Hallway Chats

Co-hosts Liam Dempsey and Tara Claeys discuss the first year of the Hallway Chats podcast, and their own definitions of success.

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

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

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

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re going to do something different. Today is our 52nd episode. It’s the first episode in our second year of our show. Following a number of requests from listeners and former guests and really just the desire to indulge ourselves, Tara and I are going to, in effect, interview each other following our own format.

Tara: Now the conversation will begin. This is episode 52. Liam, in full disclosure to everyone, this is our second time recording this.

Liam: Yes, it is.

Tara: We agreed we would share that fact with everyone because we are human and we did have the opportunity to do a practice run, too.

Liam: But we didn’t call it a practice run, we just finished it and sat on the day and said, “That wasn’t what we want, let’s do it again.”

Tara: That’s exactly right. Here we are. We sort of can redo that and just do it better this time hopefully. We’d like to start by talking about Hallway Chats and we ask everyone on our show about success. A lot of what we talk about and probably will talk about today is going to be focused on the idea definition of success. I’d like to start by talking about the success of Hallway Chats as we view it, what our intentions were, and how we feel that is working out. You can start that conversation.

Liam: And so we will. Thinking about success, and I know in the last few weeks and days in the runup to our one-year anniversary, we were pushing a lot on social media to get to that 5000 downloads, and ultimately, we got there which was kind of fun and exciting. But really, in the grand scheme of things, the download counts were part of success but they’re really not anything close to the top and it’s really the connection that we make with our guests and, more importantly, that our guests make with our audience that I view as success. We get some of that feedback via social media, we get some of that feedback when you, Tara, and I roundabout, whether we’re at respected meetups or we’re at a WordCamp here or there. And just people saying, “Oh, I really wanted to meet this guest or that guest. When she said that, that really struck a chord with me.” That’s hard to measure but it’s really, really what we’re about, isn’t it?

Tara: For sure. I think when we set out to do this, if that had been our goal, if that had been how we were planning to measure to success of this podcast, we would have approached it very differently. But the focus of the podcast is to have people on the show who haven’t been on the podcast before or who haven’t been on a lot of podcasts before, who maybe are lesser known, which in and of itself means that we are building an audience for and with them and not trying to bring someone to the show who has a big audience already, necessarily. Not that that’s something that we’re qualifying on but part of our intention is to have people that we don’t know or that other people don’t know. And I’ve loved the opportunity to do that. I’ve loved meeting new people at WordCamps or meetups and inviting them to be on the show or talking to them about being on this show because we want to get to know them and we want to share their story with other people. For me, that’s been a really fun part of this show.

Liam: Yeah, I’d agree. The age-old lesson of don’t judge a book by a cover is really the– I’ve been reminded of that 51 times so far and I like to think I don’t do it too much but I’m human, inevitably, I make my conclusions about this person or that person. Through these conversations that we’ve had with people, it’s been really eye-opening in a lot of different ways to realize that that’s intelligence and amazing aspects that our guests bring to their lives and are kind enough to share with us and ultimately with our listeners. That’s really cool.

Tara: Yeah, it’s been really interesting to hear people’s journeys, not just with WordPress, not as the common thread, but just in general, the journeys or their struggles and challenges, and how we may relate to them each, you and I personally, in some cases, and hear from other listeners that they’ve related to it as well really strikes a chord with me and that makes me feel like we’re successful in what we just set out to do. I think one of the challenges that we’ve experienced is that getting the word out to people to allow them to contact us to showing interest in being on this show is something that we anticipated as being a challenge. It hasn’t been as much of one as maybe we thought it would be, because we haven’t really had a low, but I hope that in the second year, we continue to gain some interest and traction in a wider audience so that we get even more of those people to be on the show.

Liam: Yeah, absolutely. When we set out, we jokingly said that we didn’t want it to be the Friends of Tara and Liam Show, and that does present a very real challenge, that if you don’t know the person, it’s very difficult for us to ask if that person would be on the show. So going to meetups and going to WordCamps and meeting new people is really, really helpful. But it would be amazing if in our second year somehow we had enough of, I guess, awareness about this show that people outside of Northeast United States, mid-Atlantic United States were reaching to us. The guests that we’ve had that haven’t been from our corner of the world have been fantastic, but we’ve absolutely had to reach out to them. And that’s been nice, and I’ve enjoyed them, and they’ve been wonderfully kind to come on. Admittedly, you and I are limited in our command of world languages so we do need people to speak English for us but there’s so many that do. I’m really hopeful that as we go into year two that we can more accurately reflect the diversity and the wonderful scope of culture, and country, and language that the WordPress community actually is in real life.

Tara: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with that. I’m excited about that possibility. We should also acknowledge that we’ve had several people make recommendations to us, where they recommended several people that they think would be interesting guests on the show. That’s been helpful too. Even if people who are listening now themselves don’t have an interest in being on the show, maybe they know some people who do. That’s always welcome.

Liam: Yeah, that’s a great point. We’ve had some wonderful guests on in that way.

Tara: Yeah. Here’s to year two and more success.

Liam: Here, here. Here, here. Tara, I’m going to change gears on you and loop around to the success question outside of the podcast, outside of what it means for our show, and ask you to share your personal definition or your professional definition, or your own definition of success?

Tara: We ask this of everyone on the show, and you and I have talked about it ourselves over the past few months. I think wondering whether that definition changes over time or if the definition that we have is the same or how different it is from how we would define it maybe 20 years ago. And I realized after talking about this in our practice run the other day how really difficult it is to define, not only define but to record what the definition is, to put it into words is really difficult. What I think I’ve been considering over the past couple of days what makes it so difficult, sort of recording it as a permanent thing but also that everyone’s definition, not just that success is so different, but of right and wrong, of good and bad, because I would say– when we talked about this before, I said that my definition of success, at least personally, which overrides from me professionally, is to be a good wife and mother. And I said that might be an old-fashioned way to put it, but when I thought about that, I thought, “What does good mean?” That’s such a broad term. Good in my mind is what? Loving, caring, setting a good example. There are so many things, that’s such a broad term that I can use that as my definition of success, but it doesn’t necessarily pinpoint it because that definition of good could change over time. I think that’s still my definition, at a top level, of what it means to be successful as a human being is to first and foremost set a good example as a wife, mother, partner, and then friend, and colleague, and member of my small community, and my world community, all of those things. It’s so broad and it can be very specific to my household, but I believe that it also translates to how I feel about success in my interaction and the mark that I leave on the world. I think interacting with my family is where I start and hopefully, their interactions with other people are somehow influenced by my interaction with them. I’m not speaking too clearly, still, it’s very hard to talk about and not get too deep and heavy about it. But I think ultimately, we’ve had a couple of guests, say, to be the best version of themselves that they can be. And I would say that’s probably in a nutshell what I’m trying to say. I would say, the best version of myself at this time is different than what the best version of myself was 15 years ago. I was training for a marathon and I was very focused on other things than I am focused on right now. But I was successful because I was doing the best I could at what was important to me at the time.

Liam: Yeah, that’s good. I like that and I think that your description of being the best you that you can be and then tying that into– you want to start with your husband and your children, and then your family and your wider circles. I think that makes sense to me in a lot of different ways because you and your husband, you got married together, right? You made promises and oaths to each other. And I wasn’t at your wedding, I don’t know which your vows were but the very nature of some kind of agreement that I’m going to commit myself to being the best I can. From that relationship, you have children so there’s commitments to that. Those children wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you and for your husband. Then it goes out from there, the wider community. And you’re just being the best you can for everybody that you encounter. Clearly, you’re going to encounter your husband and your immediate family and those closer communities much more often than you will the wider communities. But that, I always want to be the best I can, holds true regardless of where you are.

Tara: Yeah, and you can bring it down to a smaller level too and say, “As a business owner, what is success?” And it’s the same thing actually. It’s being the best I can be, doing the best I can at this particular time. And at this particular time, that’s different than it was five years ago when I was learning how to make a child theme or two years ago when something else was the focus. I think the definition of success changes over time but it always has that overarching doing the best I can.

Liam: That’s good. Then let me ask you the follow-up question if that’s your definition of success. What’s the single most important thing you can do every day to maintain that success, because it sounds like you feel like you’re successful right now?

Tara: At the moment, I do.

Liam: That’s not a dig. That’s a supportive–

Tara: No, I definitely feel– being able to define that makes me feel successful in a way. [laughter] Oh my gosh, I really have a handle on this, I feel like maybe possibly. But when it comes to the single most important thing that I do every day, I think just get stuff done. And I would like to say, which is what I referred to the other day, is meditating. Which is actually not totally truthful because I meditate or I don’t meditate. I’m trying to make that a habit. Honestly, I don’t know that that makes me feel successful in and of itself but I do have a goal in my best self of at least pausing during the day because I kind of can spin out of control and be so busy all the time that I don’t actually step back and pause. While I wouldn’t say I do it every time, probably the most important thing I could do to be more successful would be to take a pause. Yeah. Pause.

Liam: That’s what I just did, paused.

Tara: I saw that. [laughter] Okay, now it’s your turn, Liam. Let’s talk about your definition of success and see if it’s the same as it was the other day.

Liam: Yeah, it absolutely will be.

Tara: I knew that.

Liam: And that doesn’t mean– I think we both came to just go back to why are we recording a second time and I think it wasn’t that we necessarily didn’t like our answers, but we were also– and this kind of reflects on your challenges around definition of successes, emotionally we were in a very different place earlier this week, for some personal family changes and challenges and the like. That’s what it was, we were kind of, “Hey, it’s a one-year anniversary.” And it was, “Yeah, it is.” But we had some time to reflect then, I think. My tone is happier and my voice has probably more of an uplift in it, but my definition won’t change. In effect, it won’t. I won’t say it in exactly the same way. But in a nutshell, my definition of success is living as close to that which God wants me to do. To be successful, I need to be mindful of my relationship with God, which I see as truth, ultimate truth, ultimate love, pure truth, pure love. And if I’m aware of that relationship in kind of that paused moment that you were talking about, really mindful of it, and thinking about it. And yes, I’m still talking to you, yes, I’m still recording a podcast or maybe I’m in a conversation with a client or I’m designing a brochure or I’m launching a website, but I’m mindful of how I’m doing that and what I’m doing. I’m aware of what I’m thinking and why, and I’m aware of what I’m feeling and why, and kind of assessing if I’m doing that right. If I maintain that focus on my relationship with God, then I am a success. Because that awareness will ensure that at least at some point, I take the right step. And the right step won’t necessarily win me the contract or ensure that I’m the most efficient loving father at the time, but it means that I will be keeping with truth and love. There’s a lot of different ways to fall into that that may not still be measured as successful in a worldly way but really ultimately are.

Tara: Yeah, I admire that so much and what really I want to hone in on, what you said, is the word focus. Because I think you do have that focus and I remarked on this the other day as well, but something I noticed about you is that you do communicate and instill in all of your communication a tone of kindness and understanding that can only come from that kind of focus. It’s clear that that’s how you live your life and that you don’t just say it. I just want to acknowledge that.

Liam: Thank you.

Tara: But you’re successful in that regard.

Liam: At least right now, right? At least when I’m mindful, and that’s it. That’s the challenge, if that would be your next question, what’s your biggest challenge, it’s me. It’s focus, focus, squirrel, focus. Whatever it may be. And it’s so easy to get sidetracked, it’s so easy to lose our sense of humility to lose that focus. And it happens gradually. If I’m not careful, if I’m not really doing what I can on a daily basis, and even hourly, minutely basis to remind myself of what matters, then it’s very easy to slip. We slip once, we slip a little bit further, we keep slipping and then, ultimately, we find ourselves much, much further away than we want to be.

Tara: Yes. On that note, what is the single most important thing towards this definition of success that you can do every day?

Liam: I’ll say it to be mindful but that’s not very detailed, is it? That’s not a very practical kind of way. I have a number of techniques that I use to remind myself, in the same kind of way that you’re training for the marathon, what’s the best way to train for the marathon? Well, to be fit. Okay, how does that happen? You go on a run and you run for longer periods of time, and you eat healthy, and you maybe set an alarm to make sure that you have a snack so that you don’t get to lunch and eat all the food. You eat the right amount of food to train for the marathon because you’ve had a snack. And kind of those little human tips, techniques, David Allen getting things done kind of things is what I try to implement from mindfulness. I often set an alarm on my watch for 57 minutes so that I don’t go a full hour without thinking about my relationship to God.

Tara: I like that.

Liam: And making sure that I do some kind of daily prayer and some kind of spiritual reading and some kind of education around mindfulness. What I find is that if I have these little human tricks, human tactics, then it keeps me in the mind, it keeps me focused. And it’s not uncommon for some little alarm or some phone call from my wife or an interruption from a child to say, “Ah, yes, there’s the reminder. I don’t need to be that mad about this.” Child comes in the door, yes, that’s who I’m meant to serve. And just those little human things to remind myself, because I get to easily distracted. I so easily want to think about me and getting myself ahead, and that gets me nowhere ultimately.

Tara: Yeah. I was thinking about the strings on the fingers, reminder things. You know that movie, It’s a Wonderful Life and that cousin Billy has the strings on his fingers. “Oh, what’s this one for, what’s this one for?” There is so many things we can remind or try to set reminders on, and sometimes it’s hard to keep track of what’s that reminding you to. [laughs]

Liam: Yes, exactly.

Tara: But that’s a good tip. 57 minutes on your timer. Like the Pomodoro type of thing.

Liam: Yeah, just so it doesn’t go an hour.

Tara: That’s cool, very cool. Let’s switch gears to our next question.

Liam: Go for it.

Tara: What is the single most important effective piece of advice that you have received and implemented in your life?

Liam: I’m going to stick with the same answers that I gave the other day. Before I share it, I will preface that I heard it probably when I was 17, 18, 19. Old enough to begin to want to date people, to have relationships that weren’t just me and my buddies riding bikes and playing basketball and doing stuff at the lake. And my father shared it to me. I can’t remember the context in which he shared it but he shared it with me. I probably ignored it for, I want to say, at least seven to 10 years. Then I began to implement it but more perfunctorily than emotionally attaching myself to it. I would say, I don’t know timewise, Tara, but in the last few years, I’ve begun to embrace it more and it’s made a massive difference. The advice is, always be the first to apologize. My father meant that in a relationship kind of way. It takes two to tango, one person can’t get into a fight, there has to be two. And I’ll talk about that in a second but I ultimately found that it really can apply to any kind of disagreement. It doesn’t have to just be with a partner or a significant other, it can be with family, wider family, it can be with colleagues, it can be people from work, it can be the community that we find ourselves in. And not to say that we apologize even if we were not the original aggressor or that which was said unto to us was not justified, but we’re emotional beings and more times than not, when we get attacked we respond in ways that maybe later we wish we hadn’t. So more times I can apologize for no other reason than the way I responded. I found that being willing to apologize for my wrongdoing, to be willing to be the first to offer that I didn’t act in the way, I wasn’t being my best, to use your definition. I wasn’t being my best. That doesn’t mean I’m accepting blame for the wrong I’ve been accused of in the initial accusation but I didn’t respond in a way. I’m sorry I said what I said, I’m sorry I reacted when you came into my office, when you said those things to me, when you did this, when you sent that email. That approach has made my life a lot more peace-filled.

Tara: Yeah, I can see that.

Liam: And I sit and stew on things a lot less. I still sit and stew, but a lot less.

Tara: I thought about this advice since you shared it with me and I’m going to ask a more critical question perhaps, and maybe this is a perspective of sometimes how I find myself because I tend to apologize quickly because I like to keep the peace. So I find that sometimes I say it first without totally meaning it. If you jump to apologize to keep the peace and you don’t really mean it, then it can make it worse.

Liam: I’d agree. And I guess what I mean in apologize first, it’s not the, “Oh, I’m sorry I bumped into you.”, “Oh, I’m sorry.” Those are kind of– that’s politeness, that’s not really, “I said some mean things to you, I shouldn’t have said those. I don’t really believe that, I was mad.” Or maybe I really do believe it but I didn’t need to say it like that. And if I do believe that, we should probably talk about why I think that. Maybe it’s not justified and maybe it is, but shouting it at you, and I’m just using you because you and I are talking, isn’t going to make us better, isn’t going to help whatever we’re trying to do. Whether it’s make a good podcast or put on a WordCamp together or just be friends. We can speak candidly with each other but we need to do so in a way that is respectful of the dignity that we both have.

Tara: Yeah.

Liam: So when I said apologize first, to kind of go back to your question, is it’s much more helpful when things kind of, not explode, but get heated. It’s, “Ungh.” And then I strum off into my office or, “I’m going to go to the grocery store.”

Tara: Right. Taking responsibility for your role in the conflict maybe.

Liam: That’s exactly that. That’s probably the best way to break it down is take responsibility and come back with peace. And not like a peace offering like, “Okay, now you can go out with your friends tonight.” Although that might be part of it, but it’s more, we’re friends, we’re colleagues, we’re husband/wife, we’re partners, we’re in this. I’m sorry, that’s not how we be the best we are and I need to– again, your definition is, I need to provide a better example and just be better, so sorry.

Tara: That makes sense, good. Just wanted to clarify that little bit. Sometimes I find myself apologizing too soon because I just want the conflict to go away and I don’t really need it, I just want to shut it up.

Liam: Right. I get that, I get that. And I don’t do that, I tend to just walk away. Neither of which is an overly helpful approach but I suppose it speaks to our personalities. [laughter] Let me come back to you. We have a couple of minutes and maybe we’ll indulge ourselves and go a little bit longer on our one-year anniversary episode, Tara. But what’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten and implemented in your life?

Tara: I’m going to tell the same story I told as well, which is that you can do whatever you set your mind to. I love sharing this story and I’ve shared it in other places but when I was probably in middle school, back in the late ’70s, early ’80s, I really wanted to be a stewardess, as they were called in the day. I had not been on very many airplanes at the time but I always thought that stewardesses were so glamorous and what a cool job to travel all over and wear these cute little uniforms, and their hair was always pretty.

Liam: They’re always so friendly.

Tara: They’re always so friendly and I just thought that would be a great job. My dad asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said, “I want to be a stewardess.” And he said, “Why not be the pilot?” That changed me forever because they gave me some flying lessons for my birthday, I was probably 15 or so, and just really took those flying lessons and got really airsick and motion sick and hot [laughter] and realized that was not what I wanted to actually do. [laughter] But the fact that he supported me in trying to aim higher and to really tell me that I could do whatever I wanted to do was really helpful. I’ll also say that he would not let me take typing because he thought that’s what secretaries– that I would end up being a secretary and that’s all I would be. Now, I’m on my keyboard all day long every day. [laughter] Making a living from my keyboard and I don’t really know how to put my fingers on the keys the right way. [laughs] But yeah, it instilled a very entrepreneurial spirit in me that I think I passed on to my children as well, maybe not necessarily entrepreneurial but just sort of that I can do what I set my mind to and being patient enough to follow through and stick with something until I understand it or I’m doing it to the level that satisfies me. That was great advice.

Liam: Yeah, I love that and I love that it wasn’t just advice over dinner or a barbecue or wherever you were when you first heard that, but that your dad went out and got you a couple of pilot lessons that you could actually see if you like that. That’s real commitment, that was not a throwaway statement from him. It was, “You can do whatever you want and I will support you to do it.” Apparently, okay, piloting is not what you’re meant to do but– [laughs]

Tara: But we tried it.

Liam: But you tried.

Tara: And saying that, “Why not be the pilot?” Stuck with me all of my life. I think about that even with teaching myself how to build websites. I needed a website at one point when I had a business many years ago and it was kind of like, why not learn how to do it yourself?

Liam: Why not be the pilot?

Tara: Yeah, that’s great advice.

Liam: That’s awesome, I love that. Well, Tara, we are a few minutes over time so maybe we should wrap this up. But before we do, let’s just spend maybe 30 seconds each and share with each other what we hope year two will bring for the show.

Tara: You want me to start?

Liam: Yeah, because I’m still getting my thoughts together. [laughs]

Tara: I’ll get mine together really quickly. I think more of the same, I think we’ve found something that works for us that we’ve committed to with the same intention. I think we share that intention and goal for this. It’s something we do sort of on the side as a service to the community, but also, I think we both discovered, as a service to each other, to ourselves. Personally, I’ve gained a lot from it. So it’s fun and interesting and enriching, all of those things. I’m looking forward to doing more of the same, we’re in a groove. Hope people continue to discover what we’re doing and participate in whatever way we want to.

Liam: Yeah, I like that. I think I’d agree with that and the only thing I would add to that is that I will work for and hope that we can reach out to the wider areas of the WordPress community to really connect with as many different people. It’s been so enriching in our lives and my life, and certainly, in the feedback, we’ve heard from some of our listeners, that they’ve really enjoyed it. I think, especially in this day and age, that’s a good thing is to build more connection, rather than less.

Tara: Yes, agree. Thanks, Liam. It’s been fun.

Liam: It has been, Tara. I won’t ask where everyone can find you because, well, they know where to find you, right? Hallwaychats.com

Tara: That’s right. Well, I think this is the keeper this time.

Liam: Yeah, I hope so.

Tara: I’m looking forward to publishing it for our episode 52.

Liam: Yep, one more year to go.

Tara: Thanks, Liam.

Liam: Thanks, Tara. See you soon. 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.

Norma Miller is an international captioner and as such is the owner of the captioning firm White Coat Captioning. Through her company, Norma and her team caption live conferences, seminars, classes, events, and more around the world including more WordCamps than we can count. Norma calls Vermont her home where she lives with her husband and her Yorkie, Mr. Jefferies.

Website | White Coat Captioning

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

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

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

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 51.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Norma Miller. Norma is an international captioner and as such is the owner of the captioning firm White Coat Captioning. Through her company, Norma and her team caption live conferences, seminars, classes, events, and more around the world including more WordCamps than we can count. Norma calls Vermont her home where she lives with her husband and her Yorkie, Mr. Jefferies. Welcome, Norma. Glad to have you here.

Norma: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Liam: Hi, Norma. Thanks for joining us today.

Norma: Hi, Liam.

Liam: Good to see you and to hear you. Tell us a little bit more about yourself, if you would, please?

Norma: Well, I’m a native Vermonter, if I can claim that because I guess, you have to be something like six generations or something in order for anyone to think you’re really native in Vermont. I’ve lived here all my life, with the exception of a couple of years when I lived in London, which is really strange because I come from a town of around 200 people, originally where I was born, and the next place I lived was the major metropolis of London. I started my career as a court reporter way back, probably before many of the listeners were born. My career has evolved over the years to now being a captioning firm owner.

Tara: How did you make the transition from court reporter to captioning? Are they similar in terms of the technology that they use?

Norma: Yeah, the basic skill is the same and yes, my career evolved– in the early ’90s, the BBC in London was recruiting for Americans to come to London to become captioners. They did this big recruitment process thing and I applied sort of on a lark. And, oh my goodness, I got the job. They sent me to the National Captioning Institute in Washington DC to be retrained because when you’re a court reporter, or at least in those days when you were a court reporter, you were just writing things down and you would transcribe them later. So you could make the changes or edits or things that you’ve got wrong later at your own pace. When you’re a captioner, everything has to come out readable and clear on the first try. Things like homonyms used to be written all the same and then you would later transcribe you’re, your, your, you are. You would know in the context what would be the right way to transcribe it. When you’re writing for real-time or captioning, you have to write those on a stenography machine in a different way so the computer can translate it correctly. Because, as we know, computers are very literal. That’s one of the challenges of transitioning.

Liam: How long did that train take in terms of the length of the class? But then, I guess, also how long did it take for your brain to say, “Oh, this is how we do it now.”?

Norma: I look back on this and I think, “Really? This happened? I can’t believe it.” It was a two-week boot camp where they essentially eviscerated my entire stenography dictionary and my theory. They made me change so many things, it was unbelievable. And I was up for the challenge, I thought. They put me on a plane immediately from there to London, I landed in London and on the first day, I literally started crying. I’m sure it was a combination of jetlag, culture shock, a million things. But I started crying and saying, “This was a huge mistake. Send me home.” And at the time as well, I was a young mom and my daughter was eight, she was back home with my husband and it was quite a challenge. The first day, I started crying and they were just having me practice, practice, practice on site at the BBC. I was also, of course, getting used to the accents, and the spellings, and the terminology.

Liam: And the phraseology, and the idioms.

Norma: Yeah, phraseology. Boy, I got caught on a couple of interesting bloopers there. Six weeks later, I was on the air captioning Wimbledon.

Tara: Wow.

Liam: You learn quick then, I guess?

Norma: Yeah, it was not without a considerable amount of stress but it was definitely awesome. I mean, it was one of those things where the adrenaline just starts to rush and I went, “Oh, my god. This is want to do for the rest of my life, this is so great.”

Tara: What do you love the most about it? I assume since you started in sort of a keyboarding, note-taking career with your court reporting, that you’re drawn to something about that, but I would think that captioning would also have– I’m imagining this so I could be completely putting this upon you but there’s definitely a service aspect to it in that you’re providing something so valuable to people. Talk a little bit about what you love about what you do, what’s drawn you to it and kept you there? Because I can tell you’re so enthusiastic about it and I love that.

Norma: I do, I get a little bit excited when I start talking about it which is really, really great. At this stage in my career and my age, etc, I feel like it’s rejuvenated my career and rejuvenated really my entire life and all aspects of it. Yeah, I’ve always loved my career. I loved it when I was a court reporter but I think iteration is, for me, so much more exciting and it fits my personality more. When you’re in court or deposition, you’re meant to be a part of the woodwork, relatively invisible, you’re just doing a job. I always thought like I was appreciated but not in the same way. Now, it’s like, I feel like a concert pianist or an Olympic athlete off and on the job these days. We get so much positive feedback and we do feel like we’re just appreciated in a different way, and our personalities are allowed to come through as well. I don’t know, it ticks all the boxes in terms of work satisfaction for me. It’s super challenging, it’s unique. It’s like the coolest job, I think, that people don’t know exists, kind of thing. Then when they see it, they’re in awe. It just makes me and the people on my team– it’s like, “Wow, we’re feeding each other.”

Liam: Yeah, I almost wondered when Tara was phrasing the question about why you like it if maybe a good analogy might kind of be the difference between court reporting and what you’re doing now, live captioning, is kind of the difference between the amateurs and the pros. It’s all real time, you can’t change it later that night and say, “Well, the lawyers haven’t seen it yet so I can pick it up. That’s not what they said so I can swap this word, I remember because that’s in my brain.” It’s, you’re right or you’re not. It’s just live and there’s no, “Stop the clock. The ball went out of bounds.” Everybody is reading it, whether it’s 100 people in the room or 10,000 people.

Norma: That’s exactly right and they’re reading it in real time. Of course, when we do make bloopers, they’re always the worst blooper you can imagine. [laughter] It’s fire risk, I would say. I would say that professional court reporters are amazing and they, too, are– I wouldn’t call them amateurs.

Liam: No, I didn’t mean it in a professional way. Just kind of the difference of pressure, stress.

Norma: Yeah, I say that– and this may sound to my colleagues extremely self-servant but I think we are sort of at the tippy-top highest echelon of performers, really. I really do keep likening it to being a performer.

Tara: And you’re also now, not only are you doing this as a career, but you are also running a business. That takes things to a whole another level as well because when you are running the business, you’re running the business more than you’re doing work sometimes. So talk a little bit about your team and also how you got connected with WordCamps and, I imagine, all the travel that’s involved in that. I’m asking you a lot of questions at once.

Norma: Okay. [laughs] I’ll try. Yeah, let’s see, running the business, that’s whole new thing for me. Even my husband sort of asks often, “How do you know how to do this?” I’m basically asking myself that same question every single day as well and suffer a little bit from imposter syndrome in that realm, and I don’t know. Team members of mine have spoken to other people who are members of our community that we served, and they say things like, “Norma had a vision. That’s why she’s different.” And I go, “I’m not so sure.”

Liam: Sorry, I was reminding you that we’re recording this so if you want people to think you had a vision, they won’t anymore.

Norma: I know and it’s fine. I admit that freely from this state. I feel like I was just out in the ocean, and a big giant wave went by and I saw a surfboard there. And for whatever reason, I grabbed it and got on and here I am.

Tara: Was one of those surfboards WordCamp? How did you get connected with it?

Norma: I think one of those surfboards definitely was WordCamp. I got connected– should I say names?

Tara: I guess, yes.

Norma: Yeah. Kevin Christiano, who’s one of the big organizers and members of the community. I’ve got a call from him at one point and he had the need. I’m not sure, they’ve had somebody come in to do a small portion the year before, one of my team members nearby. Then the next year, they wanted to do all the tracks. Mirabai is only one person so maybe I was recommended because she’s my strategic partner in New York. And somehow or another, that was the beginning. We worked together and it was a challenging thing. It was a big challenging setup and everything. We pulled it off and we pulled it off well. That was the beginning, really, of how I got involved in WordCamps.

Tara: Yeah, it’s definitely a focus of the internet is to be accessible, and as WordCamps are part of that community, I’ve seen more and more WordCamps having captioning. I think I may have been at that WordCamp New York, the first time that they captioned all of the sessions. I remember that transition and how exciting the vibe was there about it, everybody was really involved. So what portion or what percentage of your business is WordCamps? What other types of things do you cover?

Norma: I’m not sure if I could put a percentage under the heat of the moment here, but percentage of tech, let’s just say that the reason that my company was called White Coat Captioning, originally, the plan was to specialize in medical captioning because I had been through medical school, captioning for a medical student several times at that point, and that’s what we decided. We decided, “That’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to specialize. Full stop, specialize. But also specialize in medical.” A very difficult jargon that many other captioners just don’t have any interest in doing or they’re not capable of doing. Back to the idea of whether I had a vision or not, that is true, I did have that vision of wanting to specialize in something really difficult that no one else dared to touch, that kind of thing. That’s where the name, White Coat Captioning came from. Then the tech community discovered us. In many ways, I think the tech has eclipsed the medical. We’re still going full-on on the medical and we have a staff that is really specialized in doing that on a day-to-day basis. But I grabbed on to the tech and I’m doing the travel that’s involved and that sort of thing.

Tara: So you’re doing that yourself?

Norma: Exclusively, what I’m doing now is running the business and doing travel tech conferences. We do many, also, remotely, but when it requires travel, I’m the first one on the list to go.

Tara: and you have a team of how many people?

Norma: I have a team that I can draw on of about– a court team that’s really working, I would say, pretty close to full time, of 12. I actually have many more than that that I could draw on, on an ad hoc basis.

Tara: I have a funny story about captioning. Actually, it was at WordCamp Philly and it was Halloween. So some people were dressed up in costumes and there was a young man captioning a session and he was wearing a boy scout uniform, and I thought, “How cool that there’s a boy scout who’s doing a service project and captioning for WordCamp?” And then I saw him at another WordCamp after that and I was like, “Oh, he’s not a boy scout.” [laughter]

Norma: Oh, I have a background story for that. That’s so great, I love that story.

Liam: Before you go, I should just say that I didn’t have a dissimilar thought. I saw the captioner in a– I’m like, “Oh, there’s a boy scout here. Wow, that’s great.”

Norma: Oh, I love that. Oh, my gosh. I’m so glad you told me that story.

Liam: And then I realized, “Oh, it’s the captioner. Why is he dressed as a boy scout? Oh, it’s Halloween. We told people to come in costumes. Alright, I’m with it now. I’m all good.”

Norma: Yes, Liam was the organizer of that conference, that WordCamp. I intended to go but I had to be somewhere else. I was in Europe somewhere. So I put together my team which consists of Stan who often is one of my first choices to do WordCamps. Mirabai who’s one of our first choices, and Amanda, who’s also one of our first choices. All my people are my first choice. And that is one thing that distinguishes my firm from other captioning firms is that I only hire the cream of the crop and they have to earn their places there. But I saw that it was a Halloween theme for that WordCamp and I was kind of chiding them a little bit or encouraging them, “Come on, guys, are you going to–” Even on Twitter, I semi-publicly said, “I wonder if my captioners are going to be wearing costumes.” And Stanley joked and he said, “Lol, I will see what I can do.” And didn’t tell me anything more. Then they sent a photo of the three of them and I went, “Yes!” And his boy scout uniform, he was intended to be the little boy in Up!. Yeah.

Liam: That’s awesome.

Norma: I was really thrilled that they pulled out all the stops for that.

Liam: Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Norma, I want to ask you one of our signature questions if I can. You talked about your career and your life, and the vision and the happiness that you’re finding through career. Not just in business success but really the joy of what you do and how you do it and the way that you get to do it. With that in mind, I wonder if you can share with us what your definition of success is? It could be personal success, it could be professional, maybe combination of both, maybe you have separate definitions. Can you share those with us?

Norma: Yes, absolutely. I think my definition of success is multi-part. I think I mentioned it earlier, I alluded to it anyway. I feel like the boxes that I could tick are, are you happy in what you’re doing, are you good at it, do you feel challenged, are you doing good for somebody or for a community, and are you well-respected and appreciated and compensated. It has to be one of the pieces as well. I check yes to all of those in my business and personal life. It feels like, wow, I feel like I won the lottery in so many ways. It’s very meaningful to me because– I’ll just say this very quickly and then move on, but I had not the most advantage childhood, let’s say that. I find this interesting, it’s quite a theme off in many of the best captioners. When we sit around and talk, it seems like we’ve had some challenges in our earlier lives and somehow or another, this career drew us to it maybe for that reason. I think one of the number one things you have to have when you’re a captioner, a really good captioner is you have t be able to focus 100%. Basically, the world around you can fall down and you have to just focus on the words and getting the words. I think that maybe having had past challenges in one’s life really contributes to that ability.

Tara: Thank you for sharing that and that insight, I think, is really interesting to be able to have that focus. It’s a hard thing to do.

Norma: Yes, it’s interesting. I sometimes work in doing not-tech work, something like, for example, in the vocational rehab department. I do captioning for them as well. The counselors will come up to me and say things like, “This looks like a really great career. And people can do it from home.” And they assume that the number one thing you need to do is just be a fast typist and I just go, “No, the number one thing you need is to be able to focus 100% at all times for long periods of time.”

Tara: Yeah, that would be very hard for me, I’m sure, and for many people. It’s a gift that you have, for sure. You’re traveling a lot, you’re running a business, you’re doing something you love and you live in what sounds like a pretty idyllic place in Vermont. Talk a little bit about how you manage all of this and what you do for your mental health, how you manage the stress of running a business and riding a surfboard and all those things? [laughter] What do you like to do for fun?

Norma: I love to workout, I do it as often as I can, and it’s a challenge keeping that up when I’m timezone-challenged. The timezone thing is hard and it does take its toll. But I love to do– maybe it’s analogous to what I do for work as well, I love sprinting. I do the high-intensity interval training type of workouts and I can do three sets of 12 pushups, [laughs] that sort of stuff. There’s that. I think that’s actually essential, we need to keep fit in order– because, really, what we’re doing is almost like an athletic event when we’re working every day. A huge thing that has been a lifesaver for me is I got an assistant, I employed an assistant. She does an awful lot of the admin stuff that I used to do all of, in addition to all the captioning. I’ve limited what I caption, what I do now. Now I do only tech conferences or other types of conferences as well but really mostly just tech. The day-to-day things like classes and meetings and such, I delegate that to others. I get massages, I treat myself really well. When I’m in the airport, I’m in the spa if there’s time, that sort of stuff. You just need to. The sleeping thing is a challenge, and I have clients from Australia to California so I’m kind of almost always on. I have to just manage that. I turn off the phone, I listen to podcasts, and walk many miles and run, I sprint in-between the walking and that sort of stuff. That’s just the way I manage it all. And I have a really great support. As I say, I do not hire someone that’s going to give me stress, that I’m worried that they’re not going to perform well or that I’m going to get any negative feedback from the client, that sort of thing.

Tara: What’s the pool of captioners that are out there? How do people find this career? How do you find people who do it?

Norma: It’s so small. Thank goodness for social media because, really, I found all of my people via social media. And I don’t know how I would have done it in the old days before that. Because finding the right people is really difficult. I mean, on the global scale– I know there are a few more diamonds out there that I haven’t found. But on the global scale, I’ve almost maxed it out. Or the additional ones that are diamonds are already so busy that they can’t join my team.

Tara: Wow, that’s really small then.

Norma: It’s super small, yeah.

Tara: Are young people coming into it?

Norma: We’re trying so hard to change the demographic. What has happened in our field is that our field is court reporters and that’s our accreditation body is also in the court reporting field. Then there’s this little outcropping of captioners and so, court reporting as a profession had some challenges when things like voice recording and such came along. The career seemed to be dying so a lot of the schools closed. We basically lost a generation. Many people in the field are my age. Me, I’m my age, going on 27. [laughs] I like to think of myself– most people my age are thinking about retiring and they’re done, this is the end of their career. And I don’t deem them to be the right demographic for my company. We are trying really hard. We decided we– I don’t know who I’m referring to in the we, the royal we, I guess, but also the top group of captioners, together we were talking about who to recruit from. Now that is changing. For so long, it was considered sort of a clerical career so the wrong sorts of people were going after it. There’s about a 95% dropout rate in the schooling, and it always has been, since the ’40s. Now, it suddenly dawned on us, big lightbulb went off, “You know what? We’re going after the wrong people.” And the wrong people are going after this career. Now, we are doing talks and things like that trying to interest people like gamers, coders, people who this would really be– musicians.

Norma: My thing, and I keep talking to my colleagues about this as well who fret about various things, I just say, “Look, you just put blinders on and you run your own race. Just forget about people upset with you or competitors or whatever the thing is, just run your own race.” I think that has worked for me

Norma: Exactly that. It’s exactly the same sort of aptitude. I’ve always said way back when I learned it, way back, I always used to say it’s really an aptitude thing. I think you can either do it or you can’t.

Liam: Sure. We only have about two and a half minutes left so I want to ask you another one of our big questions here. What is the single most valuable piece of advice, be it personal, professional, or otherwise that you have received and implemented in your life? Single most or one of the most important pieces of advice that you’ve incorporated into your life that’s really made a difference for you?

Norma: I think it’s just exactly, love what you do.

Liam: Nice and simple.

Norma: Yeah. And I think those other things have to come into it, all the other things that I mentioned earlier. But seriously, the number one thing is you’ve got to just be happy. You just can’t be miserable. [laughs]

Liam: Can I ask you, is that something that was imparted to you as a child or as an adult? You mentioned that perhaps your childhood had some challenges, that maybe it was later in life when–

Norma: Yeah, I feel like it was later in life kind of a lightbulb moment for me. I’m not really sure that I can put a finger on when that happened but definitely, I would say, later in life. Even after I was a mom, that sort of thing. Suddenly I went– because I feel like until that point, I might have just been treading water.

Liam: Sure. So your definition of success ties in very nicely with the advice that you were given and shared with us. Let me ask you this with just a little bit of time left. What’s the single most important thing you can do or should do or want yourself to do every day to maintain that success, to maintain that habit, or if you kind of lost it, to get it back?

Norma: My thing, and I keep talking to my colleagues about this as well who fret about various things, I just say, “Look, you just put blinders on and you run your own race. Just forget about people upset with you or competitors or whatever the thing is, just run your own race.” I think that has worked for me. I’ve flown under the radar in terms of my own career and found my own success.

Tara: I love that advice. I’ll take that to heart. Thanks for sharing that.

Norma: You’re welcome.

Tara: Well, Norma. I can probably keep asking you questions for a while more but we are out of time for today. Thank you so much for joining us, it’s been great having you. And thanks for what you do for the WordPress community and others.

Norma: You’re very welcome, and thank you for having me. I hope I didn’t ramble too much.

Liam: Not at all, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Before we say goodbye, two things. One, I want to reiterate the thanks that Tara just shared, not just for being on our show but perhaps even more important, for the work that you and your team are doing for the WordPress and other tech communities to ensure that all sorts of people can get value out of tech conferences. Not just that but also the work you’re doing around letting people know that it’s not just those who may be hard of hearing that benefit from captioning, the whole range. Thank you for that. But before we do say goodbye, please let us know and let our listeners know where they can find you, please?

Norma: Oh, yes. You can find me on Twitter at @whitecoatcapxg, spelled a little bit strangely. And my website is Whitecoatcaptioning.com and also Whitecoatcaptioning.uk.co I think. It’s the UK version of it.

Liam: .co.uk then.

Norma: Yes. [laughs] Yeah, that’s where you can find me. I’m sort of semi on Instagram as well under the same handle but I’m not very active on Instagram. Find me there anyway and ask to join me or ask me to join you.

Liam: Excellent, thank you so much. Lovely to chat with you.

Tara: Thanks, Norma.

Norma: You’re very welcome. And thank you so much. I’ll see you at the next WordCamp.

Tara: Sounds great. Bye-bye.

Norma: 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.

Nadia Williams is a Jane of all trades. An educator by profession, she has always enjoyed technology tools, stumbling into the world of ed tech and WordPress around the same time. Nadia is a teacher, a polyglot, a yogi, a travel addict, and a lifelong learner.

Website | MsWillipedia

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

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

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

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 50.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Nadia Williams. Nadia is a Jane of all trades. An educator by profession, she has always enjoyed technology tools, stumbling into the world of ed tech and WordPress around the same time. Nadia is a teacher, a polyglot, a yogi, a travel addict, and a lifelong learner. Hi, Nadia, welcome.

Nadia: Hi, guys. How are you doing?

Tara: Hey, Nadia, welcome. So glad to meet you and welcome to Hallway Chats. Can you please tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Nadia: Sure. Well, Liam, thank you for that awesome introduction. As he mentioned, I am an educator by trade and I spent seven years as a classroom teacher, I taught middle school English. Yes, middle school teachers are a little on the quirky side so I apologize in advance for any random pop culture references or things that might suggested that I have an arrested development because middle school. But I loved it dearly, I had a wonderful time, the kids were one of my favorite parts of the job because I always had great stories to tell at dinner parties. But in that process of being a teacher, it was really fascinating that I kind of came into the field non-traditionally. I actually was originally thinking of going into corporate law and then didn’t get into my first-choice school so that kind of threw me off-track a little bit and I was like, “Well, but I really want to be like Oprah, she seems awesome.” So I went into broadcast journalism as my major in undergrad, came back, decided I didn’t want to do that. I swear I’m not wishy-washy but what happened was I spent a year abroad and had some amazing professors who were actual in-field journalists, and they, unfortunately, did not look like they really liked their lives. As awesome as they were as professors, I came back, kind of had a personal, as they say, come to Jesus moment, realized that with a four-year degree starting pay and that level of dissatisfaction, I saw some people who were actually in the field. I thought I look for other options and one day by the pool, one of my friends said, “Hey, why don’t you think about teaching?” I thought, “Surely, you jest.” But it kind of weighed on me and it really steeped into my brain and I just couldn’t shake it because when I stopped and pulled back, I realized I’ve been teaching people all along. I was teaching people at my college job where I was working for Aveda doing makeup and showing people how to use right makeup products and right skin-care products to keep their skin at a nice condition, or the right hair products for what they wanted to do. I found that I was teaching people– teaching kids, actually. I was teaching color guard flag line for a local high school and I’ve been doing that throughout my college years, and realized, “You know what? I’ve actually been doing this.” I looked into it and was able to get in on traditionally, thanks to my communications degree. And that’s how I ended up teaching English. Yeah, it took me a little bit longer to get into education than most people so I was like a year or two older than most people that came straight in out of college but it’s been quite a wild ride.

Tara: And was middle school your first choice age to teach?

Nadia: Not entirely. My friend who suggested that I teach, she was really passionate about elementary school and I thought, “Oh my gosh, elementary looks like so much fun, the kids, they’re super adorable, some of them might still be eating their boogers, we can work on that.” But I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is going to be so much fun.” Well, what ended up happening was – I’m in Georgia and one of the non-traditional paths to certification offered a chart that illustrated whatever undergraduate degree you had, what that could pair up with, subject matter-wise. And communication paired up very easily with middle grades English language arts. So I went to the necessary process, took the test, passed the test for certification. And then upon being awarded a job, I was able to get provisional certification for five years. Kind of worked out that way. As a sidebar, I realized I didn’t even say what I’m doing now. What I’m doing now is actually work at the central office level. I started off as a digital transformation coach so I like to say I was Disneyworld for teachers, helping them make their dream lessons come true. And that was a lot of fun, I did that for two years. Then this past year, I got a bit of an upgrade to digital learning coordinator which is where I am working with several of our content areas to help assist them on the rollout of their digital content. I also serve as a piece of the team that is developing our digital learning platform. Let’s see what else? Like Liam said, Jane of all trades. I’ve done some graphic design work and social media management for my department and various other things, too. It’s kind of being like a slash this, slash this, slash this. We kind of have a joke in education, or at least in my district of the last item on everyone’s job description is, all other duties as assigned. That is definitely in what I do on day-to-day basis.

Liam: Yeah, I loved that. All other duties as assigned as of 3:00 PM this afternoon, yeah.

Nadia: Right, exactly. “When’s the deadline?”, “4:30.”, “Oh sure, yeah, got it.”

Liam: Nadia, that’s really interesting. I loved the circuitous way you came to where you’re at now or at least got into education. It sounds like once you’re in education, your flow from the classroom into the district-wide role that you have coordinating and leading within technology was a little bit more, maybe not direct, but circuitous than your landing in education. Tell us a little bit about it, if you would. Where WordPress kind of started fitting into that and how you used it over the years?

Nadia: Sure, what’s interesting is I can’t specifically remember when WordPress came on my radar but I think I know when. We’ve had these– I think it actually was before the first Edcamp we had in my district, but sometime around maybe a year or two before the first Edcamp I went to. Edcamp is essentially like an educational unconference where everyone shows up and then creates the sessions right then and there.

Liam: Sure, and is that for teachers primarily?

Nadia: Yeah, it’s for teachers primarily, but I think its origins come from something that lawyers and doctors had been doing, of getting together and having this spur of the moment symposium.

Liam: Okay. Yeah, there’s a well-known BarCamp similar, in Philly.

Nadia: Yes, it comes from the BarCamp concept, exactly. But prior to that, probably about a year, I found myself wanting to create a classroom blog for my students to be able to gather resources, see what we did in class. And also to provide a little bit more transparency with what’s going on at classroom. It helped a ton doing so, having my blog as that one-stop shop. I ended up stumbling upon WordPress. From there, I started geeking out a little bit more. This is the WordPress.com site, and after I geeked out on that to a certain level, I did a faithful Google search, found myself finding Edcamp Atlanta, about two months out, bought a ticket to Edcamp Atlanta, and then promptly migrated my site to a self-hosted site thereafter. The geekery has continued.

Liam: “The geekery has continued.” That is awesome. You talked about this Edcamp and then you moved on and that kind of was the basis for a lot of different things. Nadia, let me direct your attention to one of our more regular questions here and ask you about success. What is your definition of success? Be it personal, professional, or a combination thereof?

Nadia: Wow, way to pull out these Oprah-level questions here, Liam.

Liam: Well, you did want to be Oprah.

Nadia: I know, I’m ready for this. I’m ready. I was born ready.

Liam: I knew you would be.

Nadia: [laughs] I think success is a sliding scale, but I think, most importantly, it is something that one must determine for himself or herself. And however large or small that may appear to others, it’s really inconsequential if within yourself, you feel successful. In my work, one of the things I aim to do is to help my colleagues feel as though they are more successful with whatever it is that they’re doing and whatever it is that they’re wanting to accomplish. But also that they are able to cultivate a space of continued growth. And in that, I grow as well. In essence, yeah, I think success is being able to look at yourself in the mirror each day knowing that you either are living your dreams or your goals, or are actively working towards that and that you are able to maintain a sense of contentment with wherever you are on your personal journey.

Liam: That’s an interesting definition and I like the individuality of it and the ability to step away from measuring as the world does, but really measure as our own center and our own standards and more guide us to do so. We hear definition then, Nadia, what is the single most important thing you do every day to either achieve and/or work towards that success, if you don’t feel in the moment, in the day in the mirror that you are successful?

Nadia: Wow. I recently took on the habit of bullet journaling. Are either of you familiar with that process?

Tara: Oh yes.

Liam: I know the name, I don’t know the process. Can you give us the thumbnail sketch of it?

Nadia: Sure, sure. Bullet Journal was created by this guy, I think it’s Ryder Carroll, a designer I believe. It’s an analog system for documenting what goes on in your day. The highest points of it are that you start with an empty notebook and you basically create sections within that notebook to help you map out your months, your entire year, and also your weeks. Sometimes people also do a daily log as well. What I started doing with my Bullet Journal, one, it’s provided an outlet for me. I’ve always liked drawing and artwork and whatnot. I get really crazy– I don’t have it right by me.

Tara: Oh, I want to see it. I was just going to ask you that.

Nadia: I mean, I can grab it. It’s not too far away, just not within arm’s reach. I love to draw in mine and that provides a space for me to elaborate upon my own creativity and keep that muscle going. But what I also love is that it helps my Type A Brain which by having tasks, I have a key for my tasks and can check them off as I go through. I can also migrate them to the next day. That’s one of the things that helps me feel more successful on a day-to-day basis because if I get around to something, great, that is obviously the goal. But if I don’t, I can have a conversation with myself as to whether or not that task or that thing that I want to do is really still valid or if still necessary for my greater goals. I also put weekly and monthly goals in there, too. I like to have random dance parties. That’s another thing that helps me be successful is finding a new song and just jamming out, because why not, and also, easy cardio.

Tara: Awesome. What’s your current favorite?

Nadia: Oh. It’s a toss between two songs right now. One is by Dua Lipa and Sean Paul, it’s called No Lie. It’s just got this nice reggaeish.

Tara: I know it, yeah.

Nadia: Love that song. Then, I’m also– I was a little surprised but I’m kind of– Oh, oh, oh. Three, three. Other song is by Axwell and Ingrosso called More Than You Know. That is my in-office jamout song. If I’m doing some mind-numbing work and then I need a break– I was working on a template for a document and then I was going to do a screencast of something, I stopped, I popped on YouTube, I had a little five-minute dance party to More Than You Know, it was great. Then I think a couple of days ago, I just discovered this new song by Marshmello and Juicy J, and there was one other person on the track, too. It’s called, You Can Cry, and it’s slower and more mellow but the bassline is nuts. I can just sit there bobbing my head like, “Yeah.” [laughs]

Liam: Are those headphones at work dance parties or are your colleagues getting involved in the party, too?

Nadia: [laughs] Luckily, they have me locked away in a little closet elsewhere. Not to say that I’m like the Harry Potter of my department, I’m not under the stairs. It’s like my office is in Alaska and the rest of my team is on the mainland. I’m close enough that I can just walk over and ask the question, but I’m also far enough away that an email doesn’t seem rude.

Liam: I want to go back to your Bullet Journal because I used to do that kind of thing and I never called it that. I was not aware of that. But I wanted to ask you about when– and I can’t remember what you said, how long have you been doing Bullet Journal, but this idea of writing goals and different types of goals, be it daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Those sorts of systems, I find in my own life, are very valuable but at some point, I just fall off the wagon, if you will, and stop doing it. Sometimes because things are going well, and other times because maybe they’re not going well. I wonder if you have encountered that in your own life. I’m asking because what I want to know is if you have, how did you work your way back to it? What was the thought process? What made you pick up the notebook and the pen again? How did you do that?

Nadia: Well, very simply with this particular process, I think, was helped me maintain some model of success with keeping it because I’m not the best at maintaining just a writing journal, at all. But this, I think because it provides me with a sense of daily accountability without any more judgment that I put on myself. It’s been wildly cathartic because I get a chance to draw and doodle in it, but it also helps lessen anxiety of not being certain which digital calendar has which info, because I keep a separate calendar from my work calendar and the Bullet Journal allows me to synthetize the two without receiving any sort of annoying notifications from either or both.

Tara: Yeah, I think there’s something gratifying, too, about handwriting it versus using– probably Google Calendar, many of us would be completely lost without that thing but when it comes to actually tasking out your day or your week, having it handwritten, there’s some great feeling of satisfaction. And I’ve looked at bullet journaling and the whole crossing off and little arrows, and moving it over to the next day, it’s almost like a digital process that you’re doing by hand in a way. I think that sticks in your brain a little bit better. But they are beautiful, I’ve seen– if you go on Pinterest or Instagram or just google Bullet Journals, people really go beautifully crazy with it. Does that distract from your productivity when you keep drawing? I’ve always wondered what.

Nadia: No. For me, luckily, it doesn’t. I’m so grateful that with my current work that I afforded quite a bit of autonomy with setting up my schedule. What’s beautiful about that, is I blocked off certain times and even days where I try not to schedule any meetings outside of my office so that I can hit any outstanding tasks. Mondays I just time block some time to just let the world fade away and to get to doodling. I don’t know, throughout the week, I find it to be really inspiring getting back to it. For example, I run, it’s one of the many things that I like to do for fun.

Liam: Hear, hear.

Nadia: Oh, you’re running, too?

Liam: As is Tara.

Nadia: Oh, cool. Even better. So I ran and I talked my mom into running, doing Disney’s coast to coast challenge last year. I know, it’s kind of nuts.

Tara: What is that?

Nadia: Oh. Okay. Disney has the runDisney races and they have all sorts of random challenges you can have if you run certain races in various combinations. It just continues to gamify the experience. “Ooh, I can get more bling.” And if you give me some time, I can also pull out my race medals and show you because I have those nearby, too. But the coast to coast challenge was where you ran a race both at Disneyland in California and Disneyworld in Portland.

Tara: Oh, got you.

Nadia: The reason that I even brought that up was that in my Bullet Journal, I did a drawing of a race medal, prior to my mom and I going and running the Tinkerbell half-marathon about a year ago, because it was the last Mother’s Day weekend. It was so much fun looking at that because I sat there and I was anticipating the trip, but I could also put in place a to-do list of all the things I need to do in advance of travel to make sure that all of my ducks are in a row before I departed.

Tara: That’s cool. Thanks for explaining that. I was imagining that you ran coast to coast when you sad that.

Nadia: Oh, no, no. No, mam.

Tara: At least we’re impressed by that. I’m still super-impressed, I must say, running that stuff with your mom, that’s really awesome.

Nadia: I think she loves me a lot because she, like I said, she hasn’t ran in ages and she didn’t finish the first race and she did finish the second race. Did she? Or she came very, very close to finishing. I think she made it 10 miles in the second race.

Tara: Awesome.

Liam: That’s no small distance.

Nadia: It is not. But they give you a third medal for having ran coast to coast.

Tara: Very cool. We could keep talking about running or we could come back to WordPress and technology and talk a little bit more about that. In your current role, are you working with kids? I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear on–

Nadia: That’s quite alright. I’m actually working moreso with aduluts than I am with kids, but I do get, as we like to call, my kid fix every so often. Last week, I got a chance to go help judge an invention convention at a local elementary school and that was so inspirational. Just seeing what the kids have created and what problems they were solving. I didn’t know that vacuuming up nerf bullets was a problem because vacuums tend to mess up the nerf bullets. But this little boy told me about that and he created an invention to solve that problem and it was awesome.

Liam: I want to follow up with you after this show about that because totally, vacuums are destroying nerf bullets. [laughter]

Nadia: Will do. So I do get a chance to go into school and I get a chance to interact with students, but my purpose now, my function now is moreso either working with teachers or administrators. Honestly, the majority of my work is working with district-level personnel and content supervisors, other people at the district level, and supporting them in the ways in which they support teachers. But I do still do direct-to-teacher professional learning presentations and stuff of that nature. I intermittently maintain my blog, so I’m putting in my Bullet Journal that I will update that sooner than later.

Tara: Alright. What’s your involvement with the WordPress community? Are you in Atlanta?

Nadia: I am in Atlanta.

Tara: do you go to meetups there? What’s your connection with the WordPress community there?

Nadia: I did go to meetups as often as my schedule would allow. We had a WordPress meetup here in the Marietta area for longest. But that has since moved from being in the evenings to being in the middle of the day. Unfortunately, I’m at work and it’s not necessarily justifiable for me to go to a WordPress meetup in the middle of the day, because it’s not– it’s not not something that could relate to my work but it doesn’t entirely directly relate to my work. But we do have a website that hosted on WordPress but that’s not within my direct purview. I try to get to them whenever on a school break and I go to the WordCamps. Man, I stay connected on the WordCamp Atl Slack channel as often as I can.

Liam: Nadia, you and I met at WordCamp Atlanta and we chatted briefly and I enjoyed that. But now I’m wondering, were you there on your own, were you there with other teachers? Did you bring some of your work colleagues along? I didn’t meet anyone that you were with that day so I wonder.

Nadia: I actually came with my own volition. I don’t know if that may be the best word here but I came on my own. Let me back up. Starting over. I came from my own personal interests and my own personal lifelong learning geekery. My plus one was actually my mom this year. She thanks to me has gotten– See, once again. I think she loves me a little because she has gotten interested in WordPress blogging herself and has been wanting to maintain a record of some sort on the interwebs so she came along. This is actually her second WordCamp. One time, she came without me. Just kind of cool to experience it with her because I’ve been once or twice by myself, she’s been once by herself. This time we were able to hang out together. And we did like a little debrief afterward, too. It was pretty nice, nice and formal.

Liam: You’re geeking out with your mom about WordPress?

Nadia: Totally geeking out with my mom about WordPress. It was a lot of fun. I know.

Tara: You run with your mom, you WordPress with your mom. [laughter] As a mom, I’m totally jealous because that would be my dream, to run and to WordPress with my daughter! Wow. Have you inspired your mom for that? You got her into WordPress?

Nadia: How old is your daughter?

Tara: She’s 19.

Nadia: Okay. It’s always possible that that could happen.

Tara: You never know. Did you get your mom into WordPress? Not vice versa?

Nadia: I did. I was her gateway developer since it wouldn’t–

Tara: Maybe your mom will have to come on Hallway Chats sometime.

Nadia: Yeah, you guys would love her. She’s adorable.

Liam: That would be fantastic, I would like that. But for now, I’m going to change it up a little bit and take us to one of our more signature questions. Nadia, can you share with us the single most or one of the most valuable pieces of advice that you’ve ever been given, it can be either personal or professional or maybe both, that you’ve received and incorporated it into your life?

Nadia: Probably a couple. The one that I always return back to is, trust the process. We don’t always understand why things happen or should things happen. But if you trust and you actually are working towards things being on the right path for you, then just trust and believe that it will work out. Don’t just sit there and not do anything and go, “Oh, I’m trusting and believing it’s all going to work out.” No, you actually have to put some effort into it, but probably that. Then, it’s not really direct advice but I’m a huge fan of tenets of the book The Four Agreements. I don’t know if either of you are familiar with it?

Liam: Yes, but go ahead. Explain it.

Nadia: Yeah, it’s based off of the Toltec tradition in Mexico. And ultimately, there are these four agreements or rules or suggestions that one should live by in order to have the most fruitful and honestly, stress-free life. Those agreements are to be impeccable with your words, so to mean what you say and say what you mean. To not take anything personally, to not make assumptions, and then lastly, to always do your best. I found that when I’ve been the most stressed, overwhelmed, or detached from my purpose or whatever I’m working on my goals, I come back to those and remember that there are a lot of things I can fill in and a lot of things I can get upset about for no reason. But if I’m doing my best and not making assumptions, we should be good to go.

Liam: Yeah. The four agreements are important. I want to touch on the first one that you mentioned around trusting the process. I’m going to circle that back to your definition of success and just ask you to clarify. When you say trust the process, do you mean that as we as individuals think about success, think about ourselves, our happiness, our role in life, and try to work towards happiness? Then trusting the process is the process of self-evaluation, self-improvement, following four agreements kind of thing. Is that what you mean by trust the process?

Nadia: Sort of. That’s definitely an element of it. What I was mainly getting at was recognizing that you don’t always understand– things may not work in the time frame that you prefer. Sometimes things pop up that are genuine surprises, that’s life. But great– this goes into another quote, a great quote that I absolutely appreciated is something that Steve Jobs once said, which was that our lives make the most sense looking backward. You have to follow the dots looking backward opposed to looking up ahead. I think that that’s definitely true, trusting the process. You might not understand how you’re going to get to where you need to go or even where it is you’re supposed to be going, but when you look backward, from once you are in a space, it makes complete sense. Does that make it a little bit more clear?

Liam: Yeah, it sure does. Thank you for clarifying, it’s a lot about patience and self-control.

Nadia: Yeah, and that delayed gratification but also appreciating the journey. There’s so much to be learned from just being present in the space that you are when you are there.

Tara: Yeah, that’s a combination of two things, being present and then also having faith in what’s to come.

Nadia: Not, I feel like, religious faith necessarily.

Tara: Right. I get you completely. I think I’ve heard of something similar to The Four Agreements, they’re four Ps. Have you heard about that?

Nadia: No, I haven’t.

Tara: Sounded very familiar to me but anyway, yeah, that’s great advice. I’m definitely making a note of that book, thanks for sharing that.

Nadia: I do have more quotes in my Bullet Journal, just to bring it back to that.

Tara: When we’re done recording, you’re going to have to send me a picture.

Nadia: I’m totally going to do that. Screenshot them.

Tara: Actually, yeah, I’ll put it in the show notes. That would be great.

Nadia: Okay.

Tara: If you’re willing?

Nadia: Sure. I might have to redact some things that are highly sensitive.

Tara: we can blur that out, for sure. [laughter]

Liam: We probably should.

Tara: Alright, I believe we’re out of time.

Liam: Speaking of living in the moment, yes, our time has gone. Nadia, thank you so much for joining us this afternoon today. Before we say goodbye to you, I wonder if you can share where people can find you online, please?

Nadia: Sure thing. I am very active on Twitter, my handle is @mswillipedia and I have a blog by the same name, Mswillipedia.com that’s hosted on WordPress, or powered by WordPress naturally. Then I’m also on Instagram, same handle, @mswillipedia. So pretty much, if it exists out there and I’m on it, it’s @mswillipedia.

Tara: That’s a good handle.

Nadia: Yeah, well, last name is Williams and one of my colleagues said to me once, “You’re kind of like a walking encyclopedia.” And I went, I’m going to go with that.

Tara: I love it. Thanks for joining us. It was great talking to you, Nadia. Thank you very much.

Liam: Thanks, Nadia. Bye-bye.

Nadia: Thanks, 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.

Russell is a new father, blogger, racing enthusiast, and back-end developer meet support technician. Based out of Las Vegas, Nevada, Russell works at WebDevStudios.

Website | russellenvy.com

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

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

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

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 49.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Russell Aaron. Russell is a new father, blogger, racing enthusiast, and back-end developer meet support technician. Based out of Las Vegas, Nevada, Russell works at WebDevStudios. Currently, Russell is one of the co-organizers of the WordPress Vegas Meetup group. Hey, Russell.

Russell: Hi, Tara.

Liam: Hey, Russell, welcome. Thanks for joining us on the show today. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, more than Tara shared?

Russell: A little bit more than Tara shared. Alright, I started out doing affiliate marketing and we needed to build a website in order for people that track their sales so I got involved with PHP and I started learning basic how WordPress sites work and how– it was very brand new, this is 2004, 2005. But I started just learning the fundamentals and then I started building MySpace layouts for bands. I’m very big into music and I love everything about music. I have a guitar tatted on my arm, it’s my grandfather’s Gibson Les Paul. I love music. And I was helping my friends who had bands and I was building cool tricked out MySpace layouts, and I would use the blog feature of the WordPress blog and I would blog about my triumphs or my failures. I’d be like, “Oh, I can’t figure out this thing, or I don’t know how to build this template or whatever.” But I was doing it at the blog and I was using WordPress. One day, somebody told me that I could install WordPress on my own website. Once I did that, I just fell in love. I could do anything I wanted, I could be a blogger, or I could build a corporate website, or I could build my own little app. I was just hooked because the possibilities were endless. Then there is a WordCamp in Vegas, I think it’s 2013. Josh Strebel from Pagely, he did a presentation on the many faces of WordPress and he covered just the random websites that are built on WordPress, there’s an entire video game that you can play that’s all ran on custom post types and a WordPress site. I saw that and I just knew WordPress is where it’s going to be for a long time. That basically got me to the WordPress meetup group. I sought out more information, I wanted to meet more people in this community that I’ve heard so much about. Five months later, I was speaking and I haven’t stopped doing that and it’s really my passion. It’s a conversation that I can never stop having, anything really around WordPress.

Liam: That is great. What are you doing today in WordPress? In our intro, it said you’re a back-end developer but affiliate marketing to back-end developer I imagine had a few steps or at least a learning curve in between somehow. Talk to us a little bit about that, would you?

Russell: You should be able to get a degree from YouTube with all the videos that I have watched in order to setup FTP and to do things, you should be allowed to get a degree. That is my college, that is what I did. I have crazy insomnia so I sat around and just watched YouTube videos all day. So what am I doing currently? You name it, I do it. I do WordPress support with Maintain, it’s a WebDevStudios company. Any question that comes in, it’s my job to answer or help find an answer or say, “You know what? I’ve never heard of this before. Let me get you an answer.” And I spend my day, the hardest thing I have to do is log into WordPress.

Liam: I like that. So let’s go back a little bit to that first WordCamp that you attended in Vegas. Was that something that you said, “I have to go to this.” Or as you were getting into WordPress a little bit more, you said, “Oh, there’s a WordCamp, I wonder what that is. It’s only 20 bucks, I guess I should probably go, I’m probably free that weekend.” How did you eventually decided to go and how quick was it? Was it just that one quick talk from Josh, was it the whole weekend? Was it that talk inspired you to do a little bit more? Walk us through that a little bit more, and I guess where I’m coming from is that we hear about WordCamps a lot in the transformative value that it has in the life and the work of many people who have attended and of those who’ve been on our show. I wonder if you can just share your experience in a bit more detail?

Russell: Of course, my first WordCamp was Las Vegas 2011. It was put on by John Hawkins who is another WebDevStudios and overall pretty popular person in the WordPress community. I’m sure he would hate me saying that but he’s been to so many WordCamps it’s crazy. That was my first WordCamp was Las Vegas 2011 and I saw many different talks from all kinds of people who do WordPress. Not just developers but I was listening to marketers, and bloggers, and people who just ran businesses. At that day, I understood that there’s so many people that do WordPress that you wouldn’t even expect. You could just be standing behind someone at the grocery store and they probably are thinking about a plugin just like you are. So many people now, when you go up to them, it’s like, “Yeah, I do WordPress.” They just start asking you questions and they know a little bit about it. I knew that in 2011 just by going to this WordCamp. I’m going to be able to have a community of people because we’re talking about WordPress and that’s what I fell in love with. I saw a talk by John Hawkins, it was about child theming, it was brand new or the idea of using a child theme and a parent theme system, it was so brand new and I didn’t understand it. But I sat there and I listened, and when I got to that point in my career of child theming, I remembered everything John Hawkins said. That’s the benefit of WordCamp and that’s the benefit of going. Yes, you might not know what this thing called a plugin is but you should go to a talk about building a plugin, and when you get to plugins or when you start installing them, you’ll maybe appreciate them a little bit more. Or we think of a plugin as Jetpack, you think of it like, “Oh, it’s whatever plugin.” If you actually go to a talk by George and he shows you how they built this infrastructure, you kind of start appreciating these things that are just free downloads. To me, it’s not just a free download that makes my website, it’s somebody’s hard work out there that made my website do this cool feature.

Tara: Yeah, I think that’s a good thing to acknowledge and recognize that we do forget about a lot, we have so many things available to us that people have worked hard on and offered for free. I’ve seen some people on Twitter occasionally kind of give a shoutout and say, “Make a thankful Thursday or something and go donate to a developer who’s done something that you used or thank them, at least just send them a nice note or a shoutout on Twitter to say thank you for giving back to the WordPress community with some awesome functionality that some of us can’t imagine working without.” That’s a great thing about the open-source community. I’m going to jump into a question of kind of more general non-WordPress specific question necessarily, which is the idea of success. We ask everybody this question, it’s something that intrigues us and I think people like to talk about, which is, how do you define success, either or both in your personal and professional life, and also where do you find yourself if it’s a journey for you or a path, or if it’s constantly changing but where are you in that definition?

Russell: When I first started working, I was 15 and I worked at a GoKart track in Rino, Nevada. I sat on a rock and when somebody would bump their friend or whatever and spin them around, it was my job to run out and turn that car around. That’s all I did all day for eight hours a day and I did that until I was 25. I became number one on this thing called the leaderboard. I had seniority over all these people that literally, they had worked at this place longer but I was a harder worker and I was never one on this board. I had something to shoot for every week. If I was number two, I was really upset. I started working and stuff like that motivates me. When I can see that there’s a chance for me to be number one, I’m that competitive that I’m going to do it. But success is just winning every single day. I set a small goal every day of make sure every email that’s in your inbox gets checked. If I hit that, then I know that I can move onto my next task. And as long as I’m checking tasks off, I know that my day has been successful or I did at least what needs to be done for our company to stay afloat. That’s how I define success is that I can come to my job tomorrow and know that I’m going to work as hard today as I did yesterday to secure tomorrow.

Tara: So when you do that, when the first thing you’re doing, I like to do this too, is go through all of your email. Sometimes that can take a long time. Is that among the most important things that you do or is it just kind of a test that you need to get out of the way before you move on to more important things? What’s important in that when you say winning every day, what is that, what goes into that?

Russell: We offer 24/7 support, it’s not for everybody. You do have to have a pretty premium enterprise plan. But we do have clients, some of our bigger clients even on the WebDevStudios sides of things, they have 24-hour support with us. It’s all night I’m checking emails and it’s not because we have to, it’s because we offer the support. I pretty much stay ahead of my emails or if I fall asleep for five hours, I only got a couple of emails in that span. I’m constantly staying ahead of that. I also mentioned earlier, I have insomnia where I can sleep for like an hour and I’m up for another 36 hours. I’ve had it since I was really little, it’s a big part of my life, but I do feel like it’s an advantage because I’m working 20 hours of the day and I’m only sleeping four hours. I’ve read a book that said that very smart people who have been recognized as smart people, that’s what they do. Because they’re running their business for 20 hours a day, it’s very successful.

Liam: Russell, I want to jump in and what you said about insomnia as an advantage. I don’t know enough about insomnia to know whether or not that it’s a business advantage. But certainly, I love the approach of, I’ll call it a physiological challenge, I don’t know if insomnia is or isn’t but if you give me that for purposes of this conversation, seeing that as a strength and a way for you to succeed rather than something negative or stigmatizing or negative in your life is really powerful. I wonder if you can share with us did you always feel that way or is this something that you kind of came to. How did you get to that? Because for those who sometimes have challenges in their life and don’t see them as a strength.

Russell: I don’t know if this is the right way to phrase my point but I’m going to tell you the truth because that’s very important. When I went to my very first WordPress meetup, it was in 2009, it was before I went to that WordCamp. It was October and we were at this little bar, and everybody had their computer and we were running around trying to find a plug but we were showing each other our sites. I had the most advanced site there out of everybody. I was selling tickets, I had Jigoshop set up, #Jigoshop. I had that setup and I was selling tickets and I was doing this kind of stuff. And there were people that just had like a blog or they just had this. I’m not saying that because eCommerce is better than blog. I’m saying that I had more functionality built into my site instead of just plain content. When I look at things like that, I thought, “Okay, I’m already this advanced. What am I going to do?” I watched John Hawkins and he started teaching. He would sit there for two hours and run that meetup by himself. He just, “This is what I did today, check this out.” And he was showing them. I started buying him beers, as like, “If I buy you a beer, can I speak?” And he’s since told me that I never had to do that. I’m welcome to speak whenever but I bought him beers and I would speak. I was crazy, I was like, “Oh, there’s this setting and then if you go to this page, there’s this setting.” It was very hard for me to just stay on one topic. And John really focused and just said like, “You should do 20 minutes and all you need to do is what is the problem and what is the answer, and how do you marry those two.” I spent a lot of time thinking about that. With insomnia, I’m up. It’s 3:30 in the morning and I’m acting like I just had a cup of coffee in the morning. It’s 2:00 PM for me when most people are asleep. And it’s constant. For me, especially now in WordPress where we basically have to learn this asynchronous way of like, “Hey, this framework just came out on GitHub 20 minutes ago, did you learn it? Are you up to date?” That’s an advantage for me because I’m up 20 hours, I’ve seen more things and I’m current. My RSS feed only has three or four things where– like Tara just admitted, she comes in and she has 25 emails. I’m ahead of the game. I’m not saying that to brag, I’m saying that that is my advantage. I have always felt that in my life, it is something that has helped me get in. I didn’t want to do my homework at 5:00 PM, I want to go play with my friends so I’m doing my homework at 3:30 AM but I’m up, I’m awake and I still turn in my work. You know what I mean? Because I have so many hours in a day, I can actually move things around in my schedule where most people can’t because they work an eight-hour day.

Tara: I occasionally have insomnia and if I’m gutsy enough to actually get up out of bed and admit that I’m not going to fall back asleep, I do love that feeling of being up when no one else isn’t getting stuff done. What you’re describing reminds me of this movie that I fantasize about sometimes, not just because Bradley Cooper’s in it, but it’s called Limitless. Have you seen that movie? He takes this pill and he can learn everything in like an hour and then he learns all new language and I always think that would just be awesome to be able to absorb all that information so quickly. It sounds like you have more time so you’re absorbing more and you are learning that thing that was just released on GitHub 20 minutes ago. [laughs]

Russell: It’s not only that but I tell anybody, you’re going to have to learn WordPress. At this point, there’s almost a manual that says, “Here’s the core functionality of WordPress and then here’s the developer handbook.” Like, that’s what the codex and all the make blogs and stuff are. But if you read three articles a night, just three, “Here’s how the settings page work, here’s how the reading settings work, and here’s how the discussion settings work.” If you read three pages a night in 30 days, you’ve read 90 articles. You are that much smarter with WordPress and now you know how to do this. You’re going to retain that, right? And then you’re going to set up a site and then you’re going to start doing it and you’re like, “Oh, I know the answer.” It’s just going to start clicking. That is what I tell everybody, that is what I do at night. I’m just up and I read three new articles. Then, “Okay, let me go check GitHub, let me search for WordPress plugins. Do I see anything new? Okay, there’s this thing coming. I didn’t know.” I saw Gutenberg when it got updated before it was fully announced but I didn’t know it was going to be a thing. Still, I’ve seen stuff like that. I’m up, I’m able to just view that.

Tara: Do you have to take a nap?

Russell: No.

Tara: You just have very little sleep that you need?

Russell: Yeah. Tonight, I’ll probably fall asleep around 6:00 PM to eight, and then I’ll just be up for a while.

Tara: You have a baby, right? Is that your child’s nap schedule? Do you just nap when your baby naps?

Russell: No. I do the opposite. What it is is it’s actually helped with our raising our son, because she doesn’t want to get up, she’s tired, she worked all day and I’m like, “Well, I’m up anyways. What else am I going to do at 3:00 AM?” I go get him and we hang out and then again, I bring him out to the living room when he’s up and then I put on YouTube and I watch a WordPress TV talk, and I see another thing. I try to be involved in the community as much as I can without– with the lack of being there, I still feel like I was at WordCamp Minnesota.

Tara: Yeah, you’re very productive, Russell. Very productive, impressive.

Russell: I see the opportunity and people say, like, “When you have time in the day.” I have time in the day and this is what I think about. My heart is in WordPress and my heart is in racing, and my heart is in my family, it’s what I care about. If I get 20 minutes, guess what I’m doing? It’s either my family, racing, or WordPress.

Liam: Russell, let me ask you this. And I’ll let you decide which one you want to talk about but what’s been your biggest challenge to date and how have you addressed it, or if it’s ongoing, how are you dealing with it now?

Russell: My biggest challenge has always been finding the time to come up with content for our meetup group. I love running that meetup group. I’m currently not right now, John Hawkins has the group and that guy is just smart, let me tell you. But first of all, when I inherited the group, there was structure but there wasn’t a WordCamp style to it. It was basically just four people saying, “Look what I did today.” And I really tried to curate content for that. I want the whole night to be about contact forms. You can talk about anything you want but don’t talk about Javascript because we’re doing just contact forms. I rounded up speakers and I got that but the problem is what I’m into and what the audience is into is different because for lack of a better term, they’re still beginners and I’m advanced. I want to talk about Gutenberg and I want to talk about the REST API, and they’re like, “I’m trying to figure out my media settings. Do I click left or swipe right?” I had to go back and I started relearning WordPress as a new beginner again. And I was like, “That would be a fun topic.” I forgot half of these settings existed. I basically did a refresher course and I was able to turn our meetup group into like, “Here’s this style that we’re going to do now.” I was able to address the issue of that gap between, “Here’s what I’m doing daily.” Which is all this advanced stuff, but here’s what we’re doing once a month. How you bridge that gap.” And I started learning again, it definitely helps. A refresher is not a bad thing.

Liam: I totally agree with you. I think that 101 when you’re running at a 200 or 300 or 400 level is really, really helpful because we get to the point where we know which rules to skip and we skip them all the time. Then we come back like, “Whoa, I didn’t know WordPress did it this way now. That’s really cool. I didn’t know I can click that and this would happen. That’s so much easier. Which developer put that into core because that’s wonderful. Thank you, whoever did that. That’s awesome.”

Russell: Whoever did the one where you can just highlight a text and it brings up a link and you just click it, I didn’t know that either.

Liam: Yeah. Or that you could update menus or select menus from the bottom of the menus page. I was TAing at a GDI course in Philly and Tracy Levesque was teaching it and she showed that. I didn’t even know you could do that.

Russell: And that’s why I say, “Go to WordCamps.” Because I wrote a plugin and I went to a beginner talk on design and I heard somebody say like, “It’s not easy to style Gravity Forms.” So I built a plugin that basically inputs a stylesheet and you can just say, “Add this class name to the Gravity Form.” And it styled the whole thing. That way, if styling and designing is not your thing, here’s 10 presets that you can do and it costs you 50 bucks for a year license. But I went tto a beginner talk and somebody said that and I was like, “There’s a plugin idea.” That’s another reason why you should go to a WordCamp.

Liam: Absolutely. Let me change gears on you a little bit if I can. I want to ask you one of our more regular questions and it’s around advice. I wonder if you’ll share with us the single most valuable piece of advice and it can be personal or professional that you have ever received and implemented in your life? Single most valuable piece of advice, or at least one of the more valuable pieces of advice that you’ve implemented?

Russell: I’m thinking. As somebody with a mind who has seen so many things throughout every day. I’m trying to scour my hard drive which is my brain and think of really– I have to do a search query right now, get all the posts from the category and then add this category, get all these posts, I have WordPress going in my head right now. One of the best things I’ve ever heard and it’s so simple is just when you attend a WordCamp or when you attend a meetup or when you’re just talking to somebody about WordPress or anything in life, if you’re talking to somebody about racing, just remember, they’re either five minutes ahead of you or five minutes behind you. But you both are the same people, you don’t have to talk down to somebody because they didn’t know Jimmy Johnson crashed last year and lost the championship. But they’re into NASCAR so just have a NASCAR conversation. You don’t have to put somebody else’s story down to make yours better. You just have to have a conversation, you’re always five minutes ahead of somebody or five minutes behind. But at some point, you’re going to obtain the same information.

Liam: And you’re all on the same journey in your own way, and it’s not a race against others, it’s always just a race against ourselves, isn’t it? Or journey against ourselves maybe more than a race. I really like that kindful respectful mindfulness of we’re all close enough.

Russell: What it is is that I run a blog and you run a blog, and essentially, we output the same thing. We have a new blog article that goes on the homepage, and then when you post a new one, it goes on top and you create a feed. My blog and your blog do the same thing, but the pieces that are put together in the backend are going to be completely different because I want to do social media this way, you want to install Jetpack and go this way. The same things that I’m into are not going to be the same thing you’re into because our sights are different. You shouldn’t just be like, “Oh, you’re using Jetpack, that’s a horrible plugin.” Maybe the theme dictates that and it’s because it’s actually the best option out there. Just remember, just have a conversation, it’s not putting each other down. Maybe you’ll fall in love with Jetpack because Liam says it does this cool thing with Photon. Just accept the information.

Tara: Yeah, it’s easy to forget when you get into some of these meetups and WordCamps and things where people have very strong opinions and it’s easy to feel like you’re not doing something right or somebody’s doing something better or somebody’s doing something worse. I think that’s really good advice, Russell, it also ties into the idea of going back to the beginner level and sort of trying to relate to what someone is seeing when they’ve never seen it before. That’s great advice.

Russell: On top of that, I have friends that work in these companies. You get on Twitter and you’re going to blast this company because they had bad support 10 years ago? It’s not the same. I have friends that have families that have kids that I have held. Don’t go blasting people because of something. Why don’t you help them instead? It doesn’t cost you anything, you can make that same decision, just help people. I have a feature on my blog, it’s called Shared Blogs, and I just share links to all my friends. If the only thing that I can ever offer them is one backlink to help their SEO, I’m going to do it.

Liam: I like that, that’s very generous.

Russell: I encourage everyone to do it.

Liam: Russell, we have a couple of minutes left and I’m going to come at you with a different question and it’s following on from our conversation before we clicked the record button. You mentioned that you read a lot, if not everything, and that you had a funny story that you wanted to share with us about that. I’m wondering if I can put you on the spot to share that story with us.

Russell: I forgot the context of which I said it. I probably had it cute but I don’t– I read everything. Oh, it was about a job, I got it, I understand. So I just did this thing with my hands, for those of you playing the home game. I did this thing with my hands and that triggered my memory, now I know what I was going to tell you. I used to work for a company who was contracted with the national weather service. We worked on some high-profile code, and what you don’t know is that the weather’s the most important thing. If we can save somebody’s life by releasing some code to say, “Hey, there’s a tornado coming.” That is going to trump whatever Kanye West tweets. I’m sorry, that’s how it works. I went to the National Weather Service because I wanted to work on that kind of code. When I applied there, the guy said, “Please just sit down at this computer. Turn it on, fill out the paperwork and then we’ll do the interview.” He goes, “Come with me if you have any question.” I said, “Okay.” I turned the Power key on, I didn’t have my phone. It was in the car, I didn’t have anything, and I just sat there and I stared at the screen. And this thing clicked on the screen and it said, “Go see Tim.” And then it clicked and it loaded the Apple software. It just like it was doing its job. There was a flash screen, there was a quick little message that says, “Go see, Tim.” I got up out of my chair, I knocked on the door and said, “Tim, I just read the computer and it said to come see you. And he goes, “Have a seat, you’re hired.” I said, “What do you mean?” He goes, “When you work for the National Weather Service, your job is to look at the screen, it’s not looking at your phone, it’s not looking here. If we can save or if we can predict weather patterns that we can release an update, it’s going to change and affect how people live. We need somebody concentrated who’s going to look.” Because I read everything, because I watch everything, I sat there and it got me the job.

Liam: That is an awesome story. With that, we are out of time. Russell, it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you on this show. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Russell: Thank you.

Tara: Thanks, Russell. It’s great to have you on the show.

Russell: I had fun, thank you for your time and if you ever have questions, hit me up through Twitter. I’m sure there’s links somewhere.

Tara: I was just going to ask you that. Share with us and everyone else where they can find you?

Russell: I have a blog, RusselleNVy, or you can go to RussellNV, like the state, I think they both go to the same place. If not, my DNS has broke. I’m on Twitter as @enqueue_russ and just through Facebook Russell Aaron, you can find me also there. Or go to Webdevstudios.com, there’s a ping page and all my links are over there, too.

Tara: Great.

Liam: That is awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today, Russell, my pleasure.

Tara: Thank you.

Russell: Thank you so much.

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.

Jeff Matson is the head marketing guy for Gravity Forms and he looks after everything marketing and sales related. Jeff is married to Jamie and they have two dogs. When not working at Gravity Forms or on his own side-projects, Jeff likes to hang out in his own garage arcade.

Website | jeffmatson.net

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

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

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

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 48.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Jeff Matson. Jeff is a head marketing guy for Gravity Forms and he looks after everything marketing and sales related. Jeff is married to Jamie and they have two dogs. When not working at Gravity Forms or on his own side-projects, Jeff likes to hang out in his own garage arcade. Hey, Jeff.

Jeff: Hey, how’s it going?

Tara: Welcome, nice to see you here. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Jeff: Sure. I work for Gravity Forms and we make a form plugin if you’re not familiar with us or anybody who’s listening is not familiar with us. My job here is to make sure that we get our name out to as many people as possible and we sell as many copies of Gravity Forms as possible.

Tara: Well, I think probably of any form plugins out there, Gravity Forms, just about anybody who works with WordPress has heard of it. Hopefully, that makes your job a little bit easier. Can you tell us about your background? How did you end up there?

Jeff: So my background is ranged from a lot of different places. I’ve done everything from being a jeweler’s assistant, I worked with hosting, I owned my own cell phone repair shop at one point, I worked at an arcade. I did all kinds of different things. But what mostly brought me here was a few years ago, I decided that I wanted a change and I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina at the time and I decided to go work for InMotion Hosting and moved six hours away to Virginia Beach. At that point, I kind of worked my way up at InMotion, and because of my huge passion for WordPress, I became kind of the top WordPress guy over there. Eventually, I kind of outgrew them a little bit. Awesome company, just kind of not the direction I really wanted to be in, and I decided to make a change. Then I got a job offer to work with Gravity Forms. They just happened to be here in Virginia Beach so it worked out really well. Decided that about three years ago and I’m still here.

Tara: Are you a programmer/developer or just– where do your tech skills lie? You’re doing marketing so that’s why I’m asking this question.

Jeff: I’m the developer. Over the years, I do a lot of freelance work on the side as well, various Gravity Forms development-type projects. Even in the marketing side here I do a lot of development, whether it be just anything that we need to do on the site or just anything that I need to tweak. Even if I find a bug real quick at Gravity Forms or something, I’ll usually just fix it myself. Really how we operate a lot here is basically that if you have the skills to do it, just kind of do it. It’s a lot faster sometimes to just fix a quick bug that you find, rather than submitting a ticket and all those other things. That’s kind of where I am right now. Before I switched over to the marketing role, this is actually my second role here at Gravity Forms, previously I did documentation. I did a lot of our developer documentation or userbase documentation to make sure that everybody was able to use the product to the best of their ability. But after a little while, we decided that we maybe need a little bit of an extra push in marketing. Because of that, they decided that I was the best fit for that and offered me the position about six or eight months ago. I decided, yeah, let’s go for it.

Liam: Yeah, I like that. That’s an interesting story of transition, how it all came together for you. Tell me a little bit about documentation? You’ve mentioned that you’re a developer by background. Documentation is one of those things that we all love when it’s done well, we all curse when it’s terrible and it’s such an unsung task because nobody really wants to write it but everybody wants it well-written. Tell me about what you process of creating documentation and how did you go about that and how do you address it for something like Gravity Forms which can be used in a very very simple way? “I just need a contact form that’s well-made and can handle this newsletter subscription.” Of course, there’s other users who are using Gravity Forms in hugely advanced ways. Your documentation, I imagine, has to speak to both at some level. How did you go about that?

Jeff: It’s actually a really, really good topic and I can go on all day about it, but I’ll try to do the cliff notes a little bit is that it’s basically kind of all about segmenting your users a little bit. Your developers will kind of figure things out on their own, they’re a lot easier to work with. As long as you make sure that the code has all been documented, as well as the hooks are somewhere so that they can easily just do the search for, A, if I need to do something for submission, then they can be able to find it. But a lot of this traffic that you’re going to get the documentation is through Google searches. As long as you can get those right keywords to kind of push them in the right direction, whether it be something like, “How do I set up notifications on my forms?” Making sure that you have those kind of keywords that are going to pop up on the Google search because they’re likely going to search Google before they search your site, is key, as well as having all of that dev documentation. While it’s important to have plenty of developer documentation, it’s even more important to document inside the code a little bit better as well as just kind of at least have something there for developers. But your users, you do want to do a lot more hand-holding, a lot more tutorial-like aspects to different things. If you can kind of walk them through something, then they’re really going to be able to find exactly what they’re looking for.

Tara: Yeah, I’ve spent some time in the documentation there as a user and found it pretty helpful. I’m going to ask about your marketing role a bit and I’m probably– I don’t know if I’m going to hit on a sensitive point so we’ll see if we’re going to have to edit this out afterward or not. [laughs]

Liam: She’s setting you up, Jeff. She’s just setting you up.

Tara: I am setting you up. So you started out in this marketing role for Gravity Forms which I imagine is the longest standing form plugin that’s used. I don’t know in terms of installs how it stands but a few years ago, some other companies decided to jump into the forms space because there’s space there, right, and they also make forms, so they’re making some headway into the market. How is that for you coming in? I’m just making a guess that you’re coming in because the competition has grown for premium form plugins, how are you finding that role and am I correct in that assumption?

Jeff: Yeah, things have changed over the years, especially— Gravity Forms came out eight or nine years ago, and there really wasn’t competition out there. It really didn’t exist, there were a few others form plugins, of course, Contact Form 7 is around forever. But me transitioning into this role, a lot of it was just kind of we’ve never had a marketing team before. So it’s kind of like, “Why are we not doing this? There’s more competition coming out there and we need to stay on top of things.” We definitely have the highest install base at this point. We are, I think, the largest premium WordPress plugin on the planet at this point. Still, we’re running on millions of sites, even as being a premium plugin. But there’s been a lot of this kind of need to kind of get everything together as a single point of contact for marketing. Previously, it would be a lot of talking to different people or just different kind of partnerships that kind of happen organically or any kind of word of mouth type of thing, because we haven’t really did anything prior to me coming to this position other than just word of mouth. It’s great that you are able to go as far as we were with just word of mouth, it’s kind of mind-blowing. And how we decided that, well, if we can go this far with just word of mouth, what happens when we kind of have a direct contact and go to these conferences to handle sponsorships or affiliates or anything like that. And it turned out to be a really, really good thing, it’s taken a lot of the burden off of the founders, of course, from things like handling sponsorships or even paying the sponsorship bills or billing route. At some point, when you start growing larger, and larger, and larger, you can’t always have the founders of your company being the face. They just kind of decided that this was the best way to do this, I was already very much inserted into the WordPress community, very much known for Gravity Forms and it just made perfect sense just to kind of roll me in and that way I can consolidate things, I can kind of make sure our budgets are okay, know where to spend money, where not to spend money, better tracking and data that’s worth it.

Tara: That makes sense. Thank you for answering that, that’s kind of what I assumed, thanks.

Liam: Jeff, I’m going to change gears on you here. You’ve shared with us a brief version of your career and where you got to where you are now, we heard in the introduction that you’re married. I wonder if you can share with us your definition of success, be it personal or professional or a mixture of both? How do you define success?

Jeff: We actually talked about this at WordCamp US, me and you did.

Liam: We might have, yes.

Jeff: People do things for different reasons, some people do things for money, some people do things for fame. Some people do things just for their own personal ego. For me, a lot of things are ego-driven, my success is based on a lot of how people look at the things that I’ve done and how I feel about things that end up. It’s a lot more than just money, it’s very much, if I can make this awesome product or be part of this amazing product, this huge, huge thing, I need to tell everybody I work for Gravity Forms and this is what I did. Especially since moving into this marketing role where previously, in documentation, you don’t really get any of that, it’s kind of just the endless drone of the same thing over and over again, documentation is absolutely never complete. With this, now that I transitioned over this marketing role, I’m able to now see the direct results of my actions. If I did certain things and I made certain changes and I go, “Oh, wow, last month, we just bumped sales 10%.” Or something like that. Wow, this is something that I did, this is something that I can own and I can claim and just kind of bask in the glory of it. That’s kind of how I define success. I define success in a way that is more along the lines of, “Are you happy with what you’re doing?” I’m the kind of person that I can have billions and billions of dollars in the bank, but if I made them on selling machines of war or something like that, then I’d never ever be happy, I’d never consider myself successful. I’m the kind of person that really has to do what they love or else they just have to stop doing.

Tara: Where do your arcade games fit into this?

Jeff: My arcade games actually kind of are still a little ego-based. These people come to my house and they’re like, “Wow, you’ve got an arcade at your house?” It’s partly that, but mostly the arcade games are kind of a, go back to my childhood. I grew up in Laconia, New Hampshire a little bit so I was about 10 years old. I grew up from a really, really poor family. In Laconia, New Hampshire, there’s actually the largest arcade in the world is a little further away from the Weirs.

Liam: Been there, played it.

Jeff: It’s unbelievable, it’s a great place, it’s my whole childhood right there. It’s awesome that I could play. Since I’ve spent a lot of time there, especially since we were a really poor family, sometimes really cheap, unbelievably cheap. You can get tokens upon tokens, upon tokens for 20$ and then you have a coupon for buy 20$ get 20$ free, we’d always have these coupons. That was the one thing that I could do and it kind of put me on an even playing field with everybody else. I had a big cup of tokens and the other kid that’s got good money and stuff like that, their parents are doing well, they all have those same tokens, and then I can stomp that kid on a high score. It really kind of made me realize that even though if you grow up a little disadvantaged or anything like that, you can just find those things that really make you stick out. Because of my love for arcade machines when I was a kid, I had loved it ever since. Now, of course, I spend more time fixing them than I do actually playing them but at the same time, it’s just something that– being able to play these games and to take a piece of history and to teach something that I truly remember from being a kid as being one of the greatest parts of my childhood is a huge deal.

Tara: Is there a category of game? I went to arcades a bit on the shore when my kids were little and I relate my life to this one game, there’s the spider and you have to stomp on it. It pops up all the time, there’s one popping up and you have to step on it. I always think life’s like that, things always popping up and you have to stomp them down, especially in business. Is there a category of game that you like and one that would translate to your view on life, I guess?

Jeff: I don’t know if there’s– I think the best way to translate that would be high scores. When I play video games, I’m not huge into online games or anything like that, I’m just trying to beat the high score, I’m just trying to beat whoever else was the best. And I think that’s really where I come in is that my goal is always just to overcome whatever I can and just to work really, really hard at a high score. I was just up in Chicago at the Galloping Ghost, which is actually the second largest arcade in the world. One of the reasons I went to WordCamp Chicago last weekend. I sat there for a solid two hours and continuously just tried to work on this high score on a game called Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo. It’s a little bit of a mouthful but it’s that working really hard at that high score and getting so close and keep working on it, and keep working on it, and keep working on it is, I think, where I really translate life in general. I think those are the kind of games that I’m looking for usually. I don’t really do like to take redemption games or anything like that, I’m always looking for that game that I can look at and say, “Alright, this guy worked really hard for this high score, let me see if I can beat it.

Tara: Yeah, little competitive.

Jeff: It’s like that in my house. I recently just got a Megatouch, you’ve probably seen them in bars a lot in the ’90s, like ’90s and 2000s. That’s now the thing in the house where my wife actually grew up– she had an alcoholic father and she grew up spending a lot of times in bars and that’s the one thing she remembers from her childhood, spending a lot of time sitting down and playing that Megatouch at the bar. So I got her one and now it’s been a continuous war at the house all the time over those high scores. And I get home and I look at a score and I say, “Oh, she beat me last night. This is crazy.” I will sit there for an hour just trying to beat her high score. Those are the kind of games, it’s mostly just anything I can beat high score is great. If I had to pick a genre, it would probably be shoot ’em ups or space shooters and stuff like that, but definitely, anything that I can work really hard at for a good high score.

Liam: Two questions for you, Jeff. One, what is your favorite game that you have currently? And two, Do people like to come over to your house and play video games because it never sounds like, “We’re just going to spend a few hours relaxing and playing video games.” It’s, “Must get high score.” [laughter]

Jeff: Favorite game of mine is a game called Viper Phase 1. It actually happens to be the first game we ever got, we found it in a junkyard for $60. This is a game that is exceedingly rare There’s a game called Raiden that came out many years ago that was a little bit of a space shooter type of game. It was more just an airplane shooter, the original ones were, but Viper Phase 1 is the same game but it’s in space. But we managed to find it and I did some work to it, got it up and running, and we still have that same game and I absolutely love it. It’s exceedingly rare and I’m so glad that I have that game. I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of it, we’ve even talked about it a little bit, we’re like, “We can sell this thing and buy a pinball machine I can’t get around, there’s a little bit of emotional connection I think. And people will come to the house and play games, they usually can’t come anywhere near a lot of our high scores, that’s unbelievable. [laughter] Both me and my wife play these games and between me and her, we’re always kind of back and forth on high scores, we’re taking different positions on these games. But yeah, when people come in-house, not a chance. [laughs] They’re just playing games, having fun and that sort of thing.

Liam: Jeff, let me change gears on you. Let me ask you about your biggest challenge to date. What’s been the biggest challenge you faced? And it can be personal, professional or otherwise. And how did you address it, or if it’s an ongoing challenge, how are you coping with it, how are you addressing it? How are you trying to get over it, how are you trying to get a higher score on that challenge?

Jeff: I think there’s a few different challenges that I have to kind of put as my greatest ones and just kind of put have them in different boxes. One of the problems is that I have severe ADHD, as well as severe panic disorder. So what happens is I’m freaking out, I’m looking at everything else and it’s causing me to have panic attacks regularly throughout the day. Crazily enough that I’m a marketing guy, I’m very introverted which is weird but somehow it works and they put me on my own and it goes. But that’s one of them and that’s kind of something that I deal with every day, I’ve just kind of learned to have different coping mechanisms with things like that, different ways to relax. Things like Adderall are great for ADHD and everything, keep it really focused. Other challenges are kind of a dent to myself. Being that guy that’s always trying to beat that high score, I’m always trying to beat my own high scores, too. That’s kind of where it’s both a blessing and a curse where I’m always trying to make everything perfect, when in reality, sometimes I just have to step back and go, “This is good enough.” When I write code, I will go over iteration after iteration after iteration just trying to make the perfect thing. If I can shave this tiny, tiny bit of performance off of it, I definitely will. But if I can just make this a little more user-friendly or just a little more appealing than my high, I’ll definitely do so. And a lot of times, I have to just stop. Usually, I do that, I just set a deadline on something and say, “Keep pounding away until the deadline. Once you hit the deadline, you have to break, there’s no option.” I think those are the two biggest things that I kind of struggle with a little bit. But I make it work and I think, at the same time, while they’re challenges, they’re still parts of my personality that make me who I am and actually make me as productive and successful as I am.

Liam: Yeah, I love that embrace of the challenges that you’re facing and from what you shared with us, your capacity to figure out, I’ll call it a coping mechanism. It sounds like it’s more of a way to help you flourish and coping sounds like it’s negative and it sounds like more you’re buttressing yourself to empower yourself, and I like that. Thank you very much for sharing that. I’m going to go ahead and ask one more question and maybe I’ll steer it around a little bit here. You’ve talked about marketing and this is going to be a little different, Jeff, but you talked about marketing and how you liked getting those wins for Gravity Forms and they’re measurable, right? Sales are up or sales are down, that kind of thing. What’s your favorite thing to do within your new marketing role?

Jeff: I think my favorite thing is to chat with people like you guys, it’s to be able to connect with different people and have the ability to do some traveling the WordCamps and to speak and really just share my knowledge. It’s something that I really enjoy doing quite a bit. In terms of more the everyday type stuff, I think the biggest thing I enjoyed doing is finding the answers in the beta. There’s always some sort of data that you can find and answer it if you dig hard enough. What I’m trying to figure out, a different way to do something or if I’m trying to figure out if something that I’m doing is working or why it’s maybe not working. If I can sit and dig through data for hours and hours and hours, I’m actually pretty happy. I think really just the number-crunching is the thing that I really enjoy, especially because once I find that answer, I’m yelling at the office. Everybody knows that I found my answer because I’m like, “I found it!”

Tara: I’m going to ask you a different question now and it’s about advice. It sounds like you have traveled at half and I appreciate your sharing. I feel like I know you pretty well just in terms of your personality, based on how you approached these video games and all the things that you do and describing the struggles that you’ve had, I appreciate you sharing those with us. Along the way in getting to where you are, have you had some advice that you’d share with us that has had an impact on you and that you’ve incorporated into the way you do things?

Jeff: There’s two things. There’s, Alex would tell me all the time, he’s one of the founders of Gravity Forms and usually who I report to most of the time, he’ll tell me over, and over, and over, “Just get it done. It’s not going to be perfect, just get it done.” That’s something that I really try to think about every day is how can I just get this done and get it shipped and get it out there? Another thing that I really learned, it’s not necessarily as much of a piece of advice as it is just guidance was that a little over a year ago, thanks to my friend Kiko, I was able to climb Camelback Mountain. I was completely out of shape, it was absolutely a horrible mess. I was maybe a tenth of the way up there, I was like, “I’m done. Turn around, it’s not going to happen, I’m way out of shape. This is not for me.” He looked at me and he goes, “Can you take another step?” And me being a little bit of a smartass to him, I said, “Yeah.” I took one step and I was like, “Alright, I’m done. Turn it around.” He goes, “No, no, no. Keep going. Keep taking those steps.” I learned that my limitations really aren’t what I think they are. A lot of the times, my brain is stopping me and saying, “No, you can’t do this, you can’t do this.” But once I had the assurance that I wasn’t going to be allowed to fail, that I could trust somebody enough to say, in this case, that if I fell over or something bad happened, that he was going to carry me down the mountain. It was a little bit of a middle finger to him of saying, “Alright, whatever. I think I ended up all over so you’re going to have to carry me down.” Saying things like that. But as I was getting up there, I started realizing, I am really going a lot further than I thought. I thought I’m an absolute winner and I wasn’t even close, and I made it up that mountain. I think that really changed something in my head to the point that I was like, there’s really people who don’t realize what their limitations are. Their limitations that they think exist really aren’t there. As long as they keep pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing, there’s really no limitation.

Liam: Yeah, I think I would very much agree with that. Yes, at some point, there is a limitation but it’s nowhere near as close as our own limitations think they are. The fears and anxieties we have, the internal trust we cause ourselves. And I love that, just get it done, I just love that. My wife’s side of the family, I think it’s my wife’s grandmother, had this phrase, “If it’s worth doing right, it’s worth doing badly, just get it done.” Kind of addressing it from a different standpoint and I just love that, that it is very easy to want perfection and perfection’s great but not always possible.

Jeff: I think one of the reasons I actually try to be so perfect about everything is I was told for so long, “Do it right. If you’re going to do something, do it perfectly, do it the right way, not the bad way.” My dad used to always talk to me about that. I’m in tech, I find faster and easier ways to do something. That’s what I made my entire living off of is finding faster and easier ways to do something. He absolutely hated that growing up. Because if he’s like, “I need you to write this paper.” I’m like, “I’ll find a way to automate it. I’ll find a way to do something, I’ll write a little program in my graph calculator to do my own work for me.” He wasn’t a fan of that. I think that kind of sucks but I think, in tech, we have to learn more to just get it done. As we do that, we can always iterate, we can always change, but getting it done is that first step.

Tara: What an excellent segway to the fact that we’re done. [laughter] It’s been great, though. It’s not been a just get it done thing. I really enjoyed hearing your story, Jeff. Thanks so much for sharing with us. Can you tell people where they can find you online?

Jeff: They can find me usually on Twitter at @TheJeffMatson. You can also find me posting on the Gravity Forms Twitter or Gravity Forms Facebook, as well as Jeffmatson.net, is my site. I don’t update it too much but you can find a little bit more about me and kind of what I like to do there.

Tara: Great. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

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

Liam: Jeff, thanks for your time today. It’s been an absolute hoot. Have a great one.

Jeff: Thank you, bye.

Tara: Bye.

Liam: Bye-bye.

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

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

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

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

Pam Aungst is owner of Pam Ann Marketing, and Stealth Search and Analytics. Both offer SEO, PPC, and Analytics services. Pam loves the outdoors. She lives in Northern New Jersey with her boyfriend and 18 year old daughter.

Website | Pam Ann Marketing

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

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

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

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 47.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Pam Aungst. Pam is owner of Pam Ann Marketing, and Stealth Search and Analytics. Both offer SEO, PPC, and Analytics services. Pam loves the outdoors. She lives in Northern New Jersey with her boyfriend and 18 year old daughter. Welcome Pam!

Pam: Hi.

Liam: Hi, Pam. Thanks for joining us, appreciate it. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? More than what we heard from Tara?

Pam: Sure. As she said, I live in northern New Jersey and I do love the outdoors, camping, and hiking, and fishing, or just sitting outside being out in nature, I love that personally. Workwise, I am the owner of Pam Ann Marketing and Stealth Search and Analytics. We’ve been in business for about seven years now. Both companies are kind of sister companies of sorts. They’ll do the same thing but for different audiences. Through Pam Ann Marketing, we work directly with established businesses and nationwide brands that want to take their search and analytics strategies to the next level, and through stealth, we do SEO, PPC, and analytic services on a private label basis through other marketing agencies that want to offer such services to their clients without hiring employees to do so.

Tara: That’s interesting. Which one is older of the two? What was the first one that you started?

Pam: Pam Ann Marketing is the original, Stealth is a recent addition, less than a year now we came out with that sister company to offer the same services but on a totally different basis, on a stealth basis, flying under the radar basis where we do them on a private label structure through other companies kind of making it look like they’re doing it.

Tara: Yeah, I love that name and the service that you’re offering as an agency owner myself and learning enough analytics and SEO stuff, I can really relate to agencies that are looking to white label that for their clients. Because you don’t want to keep outsourcing it, but on the other hand, you don’t have the resources and expertise to do it at a high level internally. That’s really great service that you’re offering.

Pam: Yeah, we try to customize it as best we can because I think that– and that’s why I call it private label as opposed to white label, I don’t know if that means a difference to everyone else, but to me, there’s a little bit of a connotation with white-labeling services that it’s just this preset cookie cutter package of things done a certain way that you just put your stamp on. And we’re trying to be much more custom than that and try to bridge that divide between that white labeling, slapping your name on something that you have no control over or fully taking control and hiring employees. We’re trying to bridge that gap and be somewhere in the middle where we’ll customize things and do things the way that the agency needs them done so it looks like their way, but not have to fully hire employees and bring that fully in house.

Tara: Nice. Let’s go back a little bit further in time and how you got started in this field and also, as it relates to WordPress, if you work with all different platforms or if you’re focused on WordPress?

Pam: Sure. To go way back in time, as early as six years old, I started playing with computers, my first computer was a Commodore 64. And as opposed to what most kids would do, which is just popping the games the moment they get something like that, I started playing with the programming examples and the manual where if you just typed in the three pages of example code that they gave you that something would happen, a little ball would bounce around the screen or some horrible music would play. I was just drawn to that kind of stuff right away. So the moment we got dial-up internet in the house in early ’90s, I started coding websites in HTML just because I was fascinated with that kind of stuff. That’s what I did for fun in high school as the total computer nerd that I was and still am. That’s the very beginning of how I got into this kind of thing. My first real job was as an administrative assistant for a small company. I think they were actually still calling it secretary then. It was so funny, I literally had one hand in each world. In front of me, there was a desk with a computer, this was in 2001 and it was a small company but they did have a website so that was pretty forward-thinking of them to already have a website at that time. In front of me was a desk with a computer, the company website, they had computerized accounting system. But behind me was a desk with a typewriter and a dictaphone and an old-school green ledger book that I had to duplicate all the computerized accounting entries by hand in pencil in two copies of the letter book because they didn’t trust the computerized accounting software yet. I could turn around, I could kind of have one hand on each desk, one hand in each world verging between the old way of doing things in an office and the new way. With that experience, they had a website and they needed it updated and maintained and I was handy with that kind of stuff, as well as I would go and fix computers for fun, too, in high school. So I became the resident tech support/webmaster who would just be responsible for anything to do with the tech in the office. So I got my first professional with websites, I’ve been creating for fun before that but then I worked with them in a work capacity starting with 2001. I was at that company for a long time, and a couple of years later in 2005, they decided they wanted to add an online store to their website, eCommerce was here to stay by then and their competitors were doing it. It was kind of like, if you can’t beat them, join them kind of a thing. So they were like, “We want a shopping cart on our website.” And I was like, “Sure, that’s right up my alley. I’ll figure out how to do that.” So I found some open-source shopping cart software with osCommerce at the time. And I put that up there and figured out how to configure it and everything, I was so excited. I sent everyone an email and we launched it and said, “We’re live. If you build it, they will come.” Except nobody came. [laughter] So that’s really how I started learning, trial by fire, how to do SEO and other website traffic-driving tactics and AdWords and so on. I just continued to do so for them for several years and got really good at it. That store that I built for that company was only supposed to be like a side thing, they just had a handful of products they wanted to put up there. It wasn’t a core part of the business but I found a target audience that was out there for the products that they didn’t know was out there. So I started tuning all the marketing and messaging, and even the product line towards that audience and kind of spun off into this whole new department of the company that never really existed before and ended up having its own staff and warehouse space. I became responsible for not just driving traffic to a website but managing our competitive pricing strategies and integrating back-end technologies so that we didn’t have to hand-type a shipping label for every order that was coming in and things like that. It was great experience, I morphed into becoming an eCommerce manager. It was kind of like building my own web-based business from the ground up but without my own financial risks. Obviously, it was a great learning experience.

Liam: I like that approach.

Pam: Yeah, definitely. Whenever you can learn on other people’s money, it’s great. [laughs] And that was actually my first exposure to WordPress because at first, I was just focusing on SEO and AdWords primarily, and comparison shopping engines, some email marketing, but social media and blogging were still evolving for how a small business was using them then. But it was definitely by around, I think it was 2009-ish that I realized this was also here to stay and we needed a blog. On this eCommerce platform that we had at the time, which was an ASP.NET platform by then, it ultimately got changed from OS Commerce. I needed a blog and so I found WordPress, I put that on there and I ran it side by side on a Windows server, which was quite the adventure to configure but I figured it out and I ran WordPress next to the eCommerce platform so that we have a blog and then start putting those articles on social media. WordPress was really kind of a catalyst that led me into learning about social media to get the blog articles out there. That was pretty instrumental, WordPress is pretty instrumental and my evolvement as an eCommerce manager. After I worked for that company, I went to another company where I worked in-house as an eCommerce manager, same kind of thing. eCommerce store, WordPress blog. Again, used WordPress for a lot of the organic SEO and traffic-driving efforts on the blog articles. I had some successes in that position, too, that led to people asking me for interviews from trade publications, even internet retailer magazine interviewed me, which you could have knocked me over with a feather when they wanted to talk to me. Because they interviewed the Jeff Bezos’ of the world, but I was interviewed there, it was totally awesome. It was about driving traffic to websites and b2b environment. That was awesome and with that kind of attention, people started to say to me, “Wow, you really know this stuff. Do you do consulting work on the side?” Eve my day job boss was like, “My brother has a company and he needs more website traffic. Can you help him?” I was like, “Sure.” I was starting to get these requests for projects without even really trying. Twitter played a huge role in that, too. I was doing a lot of networking on Twitter, kind of establishing myself as an expert there, getting to know people through Twitter chats and whatnot, talking about SEO and whatnot. They started to trust my expertise and started to refer business to me without even trying to intentionally, I ended up having a side company. At some point, I did start trying intentionally to grow that company and I didn’t take too long, about a year in of having this company on the side, I realized I have 10 clients. This is not a sidegig anymore, I have a real company and something’s got to give. That’s when I transitioned from having a day job into having my own company full time.

Tara: What a great case study, wow. It must be really rewarding and gratifying to see that you started out as a ‘secretary’ and then you basically built a whole division of a company. That is a great story.

Pam: Yeah, it was very cool. I mean, I certainly don’t take credit for all of it, it was a group effort and it kind of happened almost accidentally but I just kept running with it and learning more and more and more. It turned out to be an excellent learning experience. Now that I have my own company, I have stuck with WordPress as one of our– actually, not one of our. Our absolutely preferred platform. We do work with other platforms if we have to but we try not to have to. It’s just so much harder when– it’s really an open source versus non-open source thing as far as when you need to make a lot of technical adjustments to appease Google Bot and there’s limitations on what you can do in any platform that’s not open, especially now with all these sites being tuning and how that’s part of SEO. A lot of that happens at the server level so you can’t do that on a closed platform. It’s really an open versus closed thing, the reason why we prefer WordPress. But since WordPress is so greatly supported by such an enormous worldwide community, it makes it even easier on WordPress versus any other open platform to keep up with Google’s demands. Because as soon as Google says that they want something, it’s usually a matter of weeks at most before WordPress community comes out with a solution. AMP, for example, didn’t take very long. As soon as Google said, “We want you to have this new thing called AMP.” And the WordPress community just responded and that’s completely unmatched by any other CMS that’s out there, that level of support and community and responsiveness to Google’s demands.

Liam: Yeah, and it’s not just Google, just in my own business having a client who is part of a bigger partnership and the partnership has a website that’s on a proprietary system by just a small firm. “Should we switch to WordPress?”, “Don’t switch because of me but switch because of the control and the versatility and the scalability.” As you just noted, when GDPR comes out, when Google changed, when some other significant player on the internet says, “Guess what, everybody, all change.” It’s really hard to change in a proprietary system where there are not millions and millions of people willing to pitch in and say, “Okay, let’s make it better.” That’s a great way to tie back to WordPress. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts, if I could change gears a little bit, on at what point did you appreciate that Pam Ann Marketing could use a sister company and how did you decide the shape and impetus to move forward with Stealth Search and Analytics? How did that come about?

Pam: Sure. A couple of things drove that. First of all, I think I’ll just clarify this so that this will all make sense. Through Pam Ann Marketing, we don’t actually design or develop websites. We’re kind of more like an architect, we dictate how they should be built from both a technical and content perspective. What keywords should be on which page and what elements should be there as far as the technical optimizations. But we don’t build it ourselves, we don’t build websites. Part of the catalyst for starting Stealth was that since we’re not in full control of the website, we can make a lot of recommendations but we’re not in control to execute them and bring them to life. That’s a tricky thing. When someone’s coming to us and paying us for SEO services, they want results. It’s like a brand new check for SEO, “You’re responsible for my SEO, get me results.” And we absolutely know how to do that but we’re not in control of doing that and making sure that they get results. We have to rely on their developers or designers, or their content writers, or whoever we pull in as a recommendation for the project. And that doesn’t always work perfectly. Part of it was filled by that frustration so that we could get– we wanted to be able to get pickier with who we work with directly, making sure that they’re the right fit, that they have really good development team who’s really open to executing on our recommendations, same with the content writers. As far as people who don’t have those resources in place and kind of rather just work under another agency where if you only need a couple of things done, only want a couple of things tweak, if we’re working through another agency, that’s all we’re expecting to do, that’s all they’re looking at us to do is, “Can you just give us keywords for these five pages because we have five new pages on this site and that’s it and that’s all we want.” Sure, but working directly with the client, they’re expecting big results and traffic changes and whatnot. We can only get that if we are in full force with all the right puzzle pieces in place and other partnerships. Otherwise, we can do those smaller tweaks and whatnot, if they’re needed, but would rather just do that through another agency and work with the agency. It’s basically about making the end client happy, and we would just get so many requests from other agencies. Like, “Can you just help us with this one part of this project we’re stuck on. We’re not sure how to code this to make it as SEO-friendly as possible.”, “Sure, we’ll help you with just that one little thing. That will make your life easier.” I guess it’s actually not only just about private labeling and them being able to offer their services. It’s also just about helping them only with what they need as far as SEO goes because their clients are expecting to get an SEO from their website in the end. A lot of these agencies are very capable of getting it very close but they might run into something they’re stuck on, so we just kind of help them get past that and move on. So we would get a lot of requests from agencies and we also wanted to get a little pickier with who we work with directly and making sure that it’s the right DNA of relationships that we can get results by only doing our architecting and not being in full control.

Tara: Right, that makes sense. I’m going to change gears a little bit, although everything that you talked about might relate to this question which is the question we ask everyone which is, how you define success, Pam, either personally, professionally, a combination of the two? What does success mean to you?

Pam: Sure. I had to think about that quite a bit when I knew you were going to ask me about that because there’s a lot of different ways in which I define success. I’m trying to find running themes. I think the running theme professionally is helping demystify SEO and analytics for clients, whether that end client be a company we’re working with directly or another agency. The sense of relief that they express after we’ve demystified some of this for them is so gratifying. It is hard stuff to conceptualize, SEO is very, very complex and analytics too, but so important, so crucial, yet so complex and hard to understand. I get great satisfaction out of any situation with anyone which our team can demystify that for someone and make it make sense to them. I’ve been told I guess I have a knack for breaking down complex concepts into much more understandable terms and that sense of relief that people get after I do that is just so incredibly rewarding. I guess that’s the running theme professionally throughout everything that I do and that we do as a team. It’s like, that’s our end game. We really enjoy giving people that sense of relief like,” Ah, this makes sense. Now we know exactly what we need to do. It’s not a big mystery, it’s not overwhelming anymore.” Personally, I think my definition of success has changed a bit. When I first started my company, of course, I was all about success in terms of growth. We did have a lot of growth at first which was excellent. But now I’m looking at it like, “How much more do I want to grow as far as getting bigger and how does that play into work/life balance and making sure that I can still enjoy the things in life that I enjoyed personally like spending a lot of time camping when it’s nice out, and bike riding and things like that.” That’s very important. Now I’d say success for me personally is about maintaining a good work/life balance where I’ve got a good chunk of my life that’s dedicated to that professional goal, and it provides just what I need to take care of my needs and my family’s needs, but also have time to enjoy life. Life is so incredibly short in the scheme of things, and I think it’s really important to enjoy it now and make that a goal for now and not leave that a goal for later.

Liam: I love the, “My goals have changed. And as I think about this, I realized they’ve changed over time.” To roughly paraphrase what you said. I think that’s really interesting, that idea that has– we walk through our journeys of life and that which matters today doesn’t matter tomorrow. And two days from around the road we look back, we say, “Why did that first thing ever matter to me at all? How was relevant at all?” That’s really interesting. And the other thing that resonated with me, and I wanted to ask you a question about it, was the value and joy and professional satisfaction you get from taking the mystification of SEO and breaking it down for clients to the point where they understand and you probably feel like you’re more of a partner and less of a consultant at that point because you’re able to speak in a common language. And I wonder, going back to how you got into the job you have now, the business you own now where you started in high school– well, even at age six with the Commodore 64 and then HTML sites in high school, then taking on various technological tasks for that company that you worked in until, eventually, you’re building an eCommerce site and helping them market and grow division. How much of your ability to break complex concepts down in digestible elements, how closely does that relate to the way that you approach learning complex tasks, learning something new tech? How does that interplay come about for you?

Pam: Oh, that’s an interesting question. I’m not sure I’ve ever really thought of it in quite that way. It’s actually a recent revelation of my own that that’s really what I do for a living. It just so happened that over the past couple of months, a couple of different people have said to me in almost the same way, they’ve complimented me on my ability to break down complex things in an understandable way and I kind of try not to be an egotistical person so I kind of really never wanted to toot my own horn about too much of anything. But I realized, maybe that’s really my thing and that is a strength and that’s something I should play up and focus on and just own it and run with it. The more I’ve been thinking about that in the past couple of months, I realized that’s definitely a running theme throughout everything that I’ve been able to do so far with growing this company or even before that. That’s always instrumental, even if it’s an internal thing, someone who’s working in-house, they need to convince the bosses to embark upon a project a certain way. Now we work with all these other partnerships where there’s different design teams from different copywriting teams, and then the client, and then us. And trying to get everybody on the same page is a really crucial part of everything, breaking it down and to understand so that everyone’s literally on the same page once everyone has the same level of understanding about something. As far as how I learn new things, I guess I kind of do that for myself in my own head. If something is really perplexing to me, I’ll break it down and learn one piece of it at a time and then come out with a simplified key takeaway from it. I guess the most recent example would be site speed. Google has taken site speed into account for several years now on the desktop algorithm. But as of July, they’re going to incorporate it into the mobile algorithm and mobile accounts for over 50% of searches. This is going to be a much bigger thing than it used to be and much more important than it used to be. I had over the years just almost by osmosis absorbed quite a bit about what makes a website load fast. But now, I’m in a position where we need to guarantee that our clients’ websites meet very stringent speed requirements. Three seconds or less total page load time which is not easy, and that’s something that I had to dig in and learn really quickly and was very, very confusing to me at first. Once you get down to the level of things like renderBlock in Javascript and how exactly caching works and the different types of caching, object caching and so on. I’ve been just kind of trying to break it down for myself. I made a list, I broke it down into an outline of all the different pieces that were confusing to me and then went and researched each piece one at a time until I got to a point where I was like, “Okay, this is why this matters and this is the level we need to get it to in order for it to affect all the other pieces.” I guess, I don’t know, to answer your question, I guess I kind of do that to myself internally first and then I just relate it to the world the way that I broke it down for myself.

Tara: Yeah. I’ve seen you at a lot of WordCamps lately so it’s also something that you’re not just sharing with your clients but with the WordPress community. So your involvement in the WordPress community, would you say that’s grown as a result of this desire, passion, discovery for your ability to translate these complex things like analytics, boil them down to something that’s easier for people to understand?

Pam: Yeah, I guess so. That’s definitely related as well, my involvement in the WordPress community and speaking at a lot of WordCamps. I do kind of get– even before I was so distinctly aware of it in my own head that I do get kind of a rush out of doing that for people, breaking complex things down into understandable terms and that’s really what presenting at a WordCamp is all about. I really want to make sure that the attendees walk away with a better understanding of whatever topic it was I was talking about. And when they do, they get that sense of relief when they come up to me and that’s exactly what fuels me to do that. It’s very, very rewarding.

Tara: I’m going to go back to when you were talking about not just work/life balance but this idea of is growth really what you want? You reach a point where you realize that you could keep growing but that would be a change from what you are. So it sounds like you have a team, you have some people working with you, but I know as you grow and you get a bigger team, that extends your rest, it changes the ways that you operate your business. What do you see for the future? Do you see yourself maybe transitioning to more of an educational role, turning yourself into–? Like a lot of people have done once they sort of reached their max bandwidth that they can do themselves without having to add a team, and they start doing online learning or different kinds of classes. Have you considered that? What is your future goal?

Pam: Yes, absolutely. I have considered that. I can’t say exactly what the end future goal looks like because as we mentioned, goals change over time so I really only set goals usually one year at a time. Goal for this year is to start creating educational material that people can access a bit more easily if they can’t come see me at a WordCamp. I can only do so many live webinars at a time. I want to start creating recorded video courses that people can take on their own time and continue expanding the reach of that mission of bringing people tools that can help them break complex topics down into much more understandable terms with actionable takeaways that they understand they can do right now. I guess what I envisioned was sort of a third division for us, I do it with team already, a team of five and a half of us that we do great job at executing on the work that we have and I think it’s the right level of work. I don’t know that I want to take that team and turn it into a team of 10 or 20. I just think it’s just a whole different animal. We’re right size right now, we’re just at the right size to handle the amount of business that we need to keep us going. And I’d like that the way it is for the Pam Ann Marketing and Stealth part of things. I envision a third category that would be for expanding the reach of our educational content through courses exactly as you described. Most likely, I’ll go with– we do have a site where we experimented with some of that called Webtrafficcontroller.com. It’s not live right now so don’t look at it right now. But we do have it and I’m thinking of reviving that as kind of the third segment of our business. We’ll have Pam Ann Marketing for working with established companies and bigger teams, Stealth for working with agencies, and then we’ll have Web Traffic Controller for all those small businesses, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs that need help learning this stuff but need to do so in an accessible, affordable way.

Tara: That’s great branding, I love the connection to the Pam Ann.

Liam: You come up with great names, yes, I’m jealous.

Pam: [laughs] I really don’t take credit for that, it happens accidentally, as we talked about before. I named it Pam Ann Marketing just because I wasn’t going to name it Pam Aungst Marketing, I used my middle name. But it rolled off people’s tongues as Pan Amm and that spawned the whole interline aviation-themed branding that we have just kept running with.

Liam: That is awesome. Let me ask you a different question. What’s the single most valuable piece of advice, be it personal, professional, or otherwise, or both, that you’ve ever received and implemented in your life.

Pam: That is a very tough question because there’s so much, again. But I think for me, mine’s very personal answer because I– something we haven’t touched upon yet. I struggle a lot with perfectionism. I really like to cross every t and dot every i, and pay attention to every detail and get everything exactly right all the time. But that’s not realistic, especially when running a business. And especially in SEO and analytics. They’re such complex topics, so many moving pieces, you can’t get every single one perfect and move forward with the project. Aiming for perfection will stall things. I think for me, one of my biggest most valuable pieces of advice that was given to me is that my 80%, what I consider only 80% good enough is probably most likely other people’s 120%. What I think I’ve underdone, most other people will probably think I’ve overdone and they’re more than happy with whatever we’ve done. That’s been huge for me and I try to keep it in mind all the time because it’s just too easy to get stalled in what we do if we don’t just say good enough and keep going.

Tara: Perfection is the enemy of the good.

Pam: Yes.

Liam: Yes.

Pam: But it’s also, being a perfectionist by nature has lended to our success, too. That’s what enables me to dig into something so deep until I’ve really fully figured it out and then figure out a way to explain it to everyone else. And I just don’t stop until I get there. It’s something I have to embrace and suppress at the same time.

Tara: Yeah, it’s hard to know when that 80% is acceptable because it doesn’t feel right to you and so you can remind yourself. But then you think, “Well, am I just saying that? Am I just getting myself off a little bit, slacking off?” I think I struggle with that, too, I can understand.

Pam: Exactly. Part of it, I guess, is also learning to trust myself, that I’ve done good enough and even though the perfectionist side of my brain doesn’t think it’s good enough, there’s this other side of me that now has been there, done that, been through this routine on so many projects with so many things that I’m just going to trust myself that it’s good enough and I can move forward.

Liam: Speaking of good enough but moving forward, we are actually officially over and out of time. It’s been a great conversation and clearly one that we could continue for many a longer hour. But Pam, thank you so much for joining us, it was absolute pleasure to hear about you and to hear about your business and some of the amazing you’re doing and the balances that you’re trying to achieve, that’s fantastic.

Pam: Thank you so much for having me, this was awesome.

Tara: Thanks for being here. Thanks, Pam, great to see you.

Pam: Likewise, I appreciate it.

Liam: Pam, before we say officially goodbye to you, will you let people know where they can find you online?

Pam: Sure. Pamannmarketing.com is the easiest place and all the social medias associated with that.

Tara: Great. Thank you. Bye.

Liam: Excellent, thanks. Bye-bye.

Pam: Thank you, guys.

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.