, Filmmaking was not digital.

Liam: I want to ask you about that because Tara and I both have print-design backgrounds and we’re perhaps not young enough to have started digital, we transitioned as well. I want to ask you about how you came to that kind of emotionally, psychologically, mentally? Because we’ve all embraced it, right? We make WordPress websites and we’re on a podcast. But there can be challenges and some things about web design I didn’t immediately like and I really struggled with from a design control standpoint. It sounds like you just loved the opportunity and didn’t have any qualms about embracing it, but maybe you can just dive into that a little bit for us?

Cathi: Well, it’s true. It was incredibly frustrating to learn the tools to express the way you wanted to learn to express because you couldn’t immediately use Illustrator or Photoshop, you had to learn how to make the kinds of visual representation you wanted to in a whole different way.

Liam: Sure. Because you could knock out a sketch of somebody and 20 minutes to an hour, again, depends on the detail and stuff, but if you’re just in Photoshop or Illustrator, it can take you an hour to figure out where to get started in Photoshop.

Cathi: Yes, I would give myself– I wrote a children’s book and I joined a children’s writing group, and my challenge was to layout, illustrate, write the whole book using Illustrator as a way to teach myself so that I could become fluent.

Tara: Did that take a long time? Was it faster than doing it by hand?

Cathi: Oh, no. It took a while. [laughter] No, it was really hard. Of course, I had to overcomplicate it for myself because I wanted each page of the book to connect so if you stretch it out long, it becomes one really long, long drawing. Of course, frustration factor there, how you have to learn how to do bleeds, and how to line things up, and folds, and all of that stuff, and make all of your illustrations line up. It was a good exercise but creatively, I had something to say so that helped. I didn’t have to think of something I wanted to do creatively. I had that in pocket.

Liam: That can make learning much easier if you know what you want. If you have a view of the end, then it’s just figuring out the technical of how to make that happen. Before I turn the mic back over to Tara, let me ask you one question. Illustrator or Photoshop?

Cathi: That’s like choosing a child. I would put them both in the boat and save them both. [laughs] The question I would ask is– now I’m using Sketch a lot and can I get rid of one, but I need all three now.

Tara: Yeah, I know. I’m trying to do that, too. I’m actually using Sketch to do some logo work because you can export it so easily to .spg but it doesn’t have all the stuff that Illustrator has. You can kind of copy and paste back and forth between them I think, but there needs to be something that–

Cathi: I love Sketch for laying out website designs.

Tara: Yeah, it’s perfect for that.

Cathi: I need to use my Illustrator program to bring smart objects over into Photoshop. I can’t do without any of them.

Tara: Yeah. We could geek out on design tools probably for a lot longer but I do want to kind of get away from the technical stuff a little bit and just talk a little bit more just about life and how you view life, and specifically how you view success, Cathi? You work for yourself, your husband works for himself, you’ve done that for a long time. I think that wouldn’t work if you weren’t successful at least in the ability to support yourselves. But can you talk to us a little bit about what success means to you in your business life, but maybe how that integrates also into your personal life as well?

Cathi: Sure. I was expecting a little bit of this question based on your podcast and I do love that about your podcast, that you talk about the human experience of things and challenges. I think for personal success, which is most difficult for me to probably articulate, I think I’m personally successful at being positive. I don’t think I deserve any credit for that. I think I’m just sort of born with this chemistry that can stay very positive through incredibly difficult challenges like loss, or illness, or any kind of strife. I’m able to stay really positive and that’s been a real key to my success as a personal person. Because I’ve had cancer a couple of times, I’ve lost relatives. Everybody has had a lot of life hardships by the time they’re my age, I suppose. That’s something that I’m really grateful for. I don’t really get myself a lot of credit for it but I’m really grateful that I have a very positive outlook on things. That’s how I would define my personal success. I still can eat an entire sheet cake if I’m really disgusted about something and I’m not proud of that. [laughs] And professionally, how do I define professional success? Professional success is, in my work, facing a lot of challenges because when you do creative work, you deal with a lot of rejection or a little bit forward, a little bit back. You’ve got three types of clients, ones that want you to just do all of the decision-making for you, those are really fun. Then you have clients that just want to use you as a tool to make whatever they think or to do whatever they think. They don’t want your advice. Some of those are unsatisfying. I don’t find that to be a successful way of working. But most of the time it’s 50/50. I’ll collaborate with you, I want to meet your vision and make sure that what we’re doing together, I can provide some insight based on my experience as well. Together, we come up with something even better than one of us can do alone. I love collaborating that way. Good collaboration is a success for me.

Tara: How do you find that? Sometimes you don’t know that until you’re already down the road with a non-collaborative client or project. I guess that’s something that you assess as you’re in the middle of it but it’s not something you can necessarily create or avoid.

Cathi: Right. That’s where experience comes into play. I try to nurture that in the relationship initially. Usually, you can tell right from the beginning if this is going to be a good fit, as they say. Sometimes, I’ll take on a project where I’m just the tool and I’m just going to execute these– that’s fine. As long as it’s well-defined up front. I don’t really have a preference but if there’s not going to be a healthy collaboration and a bad fit, that’s when I’m like, “Okay, we’ll just say this isn’t going to work.” And I’ll refer them to someone else. Over the last few years, I’ve really changed the types of projects we take on. I used to do a lot of ‘mom and pa’ websites, smaller local business, or people who are maybe finishing one career and moving into another of their own, little startups. Now I do much larger projects, and they’re mostly b2b projects. People are in that collaboration kind of mode more. That’s helpful.

Liam: Yeah, I find it’s really helpful to talk about how our clients work when we’re vetting whether or not to take on the work. And we just chat about what’s your flow, what works for you– because as you noted, Cathi, there’s a time and a place where you just want me to make the red bits red and blue bits blue, and you make this go over there. Yeah, I can do that, but if I think, “Oh, I would like to make the red bits orange.” And I have no creative say on that, and I thought I was going to have some, as creatives, that can be hugely frustrating. Isn’t it? That’s really interesting to try to weave that all together. I think I totally agree with you that after a few years in the business of trying to figure out how people work, there’ll get to be some telltale signs about, “Okay, this is how it’s going to be.” It’s as much as managing our own expectations as our clients, isn’t it?

Cathi: Yes, and setting those benchmarks like, “We’ll get to this point and you still have no idea what you want to do.” We’ll just set some benchmarks as little safety measures where we’ll go to this point. And then if it’s working, we’ll move forward, if it’s not, it’s not. Little safety nets are helpful.

Liam: I like that, I like that. To achieve this success, and we’re talking about professional success because it sounds like you’ve got a handle on personal success.

Cathi: [laughter] The sheet cake!

Liam: We all have our vices, we all have our challenges. And if you’re in a trail running club, then you’re the kind of person that can maybe eat a sheet cake and you’re going to pay for it days and maybe not for a year. We allow our strengths to compensate for our weaknesses. But let me talk a little bit about professional success. From what you were saying about good collaboration, what’s the single most important thing you can do professionally, or maybe it’s personally, to achieve that professional exist, to achieve that good collaboration?

Cathi: Communication, without a doubt. You have to be good at communication and overcommunicate sometimes. I think providing status updates on how work is progressing, talking about what expectations are. I’ve learned so much from collaborating with other professionals. I sort of needed to collaborate because I got sick some years ago, and I needed to be able to hand over the studio for a period of time to someone and I really hadn’t prepared for that. It also helped me with pricing work, to collaborate. Because I want to be proud of what I’m handing over to someone else or asking them to handle for a while or indefinitely. What would they charge for that? I don’t want to undersell myself. That was a good way to sort of make sure I’m not undercharging for the work I do. I guess that’s a personal problem of mine. Sometimes I underbid.

Tara: It’s common.

Cathi: [laughs].

Tara: Yeah, it’s common.

Cathi: Communication.

Liam: That’s a really good point and that’s a challenge certainly for a lot of self-employed. I remember I started working for myself part-time in about 2004 and by 2006, I was completely on my own. 2009, I hired an employee. Going from, “I make all the decisions, I do everything.” But also not in a legal way, but like, “If I don’t do it, nobody does it.” To, “Oh, somebody else wants to do some of this project. Alright, I guess I can share.” And I’m not necessarily deliberately selfish but I just wired myself to do all this and then to think about, “No, I do need to talk with them. I do need to share, I do need to collaborate.” That can be a challenge kind of figure out. I wonder how you walked yourself through that realizing you need to collaborate and then a desire and the value. How did you walk yourself through that?

Cathi: I think that I had a great mentor. Someone mentored me and then I began mentoring. I think that through teaching and sharing of knowledge, you begin to collaborate better. My first employee was a woman who was in high school, who was volunteering to learn a little bit, to get involved in some studio work. And then she became an employee for a while and she came back through college. I take on an intern for a few months and then they’ll stay with me for a period of time and right now, Ryan is with me. He’s been with me for some time now. He studied video editing so he doesn’t necessarily have a web background but he’s got a great design eye and digital background, we just click creatively and I’m happy we give him tasks because he teaches me a lot and I teach him a lot. I think mentoring back and forth helped me get comfortable with collaboration.

Tara: That’s really great that you found someone that you can mentor but who can also teach you some things and who, like you said, you click with. That’s almost a miracle to find someone at that point in their career that it works like that, that’s awesome. I’ve seen some of the videos that you posted lately and they’re wonderful. It’s a great service to offer.

Cathi: Thanks. He’s pretty terrific. He won’t be here long. I’m sure he’ll outgrow me soon.

Tara: Yeah, the problem with us as small agencies is that maybe it’s not full-time or it’s not the same kind of permanent long-time job. But that’s great that he was there, or is there for as long as he is. It sounds like a great fit for you.

Cathi: I’m working him, grooming him to be a good remote worker too, so when he does want to move to the woods in Maine, he’s got some part-time remote work he can count on. He’ll be around, we’ll be friends for a long time I’m sure.

Tara: Awesome. Cathi, I know that you started working a little bit with the WordPress team, I guess, and the design team there. Can you tell us a little bit about your involvement with WordPress?

Cathi: Sure. I’ve been going to WordCamps and WordPress WordCamp US the last few years, and I was not able to stay for a contributor day until this year in Nashville. I stayed for a contributor day because I had trouble beginning to contribute back to the design team online without actually working with some people, like at a contributor day where you have to learn Trac, and there’s GitHub, there’s the Slack channel, there’s the handbook, there’s all these different ways that the design team builds WordPress core and WordPress.org and all that stuff. It was just very difficult to become involved on the team. At contributor day, I networked with the people who were hosting the design table and really dedicated myself and found a group of people we can kind of make a buddy system to learn how to use Trac and to get in the flow of contributing. I highly recommend that. We’re starting to work on onboarding designers to the team for WordPress. We’re actually in the process of creating a buddy system set up so that people can sort of learn their way around Trac and how we triage and how we work on the design team. I love doing it, I’ve empowered people with WordPress over the years a lot. I get a little self-actualization personally for contributing back now. We’ve been doing some plugin designs, we’ve been trying to onboard more designers, laid out some pages for WordPress.org about how to create a blog. There’s really nothing on WordPress.org about how to make a blog or how to move your blog from another platform. I really like working on the WordPress.org stuff a lot and doing some of the design assets and I feel like I really want to see it grow. I love WordPress, I love that it’s open source, I love that it’s a content management system. I love the community. It’s just been a fantastic tool for me and it feels good to give back. It’s hard to find the time all the time. I’m not a big agency like Automatic or something that can just dedicate certain amount of staff hours. I’m putting in at least four hours a week, contributing and doing work with my team.

Liam: That’s a significant amount.

Tara: It is.

Cathi: Yeah, I try to keep it four. [laughs]

Tara: It’s interesting to hear that your experience at contributor day is what kind of pulled you in. I’ve tried a couple of contributor days and I find them overwhelming because there are so many people who want to help and there’s only so much that the person that’s sort of coordinating everyone can do. I think it’s hard to actually contribute sometimes at contributor day because nobody can really get direction of what to do next. If you’re able to have this buddy system, that sounds like a great plan. I would love to see that incorporated in other teams within contributor day, so that’s really good to hear.

Cathi: Yeah, because then we can follow up with each other afterward in the Slack channel on projects and the two of the ladies that I sort of buddied up with are now leading the design team. I think the design team has really done a lot this year. Well, with Gutenberg coming out I think a lot of designers got pulled onto that project a lot, too.

Tara: Great, that’s good to hear. I’m going to transition again and ask you another question that we like to ask everybody, which is about advice. If you can share with us some advice that you received, one piece or maybe two of things that people have shared with you and how you have incorporated that into your life, what it means for you?

Cathi: Well, I think I don’t have anything super profound to share but I will say, if you say you’re going to do something, you do it. If you can do that every day, say you’re going to do something and do it, then you’re pretty good. You’re going to manage your stress level pretty good. You’re going to get good feedback from the people around you. I think those are words to live by for sure.

Tara: Does that go for an internal dialogue as well as an external one?

Cathi: We have to be accountable to ourselves, too, yeah. I’m much better at the professional side of that, the external side than the internal because self-care is really, really difficult. With what we do, we’re always doing all these tasks and reaching and going further. We don’t always save enough time to take care of our internal selves. That’s something I really work hard at and struggle with at the same time.

Tara: Yeah, when you have your own business, there’s never nothing on your to-do list, there’s always something that has to be done. If it’s reconciling your bank account or updating your own website or creating a video for your website.

Cathi: You update your own website? That’s so awesome. [laughter]

Tara: It’s always on the list.

Cathi: Yeah. I walked this morning, I got my walk in. Even though it wasn’t quite as long, I tried to do that. I tried to immerse myself in nature and the beauty and the natural world for my mental and physical health on the daily basis. That’s my practice, that’s my meditation.

Tara: I like that advice and I’d like applying it to both conversations, both dialogues, with yourself and with others so thank you for sharing that.

Cathi: Sure.

Liam: We’ve got a little bit of time left and I just want to ask because we are human and I think while your advice is great, it’s one that a lot of us in time fail to achieve. How do you fix when you fail to deliver what you said you’re going to do? What does that look like? If the advice is, “Always do what you’re going to say you’re going to do.” And then you don’t because of life, what’s the next step?

Cathi: Well, I guess you apologize. Definitely don’t let it fester, just be accountable for that as well, immediately. Remedy it as best you can. Those are hard things to face up to because no one wants to not do what they say they’re going to do.

Tara: Yeah. I think also when you work for yourself, you’re accountable to your client for deadlines and things, but in my experience, deadlines are a little softer when you’re working for yourself with clients because often times, they don’t meet their deadlines of when they’re getting things to you. So I find in the times where something else has gotten in the way and the timeline has changed. First of all, clients aren’t sitting usually on the edge of their seat waiting for the design step that they haven’t put it on their calendar. So if you say, “Gosh, my week went crazy and I can’t get you that until next week.” That you’re not necessarily not doing it but you’re not doing it on time perhaps. It’s not as big of a deal as when perhaps you’re working through somebody else and they’re accountable to their client. Does that make sense?

Cathi: Yeah. My clients are waiting on the edge of their seats with their designs.

Tara: They are?

Cathi: Oh, yes. [laughs] And they pretty much always give me content on time. No, I lied about that. That’s not true at all. [laughter] But I think that– I learned this from collaborating with Jackie D’Elia, she sends a status update even if she didn’t get as far into the progress or far into the task as she thought, I’ve got a status update and I can take that to the client and let them know we’re progressing, this is where we’re at, and they really appreciate that. Even if you didn’t get it done as far as you thought you would be able to.

Liam: It comes back to that communication, doesn’t it?

Cathi: Yeah, everything seems to circle back to that. And when you work with friends– I have a client, I have a business partner– my studio, we do web design and graphic design and branding, but I also have a new business called Dots With Apps where we do apps for orthodontic practices using WordPress as a base. My partner’s an orthodontist and she’s a friend. We’re friends, we’re business partners, I’ve done her website for a practice and all this stuff. Now we’re in business together. We have to communicate five times better and as frequently as I would with a normal client or a partner, because we’re friends.

Liam: Absolutely. That’s a challenge. Communicating can be hard. Little things fest internally and then we, “Ah, I’m not going to bring that up to him.” And then eventually they don’t deserve to know it or– that’s a real challenge. This is a topic that I think could go on for hours. But alas, we are sadly, I’m afraid, out of time. Cathi, before we say goodbye to you, would you please let everyone know where they can find you online?

Cathi: Sure. I can be found on Twitter at @bethebreeze and my website Canddstudios.com.

Tara: Thanks so much for being here, Cathi.

Cathi: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Liam: Thanks for joining us, it was an absolute pleasure. Bye-bye.

Tara: 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.

Dan Beil has been working with WordPress since about 2009 and has loved every minute and seconds of it. He has been a freelancer, in-house developer, and remote employee.

Website | AddActionDan

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.

Liam: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 59.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Dan Beil. Dan has been working with WordPress since about 2009 and has loved every minute and seconds of it. He has been a freelancer, in-house developer, and remote employee. When he’s not coding, Dan spends time working on his house and playing with his two Siberian Huskies. Hey, Dan. Thanks for joining us.

Dan: Hey, thanks for having me.

Liam: Dan, It’s our pleasure. Appreciate it, thanks for making the time for us today. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, more than what Tara just shared, please?

Dan: Yeah, definitely. I’m born and raised in Minnesota, currently living in Minneapolis, and I love it. A fun fact about me is that I have not driven my car since 2016. Minneapolis is a pretty small city, pretty easy to get around with buses, and taxis, or Ubers, or Lyfts, or whatnot. That’s really nice, I’m about three miles south of downtown so always a bunch of fun stuff to do and good restaurants to eat at, and meetups and whatnot. It’s always fun.

Tara: I’ve heard great things about Minneapolis but I’ve never been. Was this a conscious, intentional decision not to drive a car there? Are you trying to be good to the environment? What’s your motivation for that?

Dan: To be honest, everything that I actually need, like a grocery store, a convenience store is within three blocks of my home. So I can just walk to them and grab whatever I need, which is nice. I have kind of a heavy-duty wheelbarrow that I can take to the hardware store to buy dog food or anything heavy.

Liam: I like that, that’s really cool. Let me ask you this, because I know if I was in your situation where I could afford logistically not to drive, I wouldn’t do anything to my car until I needed it. And then if I hadn’t driven it in 18 months, it wouldn’t start. Do you have it up on blocks, preserving the tires, and you drained the oil, disconnected the battery, and did all the prep work so that your car is ready to go when you need it?

Dan: You know what? It actually happened really unintentionally so no, I haven’t done any of that stuff. The battery’s dead, it won’t start right now, so I need to get a new battery for it, just in case the apocalypse happens and I need to-

Liam: – drive south in a hurry, right?

Dan: Yeah.

Liam: I was in Minneapolis for a couple of conferences, a couple of years in a row, and I have some relatives that live up, not in Minneapolis proper but greater Minneapolis. I was really surprised, we went to a fantastic restaurant and it was probably not far from where you live. Because I know that we were south of the downtown area and it was literally a very short row of retail shops in a suburban neighborhood and there was this really fantastic latino restaurant, right next to an antique store, and right next to something else. I was really surprised by the big city feel of the suburbs in the sense that in a big city, you’ll have all sorts of different shops, smack dab in the middle of a retail place. But in most suburbs, you have the strip malls and you have the big box stores out of the way. Is Minneapolis kind of generally like that or they intersperse kind of those, I’ll call them, cultural diamonds? Those nice little finds that you normally would get in the city but you might find it in the suburbs?

Dan: Yeah, I think so. My neighborhood is very, very mixed race, which I love. Because you run into all types of foods, and just different experiences on a daily basis. There’s a high African-American population, high Somali population, high Mexican population in my neighborhood, so you get all those cultures interacting together and the entrepreneurs that come along with that, whether it’s restaurants or stores or whatnot. I love that experience. I think that everybody should experience that at some point in their life if they haven’t.

Tara: Yeah, I’ve heard that about Minneapolis. It’s very culturally wealthy there. I’m glad that you live in a place where you can enjoy that. Dan, can you tell us a little bit about what you do with WordPress in Minneapolis? I think there’s a good community there for WordPress but are you involved in that? Tell us a little bit about your story and how you got involved with WordPress?

Dan: Definitely. It’s actually funny. I randomly went to my first WordPress meetup and I gave a talk about combining BuddyPress with s2Members.

Liam: Membership plugin, yep.

Dan: Yep. Which, by the way, is not an easy thing to do. I’m mostly a back-end developer. I also do HTML, CSS, Javascript for them as well. But Kiko Doran, if you’re familiar with him, happened to be–

Liam: Yep, that’s why I was in Minneapolis, going to the conferences that he and Josh put on.

Dan: Nice. He was in the audience and he was one of the lead organizers for WordCamp that year. After my presentation, he said, “Dan you have to give this talk at WordCamp.”, “Okay.” I gave the talk and went to the speaker dinner, met some people in the community that really encouraged me to continue speaking and doing stuff like that. Over the years, I’ve done about 13 to 15 talks, continued to be primarily a back-end developer, always a remote worker. I’ve done a lot of dead architecture stuff, a lot of custom post types.

Tara: Are you self-taught or did you study development in school? How did you find yourself doing development in the first place and finding WordPress?

Dan: That’s a great question, thank you. My formal education is actually in applied sociology. I actually did half of my master’s in sociology as well. I have a certificate in non-profit leadership. No formal education in coding, but through my bachelor years, I just kind of tinkered around with HTML and CSS and made little sites that never really did anything. Since then, I dropped out of my master’s program for various reasons, and I started playing poker full time for about eight months.

Tara: Wow, that’s really interesting.

Dan: Yeah. During the good times, I just walked the ground with three grand on me and not even care about it. During bad times, it would be 10 bucks. [laughter] It’s kind of a hard life to live well.

Tara: Yeah, you see it in movies, but it’s actually a real thing.

Dan: Yeah, no, that’s basically how it goes. But I met a lot of people. You go to the casino every day, you’re playing poker with the same people every day, you make friends and things like that. And one of them asked me to make a website for them. I think I charged him 500 bucks for the first website. Other people kind of found out and they started building network around being a developer. I started making more money building websites with WordPress than I was playing poker. That was kind of a pretty easy decision to make.

Liam: Let me ask you, were those initial WordPress builds, was that you doing child-teaming work or were you already at that point getting into customization, or were you just kind of website production where you find the team and maybe you tweet this and maybe you tweet that, but also you just put it together because you know how to do that. Where did you get started with WordPress?

Dan: At the beginning, a lot of it, I think, is a pretty typical story of installing a theme and doing some type of custom CSS work to make it work for them. I don’t think I even knew what a child team was at that point. It was a lot of implementation work, I guess I would say.

Liam: Cool. I imagine you probably hacked core at some point, that seems to be what all of us do when we get started, until it gets overwritten for the third time and we say, “Maybe we shouldn’t do that.

Dan: I’ve never hacked core. I have hacked themes.

Liam: Well, then you’re better than I, that’s for sure. I hacked both. [laughter] Dan, you’ve talked in the intro that you worked for agencies, you talked about working in freelance, that you’ve always worked as a remote employee. I wonder if you can just share your experience about maybe some of the plusses and some of the minuses of both freelancing versus in-housing always as a remote employee. Remote worker is the constant. What’s been the difference for you between the two, between freelancing and in-housing, and what’s worked and what hasn’t?

Dan: Yeah, that’s a great question. To start with freelancing, there’s an unknowable to freelancing. If a project wraps up and you don’t have another one lined up, you don’t really know what’s coming up. And that can be very stressful because you’re doing probably all the development, maybe some of the design, marketing yourself, doing your own taxes, basically running your own business by yourself. And most of those things, I actually don’t like doing. I want to be developing, I want to have client contact and have a say over how the project direction goes, which you don’t always get when you’re freelancing. When it comes to going in-house, all of that is lifted off your shoulders, on top of the fact that you get to work with a team– I’ve had the pleasure to work with [inaudible 22:25], get to know all of the partners at that company and many of the developers. You just learn so much more when you’re working with a team and going through official code reviews. I still joke with Joe Casabona about how he blocked my CSS because I didn’t put the properties in alphabetical order.

Liam: What do you mean he blocked it? He commented it out so it didn’t go into production? Because that sounds like Joe. [laughs] But in a good way, I love him.

Dan: No, definitely in a good way. Something goes through a formal code review and somebody else on the team picks it up and he says, “No, this is not going live until you make this change.” It’s kind of honor system. It was funny because I was actually his superior at the time.

Liam: So that group, that camaraderie, that cohort of learning, I get that. It’s very easy to get dependent on that in a good way. It’s like I’m banging my head against this bit of coal for two hours so I can ping somebody on Slack and, “Hey, Dan. Didn’t you do this last week or last month?”, “Oh, yeah. It’s a little bit different but if you think about it this way, you can get to where you need.”, “Thank you. Duh, why didn’t I think of that?” That’s really helpful. Let me walk you over to one of our more signature questions, if I can. We’ve talked a little bit about how you got into WordPress and do your career, we’ve talked about the different environments in which you’ve worked. I want to ask you about your definition of success. How would you define success? What is your personal or professional definition? Maybe it’s a combo of both.

Dan: I think it is a combination of both. My short answer would be personal happiness. You need to find that. Whether you find that through your profession or through work/life balance, as cliche as that is, it’s up to the individual. Being financially independent is obviously a step in the right direction but it’s not always possible for everyone. I wouldn’t necessarily include that in success, but I think it helps with finding that personal happiness.

Tara: Yeah, I think ‘money can’t buy you happiness’ is the cliche term. But certainly, if you are under a lot of financial stress, it’s hard to be happy. I think, yeah, having enough money to live on adds to that.

Liam: Yeah, I like to say money can’t buy happiness, but it can stave off unhappiness. It will never keep it away permanently but it holds it off. Dan, the personal happiness is a good one because it’s detailed enough to kind of really get to the heart of the matter, but it’s efficiently open to allow individuality to get it nailed into the specifics of what is personal happiness, what does that mean for Dan, what does that mean for Tara, what does that mean for Liam. At the risk of going deeper than maybe any of us are comfortable, maybe I’ll ask you what does personal happiness mean to you and if you’re okay with answering that, maybe I’ll ask you what is the single most important thing you do every day to achieve or maintain that personal happiness?

Dan: I step away from the keyboard and I think that that’s important because developers and designers often get so laser-focused on a problem that they don’t see the big picture. It’s like standing too close to an elephant, you can’t see it’s an elephant. Taking time away is very important for me. For better or worse, I’m a smoker so about once an hour, I go outside and have a smoke. It’s kind of easy to walk around my backyard, walk in circles with my dogs and maybe contemplate a problem that I’m trying to code. Rather than trying to code fast, I try to code right. That’s one thing that helps me, just taking the time away, checking out at 5:00 or 4:00 PM or whatever and just zoning out and watching TV, doing whatever, just not coding.

Liam: Giving yourself the opportunity to get perspective?

Dan: Right, right.

Liam: Yeah, I think that’s valuable. I think it is not necessarily just for the design or development but life. It’s easy to lose the forest for the trees and to meet this deadline and get this task done, clean this room in our home, and get ready for this engagement, forget that the purpose of life is more than meeting deadlines and targets and milestones.

Dan: Yeah, I agree. I think one of the most important things is, if you’re working with a team, you need to be in a– I heard this phrase from Aaron O’Neal, a non-blaming environment. As a developer, if something goes wrong, and especially if it goes in code review, it’s the company’s fault, it’s not the developer’s fault.

Tara: Yeah. I think that’s ‘the buck stops here’ type of idea. It’s also hard if you’re the one who’s made the mistake to feel– you’re still part of the team whether you’re making a mistake or not. That’s where your pausing idea comes into play as well, I think, where you kind of have to stop and take a step back and be gentle to yourself and other people. Sometimes when you’re stressed out and in a rush and a flurry, it’s easy to lay blame or lay blame on yourself or other people. That’s a very good point.

Liam: Dan, let me ask you this then, within the world of back-end development, what’s your favorite thing to do?

Dan: I really love two things. One, data migration.

Liam: Wow, really?

Dan: Yeah. And data architecture.

Liam: Data architecture I get. I can see why that’s appealing. Talk to me about data migration? I get that it’s a challenge and there’s a lot of hurdles there but that’s a mixture of massive headaches and little hiccups, and little hiccups kind of at every bend and especially everybody configures their WordPress site a little bit differently. Especially if you’re working on more complex builds and how we’re going to move it into this. Talk to me about that, what about that migration process, those challenges works for your brain, works for your soul, works for you? What brings you happiness?

Dan: It’s funny. When I was interviewing for web-dev studios, Brad Williams, that was the first time he ever heard a developer say that. And as it turns out, my personal pet project is a WP-CLI JSON migration script because I got bored and I decided to write it. I got sick of asking clients for a database hold or something. If the client happened to leave the API open, I could just hit their site and get everything. It just kind of spiraled out of control and I learned more and more about, one, WP-CLI, and two, about the JSON API. I just kept going, and going, and going. It’s just a really interesting problem to solve because as you noted, everything’s a little bit different. I’ve actually kind of paused my work on it while I’m waiting for Gutenberg to drop because I have no idea how they’re going to deal with metadata.

Liam: You’re not going to get any insight about that on this show, I’m afraid.

Tara: Yeah, sorry.

Dan: I don’t think anyone knows how they’re going to deal with metadata at this point.

Liam: They’ve got a few more weeks before 5.0 comes out to get that all resolved. Yeah, I like that, that no mountain is the same and you just never know what you’re going to find. You can never know too much, there’s always going to be some previous developer who’s built something that you’ve never seen before that you’ve got to figure out how to connect their data to yours or grab their data. That’s pretty cool.

Dan: Yeah. And it’s pretty common that no migration goes correct the first time.

Tara: Yeah, you have to be prepared for that. I have a question for you, I want to talk a little bit going back to the idea of working with a team and how to do that. I think that’s something that is a learning curve in and of itself. I work mostly by myself, many people we’ve had on our show work for themselves or by themselves. Some work on teams. I’m always curious about how you learn that skill if your background was not in development, you taught yourself that. Having worked on a team and worked for yourself, what’s your preference and what’s your take on working on a team versus working by yourself.

Dan: I vastly prefer to work with a team. Because I think that there are things that I’m not good at. I don’t do Backbone, I don’t do Angular, I don’t do front-end Javascript framework and stuff like that. Being able to assemble a team where people can have different specialties and kind of lean on each other when they’re needed I think makes a project so much better, especially when you’re working at scale.

Tara: Yeah, I can see that. There’s also a camaraderie, too, I’ve seen. There’s a lot of talk about mental health in our community and sort of the isolation and loneliness that can come with working alone that I imagine, even if you’re working remotely. If you’re on a team, you’re still in touch with people on a regular basis. Is that true?

Dan: Yeah, absolutely. All of the teams that I’ve been on or led have had a private Slack channel where we can just chop it out and be ourselves. I think that’s important to have some type of human interaction on a day-to-day basis, even if it’s only over Slack or a Zoom call or whatnot.

Liam: Yeah, the human interaction is not to be taken lightly or to be minimized. It’s pretty valuable. Speaking of human interaction, let me ask you another one of our signature questions, Dan. What is the single most valuable piece of advice that you have ever received and implemented in your life? That advice can be personal, it can be professional, maybe it’s a mix of both. What has somebody told you that you like and you implemented successfully? And I stump them on that one. You’re thinking.

Dan: Yeah, I’m thinking.

Tara: Maybe it has to do something with ‘know when to hold them, know when to fold them’ kind of thing? [laughter]

Liam: Tara, you win the podcast show today. Yes, the gambler rides again.

Dan: I think I would say that someone once told me that I am not my code. It just is. It’s not personal, it’s not anything. It’s just something I wrote but it is not me. If somebody critiques it or says something, it’s not a personal attack on me. It’s just code.

Tara: I like that. I’m very self-conscious person so I think that when you’re writing code and it’s something that people can view and look at, it’d be very easy to define yourself that way. That’s great advice. Thanks for sharing that.

Liam: Just to explore that a little bit. If we think about anything we do in life, we have good days and we have bad days, we have focused days and we have ‘squirrel, squirrel, squirrel’ days. And because of the way our society works, we spend the bulk of our awake day working that inevitably whether we write code, or we write poetry, or we paint walls, or we fix cars, we have some days where it’s not up to snuff but it still has to get done and it’s the best we did that day. And I think separating our actions from who we are is hugely important because they are reflective of us, they’re indicative of who we are, but they’re absolutely not who we are. In the simplicity of, “I am not my code.” It’s really brilliant. I think it goes back to that personal happiness definition of success where it’s succinct enough as to be very clear what you mean, but open enough as to be applicable to people in all walks of life. That’s great advice. Whoever gave you that advice, thank you.

Tara: Yep.

Liam: Dan, we’ve got about a minute or so left, maybe a couple of minutes. I wonder if you can talk about your biggest challenge to date? You’ve talked about the challenges and how you like the data migration, you’ve talked about working with the team, you’ve talked about working outside of a team as a freelancer. Maybe if you just spend maybe a minute or so talking about what’s been your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it or how are you working on it if it’s an ongoing challenge for you?

Dan: I think professionally the biggest challenge I went through was when I took my first in-house job. I had push access to the New York Post on my third day which really scared me. Just down the tangent, I was working on a PC at the time so I pulled the repo down, do like a tiny CSS fix, try to push the repo back up. And because I was on a PC, I turned the entire project rep. It said everything changed.

Liam: Oh, snap.

Dan: This is a very large GIP site.

Tara: Wow.

Dan: Yeah. I had VIP access on my third day of work, which was awesome. So I actually sent the repo over to somebody that was on a Mac and everything was fine. It was just one CSS file, it was file-ending differences that SPN picked up. And that terrified me, I thought I was getting fired. The company flew me out to New York, I’m working right next to them. If I get fired, are they going to pay for my plane ticket home? I don’t–

Liam: I can only imagine what your stress levels were.

Dan: Yeah. Something snapped in me after that and it kind of goes back to the ‘you are not your code’ idea that everyone makes mistakes, and if you make a mistake, just raise your hand and say, “Who knows how to fix this?” You own it, you hope you’re in a non-blaming environment, and you hope somebody knows what went wrong.

Liam: That’s great. I love that. I was going to mention the non-blaming environment because in order to feel safe enough to say, “Hey, guess what I did?” You need to know that you’re not going to get beaten or chastized unnecessarily for that.

Dan: Yeah. I think that having somehow learned that philosophy or those philosophies is kind of the answer to your question.

Liam: That’s a good answer, I like that. With that, I’m going to go ahead and wrap this up because we are out of time. But Dan, before we say goodbye to you, let me ask you to share with us and with our listeners where people can find you online, please?

Dan: Yeah, you can find me online at Addactiondan.me and on Twitter at @add_action_dan, which is where I spend most of my time.

Tara: Thank you. Thanks so much for joining us today, Dan. I really appreciate having you on and getting to know you.

Dan: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Liam: Thanks, Dan. Appreciate your time today out here in the hallway. Have a great afternoon.

Tara: 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.

Andy Fragen is a WordPress hacker and hobbyist. He’s an acute care surgeon who is also self-taught programmer – doing this for fun while trying to solve problems.

Website | TheFragens.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 I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Andy Fragan. Andy is a WordPress hacker and hobbyist. He’s a self-taught programmer doing this for fun while trying to solve problems. Oh yeah, and his day job is an acute care surgeon. Hi Andy, welcome to Hallway Chats.

Andy: Hi, Tara.

Liam: Hey Andy. Thanks for joining us.

Andy: Thank you.

Liam: You’re welcome. Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, please?

Andy: I live in Palm Springs, California where I grew up. I do the WordPress stuff for fun. My day job is an acute care surgeon. I work in a local hospital here doing acute care surgery. I have spent my time as a kind of a recovering trauma surgeon for the last 10 years or so and recently stopped that, I may end up getting back into that again, but we’ll see. I generally make WordPress plugins and stuff to solve problems with my own and it just kind of led me to be involved with community. I have met a lot of people both online and in person. A couple of years ago, I decided that in order to kind of step up my game and meet more people on the inside, I started becoming a sponsor for my local area WordCamps. I’ve been a sponsor for WordCamp Orange County, WordCamp Los Angeles, WordCamp San Diego, and WordCamp Phoenix in the last several years.

Tara: A sponsor meaning just as yourself, a personal sponsor?

Andy: Well, I kind of sponsor under the name of the plugin which I’ve done more.

Tara: Okay. Let’s back up a bit and talk about how a surgeon starts to become a WordPress aficionado, how did that come about?

Andy: I had my first online account that I used to have to go through as a SLIP account, later came PPP. This was probably around ’91 or so, if anybody remembers that far back. I’ve got my first Macintosh computer when I graduated from college in 1985, and sided with Macintoshes ever since. For a long time, I was using a software called Radio UserLand. It had an object-oriented database in the back-end but produced static HTML file. I’ve written a couple– it’s scripting language is very similar to Apple script. I’ve written a couple of– I kind of don’t know what they’re called anymore. Modules, plugins, whatever, for that. One of the first ones was to enable the user to edit their post and markdown. As that kind of went by the wayside, I pulled myself out. This was kind of around 2007 in Zen Garden days and I saw WordPress had a lot of traction. I exported, imported and been staying in WordPress ever since, mostly playing with back-end because I don’t blog that often. Bad for SEO, I know.

Tara: [laughs] Have you always been interested in technology and computers and that type of thing? I would think that dissecting, cutting into people is a very different interest than coding. Where does that come from?

Andy: I’ve always been coding. I took my first computer programming class in college, clearly before becoming a surgeon. But I’m looking at it as just a different way of problem-solving. You get to be creative, you get to figure things out. The computers only ever do– well, only supposedly ever do what you tell them to do, and it makes it a bit more interesting. The kind of parallel to surgery is that a lot of it’s problem-solving and a lot of it is problem-solving on your feet. You have to do it right then and right there.

Tara: Yeah.

Liam: Andy, it’s interesting that you got into computers when you were younger and in college, and taking programming and then pursuit a career in surgery. And then around ’07, you were coming back to look at coding and you discovered WordPress and the like. Were you coming back to coding– were you trying to market your practice? Were you looking for a hobby on the side? What was the impetus to look back at what’s the best coding situation for the challenges you were facing?

Andy: Actually, I did sort of come back to coding to market my practice a little, but I was using an application called VoodooPad which had a templating system. It was before I found WordPress, and you could script it in Lua. I had no idea about Lua but I did manage to figure out a couple of things in it. I basically hand-coded a static website out of it. It was very similar to Radio UserLand in that it was template system that produced static HTML files that you FTP and upload. So I learned CSS, I learned HTML.

Tara: I’m pretty much in awe of the fact that you do this alongside being a surgeon so I’m going to talk a little bit more about that and maybe the relationship between the two because I find it really interesting. I have often said to my family and myself when they’re frustrated or I’m frustrated, by how much attention I’m giving my clients and how much urgency with which I respond. I often say, “I’m not a brain surgeon, I’m not saving lives with my website. I don’t really have to reply right away.” In your case, you have a day job where you actually do save people’s lives. For you, I’m just wondering how WordPress fits in with that. Are you doing work for clients with your plugin, or how do you relate the two together in terms of hobby and business if you’re doing WordPress as a business?

Andy: It’s all hobby, I don’t monetize it in any real way, shape, or form. So at times, I’ve been asked if there’s a tip jar I have, a donate button on plugins and links that I have. I know too many brain surgeons, I have to say it’s not rocket science.

Tara: [laughs] Okay, thanks for that reality. That’s good to know. I imagine keeping things in perspective when your website goes down or somebody finds a bug with your plugin or something like that, do you relate that to the gravity with which your day job needs to be approached, I guess?

Andy: Yes and no. I can usually tell if I’m going to white-screen something right away, and god, I feel really bad if I’m doing that. I try to get those things fixed right away. The first plugins I ever coded, I was cowboy-coding on my test server on an iPad from the Carribean at my in-laws. That was kind of the first release of The Event Calendar Category Colors plugin.

Liam: Should I ask if that was a couple of holiday cocktails in, too?

Andy: No, it wasn’t. Fortunately, the software on the iPad was such that I could FFTP into the server as well so I could fix whatever I broke right away. I know I really broke it when I white-screened it.

Liam: I think we’ve all been there too, right?

Andy: Starting with an IDE has been tremendous, just speed increases and being able to code and do stuff. X Debug] has been phenomenal, figuring out how to use that.

Liam: Andy, I’m going to circle us around to one of our more pivotal signature questions here and I’m going to ask you about your definition of success and whether or not you have a personal definition, maybe a professional definition, maybe something that’s a combination of both. How would you define success?

Andy: Personally, I think, obviously, we all define our own successes. I’m not sure how we really think of ourselves as successful, because usually, you don’t say, “I’m successful.” Depending on who you are, maybe you do, but usually, other people tell you or they tell other people, “Yes, that person is successful.” I’m looking at it as I do what I do and I have enough time and means to be able to do the things that I enjoy.

Liam: That’s direct. I like that.

Andy: Surgeon.

Tara: Yeah. [laughs]

Liam: When you shared that you do acute care surgery, is there a sub-specialty of that or if somebody comes into the acute care center, regardless of the need, you’re the surgeon to take care of it? How does that work?

Andy: What it basically means it’s that it’s mostly stuff that comes to the ER. There’s a smaller elective practice, most of it’s what comes to the ER. For a good chunk of last 12 years or so, I was doing trauma and acute care surgery. That was basically entire non-elective practice. I found that acute care, just the stuff that comes to the ER better, more challenging, fun.

Liam: Are you attached to a hospital then, and not in a separate surgery center, right? Because if they’re in the ER, they’re not going to ship them over to you? You operate out of a hospital or two?

Andy: Yeah, I operate out of a hospital. Local hospital here, is Desert Regional Medical Center. It’s part of the Tenet Healthcare. They run it. I have held quite a number of jobs and positions in the last decade or so at the hospital, including just coming off a stint as a chief of staff.

Liam: Yeah, that’s a good job title. Let me ask you this, and I’ll steer back towards WordPress. You mentioned that you were digging into WordPress and you found it as a useful tool. And then as you began to use it more, you discovered WordCamps and thought, “Maybe I’ll go to one of those and see what that’s all about.” Talk to us about that, how did that process evolve for you?

Andy: First WordCamp I went to was Orange County in 2014. I took my son, who is now 23, who is sort of in the business but not quite. The pre-text was I took my kids so that my wife wouldn’t yell at me and allow me to go.

Liam: Well played.

Andy: And the standard deal I have is that I can go to any WordCamp I can drive to, which kind of limits me to Southern California.

Liam: Well, how far can you push that? Because technically, you could go to Lima, Peru and still drive. It would take you for a while.

Andy: It’s hard to get there for a weekend, though.

Liam: Well, to get there and back in a weekend is tough.

Andy: Well, okay. It’s also one of those, it’s like, you’ve got to be able to leave Friday and come back Sunday, right?

Liam: Yeah, fair enough. Go ahead, sorry. I got us sidetracked. You were saying?

Andy: So I went and I met a lot of people. A lot of people that you see on Twitter, you see on WordPress Slack.

Liam: I don’t know when that started, but yeah.

Andy: And just in core looking at things, it was a lot of fun. That’s when I kind of realized, “Hey, if I’m ever going to kind of get more involved–” They didn’t really have WordPress meetups locally, and the only way I would be able to do it is to kind of become a sponsor and show up and then be the one talking. I’ve given several WordCamp talks over the years, too, I think about three years or so, it’s been fun.

Liam: Yeah, that’s neat. I think that’s one of the best things I like about WordCamps too is meeting the people. The Twitter people, or the GitHub people, or the Slack people that we engage with over the internet, and to get to know them beyond their avatar and their sayings online.

Andy: GitHub’s amazing for that stuff. Before, when I was doing stuff, before I put it up on GitHub, it was just like, okay, I’d be doing things and put it there. I think the first plugin that I wrote was The Category Colors plugin. After I put it up on GitHub, I got a response from one of the guys who works for Modern Tribe to help me out with it.

Liam: That’s pretty cool, wasn’t it?

Andy: It’s been very cool. Actually, they came down for some– I haven’t met most of them because they’re all remote and I don’t think any of them are in Southern California. But they invited me out to dinner when they were down near LA for some meeting, so I drove in to come hang with them for a little bit.

Liam: That’s pretty cool. Within the WordPress community, or the WordPress environment, you’re writing plugins, you’re doing some code, you’re solving some problems, what’s your favorite thing to do about that? Is it to expand on a plugin that you’ve got and check in more functionality and watch it grow to see what the community does with your plugin? Is it troubleshooting? When you’re unwinding in your hobby, what do you like to do most?

Andy: I like to make sure it works.

Liam: Good call. [laughs]

Andy: It depends on where the plugin is. I recently put out a rather larger version update to the GitHub Updater plugin, made it much more modular, made it much more able to kind of peel off parts if I so desire to maybe strip it down into two different plugins to be able to put part of it in the repository and part of it not. Because originally when I wrote it, I submitted it to the repo and was denied because, essentially, they didn’t want to promote outside repository. It wasn’t against the guidelines at times but I think it is now since the guidelines have been rewritten. It led to very interesting conversations, very professional conversations with the plugin teams. I had great email interactions with Mika Epstein, Pippin Williamson and with Otto. I actually met Pippin and Mika in real life at various WordCamps and had mailed with them and stuff. They’re great people.

Liam: You know, they are. You know what? I’m remiss at not asking you sooner. Tell us about what plugins you have? You’re mentioning them and you’re mentioning them sometimes by name. But if you could just– I think you said you had three or four. If you could just name them and tell us a little bit about what they do, that would be great?

Andy: There’s a number of them that deal with the event calendar. The most lively used one is The Event Calendar Category Colors, it has probably about 6000 active installs and it’s been downloaded over a hundred thousand times give or take. There’s a couple of other smaller event calendar plugins. One as kind of an alarm feature to the event. If you subscribe to the feed or subscribe to it, it will put up the alarm on your phone.

Liam: Cool.

Andy: Another plugin fixes the exported URL through using Outlook. I wrote one for the second WordCamp Orange County Plugin-A-Palooza because it filled a need I had, just to embed PDF into a webpage and called it Web PDF Viewer. I thought it was great but there were like at least 400 downloads by the time that the Plugin-A-Palooza came around, which means that it only had been out for a couple of months because it’s like from March to June.

Tara: Cool.

Andy: I kept that updated and updated things. As I found either errors or I found better ways to improve it. The GitHub Updater, I’m actually on my fifth-year anniversary of its first commit to that. It’s changed tremendously, to the point where I probably ought to rebrand it as just Git Updater because it’s for GitHub, and BitBucket, and GitLab, Gitea.

Liam: How does that work? Is that if you’re editing from within the theme editor in the dashboard, it can push it to your repo?

Andy: If you have a plugin or a theme that you’re developing and you keep it in GitHub, let’s just stick to GitHub at the moment, you keep it in GitHub, when you push a version change or a release or something like that, if you add a single header to the file, and someone is running my plugin, they will see an update. If they– depending on their site, if they want to, they can also create a webhook to have it update automatically.

Liam: Okay, it’s for individuals running themes to know when the master theme, if you will, has been updated?

Andy: The original idea was that the update would just show up in the plugins or themes page or on the update page. It’s like any other other plugin that came out of the dot.org repository.

Tara: Okay. I’m going to move away from tech for a minute, maybe we’ll jump right back in and I suspect it might because I can tell this is a passion and your brain was always turned on. What would you say is the most important thing that you do every day towards this idea of success and doing what you enjoy?

Andy: I can’t say get up and drink coffee?

Tara: You can, sure. That is absolutely a valid answer, for sure.

Andy: Honestly, you get up, you jump in the shower, you put on some clothes, and you get to work, whatever that work may be. Whether it’s going to the hospital, seeing patients, getting called by the ER in the middle of the night and crawling out of bed and running in there, or not. Coffee, of course, is part of it no matter what time of day it is.

Tara: Yeah, I’ve got some here myself. Because you’re not monetizing your WordPress work and it’s something that you love and are doing as a hobby, do you set goals for yourself for what you want to accomplish and what you want to learn, or has it just sort of been an organic process that you’ve just kind of moved, progressed from one thing to the next. Because obviously, the type of code you’re talking about, some of which I don’t even know what it is, takes a lot of learning. So you’ve committed time to that. Do you spread out goals for that? How does that work?

Andy: New things come up in the world. All the new PHP and things like that. Yes, I have gone kind of more in taking efforts to learn what that is and how it works. One of the first programming classes I took was in Pascal and Pascal was subroutines and routines, it feels very similar to an object-oriented programming method. There’s still things that I need to learn how to do. Write UNIX tests, Javascript, I kind of faked my way through some Javascript just enough to figure things out but I haven’t really spent any time learning it.

Tara: Is that a goal that you have? Do you keep a list of things that you want to do or do you just kind of–?

Andy: I have a list of some things that I want to do. They’re either feature things to add or they are just kind of longer-term ‘learn Javascript’ kind of goals.

Tara: Right. And when you’re not behind a computer screen or in your scrubs, what other kinds of things do you do for fun? I’m almost afraid to ask this question. [laughs]

Andy: Chicken. I hang out with my wife and kids a lot. My son is 23, my daughter’s 17. They’re both living at home although my wife and daughter are away on vacation right now, so it’s good to be my kids and my wife in the summertime. [laughter] And I’m here authentically working.

Tara: Right. Are either of your kids interested in medicine or technology programming?

Andy: No. Technology yes, medicine no. I have successfully scared them clear of that, I think.

Liam: Deliberately or just coincidentally?

Andy: Sort of deliberately. I don’t think it’s practice like it used to be, I love it and I enjoy it and I have a good time, but it is certainly there are a tremendous number of rules, policies, procedures, law that it’s becoming less and less fun at times and I can certainly see where in the future that could be problematic.

Tara: Yeah.

Liam: You’re certainly not the first medical professional to have expressed that opinion to me that there’s value in some rules and regulations. If people are just doing whatever they want, that’s a problem. But when it goes to the point where it becomes difficult to practice medicine because of the rules and regulation, that’s another problem, isn’t it?

Andy: Yeah. You can just look at the difficult– I can see somebody and take them to the operating room and make them better, and that’s great. And then if I haven’t documented everything properly according to the federal government, I may not get paid for it. Medicine is one of these very few activities where you get reimbursed sometimes much after you have provided the service.

Tara: Right. As patients, we don’t think about it from that perspective very often. We think more about what our insurance is going to cover and we don’t think about maybe when our provider is going to be paid or how much they’re getting paid.

Andy: And I’ll also tell you that having the patient, and I’m a patient too, having the patient not be directly responsible for paying the person who’s providing the care is an interesting process.

Liam: I mean, we can get really carried away and get into all sorts of insurance things here, but that’s something I’ve long wondered about is the disconnect. And you wouldn’t go into the grocery store and say, “I want a loaf of bread, four eggs, milk, and some bacon, and that person over there will pay for it.”

Tara: Right.

Andy: “And that person over there will pay 78% of what you’re charging for it.” [laughter]

Liam: Andy, let me ask you another one of our big signature questions here, and it has to do with advice. I wonder if you’ll share with us the single most valuable piece of advice that you have received and implemented in your life? That can be personal advice, professional advice, maybe a mix.

Andy: Given or received. Received?

Liam: Yep, what did somebody tell you that made a big difference in your life?

Andy: When in doubt, just go see the patient.

Tara: Does that apply to your code too? [laughs] Or is it life in general? I guess your family. It could apply to everything, right?

Andy: Fundamentally, I guess you can break it down if you want to be more general about it. Don’t always take other people’s words for things. Check it yourself, make sure you investigate it yourself to figure out what the problem really is. We all get advice and we all get information from lots of places. One of the things I’ve learned very apparently when I was chief of staff is that there are always two sides to every issue and problem. The vast majority of what I felt like when I was chief of staff was the kindergarten teachers because all the little kids were getting in fights and I would have to be the referee.

Tara: Yeah, communication is really important. I think that’s the essence of that advice.

Liam: I suppose it also ties into an impates to not just communicate but also to not be afraid to go and have those difficult conversations. Not in a sense that the patient is going to mind if a doctor comes in and says, “Can you tell me more specifically?” But maybe with your colleagues, they’ll say, “Hey Andy, I already told you they have this or they have that.” And the risk and to reputation and to collegial camaraderie of, “It’s not that I don’t believe you or I don’t trust you, I just need to hear it from them to make sure that I’m understanding it in a correct way.” That can be a challenge, can’t it?

Andy: Especially if they’re not correct, yes.

Liam: [laughs] Yes, yes. And learn to tell people that they’re not correct in a way that is respectful and still doesn’t disrupt the teamwork.

Andy: Because usually, I’m a consultant. People are coming to me for my opinion about something and they’re coming at it from a different perspective. So while we both have our different issues and perspective, we have to figure out what’s the right thing for the patient.

Tara: I was going to bring up something I will probably going to run out of time before I get into this conversation, but this whole idea of communicating in general– but I listened to a podcast recently where Alan Alda was the guest and he has this whole thing about communicating in– this was specific to medical field actually, come to think of it, about the definition of communication. That we think about talking is not communication, that’s a two-way street. Anyway, he has a really interesting perspective on it. I don’t know if you’re familiar about what I’m talking about.

Andy: I’m not but I will tell you I talk all the time to people about very technical things and they are not very technical. One of the things I have to make sure is that they understand what I’m saying. In the computer parlance, it’s very much, tell me like I’m five, or explain it to my rubber duck.

Tara: Yeah, I think that was the essence of what he was saying, yeah.

Andy: Communication’s probably more about listening than speaking.

Tara: Yes, I like that combination of the two.

Liam: Absolutely. And I would love to keep communicating but we are out of time here. Andy, before we say goodbye to you, I’ll ask you to share with us where people can find you online, please?

Andy: They can find me on Twitter at @andyfragan, at my website where I publish occasionally at Thefragens.com or on GitHub, my user is afragan.

Liam: Excellent, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been an absolute pleasure. We can go on for hours here.

Tara: Thank you, Andy. Thanks for joining us and thanks for all you do in the world and general.

Andy: You are both quite welcome. Thank you very much for having me.

Tara: Have a great day.

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.

Josh Gellock is the SEO consultant at Expander Digital, an SEO studio he founded in 2014. Through his business, Josh helps other businesses improve their search visibility. When he’s not meeting with clients, you can find him biking on trails or fishing on the lake.

Company Website | expanderdigital.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 I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Josh Gellock. Josh is the SEO consultant at Expander Digital, an SEO studio he founded in 2014. Through his business, Josh helps other businesses improve their search visibility. When he’s not meeting with clients, you can find him biking on trails or fishing on the lake. Hi, Josh. Welcome to Hallway Chats.

Josh: Thanks for having me, guys.

Liam: It’s our pleasure, Josh. Thanks for joining us out here. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, please?

Josh: Yeah. So I’m a dad, I have three kids. I have two daughters and a son, and that’s kind of where life starts for me. My kids are kind of my world, like any other parent. Like Tara mentioned there, I enjoy mountain biking quite a bit, and hiking. I’ve had the opportunity to do some trail work up here in the valley. So I helped go out and do some maintenance on some of the parks here. I enjoyed that quite a bit, I like being out in nature. Yeah, I’m a huge Voltron fan. I’m a child of the ’80s, so all those nostalgic shows that are coming back and finding a resurgence, I’m really enjoying that. My kids and I, we like to binge Voltron quite a bit. [laughs]

Tara: I am not familiar with that one. I’m married to a big sci-fi fan, that sounds like a sci-fi show that I’ve not heard of. Is it?

Josh: I’d put it in sci-fi, yeah. It’s got elements of sci-fi, yeah.

Tara: Does it takes place in space?

Josh: It does.

Tara: With the name like Voltron, that sounds like it would take place in space. Alright, that’s an ’80s program I’m not familiar with, cool. And your kids like it?

Josh: Yeah. They just put out season six, Netflix just put out season six, and we just got done wrapping that up. Yeah, we are really excited about season seven. Netflix has made this– they put out a commitment to a certain amount of episodes and we’re kind of getting towards the end, so we’re really excited to see where they go with it. It’s one of our favorite things to do. Typically, when a new season comes out, we’ll order some pizza and we’ll gather around the coffee table and just chill out and hang out and watch the whole season for the whole night. It’s one of our favorite things to do.

Tara: Excellent. I enjoy watching things on Netflix and TV as well and do the same. That’s my main source of entertainment. We are in the same camp there.

Liam: On a vein of Netflix, I’d recommend against binge-watching the entire season of– it’s a mob–

Tara: The Sopranos?

Liam: Yeah. I did that one weekend with my wife and then by Sunday dinner, it was, “Pass the, bleep, bleep, salt please?”, [laughter], “Get your, bleep, bleep, salt.” [laughter]

Tara: Yeah, that’s a pretty intense show.

Liam: That’s just a word of warning, a bit of caution. I can’t imagine Voltron has that concern. [laughs]

Josh: No. We won’t have that kind of stuff going on, but yeah, I didn’t know Sopranos was on Netflix. I’ll have to check that out.

Liam: I think it might have been back on DVD. This was a long, long time ago.

Josh: Okay. I never got a chance to watch that one.

Tara: That’s not the one to watch with your kids, for sure.

Josh: Definitely not. [laughs]

Liam: No.

Tara: Josh, tell us about the Valley you mentioned?

Josh: Yeah, I am one of the co-organizers of the Lehigh Valley WordPress meetup, and Kim Kramer, he’s an organizer, and Kim White as well. The Valley is interesting, we have three cities that make it up Allentown,, Bethlehem and Easton. It’s been interesting to watch the Valley kind of go from this region where Bethlehem still was kind of the icon here for so many years. Many years ago, it got shut down. There’s sort of a transition happening here in the Valley where we’re trying to rediscover ourselves. It’s been really interesting to watch as people take on different careers that are more web-focused to watch out group kind of grow, and to see where different people are at. We have a lot of new people that are very new to WordPress when they come to the meetup. I would say probably more new people than regular people. It’s really cool to be a part of that and to kind of help people along their journey. But the Valley is great, I love it honestly because of the mountain biking. This is some of the best trails in Pensylvania, or on the east side of Pensylvania. It’s just a lot of family fun activities to do. We have a lot of movies in the park, there’s a lot of, I think, historical things around here, they are really cool to check out. There’s a lot of history in the valley. But then it’s just the northeastern United States, just a lot of history. We like doing stuff like that. But yeah, I don’t know, it’s got some big city elements but not too much.

Liam: It’s like a neat little corner of the world, isn’t it?

Josh: It is, it has its own quirks, like any place.

Liam: I’m about 90 minutes away from there and I’ve been up to Lehigh Valley WordPress meetup group and up to the WordCamp there. I did went to a Maker Faire not too many years ago up in Lehigh Valley, and did some co-working up at one of the old warehouses or factories that’s been repurposed by the economic development counsel up there. I want to ask you just briefly, where do you find trail maps? Because I just got my mountain bike out of the shop after about nine years of not riding it, and I’m about to buy a bike rack for the car. Where do you find your trails, and preferably ones that are safe for a guy with a really bad back?

Josh: Yeah. There’s a couple of resources that are online. I’d say Mtbproject.com, I think that’s what it is, Mtbproject.com. But you can go to Bikevmb.com, Bike VMB is Valley Mountain Bikers, which is an organization that I’ve been a part of in the past. On the website, you can find maps, you can find trail days where you can go and help with maintenance and things like that. But they have maps for most of the systems that are in the valley, and if you don’t have one, then usually someone can have one down for you.

Tara: Cool. Let me bring it back to WordPress for a minute. I would like to ask you a little bit more, I’m really curious about the career transition that you mentioned. As you also mentioned, where you live is sort of notoriously steel country. We hear a lot in the news about transitioning from those types of jobs to other jobs. I’m just wondering what you’re seeing there if you’ve met a number of people who used to work in steel plants and then now are exploring tech careers and going to your meetup?

Josh: The plant closed down a while ago but I think just in general, people in the valley, it was sort of this place that didn’t really have an identity for a long time. Now it’s sort of becoming this tech-focused and entertainment-focused kind of place. I think some people when the plant closed, they went with it, there was a different place down south that some of them went there, but some of them stayed behind. I think, especially here, a lot of people were trying to get to more of those tech-focused jobs. It’s really interesting to hear about some of the challenges that they’re faced with. We have some people who are starting new businesses, and they’re using WordPress. Some of them are already part of the business. Maybe the business is going through tough times and they got WordPress dumped on them. Like, “Hey, you’re going to take care of our website now. We had someone before and we know that you don’t know anything, but here you go, make it happen.” That’s challenging, those are real challenges and those are some of the people that are coming to our meetups and asking really great questions and trying to learn more about WordPress and more about where it’s going, lots of where it’s going. And now they can just be better at it.

Tara: Yeah, what a great transition that your area is making, and the community that’s there to support that shows that it’s having an impact. These people have found your meetup and they’re coming there and asking questions and then, hopefully, telling other people about it as well. Yeah, that’s cool, very cool. I’m going to ask you another question that we ask everyone. Josh, it’s time for the success question. Can you tell us a little bit about your view of success, what your definition of that is and how you implement that in your life?

Josh: Sure. I knew this one was coming because I hear you guys ask everybody this question, and it’s such a good one.

Tara: It’s not that easy to answer, in fact. It’s good that you thought about it beforehand but you’ll still find it hard probably.

Josh: It is, it’s tough because I think success varies from person to person. For me, I know that who I am as a person is I like helping people, I like encouraging people. I feel like I’m so privileged to be able to work with SEO because that’s really what it’s about. It is very much a service-focused activity. You’re really trying to help people achieve certain goals and trying to, I think anyway– lots of the people I talk to, whether I’m speaking at a WordCamp or giving a talk at a meetup or just out and about, having a conversation about a website, I feel like SEO is like this thing that a lot of people struggle to understand. It’s so satisfying for me and it makes me happy to be able to sit down and have a conversation whether I’m in the Happiness Bar or out having coffee with someone, and just kind of felt them understand it. It’s so cool I think, and this is kind of where success comes for me, is when you can sort of see this lightbulb go off for them, as you’re talking with them about things and you can start to see them start to understand what you’re explaining. I just think that for me, that’s very, very rewarding. My clients are happy, I’m happy. And I know that’s sort of cliche but really, just my personality, I get a real joy out of just helping people be successful. I love the fact that I can do that with SEO.

Tara: Yeah, SEO, it does have some measurability and accountability to it. You can see the results of what you’re doing in terms of the work. But what you’re describing even more is that lightbulb that you see going off when you show someone how to do something. We’ve spoken to a few people on this show who work in the SEO field. And I would say, without exception, they all are equally enthusiastic and love what they do just like you’re describing. I’m curious about that a little bit. It’s a field that’s very challenging to work in, I think. As you said, it’s hard to learn and there are a lot of changes happening in it all the time. How do you keep yourself in love with it and motivated, besides what you’ve described about seeing that lightbulb go off? There’s a lot of work that’s behind that, a lot of keeping up with things. Can you tell us a little bit about how you keep up with that in your space and what you do to keep learning?

Josh: Yeah. For me, I set a certain amount of time aside each week to either– well, two-fold, one is to learn, so to actually go on and do an online course or maybe a book. Then the other side of it is just staying up to date with everything that’s going on. The search algorithms are changing, it seems like, all the time. New guidelines are coming out all the time. There are a couple of news resources that I subscribe to and I take time every week to sit down and make sure that I’m up to date with what’s going on or if there’s a small change or a small tweak. Usually, these places are really great about staying up to date with that and they share that. That’s been really, really helpful for me. Yeah, that’s kind of how I go about it. The other thing I’ll add to is Twitter is probably one of the biggest sources for me because there are a couple of people I follow like John Mueller, he works at Google. There’s a couple of others too. But really, really I’ve found more often than not that Twitter just keeps me up to date with what’s going on that day or that hour. It’s just fantastic.

Tara: Do you keep it open all the time?

Josh: I don’t keep it open all the time but I do check in a few times a day to see if there’s some kind of fire going off or something like that.

Liam: There’s always a fire on Twitter. [laughter]

Tara: I’m trying to keep it off these days a bit, I don’t keep it open all that often anymore. But I have learned so much from Twitter, to be sure. I got my husband to sign up for Twitter for his work because I told him it’s just an amazing resource. I think it’s a secret for people who have not found it, and a lot of people in WordPress use it, so most of us know about it. Can you talk a little about how you discovered SEO, how this became your thing?

Josh: Yeah. I started doing websites when I was in high school, I think freshman year. This is kind of funny. What I would do is I would go — after school had let out, I would walk down to the public library. They had like a row of computers, computers on both sides of the row, and you would go and get like a little punch card and you’d be able to be on the computer for like, 30 minutes at a time. And then the librarian would come by and she’d check your card and say, “You’re past time. You can go get a new card if you want to but–” Imagine trying to build an HTML page in Notepad on a public computer in a 30-minute window when you’re 14. [laughs]

Josh: I grew up really enjoying anime, Japanese animation. When I got to high school, I started building Dragon Ball web pages and things like this. And this is on GeoCities and Tripod. I think I may have even had an Angelfire page. That’s kind of how I got into the web, just building web pages. When marquees were cool, that’s when I got started.

Liam: Are you suggesting that they’re no longer cool?

Josh: Oh. [laughter] I’m not hating on marquees. Not hating on them.

Liam: Carry on.

Josh: But years later, I found myself in a neat position. I started a job at T-Mobile, the mobile phone carrier, in 2001, and I worked there for 16 and a half years. I left last year, believe it or not. And during my time there at T-Mobile, there was an opportunity for me to work on the knowledge base, which was an internal resource that customer service reps would use to get answers to questions and things like this.

Liam: Like a wiki of sorts, an internal wiki?

Josh: Yeah, it was like an internal wiki. By taking on a special project, I got a full-time role as an editor and things just kind of spiraled, the snowball effect kind of happened for me. And when I left, I was a content strategist managing content strategy and SEO for the T-Mobile support website Support.t-mobile.com. About five years before that, though, maybe five or six years ago was kind of where an opportunity opened up for me to join that team, the support team, and start publishing content on the public-facing wiki if you will. That’s kind of where things started for me. I kind of stumbled upon it that a lot of our visitors were coming from organic search. I thought, “We should probably pay attention to this if a lot of people are coming to us from that channel.” It kind of just turned into an SEO role over time. Yeah, it’s kind of how I got started with it.

Liam: I imagine, with that big of a content base, that big of a website, the kind of learning and value of data and insights that can be gleaned is pretty substantial, right? It’s not a small mom and pop shop with a hundred visitors, and, “What’s the data?”, “Well, we had eight people last week and four the week before that.” You’re able to really see the value of this tweak and that tweak when it can mean the difference between tens if not hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Josh: Oh yeah. We had a lot of visitors on average. We had a consistent number and it was in the millions, millions of sessions per month. Like you said, lots of different interesting data points. I feel I was really fortunate to go through those experiences. Even today when I’m talking with people, whether it be clients or fellow WordPressers or whatever, and we’re talking about ideas of how they can improve, I look back on my time there and we tried a lot of different things. Some were successful, some weren’t, but being able to share some of those insights was really great. I thought that was a really good experience for me.

Liam: I like that a lot. As a designer and a marketing consultant, I talk a lot about Coca-Cola as– when you go into the convenient store and you go to buy a Coke, now they got 97 different varieties of Coke, but you never guess who made it. I kind of try to take those– yes, we don’t have a Coca-Cola budget but we can take that focus on branding and the lessons that those bigger companies are rolling out across the world, like a T-Mobile. We take the same lessons and the same learning and apply them on a thousand-dollar budget, on a hundred-dollar budget, on a ten-thousand-dollar budget. That’s really neat. I wonder how well your clients engage with that. I found initially when I started using that Coca-Cola analogy, there was a little bit of a, “Yeah, but I don’t have 87 million dollars to launch my new project.” I wonder what kind of pushback you might get on that?

Josh: That’s interesting. What’s interesting is that we are doing a project right now where we are trying to build workflows, because lots of times, it’s just, “We don’t care how you do it, just get it done.”

Liam: That’s tough, that’s a challenge.

Josh: It is a challenge. I think it’s a challenge that is very common though, especially for small business, right?

Liam: I’d agree.

Josh: Or contractors and freelancers, they’re just told, “Just get it done.” One of the things I’m trying to help this client with particularly, is bringing some of my experience as a content strategist at T-Mobile into this relationship and some of the work that we’re doing. So I’m trying to help them build workflows from where we’re– when we’re bringing a new page to life, we’re going to follow this set of steps. We need to optimize a page, we’re going to follow this set of steps. We want to sunset a page, we follow this set of steps. And kind of providing that structure really helps people understand their roles and their responsibilities, and when things need to be executed. That sort of brings the clarity and I think a lot of confidence from, especially the people that make decisions. They can see the value that you’re bringing and it also gives them confidence in the process and the kind of quality of work that you’re delivering. That’s an exercise that I’m going through with a very small client. They’re successful but they don’t have anywhere close to the kind of staffing that some of these bigger brands do. Again, I just feel really fortunate that I can take my past experience with T-Mobile where things are very structured and very, very process-oriented, and sort of bring that into a smaller business model.

Tara: Yeah. How have you found the transition into self-employment, running your own company?

Josh: [laughs] I’m laughing because I don’t think I could have ever been prepared for this. There are no shortcuts when you’re a business owner. I don’t think there’s a shortcut in any career but I think my point is I don’t know that I was totally prepared for the volume of work, the volume of learning that has to come along with being a business owner. The challenges, oh my god, the challenges. It’s overwhelming, it really is. But it’s also very cool and very rewarding to sort of– one day, you have this idea and you’re just like, “You know–” and maybe you go back and forth with it, I did for a while. I was kind of, “Ah, I don’t want to do this. I do not want to do this.” And then your idea becomes an LLC or whatever entity you want to form. For me, it was an LLC. Now you have this business and you’re just like, “What do I do with this thing?”

Tara: Were you working remotely for T-Mobile?

Josh: I was. I went through golden years with T-Mobile, I went through dark days with T-Mobile. I watched multiple call centers closed, I watched stocks go through the roof. And there’s times where I went to an office and I sat at the desk, and during my last few years, I’ve worked remotely, almost exclusively out of my house. I do that now. Sometimes I go down to a co-working space. I’ve played around a little bit with co-working this year, I enjoyed that. But yeah, for the most part, I worked out of my house. It’s good. I think being a business owner is nice because of that flexibility. If you’re a parent, flexibility is so big so I like that. But I’ve got to tell you, the challenges are tough. It’s really tough to find your way. At least, it’s been difficult for me to find my way. I don’t really have a lot of family that runs businesses. I don’t really know that I have close friends that run businesses. It’s been a journey of a lot of trial and error, seeing what works and seeing what doesn’t work. But I think we learn that way, right?

Liam: Yeah, absolutely.

Tara: Yeah.

Josh: Lots of failure, lots of learning.

Tara: Yeah. And that’s a benefit of the WordPress community is that there are a lot of self-employed people here who have a lot of forums and a lot of sharing at WordCamps and things like that with business topics, which is really helpful, because we tell our clients, once you start running your business, you’re not doing your trade. It’s not as it used to be because you have to do everything else, too. We might tell them we’ll take care of their website so they don’t have to do that, but they still have to do the bookkeeping or all those other things that you don’t ever think about when you’re not working for yourself. Making websites or doing SEO is probably a small portion, actually, of what you do on a weekly basis or a monthly basis, because there are so many other things, marketing, and processes, and all of that. Do you have anyone working with you or for you?

Josh: No, not at this time. It’s just me. Yeah.

Liam: Josh, as a business owner, I very much get that, especially transitioning where you’re working with other people and you know, “Well, I’m going to ask Mary about this. There’s no Mary. I’ll ask Tom. There’s no Tom.” [laughter] That’s a challenge. Let me ask you this, it’s another one of our big questions here. What’s the single most valuable piece of advice, personal, professional, combination, that you’ve ever received and implemented in your life?

Josh: I would say there’s a guy who I listen to and his show fairly regularly, he sort of gave this nugget that I just really love. His saying is ‘hard work win’. It’s something that his father told him. I just feel like there’s so much truth in that. Though I would say, a close runner-up would be ‘never stop learning’. I think if anybody wants to get ahead, you got to learn and you got to continue to be great. I think that the process of being better, it never ends. But I think as a business owner, you’ve got to find something that you love. Because if you’re going to work hard at it, you’ve got to put extra time in it. And who wants to put extra time on something that makes them miserable? Nobody. Find something you love so that you can not even think about having to put in extra time, you just go and you do it. I think that saying sticks with me every day, it’s something that I think about probably multiple times a day, that this is hard work but that’s how you win. That’s something that I found to be true as I’ve gone along my business journey is that as long as I keep plugging away at this and try to do my best, usually things have worked out pretty well so far.

Liam: Yeah, I can see that. In the sense that if we do our honest best and we keep plugging away and we don’t shy away from hard work, it may not go exactly where we hope it will.

Josh: [laughs] That’s true.

Liam: But we’re going to get some kind of reward and maybe we get to contract and we pay the rent or the mortgage. But maybe it’s just, “Hey, we gave it a good go and we’re going to go somewhere else now.” But I just love that. Just keep learning, keep working, keep working and keep learning. That’s a very practical approach to taking care of yourself and your needs, isn’t it?

Josh: Yeah, definitely. I like making things simple. [laughs]

Tara: Making things simple but working hard. [laughs] Yeah, work smarter, not harder.

Josh: Yes. [laughs] I see that on your wall, I love that, that’s great.

Tara: Well, Josh. We are out of time for this wonderful interview. Thank you so much for joining us, it’s really been a pleasure having you here. Can you tell everyone where they can find you online?

Josh: Yeah. We are at Expanderdigital.com and on Twitter @expanderdigital, all one word.

Liam: Josh, thanks so much for that. I really appreciate it and we’ll have to find the time to hit a trail together and hopefully not hit any trees while we’re on that trail.

Josh: I hope so. Thank you guys so much for having me, I appreciate it.

Tara: Thank you, it’s been a pleasure.

Liam: It’s been a pleasure, take care. Bye-bye.

Tara: 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.

Mary Job lives outside Lagos, Nigeria. She is a philosopher by birth. She runs How Do You Tech for work. She loves to travel, take photos, write, meet awesome people, and experience cultures. She loves doing 22 and experimenting with food and listening to great music, and great wine.

Personal Website | Ask Mary Job – Your Personal Tech Consultant

Doing 22 | See meaning

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 Mary Job. Mary lives outside Lagos, Nigeria. She is a philosopher by birth. She runs How Do You Tech for work, she loves to travel, take photos, write, meet awesome people, and experience cultures. She loves doing 22 and experimenting with food and listening to great music, and great wine. Hi, Mary.

Mary: Hi, Liam.

Tara: Hi, Mary, welcome. I’m so glad to have you here. I’d like to ask if you could tell us more about yourself and explain what 22 is?

Mary: Hi, Tara. Nice to meet you again. My name is Mary, you already know that. I live outside Lagos, just an hour drive from Lagos. I work as a tech consultant, in How Do You Tech, a company I founded with a colleague. We teach people how to use digital systems. You asked me what 22 is. It’s a little ritual. It’s interesting. I got it from a colleague. 22 is not yoga, it’s not meditation, it’s you just lay back and relax and then for 22 minutes, you think about nothing. I do it in between work. When I feel pressured, when I’m hitting a stone wall. When I just need to relax my brain, I just put on 22 minutes, I lay down, don’t think about anything at all, and turn my phone on flight mode. That part is very important because the phone is always – I put it on flight mode and then I just go for 22 minutes. Sometimes I sleep, which is good. Other times, I come work with a fresher perspective.

Tara: That’s interesting, I’ve never heard of that. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about meditation in the past year and I haven’t heard of 22. 22 seems like a long time. About all I can meditate is 10 minutes so I would imagine I probably would fall asleep as well. Do you do it lying down, though, you said, yes?

Mary: It’s better lying down. It was started by my co-founder. I started doing it after I had an experience with MRI. I had a brain scan. That moment where I was laying still– you know with the MRI, you don’t move, you have to be still or they have to start all over again. You’re given this perspective that you feel really good after the MRI. He started it, he’s been pushing it. He introduces it to people. I tried it and I really liked it so I stop for it. He has a site for it, https://kb.life/22.

Tara: Is there a reason that it’s 22 minutes?

Mary: According to him, you spend 20 minutes in MRI. I don’t know why it’s just 22 minutes but 22 just works. 22 is 22.

Tara: Yeah. And you really don’t think about anything for that time? I think my mind would be going a million different directions.

Mary: That’s the problem. Because I can’t sleep if I don’t think. I have to be thinking about something and then fall to sleep. But this makes the process a lot faster because I’m not thinking about anything. When I got into this, I used to have migraines a lot – I used to have headaches]. The first time I tried it, the first few minutes of not thinking about anything, my feel so light. Everything is just gone. I don’t feel any pain whatsoever. I’m just free. I’m just in a state that I would love to be forever, but sadly I can’t be in that state forever because I have to work and I have to do other things.

Tara: Interesting.

Liam: This is very intriguing. I want to ask you about this. When I sit and try to maintain that practice of thinking about nothing, what I try to do is not think words in my head. So don’t pronounce any words in my head. And that’s very difficult for me, that’s just a huge challenge because I say, “I’ll be doing this and not say anything. Dang it, I just said something.” I’m not speaking it, it’s all in my head but what is your brain doing? Are you just focusing on breathing so you’re not thinking about work, you’re not thinking about your daily concerns? Because my brain tends to, and I think this is what Tara is getting at, it goes off into this direction and it gets distracted and starts to think about this deadline or making dinner plans for this evening or what we have to do next weekend. Tell us a little bit about how you either avoid that or when those thoughts pop into your head, how do you chase them out and go back to nothingness?

Mary: That happens very often. In fact, when I first started, it was very difficult. I mean like, “No, no, no. I have to think about something, anything.” And he would say, “Well, you’re only allowed to think about one thing.” But I found out that I was much better not thinking about anything. When that thought comes to me, I just tell to myself, “No, you can’t think about anything.” And then it goes off, again. And if I does come again, I tell it to go back to where it’s coming from. “No, I don’t want to think about anything. Just leave me be for 22 minutes and then I’ll come back to you.”

Tara: Yeah, that’s what I’m reading a lot about meditation as well is it’s sort of you just have to keep working at it and don’t be hard on yourself when your mind does wander, because it will, and just kind of bring your attention back. The point is training your brain to focus. That makes a lot of sense to me, but it is very hard to do in reality, it’s easy to say but very hard to do.

Mary: When I have a headache, it is so difficult, because the moment I start to think about something, the pain starts coming back. And then I tell it to go away, “Just leave me be. I don’t want it, I want to feel better.” Afterward, I feel way much better.

Tara: Well, thanks for sharing that technique. I’ll be looking that up. Let’s jump back or forward and talk a little bit about your relationship with WordPress, how you discovered WordPress, What you do with WordPress, and the community of WordPress?

Mary: I discovered WordPress first sometime around 2012-2013. I started blogging as a way to express my feelings. I find it very difficult to tell and express how I’m feeling, I find it easier to write it down. I could write 10 pages of why I feel like it’s nothing. Blogging for me was a way to let out those feelings. I started with webpages, I tried WordPress. First time I tried WordPress, I was like, “Wow, this is so complicated. What am I doing here? I just want to write my blog. I don’t think I have the patience for this.” So I left it. And then in 2015, I went to do my internship at Ghana with the Salecians of Don Bosco, it’s a Catholic organizations that focuses on youths . My cousin is a Salecian Brother so I was more or less among my family. One day we were in the office and he said, “Why are you not blogging on WordPress?” And I’m like, “No, why would I want to blog on WordPress? It’s a complicated platform, I don’t want to use it.” He said, “No, but our website is built on WordPress.” I said, “Wow, let me check that out.” And then I’m like, “Are you serious? I didn’t know you could build a website in WordPress.” Then he gave me videos made by Morten Rand-Hendriksen, who is now a very good friend. It took me two weeks to watch those videos. When I finished watching those videos, I exported my blog from Blogger to WordPress and that was how I started. I mean, when I was on Blogger, I think that most I got was a Like from a friend. [laughter] But within first three months of being on WordPress I made a number of friends, good friends that I interact with up until now. There’s one from Zimbabwe, and a guy in India, he writes beautifully. And then there’s this old man also that lives in the US, and then there’s a good grandma somewhere in the US. I’ve made friends from all over the world. It was so cool. Being able to share and connect and then interact with people from far hubs – way farther from where you reside. It was really interesting. I asked myself one day. I said, “This WordPress is so cool. How can I be a part of WordPress? Is there something I could do?” But before then, in December 2015, there was a lady who approached me. She lives in the UK and she said they want to redesign their website, it was built on WordPress. I didn’t know about WordPress at all. I didn’t know anything about WordPress at all. She was like, “I like the way your blog looks and I want you to work on our website.” And I’m like, “Okay, nice. I will do it.” And then I went to purchase a domain and there’s hosting on WordPress. And then I started reading more about it. The more I did, the more I fell in love with the software, because it’s like this beautiful work of art that inspires you to be a better person. That’s the way I see WordPress.

Liam: Wow, that’s pretty deep stuff. WordPress is a work of art that inspires you to be a better person. That’s an amazing perspective, Mary.

Mary: Yes, it is. I stumbled on make.WordPress.org while trying to look for ways to be a part of WordPress. I’m like, “Okay.” You know when you go to make.WordPress.org you see testing, core. I mean, my first degree was in philosophy, and then mass communication and information management – a master’s degree. It had nothing to do with computer science. I have just been passionate about the internet since 2002. I opened my first computer in 2002.

Liam: Awesome.

Mary: I saw testing, I saw accessibility, I thought — “I don’t know what is this, what am I doing?” And then I saw community and I was like, “Wow, this sounds like a very good place to fit in. I don’t have programming skills so I could very well fit in here.” And then I saw they had a community in Lagos but they weren’t active. In Nigeria – Lagos, Ibadan and one other one or two. And they weren’t active so I said, “Okay, I don’t ever live in Lagos.” I go to Lagos almost every week because it’s like the New York, it’s where everything happens. So I told myself, “Let me apply for one in my state since I don’t live in Lagos.” So I applied to start a community in my state and then Courtney wrote back to me and said, “How would you like to be a part of the Lagos community? They haven’t been active so maybe you can bring the back.” And I’m like, “Okay. It’s not far, it’s just an hour’s drive but three hours drive with traffic.”

Liam: Yeah. Hour on Google.

Tara: Yeah, that’s a commitment.

Mary: The traffic makes it three hours, but if there’s no traffic, it’s just 45 minutes to one hour drive from here. I said, “No problem.” The first meetup I did, I did it at a mall in Lagos and three people showed up.

Liam: Awesome.

Mary: Before we had done five meetups, we had 100 people show.

Liam: How many showed up?

Mary: 100.

Liam: Wow. Three to 100 in five meetups. That is amazing.

Mary: Yeah, we have a folder, we have Google folder where I always upload photos – I always upload photos. And then it went to 150. “That’s 150, Brooke.” When we got to 150 – I like calling him Brooke, his name is Hugh. You know him, right? I just prefer to call him Brooke.

Tara: Oh, Hugh Lashbrooke, yes.

Mary: I prefer to call him Brooke. Brooke sent me a message saying, “Why don’t you organize a WordCamp? 150 is already WordCamp crowd.” And I’m like, “Okay, let’s give it a shot.” But before them, I made WordPress all about me. Everybody around me knows that I’m into WordPress. I put it on my status, put it on Facebook, put it on Twitter. People who would see me are like, “What is this WordPress you’re into?” Even my mom was interested because at that time, I decided to work from home. And imagine telling African parents you want to work from home. Every day, my dad is saying, “Let me call your friends to get you–“, “I’m not looking for a job. I’m working from home.” Then it was like, how can you be in shorts and a t-shirt and say you are working from home? How does that work? So my mom was interested. It is a funny story because I told her about Luminos. A Nigerian working for Automattic. Do you know it turned out that Luminos’ mom and my mom were colleagues? She retired as a nurse.

Liam: Doesn’t he live in Dublin? Does he live in Ireland? I met him at a WordCamp a few years ago.

Mary: Yes, he lives in Ireland. Cool. I asked him when I said, “Oh, we even have a Nigerian working for Automattic.” I was trying to explain WordPress. I told her, “His name is Luminos.” She said, “That sounds familiar. I had a colleague that named her son Luminos while we were still working together. And then I asked Luminos on Slack, “Is your mom by chance a nurse.” He says, “Yes.” I’m like, “Wow, what a small world.” That’s just small world. Because I posted on Facebook a lot, I started getting a lot of requests and people saying, “I want to start a community in my city. I use WordPress also, I would like to do this.” Today we have 14 communities with WordPress presence in Nigeria and they’re still counting.

Liam: Wow, that’s really impressive, to go from one meetup with three people to 150 at one, two, 14 different communities. That’s a pretty amazing growth rate and very successful.

Mary: Yeah. We’re trying to keep it close-knit. We have one Slack group for all the organizers. When you become an organizer we add you to it. Help support each other, attend the meetups, trying to encourage one another. We have a Slack channel for all members in Nigeria. WordPress inspires me to be a better person. My co-founder was telling me one time, when we were asked to build a new site, he said, “I don’t think you’re going to like this. I don’t want to build it on WordPress.” He kept asking, I said, “No. How do you know something is good if you don’t try other platforms?” You’re free to build it on another platform. It doesn’t stop you from loving WordPress. Unless the client says they don’t want WordPress. For me, it’s coming from a background with no computer academic knowledge, and then finding myself in WordPress. For me, I always said that WordPress gave me a place to fit in.

Liam: I like that. Mary, I’m going to change it up on you just a little bit because you were kind enough to share with us about some of the things you’re doing personally, 22 and that was very interesting. You talked about starting the meetup and then how that grew to this amazing community across Nigeria. And you’re getting into talking a little bit about your business and that, and I want to hear more about that. But what I wanted to ask you is what’s your definition of success, be it personal, professional, or a combination? How would you define success?

Mary: Success to me is knowing that there is somebody out there that you have touched with your actions positively. Knowing that somebody somewhere looks at you, is inspired, and wants to be a better person, a good person. To me, that’s what makes me keep doing what I do every day. When somebody walks up to me and say, “Oh, wow. I see the work you do and I also want to do this and I want to be a better person. Maybe because I’m a philosopher. I like it when people do things that are right. Some people tend to say, “because everybody’s doing it so I should do it.” I really don’t like that, I don’t like it at all. For me, I’ve been able to inspire people positively, impact them. When you come to me and leave with something, that alone is what makes me happy and what makes me feel like, “Okay, yes. I am successful today. somebody today. I’m happy.”

Liam: That strikes me as something that is not really ultimately then surprising that you took a community of three and grew it into hundreds, if not thousands, because if your definition of success is to give them yourself in a way that makes a positive impact on people. People have mentioned that you spend a good part of your energy trying to create a positive impact in the world around you.

Mary: Yeah, I enjoy it.

Tara: Other than the WordPress community, can you talk a little bit about what you do towards that goal? What is the most important thing that you do every day or in your life towards that idea of being successful and having a positive impact on other people?

Mary: First, I started as a freelancer, like I said. I kind of roamed the internet for some years. I was roaming the internet, looking for a place to fit in. I did all sorts of freelance jobs, freelance writing, ghostwriting because that’s what I did most. Virtual assistant, I did a lot of that. Towards 2016, 2017, I took up a job at an automobile firm where we sold brand new cars. I had a lot of bad occurrences. I got robbed twice, my boss wasn’t paying me well. I just told myself, “You know what? I don’t want to work for anybody anymore. I want to work for myself. Why can’t I work for myself?” It’s the information age. People are making money working from home doing what they love. I wanted to do that, too. I stopped doing that and I started my own firm, I registered as sole proprietor. I used that for about a year or two and then last year, I founded How Do You Tech which was– you know, like I mentioned at the beginning, I find it difficult expressing my feelings. When I have an idea, I find it so difficult to put it down in words. My co-founder KB, one day we sat down and he was like, “What exactly do you want to do?” Of course, I started explaining and mumbling the words together.” He went to 22.

Liam: [laughs] You sent him into 22?

Mary: Yeah. And then he came back and How Do You Tech was born. I mean, it got the main founding in 22. That, for me, was a turning point. It felt like, “Oh, look at what I have been struggling with all this work and somebody was able to put it on paper for me.” That started How Do You Tech Limited.

Liam: And what does How Do You Tech Limited do? What services do you provide? That would be interesting to hear.

Mary: That’s where I’m going into now. When we started How Do You Tech, the idea was this, we want to be able to offer custom solutions for people in tech: websites, mobile applications. Our focus was not really there because a lot of people do that these days. We love teaching. The easiest way was for us is to teach people what we know. But then we struggled with shortage of people who can afford it or a shortage of people to build them accordingly.. The company is just six, seven months old. We are still shaking and our foundations are not so strong, but basically, what we want to do is be able to build useful digital systems. Useful and functional being the keywords. Anybody can have a website but is it useful? Is it functional? What is it doing? Is it just sitting there on the internet selling services? It’s just there and not doing it. A website is supposed to be useful and it’s supposed to be functional. If it’s not any of those things, it shouldn’t be on the web, I wanted to offer my teaching skills, I wanted to be able to teach people. I have a small space in my village here. I like calling this my village. My mom will tell you it’s not a village!

Liam: We’ll call it your village. It’ll be your village on our podcast. Mary’s Village, you’ll find it on the map.

Mary: Exactly. There’s this place, I wanted to use it as an office space. What started out as an office space is now a hub for young girls and men who stand no chances of being into tech but are curious to teach them. Presently, we have 3 students.

Tara: Wow, it’s a school as well.

Mary: It’s totally free. We start with basic training, skills training, introduce them to the internet, and show them how blogs and WordPress work. I was asking one this morning, “How’s your experience blogging been so far?” She says, “Well, it’s so good to have a friend from here. I’ve met somebody from here.” I said, “Yes. Keep at it and it will help empower you.” So far How Do You Tech is not yet solid but we know where we’re headed. We’re just not there yet.

Liam: That’s important to have a vision, right? Because without a vision, you don’t know where to go. That’s great.

Tara: Yeah, and it’s supporting your idea of success, too, in helping other. I’m going to ask you another question, Mary, and this has to do with advice. It sounds like you’ve found a lot of great things from your technique of 22 and working with your business partner. Can you share with us some helpful advice, the most helpful advice you can think of that you’ve received and how you implement that in your life?

Mary: Okay. I think the most helpful advice was from my uncle. He’s older than me but we are sort of like twins, we go everywhere together. It’s the one I went to meet in Ghana when I did my internship. When I first got to Ghana then, I would ask him how to do something and instead of showing me how to do it, he would tell me, “Just Google it.” And I would be upset like, “Why are you telling me to Google it? Just show it on your system how to do it.”, “No, go and read about it.” I wasn’t the type of person who would always ask, ask, ask. It’s not something that is in our culture I don’t know how to put it but you get what I’m saying. It’s not something you would find on an average person doing. We don’t have that curious mentality where you want to know, know, know, and then you’re seeking knowledge. So that’s stuck with me. Now, when somebody says, “Oh, I want to do this. I want you to show me this.” The first question, “Have you Googled it?” And you say, “Okay, go ahead and Google, then tell me what you found.” You can tell me what you find, we’ll know where to start from. That, for me, is the best advice I got so far. It was the best advice I got so far. You don’t wait for people to tell you how to do things, go find out how to do it. If you’re lost, if you’re confused, come back and then I will guide you the rest of the way.

Tara: Yeah, that advice, something that’s interesting about that advice is that it couldn’t have been given 50 years ago, right, in those words. A few years ago, it would have been, “Go find a book about it or something.” I mean, it’s much easier, it takes a lot less effort to google it than it does to find a library and find a book and all of that so we’re lucky we have that. But I think that’s great advice. Have you ever heard the response on forums and things when someone asks the question that could probably be easily answered that there’s a website called, I think there’s an acronym, Let Me Google That For You, whatever that would be, LMGFY. Yeah, people use that to sort of criticize people who ask questions without looking for the answer on their own.

Liam: Mary, I love the self-empowerment angle of that advice. Google it, figure it out. I wonder how that advice that you’ve embraced and you’ve found so valuable, how does that work into your school? You’re teaching girls about information and computer technology. You’re trying to enable them to learn so it has to have some kind of a structure, right? Entire class can’t be, “Good morning class, google it.” How do you find that balance, how does that all come together?

Mary: I developed a lesson plan. At first, I was looking for a lesson plan. What am I going to teach them? How am I going to start? Where am I going to start from? And at the end of the day, I told myself, “Why are you trying to teach them something that somebody asked somewhere? Why not just teach them what you know and how you know it and how to do it?” That was my model. Teach them what I know. I started developing a lesson plan based on that. The first class, the first week, what we go through is this, I teach them how to create an email. Because you need that email to access a lot of service online. I teach them what usernames are, what domain names are, what a website is, how to make a site that is built on this this, or how to register a domain name, hosting. I taught them all that. One other thing I taught them was how to get accurate information out of web because that is so important. How do you find accurate information? How do you find information that’s actionable and accurate?

Liam: Yeah, that’s increasingly difficult.

Mary: Very difficult but if you know how to go about it, that’s one thing that I’m very, very good at. Google it. I am very good at that. If I want to find anything, I find it, and I find the right one. That’s one of the key things that I taught them, how to get this information. First week, in fact, they were already googling, I told them, I just said, “Go and check how to make drop scones.” Of course, I know they don’t know what drop scones are. Drop scones are pancakes, but they don’t know American pancakes. When I asked them, “How do you approach this question?”, “Well, I think that firstly, we should find out what drop scone is because we don’t even know what drop scone is.” Googling is an act. You don’t just type in your question in. No, you break it down into simple terms and then you search.

Tara: Yeah, googling is an art. That is a good lesson to learn and a good way to wrap up our conversation today because we’re out of time, Mary. But I love that you’re teaching young girls in your village not only to code, but also to use the internet wisely, I think that’s a fabulous lesson and it’s an inspiration. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us and for joining us today. Can you tell us and everyone listening where they can find you online?

Mary: You can find me on Twitter, @maryojob, that’s my username, or just visit my website Askmaryjob.com.

Tara: Great. Okay, thank you.

Liam: Mary, what an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for spending time with us today, really enjoyed getting to know you.

Mary: My pleasure. Thank you so much. I loved my time with you guys.

Liam: And I can confirm for you that you have absolutely been successful in this conversation. You have touched me in a positive way so thank you very much.

Tara: Me as well, thank you. Thanks, Mary.

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.

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.

Morgan Estes is a Christian, a husband, a father, a WordPress developer, a veteran, and a nerd. He has been working with WordPress since 2009 and first learned PHP by reading the WordPress source code.

Website | Morgan Estes

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

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

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

Liam: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 55.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Morgan Estes. Morgan is a Christian, a husband, a father, a WordPress developer, a veteran, and a nerd. He has been working with WordPress since 2009 and first learned PHP by reading the WordPress source code. Hey, Morgan.

Morgan: Hey, Liam

Tara: Hi, Morgan. Welcome to Hallway Chats. Can you please tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Morgan: Sure. I said my name is Morgan Estes. I live in Edmond, Oklahoma which is just outside of Oklahoma City. I work downtown in Oklahoma City and I’m originally from California. I joined the navy when I was 17 and traveled the world, moved all over the country and just kind of ended up here about 14 years ago.

Tara: And how are you liking it there in Oklahoma City? We were talking about this a little earlier.

Morgan: Yeah. There are very unique things to every place I’ve lived but this is the only one besides when I was in the Persian Gulf where it’s over a 100 degrees for like a 100 days straight, and that’s normal, and I don’t do heat very well.

Tara: Yeah, it’s hot and muggy here, too. So you’re comparing this to the Persian Gulf? Can you tell us a little bit about your military background?

Morgan: Like I said, I joined when I was 17. I left home, went to Bootcamp in San Diego and I took a job when I joined up. They said, “What do you want to do?”, “I want to work with computers.”, “Great. We’ve got a job for you.” And maybe computers are not like any other computers in the world. I got to work in front of a big grey box that was running some weird version of Unix and did radar work. I worked on radars and communications and ended up doing a total of six deployments in the 12 and a half years I was there. My last two years of active duty, I deployed four times and started getting burnt out. But I got to do some really fun stuff. I did eventually work with computers but I’ve also been able to travel a lot and enjoy the time that I was there.

Liam: When you say you did radar and alike, does that mean you’re the guy with the headphones on and watched for incoming vessels and vehicles or were you getting to troubleshoot why they weren’t working and getting them back on as missiles were incoming? [laughter]

Morgan: Really, both. My main job was a guy with the headphones on listening to radios and talking to other ships and watching ships and aircraft. I did some air control so I got to talk to pilots and direct them where to go, and also, there was only, at one point, two of us who understood radars on one of my ships, we were a really small one. So I ended up climbing 150 feet in the air and working on them with the main radar technician. So I learned a lot about how the internals of them work. I had a tendency to break things and the technicians who repaired them got tired of that so they would come to me and say, “Let me show you how this works so you don’t break it again.”

Tara: Okay.

Morgan: I really enjoyed that and I learned mentorship through breaking things.

Tara: Interesting. You were 17. Were you already involved with the computers at that time? Is that why you knew you wanted to do it or what led you to the military to begin with, I guess?

Morgan: I come from a military family. My dad’s navy, dad’s dad on both sides, dad and mom, both grandpas were navy, uncles marines, got family air force. It just is a thing with us. I started programming when I was in sixth grade, reading the back of Apple magazines and typing in the basic source code into Apple and watching things work, and then turning off the computer and losing everything at school. I just knew, “Hey, these are pretty cool and I can make them do things.” That’s what I thought I would do for the rest of my life is programming computers.

Tara: And the navy was lucky to get somebody who already had that sort of fascination. You learned a lot while you were there?

Morgan: I learned a whole lot while I was there.

Tara: Yeah. And when you left the navy then, how did you translate that into your next thing? Is this the next thing that you did after the navy or was there something in between?

Morgan: This is pretty much the next thing. I left the navy and went to college. I went to Oklahoma Christian University to learn computer information systems. I made it about a year and a half in before I realized I hate programming, so I changed up my major and I started liberal studies. I studied Bible, business, and history, and graduated with my bachelor’s degree and immediately took a job for the bar association as their programmer and website editor. I figured out that it’s not programming that I hate, it’s just C++.

Tara: Okay.

Liam: I’m glad you clarified that because you told us that, “I realized in college that I hated programming.” And then the first job you took out of college was to do programming.

Morgan: Yeah. I remember sitting in class one time and this gal sitting behind me saying, “My dad’s teaching me this language called PHP, it is the future. And they’ve got this thing called WordPress.” I’m like, “Yeah, I just don’t get it.” Two years later, I was working and contributing to WordPress.

Liam: Because of the woman behind you in class or did you just get so frustrated with C++, or is it the job out of college where they said, “Hey, Morgan, we need a website to do this.” And you said, “Okay.” And then you ended up looking around, you found WordPress. How did you make that transition? How did that happen?

Morgan: It was the first job out of college, was with the Oklahoma Bar Association. At that time, it had over 4000 pages of static HTML. I managed everything with Dreamweaver and FTP. They had a programmer in IT and she knew PHP. She helped me kind of make things dynamic. I’ve built a couple of my own CMSs because, of course, who hasn’t? I did stupid things like publishing spreadsheets to the internet that were internal, because who hasn’t done that?

Liam: Well, also Google wasn’t as much of a thing back then so it didn’t matter much.

Tara: Liam and I both raised our hands, we have not built our own CMSs.

Morgan: No? Good, you’re smart.

Liam: We’ve had a lot of people who did that in the early days: “This thing stinks, let me make something better.”

Morgan: And this was 2009 and I decided, “Okay, I have to do something different. I have to do something better.” And I started looking at content management systems. We, me and the editorial board that we were on, reviewed a bunch of CMSs and the only one that actually made sense to me was WordPress.

Liam: From a code standpoint?

Morgan: From a code standpoint and from user standpoint. I looked at Joomla and just didn’t understand how it was put together. The programmer that was upstairs, she did, she liked it. But I couldn’t write content in it. I looked at Drupal, I liked the idea of modular code but I didn’t understand it VC. I couldn’t even figure out how to create new pages or write posts in Drupal.

Liam: Yeah, that’s a challenge.

Morgan: And I looked at WordPress and I realized, “I can change this code, refresh my browser, and it immediately works for me, that’s the one I’m using.” Then I had to try and convince a bunch of lawyers that this was the system to use. I didn’t, they ended up going with .NET solution after I was gone. [laughter] But I tried.

Liam: That’s humility. Thank you for sharing that. As you was thinking that, “Hey, WordPress is pretty cool. This is what we should use, this is what the bar association should use.” It sounds like you were then learning that you liked writing code and it wasn’t code itself or programming that bothered you, it was the challenges around C++ that was giving it to you. Talk us through that, how did that evolve into your next phase?

Morgan: My main job at that point was content and teaching others how to write content. I learned a lot about editing, I had a Yahoo style guide on my desk. I learned how to format things. I’ve been building websites since 1998 so I understood how the web worked but not how to help other people create with it. I found this tool that was a creator’s dream. The problem is everyone had their own idea of how to create and what they wanted. I started realizing, “Okay, in PHP, or at least in WordPress, I can make this change and that solves the problem of someone else.” One of the very first things was lawyers love WordPerfect and they wanted to be able to upload WordPerfect which didn’t have support in WordPress at that time. So I hacked WordPress core to make WordPerfect a file that was permitted.

Liam: Awesome.

Morgan: Updated and realized, “Okay–” I didn’t understand filters at the time, I didn’t know what actions were, I didn’t know hooks. I learned quickly–

Liam: Who among us hasn’t added in core.

Morgan: Right.

Liam: Even I’ve done that.

Morgan: I’ve had themes blown away from a theme update, I’ve had WordPress blown away from a core update. I’ve made those mistakes. But I’ve also learned really quickly from searching on WordPress.org, that you can get help from other people, and then you can contribute changes back. I contributed my change back to core to add WordPerfect. When that was accepted, I thought, “This is huge.” That was the turning point for me, realizing I can make changes and share that with someone else to solve their problem. I was just hooked so I started diving deeper and learning the language and learning for community and trying to use and give back as much as possible.

Liam: That’s really neat. Let me ask you this, when you first made that contribution to core, were you still kind of out there in the world on your own or did you discover meetups and WordCamps yet?

Morgan: I had not yet discovered WordCamps. I hadn’t been to meetups. I think I started going to meetups about six months after that. I found one locally and it was right by my house which was nice. I started attending there. It turns out that the person who was running the meetup at the time or at least, heavily involved in it, was also an alumnist of the job that I was doing, just in a different name. It was nice to see, okay, there is other people who understand what I’m going throughout in the world and in my backyard.

Liam: Yeah, so people that you can not only speak code to, but you can talk about the very real business problems and challenges you were trying to address with code.

Morgan: Yeah. And it wasn’t until a couple of years later that I found out about WordCamps. The nearest one to me was in Austin. I signed up for it and took my family. My wife said, “Are you sure families are allowed? Like, this is a professional conference.” I said, “I really think so. I think this will be okay.” And it ended up at one point–

Liam: Wait. How far is the drive when you got the wife and the child to go along with, “I think it’s going to be okay.” [laughs]

Morgan: That’s about an eight-hour drive for us.

Liam: Wow, you are a bold man. [laughter]

Morgan: At that time, I was by myself. I was working for a small marketing company and I was the only developer. I was in nowhere’s land. I could meet with the other people but I didn’t know how to grow in my job and I didn’t know how to grow in WordPress. I figured that WordCamp is the way to do it. We went there and there’s things like, I met Andrew Nacin in the hallway for the first time and I introduced myself and he’s like, “Yeah, I just met your wife and daughter in the hallway.” [laughter] And I lost my kid at one point at the end of the day, and I look over, and she’s up in Jen Mylo’s arms. She was only two years old. And I realized, “Okay, this is like an extended family. These people get me.

Tara: That’s awesome, it’s a great story.

Morgan: It was just another turning point for me into, “Okay, these things are important.” So as a family, we’ve gone to several WordCamps together because WordPress is how I feed my family. My family is involved in this and we do things together. My wife is a contributor, she’s worked on captioning WordPress TV videos. My daughter has attended half a dozen, seven WordCamps now. She’s six and that’s our thing. One of our family vacations is traveling to a WordCamp.

Tara: That’s great. I like to hear that, it’s really neat. I’m going to continue, you just mentioned things that are important to you and I’m going to ask you one of our signature questions, here it comes. Morgan, what is your definition of success?

Morgan: For me, success is being able to make my clients at least happy with the process if not the final product, and going home and seeing my family. I like my work, I love my family. Them being happy to see me and being able to pay the bills, to be able to spend time with them, that’s success for me.

Tara: Yeah, that’s a good combination. What kind of challenges do you face in managing that with you having a successful or productive day at work and getting home to see your family and balancing that, how do you do that?

Morgan: One thing I don’t do often is I don’t bring my computer home. When I work remote, I love working remote. There was times throughout the day when my family could hang out with me. I’d take a Lego break in the middle of the day. My kid would show up to meetings, but I never left work. I would still be working on the couch at the end of the day. Now, I try as much as possible to not take my computer home with me unless I know there’s some real pressing need. And quite frankly, in marketing, there’s never really pressing needs that are emergencies that I need to do often. Being able to physically separate those has really been a blessing for me. I hate the commute. I have an eternity of a commute, it’s 25 minutes. [laughter] And that is long here.

Tara: Well, compared to going into the other room in your house, yeah. But yeah, that’s not too bad.

Liam: Would I be correct at understanding that you have no computer at home or you just not have a work computer?

Morgan: I have computers. Just most of them are laptops now. My desktop broke at Christmas a few years ago, it got fried during an electrical storm and we never replaced it. My wife and I were on our computers but not all the time. We’re on our phones a lot so take that, but it’s not the focus at home anymore. Computer’s a tool. Unfortunately, like I said, the phone has kind of replaced the time in front of the computer so that’s that’s a challenge.

Tara: It is nice, though, I imagine. It’s been a long time since I worked anywhere but in my home. But when I did, it was before cell phones and computers so it’s hard for me to even remember what it was like to come home and not be able to access your work or anything. I can imagine now that we have phones and everything, even when we say we’re leaving work behind, we’re still always accessible.

Morgan: I remember several years ago, walking through California Disney and being on my phone SSHing into a server in Miami so I could reboot it so our client’s websites could come back up. That’s really cool technology but I really don’t want to live my life that way.

Tara: I’ve had similar experiences, I’ve had memories like that of being on a vacation and doing things. It’s great. You can add a WordPress site on your phone if you have to, right? That’s a good thing in some ways.

Liam: It comes down to a mindset, doesn’t it? Think of the stress and the grief of not being able to have rebooted that server. Because you’re still going to have a phone, so they’re going to call you. You get the phone, “Okay, that was the third time they called, I should probably answer that.” [laughter] And then maybe 10 or 15 minutes because, of course, SSHing on your phone, it’s not going to be, “Let me send a quick text.” It’s going to be a bit of a pain, and the UI is probably not going to be great, you’ve got to do it. But then 10 or 15 minutes later, you’re back on vacation with your family without the stress of, “I wonder if they got it. Wonder what the client’s going to say when I’m back next week.” It’s over and done with. But to the point you were talking about, not bringing the work computer home, it’s what is the mindset around always having that power with us, and how do we use it. Are we using it in emergencies and in situations because it’s a better solution to fix that immediate problem that was happening with the server and then going back to your family, rather than having it hanging over your head for the next three or four days?

Morgan: Right. That has been a mind shift for me because I used to be always on call. Going into that, having a supportive manager who says, “When you leave, you’re not on call.” And we still communicate but it’s not this urgent, “Our servers are down and we need you to come back into the office and fix something.” Being able to have the computer there if it’s needed, but not to open it on a regular basis, lets my family know and lets me know what is more important. The importance is that family work is important but work will always need to be there. The time with the family, for me, needs to be spent more focused on the family and not wondering about is work going okay.

Tara: Yeah. That makes it easier to like what you do, also, that constant stress on you all day long and pressure to always be on call. It sounds like a good situation that you’re in right now.

Morgan: Yeah, it is. I’m frustrated some days but that’s with any place, that’s just life.

Liam: Indeed.

Tara: For sure.

Liam: Tara, did you have a question or can I jump in with one?

Tara: Go ahead.

Liam: Morgan, you were very kind to share that definition of success, and then we kind of followed on about how that plays out. But within that definition of success, that balance that focused time with the family and work to support that and kind of that hierarchical form of importance, what’s the single most important thing you do every day to achieve or maintain that success to make that family time a priority? How do you do that? Is that a mind thing, is that a scheduling thing, a little bit of both? Talk us through that.

Morgan: I think one of the most important things is my evenings are very short with my daughter and my wife together. So I come home and I eat dinner. We catch up on our day. Bath time with the kiddo and then read and put her to bed. And I don’t do work in between that time. I don’t do other things. We’re there together as a family. That has helped me stay grounded and that has helped me actually enjoy my work time because I know my family time is coming. And family time is fun. We play in the morning and I head off to work, but I know once I get home, we are going to have probably only about two hours of the three of us together. I focus on that and I spend that time well.

Tara: What a great memory for your– you have one child, you say?

Morgan: One.

Tara: For your daughter. Is it daughter?

Morgan: Yeah.

Tara: For her to grow up with, that special time. That’s neat. I remember when my dad used to come home from work and we’d climb all over him and he’d make himself a Manhattan and– [laughs]. That’s nice that you can do that.

Morgan: My dad was a California-hired patrolman. So most of the time that we had family dinner, it was with his cop car pulled out in front, he’s in for 20 minutes, half an hour or whatever just to catch a quick thing, catch up with us, and then we wouldn’t see him again until maybe the next morning. He worked a lot of weird shifts and long hours to be able to provide for us. But I remember dinner was just a short period of time for him. That was sometimes the only time during the day that I saw him. I’m trying to make maybe happier memories with my family.

Liam: Yeah, shift work is very hard on a family, isn’t it? Being tied to that clock. We’re very lucky to have the kinds of careers where we can sit in airconditioning even in a 100 degrees, and have two hours a day every evening with our child. I know it’s not every evening, something’s this, something’s that. But that’s really something to be quite grateful for, and I can tell from that conversation that we’re having, it’s hugely valuable and you’re very grateful for what you have.

Morgan: Absolutely.

Tara: Yeah, it goes by very fast, children growing up. It’s a cliche, I suppose, but it does go by so fast. It’s good that you’re appreciating it in the moment.

Liam: Morgan, let’s talk a little bit more about work because you’ve told us how you’ve gotten to where you are today, you shared with us that you work for a marketing firm in Oklahoma that’s 25 minutes from your house. Tell us a little bit about what you do there and what is your favorite thing to do there every day?

Morgan: I work for Big Wing and Big Wing is a marketing agency that started initially from the Oklahoman Newspaper. It was a spinoff of the newspaper, people were placing ads in the print and then saying, “Here, there’s these things called websites. Do you know how to do that?” And one of the marketing people said here, “Yes, yes, we do.” And then she learned quickly how to get people who do websites. That has been, I think, five or six years, maybe even seven. The agency has grown, we now have a web department inside of the agency and there are, right now, five of us on the web team. I do mostly back-end development for client websites. We have mostly local websites or local clients. Some of them are rather large in the state, some of them are national chains, but that’s what I get to specialize in. It’s helping with the publishing experience and helping with making sure their websites are fast and secure.

Liam: Are you client-facing or are you fielding responses from the project leads that say, “Hey, Morgan. They’re saying this needs to be faster and they want to build this out. Can you make this happen? Oh, by the way, can you have it done before you go home tonight?”

Morgan: [laughs] It’s a blend of both. We have a lot of personal relationships with our clients, it’s one of the benefits of having small clients is we’ll be on meetings with the sole proprietor or the CEO of the organization. Depending on the size of the client, they may have just a point person but as a developer, our dev team gets to be involved in client meetings every week as well as the larger management meetings that go on between them. We’ll have times where the client will come to the project manager and say, “I want this big thing.” And they’ll come to us and they’ll arrange a time for us to visit with the client to figure out how’s the best way to make this big thing happen, or convince them that they need really something different.

Liam: And are you building exclusively with WordPress, primarily, sometimes-ish?

Morgan: For me, it’s 99% of the time WordPress. We have a lot of clients that come to us from Weebly, Wix, Squarespace, and they start out with, they need analytics or they need marketing. And then they quickly run into a limitation of whatever platform they’re on. There’s some agencies here in town that have their own CMSs and so we do migrations from other CMSs. There’s a lot of them that come to us with just a need and we end up building something from the ground up for them inside of WordPress.

Liam: That sounds cool. I am going to change gears on us just a little bit and I’m going to ask you about advice. What is the single most valuable piece of advice that you’ve ever received and implemented into your life? It can be personal advice, professional, maybe a mix of both.

Morgan: It was not directly given to me, but one thing that I’ve learned is don’t change your hair before a conference. Several years ago– if you don’t know, I have long blonde curly hair, my daughter has long red curly hair. it’s hard to miss us. I’m 6’2, she is over 4 foot tall at six years old. My wife is a foot smaller than I am. We’re noticeable when we go places. And I was walking down the steps in between sessions at WordCamp San Francisco three years ago, I guess, the last one that was there was the first time we went. And I saw Mika Epstein on the stairs. That’s a first time we’ve ever seen each other in person, we interacted online but we saw each other and I introduced myself, and she says, “Yeah, I know, the hair.” And she kept walking, she was on her way to something else. And we chatted about it later and realized, there were several people who recognized me at WordCamps because of my hair. My avatar matched my face, they were able to piece together those things. And I figured out, if I ever get a haircut, it’s got to be after the WordCamp, and I’ve got to change my avatar pretty quickly to match it. Otherwise, people are just guessing who I am. I still have my long hair, I’ve cut off a foot of it about six or nine months ago and I’m letting it grow back out. I guess I can’t ever cut it really short without making sure that I’m not applying to speak anywhere.

Liam: I totally get that because I’ve had people like, “Oh, it’s you, I didn’t recognize you. You look different than your avatar.” [laughter]

Morgan: Those are important to keep updated.

Tara: Yeah, that’s advice I think we’ve not heard before so we’ll keep that in mind. Liam – Don’t grow your hair. [laughter] People will definitely not recognize you.

Liam: Yes, thank you, I appreciate that. Good reminder, Tara. Good reminder.

Tara: Liam and I were chatting a little bit about references to your home state, and I’m looking at a song list from Oklahoma and I was wondering since we’re running out of time, if you wanted to go out on a song or something? I’m in a little bit of a funny mood today, so, The Surry With The Fringe on Top or something.

Morgan: I’m supposed to know that song. They sing it at the 7th inning stretch at baseball games here. But after 14 years, I still don’t know all the words and I’ve only seen the play once. [laughter]

Tara: Okay.

Liam: Do the people of Oklahoma even like the play or is it like, “Yes, we are all aware of it. Thank you very much. It’s not the only thing that happens here.”

Morgan: We are the national home of the Oklahoma play. They got it on a town out east that puts it on every year. It is the national performance, it happens here. So I guess, to them, it’s a big deal. It’s one of those things you go see once and you say, “Yup.”

Tara: That’s kind of weird in some ways. There is parts of it that you just kind of shake your head a little bit and other parts that are really fun and vibrant. It gets kind of dark in places, though.

Morgan: Now that I say that, I’ve got to see it one and a half times. The first time there was a storm that was so big that they were afraid the crew and the actors were going to get electrocuted so they cut it short and gave us free tickets for the next year.

Liam: That is awesome. Thinking of cutting it short, we don’t have any storms to worry about but we are out of time. Morgan, thank you very, very much for joining us. It’s been an absolute pleasure chatting with you this afternoon.

Morgan: Thank you so much. I really appreciate the time.

Tara: Thank you very much. I hope everyone has Oklahoma stuck in their head for the rest of the afternoon. [laughter]

Liam: Morgan, before we say goodbye to you, tell us where people can find you online?

Morgan: I hang out on Twitter most of the time. @morganestes. It’s also my website that I don’t ever blog at and pretty much everywhere else.

Liam: Awesome, thank you so much. Good to see you. Take care.

Tara: Thank you, Morgan.

Morgan: Thanks a lot, see you all.

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.

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.

Lauren Pittenger is a front-end WordPress designer and developer. Her college degree is in English, but she’s always had a strong interest in design – and she has also earned a web design certificate. She is obsessed with her cat.

Website | Lauren Pittenger

Life Coach School | The Life Coach School

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

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

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

Liam: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 54.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Lauren Pittenger. Lauren is a front-end WordPress designer and developer. Her degrees are English but she’s always had a strong interest in design and she also earned a web design certificate. She is also obsessed with her cat, as am I. Hello, Lauren, and welcome.

Lauren: Hi.

Liam: Hey, Lauren. How are you? Thanks for joining us on the show today. Can you tell us a little bit more than what Tara just shared?

Lauren: Yes. Thank you for having me. As Tara said, I’m a front-end designer and developer, and I actually work for Liam and his company LBDesign. Together, we design and build websites for our clients.

Tara: Glad to get that out of the way up-front. You and Liam work together and you and I have met as well and interacted a lot online. I’m really excited to have you on Hallway Chats today because there’s a lot that I don’t know about you and I’m looking forward to hearing more about that. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got started with WordPress and maybe even how you and Liam started working together?

Lauren: I actually, as you said in my intro, have my degree in English. I always had an interest in art and design where I could Photoshop throughout school and high school. Then when I got to college, I continued to be interested in graphic design and art and all that. But somehow I decided to get a degree in English. After I got my degree, I kind of thought, “What the heck do I do with this?” [laughter] I started looking at jobs, and the ones that were interesting to me, which now that I think about it, it’s kind of obvious, were the ones around design. I decided to go back to school for a web design certificate and so I just went to a community college and got a certificate, I learned about HTML and Flash which I never actually used in real life. HTML, I think I said that already, and Photoshop, and Illustrator, and InDesign. It was really just the very basics of design production work. While I went through that certificate program, I had a teacher who was contacted by a local company who was looking for somebody to help with their website. She told me it was with WordPress, I said, “I can’t do that. I don’t know about that. That’s databases.” She’s like, “No, it’s fine. You can figure it out.” What was really great about going to community college was that they offered access to Lynda.com. It was through working for– I ended up working for that company that that teacher told me about for, I think, two and a half years. I did a lot more than just help with their website as small companies end up doing. I learned a bit about WordPress and started taking classes with Girl Develop It as well. I knew that I wanted to do more of that type of work and so I tried to learn as much as I could. Eventually, somebody that I met from Girl Develop It actually told me about the job with Liam, so I applied and now we’ve been working together for almost three and a half years now. Not quite four years, so that’s kind of my story of WordPress.

Tara: That’s a great story, and I know Girl Develop It is a wonderful organization and I believe that Philly chapter is really active and I’ve talked to other people who have sort of found their way via Girl Develop It as instructors and as learners or learners becoming instructors and all of that. I’m glad to hear that it was a positive thing for you too. Lauren, I’ve seen online that you are a self-professed introvert. I wanted to start a conversation about that because that’s a conversation that a lot of people in the WordPress space and in the tech space touch upon. It’s interesting because I think, especially in social media, introverts sometimes are not as introverted as they are in person. There’s been some sessions, sort of pre-WordCamp sessions to help people who are maybe introverts or who are shy, to be more comfortable at WordCamps and events like that. Can you talk a little bit about what that means for you and what you’re doing around that word introvert?

Lauren: Yeah, I love this question, thank you. Yes, I’m a total introvert, I’ve always been very quiet and I like to just kind of observe what’s going on around me, and that often doesn’t include talking to people. [laughs] As it relates to WordPress and working on the internet and specifically WordCamps, I found for me just kind of– it’s interesting, I never actually thought about this as much.

Tara: We love to do that to people, catch them off-guard.

Lauren: But the internet can kind of serve as a platform for which to observe people before actually knowing them. What I have found that really helps me as somebody who was shy and has social anxiety of talking to people is getting to know them online, and that’s mostly on Twitter. It’s kind of getting acquainted with people in a more comfortable, for me, way. Following people in WordPress on Twitter and starting conversations that way has helped me– you, too, talk about belonging. I think that helps me to feel like I belong to something that, in person, would be more uncomfortable.

Tara: Yeah, I think it’s very true that what social media has done for any of us, whether– I don’t necessarily think I’m an introvert but I definitely have some social anxiety. What social media does is it allows you to have a comfort level with someone before you even meet them in person. I was just talking to some women who I met through WordPress, through Slack, and Twitter, and we hung out together in person. It was kind of like we already felt like we had a bond before we actually even met. It breaks down some of that initial getting to know each other. Yeah, I can definitely relate to that. It doesn’t necessarily take away the awkwardness that you have when you’re in-person with people caring on the conversations because you can’t type and edit and change your thinking mid-sentence. [laughter]

Liam: You can change your thinking but what you’ve said already has gone out.

Tara: [laughs] Yeah. I’ll switch gears from the introvert a little bit but maybe it will relate to that and ask sort of our signature question which we asked ourselves recently, and I realized what a difficult question it is to answer. You know it’s coming. Success. Lauren, how do you define success? What does success mean for you?

Lauren: Yeah, I love this question. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I loved both of your answers to that in that episode. I think for me success is– I think that there’s a lot of different aspects that feed into it. Personally, it’s continuing to grow personally and professionally. It’s really kind of purposeful in creating my life. It’s looking at the default programming, if you will.

Tara: I like the code reference, good job.

Lauren: [laughs] I haven’t thought about that but I like that. Looking at the default programming that I’ve picked up over the years and being willing to ask myself whether that stuff is working for me anymore, and making decisions towards whether it’s my mindset or the actions that I’m taking in my life. That’s a big part of it. Then also, I think an indicator for my own success, and I feel kind of weird saying this out loud, but it’s really how– I think the point of life, and I decided this a few months ago, is that I wanted my life to be about loving so I can decide– the question I can ask myself is how well am I loving other people and my life and the things that are in my life, and kind of using that as a metric for my own success. Does that make sense?

Tara: That’s phenomenal, yeah, I loved that.

Liam: Yeah, that is just filled with wonderful imagery and phraseology and I absolutely loved that. Thank you, Lauren. You said a number of different aspects about your definition of success that I want to just kind of ask you about. With the understanding that so much of it is the different aspects, right? You want your life to be about loving and how well am I loving myself and other people. It almost sounds like, if I’m hearing you correctly and understanding you correctly, that success is more of a journey than a destination perhaps. Maybe successful, to put that in air quotes, is a nicer stretch of the road where it’s less hilly and less rocky, although hills can be beautiful, but I just mean in less emotionally and psychologically and all those other ‘lys’. It’s less arduous. Would that be something that you would agree with that I hear that right, where it’s more of a journey and it’s about trying to journey ‘well’?

Lauren: Yeah, and one of the kind of images that I’ve had recently is the image of being on a train and the difference between intentionally getting onto the train and sometimes being thrown off of it by these default things that aren’t serving me, and then making a conscious decision to get back on it.

Liam: There’s a certain imagery there with the train that indicates that, well, we can choose to get on, and we can fight getting thrown off, and we can work to a cheek to decide which train to get on, right? Are we going to take the train to New York? Are we going to Chicago or DC? Ultimately, we’re not controlling where that train goes because we get on as passengers and we’re not the driver, we don’t control the speed. I wonder in your analogy, in this imagery that you’ve worked up, which I really like, was that a deliberate choice? With life, we respond what comes at us and we make choices. And we can’t control the actions of those around us and maybe that’s kind of like the train. Were those parts of the analogy that you would explore yet?

Lauren: Yes, I love that question. It’s really not a train. My choices are how I am showing up in my life, not what is going on around me. The choices that I have are how do I respond or react to those things, and I could react in a way that is default and might not be– default is not always necessarily bad. Sometimes our default does serve us but when it doesn’t, I think, is where the decision is. Does that make sense?

Liam: Yeah, it totally does. I get where default can serve us but default should be a deliberate choice and not a, “Well, that’s what I always do.” Because you’re going back to thinking about what is default and what does that mean in this situation or this aspect of my life. Default can be great, okay, that I’ve got sorted, right? I’ve got that successfully figured out at least for now. But looking at the other stuff, I liked that a lot, thank you.

Tara: Yeah, me too. Lauren, what would you say is the most important thing that you do every day in this journey?

Lauren: The most important thing that I do every day is– I call it meditating on paper and it’s a practice that I learned about through a coaching program that I’m in. What you do is basically do a brain dump onto paper and then look at all of those sentences as just thoughts in my head. Then you take each of those sentences and you do what is called a model on them. A model is a way of gaining awareness about the things that you’re creating with your own mind. The idea is that you have your circumstances which, if you think about the train, it’s all those things that are happening outside of ourselves. Somebody saying something to us or stubbing my toe on something. Until you would have that circumstance, and then you have a thought about it. From that thought, you have a feeling and while you’re feeling that certain way, you do certain things. From those actions, you get a certain result.

Tara: That’s a very thoughtful approach to so many things. It seems like– going back to your word, purposeful, that you used earlier which is a word that I gave a lot of thought to as well. Having so much purpose and thought behind your reactions to things that happened around you sounds like it is very important. Also, it sounds like it’s hard to do sometimes in the moment. Can you talk a little bit about the challenges around that?

Lauren: Yeah, sometimes it’s not possible for me yet to do it in the moment, which is okay. It’s a practice towards being more conscious and aware of really my own mind. Sometimes it’s looking after the fact at, “Well, what was I thinking in that moment that made me say a certain thing or act a certain way?” I have heard, though, that the better you get at it, that you can do it in the moment, but like we said, it’s a journey and it’s a practice.

Tara: Yeah, it’s a very intentional mindful thing to do, to pause in those moments before reacting. I can definitely appreciate that, thanks for sharing that method, that’s really cool.

Liam: I’m going to change it up a little bit if I can and just circle back around to build a little bit of a focus on WordPress. Lauren, obviously, I know you, I recognize you. I know that you’re quite active in the WordPress community. I wonder if you can just talk a little bit about that and how you came to get involved and maybe as it relates back to success and purposefulness and loving well, what does that all mean to you? Let’s talk a little bit about you in the WordPress community, if you will. That’s an open ending question so sorry like that, but maybe start with how did you get started and what attracted you to it. Then maybe touch on as you’re developing this definition of success, how does that apply to your involvement with the WordPress community?

Lauren: I’ll be honest. When I first got involved, it wasn’t really driven by love. It was more like feeling a sense of needing to be better. Being better at my own job and being better with WordPress. I think when I first got involved, it would have been like 2014. That would have been going to the meetup that Liam organizes.

Liam: That was 2014, and then how did it go from there?

Lauren: And then it was, Liam, you encouraged me to apply to WordCamp Philly and you encouraged me through speaking, which I never ever would have imagined doing as somebody who is very quiet and shy.

Liam: Then as you spoke at a number of different WordCamps and presumably you got more comfortable with that or at least liked it or were willing enough to do it, maybe if no other reason, just to make me quiet and leave you alone. Where did it go from there? Honestly, don’t stress about it. We can edit out for time.

Tara: No worries at all.

Liam: Silences.

Tara: I think we should go back to the deep questions instead of the history questions because they’re interesting. [laughter]

Liam: Yeah, I wasn’t trying to go for history, but yeah.

Lauren: I don’t know if this kind of answers your question but I see the history of it as really kind of– I think it wasn’t really driven by my current definition of success. Just recently, the stuff that I’m learning by doing my own work to be more deliberate and purposeful and mindful in my own life. I’m finding that I want to share that with other people. I recently gave a talk at a meetup and it was about, I taught them the model. I just really enjoyed that and so I see what I want to continue doing is more of that and giving back in that way. Does that kind of answer your question?

Liam: Yeah, it totally does, thank you.

Tara: Based on what Liam said, it sounds like you’ve responded to some encouragement and advice so I’d like to ask you another one of our questions which is around advice and if you would share with us any significant or perhaps the most significant advice that you’ve received and implemented in your life.

Lauren: I came up with two things and I wouldn’t necessarily call them advice but kind of beliefs that I’ve taken on as true. And the one is the practice of using the model in my life, and the second is that the idea that– and this might sound silly but the idea that negative emotion is not a sign that something’s gone wrong. I learned that on a podcast. Yeah, as somebody who has social anxiety, being anxious to talk to people is not a sign that something’s gone wrong. Because feeling anxious and being okay with that, and being anxious and wishing I didn’t feel anxious. It’s kind of glaring on the negative emotions. That idea, I remember hearing that and I was like, “Why did it literally take me 32 years to learn this?” Yeah, that changed my life.

Liam: Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more that negative emotions, whether they’re anxiety or stress or anger or kind of anything that we might, generally speaking, consider negative, and I really was about 40 before I really appreciate that.

Tara: I just learned it now, so. [laughter]

Liam: You’re well ahead of the curve, Lauren. But the understanding that emotions come, right? When someone says you won the lottery, you’re now a billionaire or a millionaire, we don’t decide to get excited. When we stub our toe into the table, we don’t decide to get mad or angry at that. It just happens. I have no idea why that happens, whether that’s physiology, biology, or psychology, probably a combo of all three. But it’s really how we respond to that emotion, that’s our power. That goes right back to what you were talking about earlier, Lauren, about being purposeful in creating your life and then meditating on paper by analyzing what emotions came in, how you processed them, how you dealt with them, how you responded to them, how you acted on them. And then analyzing, I’ll say, your justification about whether or not that was good or bad. Yeah, I love that. Very, very succinct. Very, very comprehensive in your thought process, thank you.

Tara: There’s another layer there, too, that I want to talk about that I really latched onto, which is the idea that not only is that not a negative thing, there’s nothing wrong with that emotion, but that it’s actually normal. I take comfort a lot of times in knowing that I’m not alone. Sometimes you feel like your anxiety or your response to something or whatever’s happening to you, that you’re the only one that’s feeling that way or that’s ever gone through that experience before. I think that part of that advice is related to that in terms of it’s okay, what you’re feeling is normal. I think that’s important to point out as well. Thank you for sharing that, that’s excellent.

Liam: Tara, I’m going to riff on that a little bit and you’re probably going to agree with me. I’m playing with language here but I’d suggest that there is no normal. There is common or more common or less common.

Tara: Yeah, common is probably a better word than normal, that’s true. I probably had a bad word choice there. But the idea really that whatever anxiety you’re feeling, that there’s nothing wrong with that. I think that was maybe the word that you used, Lauren, that there’s nothing wrong with the negative emotion. In fact, that it is common or normal and that people feel that way, too, that you’re not alone maybe is what I meant to say. Thank you for clarifying that, yes.

Lauren: Yeah, if I could say one more thing. I think about it as like– and what I learned from one of my other teachers is the fact that we feel negative emotion means that we’re supposed to, it just happens. Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a thing that happens.

Tara: I love that. That means a lot to me, thank you for sharing that, actually.

Liam: So, Lauren, you shared a lot with us around success and advice and thought processes and self-development and self-improvement, that’s been really cool. I’m going to ask this question of you and ask you kind of around this. What’s been your biggest challenge to date? It can be work-related, it can be kind of personal development-related. How are you or how are you overcoming or addressing that challenge?

Lauren: All of the things that I talked about like meditation and the work that I’m doing in this coaching program has all been driven by– my biggest challenge has been on my own brain. I mentioned social anxiety earlier but, you know, I also have depression and ADHD, it’s through those challenges that really made me do this deeper work into myself and kind of find the purpose in my life. I don’t think that it’s an overcoming, I think it’s a practice of working with these things and not letting them drown me inside my own head.

Tara: What a thoughtful and purposeful approach to that one. I really appreciate you’re sharing that with us. Sounds like you’re in a transition time in a very thoughtful way. I’m excited to see how and where you go with that. With that, we need to wrap up our interview unfortunately because I would love to keep talking to you about this. But I would like it if you would share with us where we can find you more, find out more about you and maybe if you could share this process that you’re using as well?

Lauren: Oh yeah. I have my own website, laurenpittenger.com but I haven’t updated that in probably over a year.

Liam: Welcome to being a web professional. None of us update our sites. [laughs]

Lauren: Twitter’s a different story. You can find me on there at @laurenpittenger. I recently shared a new blog where I’m going to be sharing more about the practices that I’m doing to create deliberate life. I have a new blog called Mindful Creative Life and it’s online at mindfulcreative.life. My coach’s name is Brooke Castillo and she is at The Life Coach School. She also has a podcast and website, thelifecoachschool.com. I definitely recommend checking her out.

Tara: Yeah, thank you so much, that sounds great. Lauren, it’s been great chatting with you, thank you so much for sharing so many things with us, we really appreciate it and we appreciate the lesson that you had about your advice and taking that to heart today as we speak. Thank you.

Lauren: Thank you for having me on.

Liam: Thanks, Lauren. Always a pleasure to see you and chat with you and spend time with you. Thanks for joining us on the show today. Bye-bye.

Lauren: Bye.

Tara: Bye, Lauren.

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.

Michele Butcher-Jones is the WordPress technical specialist for Thrive Agency. She also teaches beginners WordPress and freelances with her own shop 13 Core. In her free time, she blogs at Can’t Speak Geek. She’s a lead organizer for the Southern Illinois WP Meetup and runs WP Kids, a Slack group for people interested in organizing WordCamps for kids.

Website | Can’t Speak Geek

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

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

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

Liam: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 53.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Michele Butcher-Jones. Michele is the WordPress technical specialist for Thrive Agency. She also teaches beginners WordPress and freelances with her own shop 13 Core. In her free time, she blogs at Can’t Speak Geek. She’s a lead organizer for the Southern Illinois WP Meetup and runs WP Kids, a Slack group for people interested in organizing WordCamps for kids. Hi Michele, welcome to Hallway Chats.

Michele: Hi Tara and Liam, I am so happy to be here. I absolutely love your guys’ show and glad to be included on it.

Liam: Aw, thanks. We love that, what a great way to greet us. Thank you. We’re so thrilled that you’re here. Will you tell us a little bit more than what Tara shared about you?

Michele: Okay. First of all, I am in Carbondale, Illinois which is the southern part of the state. We like to say it’s a prettier sight from Chicago. I’ve been in WordPress since 2011 and also, on my free time, I am a part-time hobby photographer. I mostly do nature and kids. I live with my husband and my 14-year-old daughter who’s also into WordPress.

Tara: Tell us how you started with WordPress?

Michele: How I got started in WordPress is actually a funny story. I was talking with a friend of mine back in 2010 about starting just a personal blog as I was a preschool teacher and had been for about two years by that point. I was wanting to blog about different stuff when it came to kids and preschool teachers and things like that. At that time, a friend of mine was writing a security plugin called Better WP Security at that time. The friend was Chris Wiegman. He started helping me build my site teaching me along the way. The more I learned how to do my own site, the more I was like, “I can actually do this as a job.” I started out more doing just my personal stuff and then I got in with WP Security Lock which is a WordPress security cleaning company based out of Northern Illinois. And I worked with security and support for many years and doing my own freelance thing, and have now ended up doing agency support for Thrive Agency.

Liam: That’s pretty impressive way around that, that’s awesome. What’s the timeframe there? You said you started getting into it in 2010 and now you’re working with Thrive Agency, you do a little bit on the side through your own 13 Core and you’re blogging still. And if you’re organizing a WordPress meetup and running a Slack group, you’re pretty active all-around. What’s the timeframe here?

Michele: Well, when I was introduced was November of 2010. November of 2011 was when I setup 13 Core, that was just mostly doing hosting and maintenance-type things. And then WP Security Lock was April of 2012. Then I started working for different plugin support companies like Yoast and Give and WP Rocket, those happened around 2015 and 2016. I also did agency support for Valet back in 2016 as well.

Liam: As you are sharing those dates, I can see that you are looking up and remembering. I don’t think I could remember those kind of dates without looking at a resume or some kind of LinkedIn profile. That’s pretty impressive.

Michele: I am surprisingly really good when it comes to dates and numbers. The biggest one, as I remember, in high school, I was actually going through the Military Entrance Program to join the Navy, which ended up I wasn’t able to due to a medical disqualification. But I remember learning my social security number then. And at the same time, I also learned my driver’s license number. Back in college, I actually got out of a ticket where I forgot my driver’s license that wasn’t on me. I was actually en route to pick it back up because I forgot it at a friend’s house and got out of the ticket because I was able to let the officer know what the number was and when it expired.

Tara: That’s awesome, I don’t know if that would work every time. It sounds like you got lucky with that one.

Michele: I only did it once but it worked. [laughs]

Liam: All you need is one, that’s all you need. Michele, it sounds like you’re pretty active in the WordPress community. Tell us how you got into that and what you think about all of it.

Michele: I’m actually even more involved than just what you said. My first WordCamp was WordCamp Chicago 2012 and I absolutely fell in love with the community. I was lucky that my first WordCamp, I even actually got to meet and speak with for a few minutes with Matt Mullenweg, and it just, I use a term loosely, created a monster. Carbondale area did not have any type of meetups so I helped organize and start the one here with help from Andrea Middleton. Since, still, ours was really, really small, I also helped organize WordCamp St. Louis as that is our closest camp to here. And I’ve been doing that for four years. Then last year, I was able to be the speaker lead for WordCamp US. This year, I’m helping out with the marketing team.

Liam: Well, that’s enough to keep you busy.

Michele: Yes, I enjoy staying busy. My grandfather was a very big believer, promoter of the idle hands as Devil’s playground. When he wasn’t doing his nine to five job, he was out in his workshop building things, making things, or working on stuff on his house. The only time he really rested was when he slept and I kind of kept up with that type of mentality.

Tara: Sounds like you have a good example there and that’s a good transition for me to move into the question that we love to ask about success. Since you have this role model in your grandfather who sounds like he was very productive and always had something to do, sometimes people would define success in those types of ways. We like to ask people, what is your definition of success, Michelle? Whether it’s in your personal life or your professional life or both. How would you define it?

Michele: Success for me is actually, in a way, a quite oxymoron type of view because success is when you are content with where you are, whether it be professionally or personally, or even in a relationship with your spouse or boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. Success is being happy, however, to me at least, you should always strive to make it better, make it more comfortable, make it more happier. I try to make sure that even though while I’m staying busy, it’s all things I love because of the old rule of, if you love what you do, you never really work a day in your life.

Tara: I like that quote, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that before.

Michele: I was very, very much a grandpa’s kid growing up, and even still a grandpa’s kid as an adult, even though that he passed on eight years ago. He was full of the old wise tales type things.

Tara: Yeah, little words of wisdom.

Michele: Yes.

Tara: Thank you for sharing your definition of success. Would you say that that comes from your grandfather, that idea of being happy? Do you think he loved all those things that he did all the time or was he–

Michele: Oh, yes. His favorite part-time was woodworking. He would build– I have clocks and different things even in my house that he had built. While his hands were always busy, he was happy and I would sit out there and watch him when I was very little and he’d be talking about what he was doing. And he ever said, “If I ever get tired of this, I will just quite building it.” That’s kind of how he was in his work life, too, with things is once it started being something he wasn’t really wanting to do, he’d switch profession, actually about four or five different times.

Liam: That’s really neat, I love that. I want to go back to your definition of success about being content where you are and tying into some of the things you shared about your grandfather and his belief about being happy in your work, and if you’re not happy, change. It sounds like you certainly did that as you transitioned from preschool teaching. You never said you weren’t happy with it but apparently, you’re very happy with WordPress. But how do you, in light of your definition of success, when you’re finding yourself in a work or personal situation where you’re not happy? It’s not a fundamental ‘I need a career change’ unhappiness but it’s a difficult situation at work, a client isn’t happy, maybe the company is going through and there’s just stress around that. How do you deal with that? How do you cope with that?

Michele: The biggest thing is just a mindset when it comes to issues and problems. A person can either look for the solutions or keep staring at the problem. I’m one who always finds solutions. It goes on with my own life, I’m usually the one that gets to handle the clients at Thrive who get upset about something not working. And I’ve had a couple where they’ve been on the phone very upset and I’m like, “Let’s take a moment, let’s try to find a solution for you.” It seems to defuse almost any situation and it keeps your eye on the prize.

Liam: Yeah, I think even just when people hear that we want to find a solution, let’s talk about that, let’s think about that, let’s work together on that. But within that kind of environment, you talked that you were good at finding solutions, so what does that look like to you? Realizing that every situation is a little bit different, it’s going to pull on your experience, but do you start just jotting down ideas, do you just start talking, “Well, what if we do this?” You’re kind of sticking loud. How does your ‘find the solution’ approach come together?

Michele: It starts just with the first mental brainstorming of it. If it’s something that I absolutely have no clue on, I either go to Google, I go to people who I might think know the answer. I believe, to be successful with anything really is to have a good network of people that can just be even on your own personalness of if you are having a bad day, that great network to talk to people to help you get through the day better. If you’re having mental health issues type of thing. Down to with a professional of a client saying, “I need help with this.” The best answer is then if you don’t know is, “I’m sorry, I do not know this but let me find someone who can help you.” Which is still working towards the solution.

Tara: I think providing support is probably one of the hardest jobs that you can do and finding what you just described and having the patience to draw upon that side of yourself is a real skill, is that something that you’ve brought with you or is it something that you’ve sort of learned the hard way by doing that?

Michele: I’ve kind of came by it naturally. I joke and say if I can handle a room full of ten toddlers, I can pretty much handle anyone.

Tara: That would help you with patience for sure. [laughter]

Michele: Going back just with the family traits and my grandfather, he was kind of my father figure growing up because my mom was a single parent. But most of his jobs were support-related, his last one was he was a janitor at a high school. He also was the Maytag man, service technician. And my grand aunt, his sister, who I was also raised around, was a nurse forever. She’s 98 years old and still living quite well, and my mom was a preschool teacher. So I was always raised around helping people.

Liam: I like that, that’s really interesting and I think I’m hearing in your voice and in your answers that what you’re sharing is not something that you just stumbled upon last week or last year or even five years ago. But there’s a real history to it. I want to go back to your comments around the value of a support network, and I couldn’t agree with you more that personally and professionally, maybe even personally is where it’s so much more important. Networking professionally is good for a career but personally, if you don’t have a network, life can just be overwhelming. You’re doing a lot of organizing within the WordPress community. You talked about WordCamps and your meetup and now working with US. What kind of work are you doing to empower others or enable others to build their own support networks through the WordPress community? I don’t mean to put you on the spot but I think a lot of what you’re doing would lend itself to that and I wonder if that’s something you’re doing consciously or it’s just part of who you are and what you do and that’s a natural byproduct?

Michele: That kind of goes back into, I was also, in my college years, a DJ. It was always my job to make sure everyone’s having a good time. And I’ve noticed myself, especially at WordCamp US this past year. I had a few number of friends that that was their first WordCamp ever, and they were quite nervous about it. I was the one kind of grabbing their hand, “Come on, let me introduce you to such and such.” And pulling them into circles and they’re like– I have had over the course of past couple of years people asking me, “How do you do it? How do I get involved?” It’s more of just putting yourself out there for it. With the look between professionally and personally, there’s so many people I have met professionally with WordPress who became really close friends personally.

Tara: I’m going to switch gears and I love hearing about that, I definitely fit into that category of people who have found their way and passionate about WordCamps. I love going to WordCamps. We’ve talked to a lot of people for whom WordCamps have changed their life. I want to come back to sort of what your grandfather taught you and your definition of success and how you approach your support tasks that you have and being patient with people and ask you about, in order to achieve all of this, what is the most important thing that you do every day?

Michele: That is actually two-fold. With me having a 14-year-old daughter who is into a lot of things and my husband’s into a few groups as well, and I do things outside of WordPress. Every morning when I wake up, I first say to myself what the day is and then I from memory kind of go over what I’m supposed to do in my head. And this is still just laying in bed as soon as the alarm goes off, and getting myself mentally prepared. Then once I get up, get ready, brush the teeth and sit down at my desk every morning. I go through my calendar again and look at everything that has to be done. All the meetings, all the schedules and things of that nature. Then branch out on the top things I want to get done both professionally and personally, above all the scheduled events. Be like, “I want to make sure I get a WordPress blog out. And make sure I set out the chicken at noon so it’s defrosted for dinner.” [laughter] I’m very much a note and task and calendar type person. It’s sitting on my couch right now because I was looking at it earlier. I have a paper calendar that has all of my scheduled meetings, all of my to-do lists, meal planning, all of that so I can stay on task. And that helps, for me at least, to not stray away from what needs to be done and for me to be successful every day.

Tara: Yeah, I love hearing everyone’s different methods of organizing their day and their life and writing it down certainly is something that resonates with lots of people. No matter how many online tools you have, there’s something about writing it down that helps you remember it and keep track of it.

Michele: And who does not get the great feeling when they do the task and they go, “Check, I’m done.”

Tara: That’s very true, that is very, very true.

Liam: Writing it down never helps me remember to take the meal out of the freezer in time. I can’t remember that to save my life.

Michele: I may or may not– I have a hutch-type desk and I may or may not have sticky notes right up on my laptop, and set reminders on my phone to go off at noon like, “Take food out!” [laughs]

Liam: That’s what I need. I need the frozen chicken to text me, to say, “Hey, it’s cold in here. Come get us! We want to warm up.”

Michele: If you’re on the iPhone, the Reminders app is just ridiculously awesome for that kind of stuff.

Tara: Yeah. I thought Instant Pot was invented for people like us who don’t remember to take the food out of the freezer. I don’t have one but I’ve heard that that thing’s amazing.

Michele: I got one for Black Friday sale and have yet to even take it out of the box. [laughter]

Tara: Oh, gosh. Well, the first day you forget to take the chicken out of the freezer will be the day you take Instant Pot out of the box, I can see it right now. [laughter] Can you tell us a little bit more about what you do with kids? We’ve read that at the beginning and I’m really interested to hear more about that.

Michele: Well, I was actually a preschool teacher for 12 years and it kind of overlapped with me first getting introduced to WordPress. I’ve always loved teaching, whether it be teaching preschoolers or teaching beginners WordPress and just everything in between. Even in high school, my math teacher kept trying to talk me into becoming a math teacher once I graduate high school, which totally didn’t happen. I couldn’t teach high schoolers to save a life. [laughs]

Tara: I agree.

Michele: Once I completely moved over to WordPress, I kind of missed the kid aspect about it and back in 2015, I went down to WordCamp Miami and helped out with their kids camp down there and fell in love with it. Came back, we actually did it in St. Louis that year as well, Working with Sandy Edwards and a few others just how it’s done everywhere. It’s like, this needs to be more dictative so it would make it easier for actually every place to teach. Because my philosophy on it, if we want WordPress to keep growing, we need to pull in the younger ones as well.

Tara: Yeah, that really interests me. I had a couple of family members and I set them up with a WordPress website and I was curious to see what they instinctually did. And I put a page builder on it to try to make it easy. That thing that says customize is what these kids– they just went after that right away. But they’re so app-oriented. Young kids these days. I sound like an old lady. They don’t even type any punctuation because it’s done for them. They don’t capitalize the letter I because it automatically capitalizes for them when you type it into your phone. I would think that we’ll be seeing more and more things that are geared to match the functionality that young people are seeing on their apps. And I’m talking like an old lady. But tell us a little bit about the difference between teaching young people and old people.

Michele: Actually, there’s differences but a lot of similarities. Especially if you’re looking at the older group who wasn’t really raised in the growth of technology as your 25 to 45-year-olds are. When it comes to teaching above 45s, sometimes it’s almost like new kids to tech as teaching, but kids get a lot more with the creativeness of it, as you saw with the customizer and stuff. And at kid camps, it’s so much fun to have them working in the customizer and stuff but not letting them see the sight until they’re done. When they switched it over, it’s almost like a five-year-old learning how to tie their shoe the first time. They are all just big smiles and it makes it all worth it. When it comes to teaching adults, the fact that they can see it being built on it is just amazing way to watch them grow technology-wise.

Liam: I just want to comment about Tara thinking she’s sounding old while recording a podcast that we’re going to publish on the internet. [laughter]

Tara: Well, I know I’m older than you so I guess I can try to get away with it. [laughter] I think skills may need a little help, I will not be on stage anytime soon.

Liam: Michele, let me ask you another one of our big questions here. What is the single most valuable piece of advice, be it professional, personal, or both, that you’ve received and implemented in your life?

Tara: And one from your grandfather but one from not your grandfather.

Liam: While she’s thinking about that, I was just going to say, Tara, that I was going to bet that it was going to come from her grandfather. But now you put the pressure on it and now she can’t remember what grandpa said that one time.

Tara: Made it tricky.

Michele: For him, it would probably be the one statement I always actually hated hearing him say. That was, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” I could not stand that saying but it’s so true of making sure you have everything in order before going for it. Because if you build up such anticipation for something, often times, you’re either let down or God and Universe and Murphy’s Law has other ideas for you. So it’s good to always be prepared for the worst but hopeful for the best. I was probably in my mid-20s before I was finally like, “You know, that thing makes sense and it’s true. Darn it!” [laughter]

Tara: That’s where you get some of your patience from.

Michele: But for me, for the personal, not really taught by him or one of his sayings, but still just in a way I was raised, too, of the ‘don’t hesitate, go for it’ mentality, of the more you sit back and think, “Well, can I? Should I?” The more self-doubt you give and often times you don’t do it and then you never really regret things you did, you regret more the things you didn’t do, unless, you know, they’re illegal. [laughter]

Liam: Don’t go for those.

Michele: How many times have you sit back and said, “I wish I would have done this five years ago. I wish I could have went back to high school and done this differently instead of–” You know. “Oh, I really wish I would five years ago have met WordPress and be where I am now.” If I see things, I typically try to go for them and let the pieces fall where they may instead of sitting back watching from the sidelines.

Liam: I like how those two bits of advice tie together. The one about going for it is requirement of hard work and self-reliance and initiative and bravery and courage, but balanced with the, just because you started doesn’t mean you’re there yet. Don’t count those chickens, even if they are still in the freezer. Don’t count them yet. I like that. Thank you for sharing those.

Michele: The other thing I would have to add to that is never stop learning and never stop wanting to learn. Because when you think you know it all, that’s when you kind of revert back to a teenager. [laughs]

Tara: Yeah, that’s true. How do you determine what’s the next thing for you to learn?

Michele: Mostly what interests me because things are always evolving. When I first got into WordPress, I really, really wanted to be a developer. And I noticed after a few years of being just of many types of people, and I was very lucky to be surrounded by many smart people in the industry. Where I decided was talking actually with Chris Wiegman one day and I was like, “You know, I’m not a developer. I never will really be one to build things new. I’m a fixer, I like fixing things.” That’s where I really went full force on the support type roles and I found that is really what I enjoy. It sometimes does give me time so I do get to write code and stuff like that but I enjoy mostly helping people.

Tara: That’s a great realization to have. There’s a great temptation, I can share that, to want to be a developer and know how to do everything. It’s just so much to learn it can be overwhelming. And fixing things one at a time is a little bit more manageable, right? You learn what you need to learn to fix it and then you move to what you need to learn to fix the next thing.

Michele: And I love Pandora’s Box type things. Give me a riddle and I will sit there and manipulate and play with it.

Tara: Oh, now I know who to call. Now I know. [laughter]

Liam: Yeah, don’t call me. I can’t stand that. [laughter]

Tara: It’s like trying to find that two cents in your checkbook years ago when we used to actually manually balance our checkbooks, and you’d be two cents off but you need the kind of person that would–

Michele: Oh, I can spend two hours trying to figure it all out. Grabbing a new bank register and writing it all down correctly. [laughter]

Tara: Alright, we definitely have a common thread there. I can do that, too. Yeah, code relates to that, I think.

Michele: Even in my relaxed time on the couch, I’m typically playing the Candy Crush Saga or Tetris or something like that on my phone, which is still very much puzzle games.

Tara: Yeah.

Liam: Well, I do like Tetris but it’s just a game.

Michele: I do mine for bored and nothing else to do and haven’t grabbed my Kindle yet to start reading. [laughing]

Liam: Michele, we are just about of time so I’m going to thank you very much for joining us out here in our little virtual hallway with our modern technology and our curmudgeonly backward-facing perspectives. Before we say goodbye to you, I just want to ask you if you can share where people can find you online, please?

Michele: Yes. On Twitter, I am at @michele_butcher, Facebook Michele Jones, and most everything either Michele Jones or Michele Butcher-Jones.

Liam: Excellent, we’ll make sure we get those links and put them in the show notes so people don’t have to guess how to spell Butcher.

Michele: Spelling Butcher is easy, it’s the first name often has issues because I am a one-L Michele.

Liam: One-L Michele, there we go.

Tara: Well, thank you, Michele, for joining us today, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you and hearing your stories and hearing about your grandfather, thanks for sharing everything with us, really appreciate it.

Michele: Thank you so much. This has actually been one of the most fun and kind of harder interviews than I really would have liked it because it’s really made me think.

Tara: Great. Thanks for saying that, appreciate it. Alright Michele, hope to see you at WordCamp. Take care.

Liam: We’ll see you soon, 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.