Hallway Chats

Ebonie Butler has her BS degree in information technology from Drexel University. And in 2015, she became interested in WordPress as a platform to start blogging about metal music. She recently started her first developer position with YIKES, Inc. as a WordPress developer.

Website | Ebonie.me

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 46.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Ebonie Butler. Ebonie has her BS degree in information technology from Drexel University. And in 2015, she became interested in WordPress as a platform to start blogging about metal music. In late 2016, she participated in the interactive mechanics fellowship program, focusing on creating a custom WordPress theme as her final project. At the conclusion of the fellowship, Ebonie started her first developer position with YIKES, inc as a WordPress developer. Hi, Ebonie. Welcome.

Ebonie: Hi.

Liam: Hi, Ebonie. Thanks for joining us on the show. Can you please tell us a little bit more about yourself? More than what Tara just shared?

Ebonie: Sure. I’m a 30-something and I feel like mentioning my age as a new person in tech is like– people don’t think that you can get started in tech later in your career but I’m only a developer and I just turned 30 so it’s never too late. Yeah, I’m a 30-something WordPress developer and I’ve been a developer professionally, full time for about nine months. And I transitioned from being a tester in a big company but it wasn’t fulfilling at all. I finally took the leap and took the challenge to become something I thought I wouldn’t be able to do, something I wouldn’t think I’d be able to become. But with high work I definitely made it there, obviously. But yeah, I think that’s a little bit more about myself.

Tara: Have you always been interested in technology and is that thing that you’ve been passionate about? What kind of sparked that for you to pursuit that?

Ebonie: Well, I grew up in a very tech family. My dad has his degree in computer science and he always exposed us to a computer. From early age, probably around six, I had my own computer which is a good and bad thing. Because with my generation, I definitely grew up in the height of chat rooms and talking online and all that stuff. I think actually that definitely played a huge part in what I’ve become today, just having access to that information right from the getgo and having a computer at that age. I was being able to learn how to reinstall my OS when I screwed up the viruses or malware. Because my dad wasn’t going to do it for the 10th time, he’s got tired so I had to learn how to do that. That ended up just being something I do yearly, not knowing what the skills I had. I know a lot about system admin stuff just from being forced to do it myself when I was growing up starting from when I was six. It was good, I definitely had a lot of fun, had my own computer, but I definitely feel like that contributed to my introvertism, too Because I had a lot of online friends. I still do have a lot of online friends friends. [laughs]

Tara: That’s really neat that your dad kind of did it for you a bunch of times but then let you take over and build up your comfort level with digging into things that people aren’t comfortable with. Did you also break apart the computer and look at what was inside of it or were you doing code type of stuff mostly?

Ebonie: It was mostly building computers. I did have an opportunity to build my own computer as well. Just because of the nature of my dad’s work, he always had computers and data racks in the basement. If he was working on something, I’d be nosy and look and see and learn what a hard drive looks like and what CD-Rom looks like, people were still using that. I installed my own CD-Rom drive on my tower one time because I just wanted it to play video games. But yeah, looking back, I definitely had exposure to a lot of tech when I was younger, not knowing that it was very beneficial.

Tara: Right, right. And now you’re using it to make your living. It sounds like you dove into studying it formally which a lot of people that we talk to on this show are self-taught, so I know you expressed that you’re getting into it late. From my perspective, it seems like you’re getting into it not that late. But the fact that you actually pursuit it formally, to me, I’m envious of that because I think that we talk about imposter syndrome a lot. And I think a lot of imposter syndrome comes from the fact that so many of us are self-taught. At least speaking personally, but I think it applies to a lot of people. When you’re self-taught, you kind of assume that you don’t know a lot of things because you never actually taught it in a formal way. Can you talk a little bit about your formal education and how that’s helped you as a developer?

Ebonie: Well, I still think I have imposter syndrome myself even though I do have a formal education. Like you mentioned, I have my bachelors and science degree in information technology. I originally started out in college going after my degree in computer science because I kind of just knew I wanted to do that because my family, my dad– I knew I was smart enough to do that. But I had experience in college where one of my classes, I forget which particular class. Something to do with binary trees and recursion, basically a lot of the fundamentals of programming and learning different programming algorithms and ways of creating functions and all other stuff. I was having a difficult team class and that was like the second year of my computer science degree, soI made it through the first year, thankfully. Having difficulty, didn’t really understand a lot of it and being a perfectionist, I put a lot of pressure on myself. Like, why can’t I understand this? Something wrong with me. I was going to turn west and actually step out of my comfort zone and meet with the TA, the teaching assistant of the class, to try to get help. Fortunately, that experience kind of led me to change my majors because he kind of ended up– near the end of the session, he ended up basically telling me the major was not for me. Also, probably being one of the few black women in the major, you kind of– and he was a white male so he wasn’t really being too– looking back, he wasn’t actually teaching me or trying to teach me. He was making an assumption that there was no way I could understand what the mediocre effort he put into teaching me and I still not understanding, but he included that I was not good enough to be in that major. Of course, that’s always upsetting. I didn’t know the guy but when you’re in college and you’re interacting with teachers or teaching assistants, you put them on a pedestal, you think they know everything. I took that to heart and ended up changing the major. [laughs] To be honest, information technology was super easy, I barely studied. [laughs] I do always say I took the easy way out, but that experience definitely took a toll on me because I ended up not– the first six years of my career, I wasn’t a developer like I thought I would be. I thought I was not good enough to be a developer because what he said to me in college.

Tara: Do you ever think back to that time and think about, now, knowing what you know now, if you had that teacher now and he did that, how you would reach differently? I guess in the current climate that we are, times change, too.

Ebonie: Yeah, I would definitely have reported him. My mom, when she was alive, did yell at him, so I’m happy about that. [laughter]. But in the times that we have, looking back to that, I would just really– it’s never worth really trying to encounter that kind of bias and try to speak logically to person who thinks like that. Especially, if you are the person who’s being oppressed and you’re trying to speak rationally with someone who’s oppressing you. By default, everything you say is going to go in through one ear and out the other. It wouldn’t even be worth it to encounter him but I would probably just snark at him and tell him I’m a developer now and I am better than you. [laughs] But that’s to an extent that I would probably interact with him.

Tara: Yeah, that’s a really good story when you think about how times change but also how your mindset changes. When you’re young, too, it’s harder to stand up for yourself, I think, too. It’s great that you moved past that and that you are a developer now. Tell us a little bit about that and where WordPress comes into this story?

Ebonie: I’ve been reaching my five-year mark in my corporate career as a tester. Technically, they called me assistant engineer which is a very big term that can mean anything. Just not being happy and kind of seeing a lot of women developers and black women developers and being influenced by that and kind of getting the feel to be like, “Oh, they can do it. Maybe I can do it, too.” And also just encountering people on the street that’d be like, “Hey, I’m a developer. I’m just taking lead over my classes and I’m just building stuff because I want to.” Encountering a lot of that, I finally took the leap into trying to code and learn how to code. What originally tipped that off is because of my love for metal music and wanting to put myself out there as a metal personality, metal critic, metal reviewer, just because mostly, kind of funny, in tech, it’s male-dominated. Metal is very male-dominated. I took the opportunity there to actually create a blog called Metal & Coffee and that was my first adventure into WordPress and coding because I went ahead and set up my own hosting provider, did a manual installation of WordPress. Also, choose a theme, I ended up buying a theme, I didn’t code one myself yet but I just wanted to get the ball rolling. Then I made it live and that happened in 2015. So I started my blog in 2015 and yeah, I feel like that gave me a taste that I can do this because I was able to easily follow instructions on how to set up a hosting provider but also fill in the blanks of understanding because my past knowledge of tech and being in tech family, that whole process went really smooth. That was my first glimpse into WordPress connections. I ended up choosing WordPress for my website because I did research and it was easy. I could put easy content into it, and the setup was easy so I agree.

Liam: Five-minute install.

Tara: Five-minute install. Jinx.

Ebonie: Yeah, let’s say 10 minutes.

Liam: Yeah, and then some, right?

Ebonie: Yeah. [laughs]

Liam: Ebonie, you shared a very interesting story, particularly that college challenges that you were facing as a student compared to your TA, as a woman in tech, as an African-American woman in tech. You’ve overcome all of that and you had a corporate job that, my words, not yours, you weren’t overly happy with. And you found a way out of that into a job that from what I gather, you really enjoy. With that kind of context, I wonder if you can talk about what is your definition of success and if you want to weave in a personal definition or professional. What does that all mean to you? How do you define success?

Ebonie: Success to me is being happy with your job, basically, with your profession. That’s the most, obviously, professional definition, being happy, and just yeah, I feel like that is the definition. Being happy in your profession because with my previous experiences in my previous jobs, I always felt like I was not heard at my job. Not that I was the most flamboyant person and talking all the time, I’m actually pretty shy professionally. I’m a quiet worker, I like to get stuff done but the major problem in my previous positions was that there was a lot of disorganization and I didn’t see a lot of diversity and inclusion at my previous positions. That led to having to hold in any passive-aggressive comments made towards me or any borderline racist comments towards me or sexist comments towards me. Because I knew that management weren’t going to view much for me. Dealing with those kind of things in a working environment really weighs on you because it makes you very stressed. I remember how hard it would be to get out of bed and just get ready for work and have to drive to work and just how this big dark cloud was with me the entire time. Yeah, and I didn’t even realize that was not normal, I got used to that. Basically, a toxic work environment is what that is. Dealing with a lot of the– I mean, not every workplace has this but it can seem like there’s like a high school dynamic going on where there’s like quips, and gossip, and all this is going on in the big– a lot of that goes on in bigger companies, too. But my position now, where it’s only five people, including my two awesome bosses, the big difference is that my management, my bosses are actually real, they actually reveal success, they actually care about your life. And they actually check in with you on life in general, health, fiscal health, how you’re dealing with work if you need help completing tasks. It’s not a question that they’ll help you and get the information that you need. They’ll feed you with the resources and who to talk to you if you need help with the task. I’m having really caring bosses and people who care about you and don’t look at you as a number and just a low-level employee who needs to do their job.

Liam: That sounds really healthy.

Tara: I’m really glad you explained that and went beyond the idea of being happy with your job or happy with the work that you’re doing because what you’ve described is much more than that, right? It’s not just the work that you’re doing, it’s not just your job, but it’s culture and environment in which you’re working in. It sounds like you’ve found a great fit for that and you have a lot of things to compare it to in your experience. You describe yourself in a world that’s dominated by men and by white men to be a black woman, to stand out and stand up for yourself and be in an environment where that’s embraced, it must be like you’ve described, just a great place to be. I think that happy is a general term that really hits a lot of described.

Ebonie: Yeah, exactly. Another thing I’m happy about but I define success is that when you’re excited to learn, and most of that is because you’re being enabled to learn and always stay on top various technologies, especially in the tech field. One of the instances I had at my previous job is that it was not encouraged to learn and as someone who can’t sit still, I have to do something. If there’s no work to do, I’m going to learn. That was what I was doing. And because I was doing that, going back to that workplace seeming like it was high school, I experienced a lot of jealousy and kind of being ostracized for working hard, which I kind of never understood, and this is weird. I’m not even sure if anyone can relate to that experience of being seen as weird and overachieving because you’re just trying to do the job to the best of your ability.

Tara: It does sound like high school, that really does. That’s a sad story. What would you say is something that you do every day or the most important thing that you do every day? We talked about learning as part of your definition of success. What do you every day towards that goal?

Ebonie: Well, in terms of WordPress, since I’m a full-time WordPress developer, I’m always seeing what’s being released in the upcoming core releases, such as Gutenberg. I’m learning to build my own blog. I generally do stay on top of WordPress development. My team, YIKES, that I work with, they’re always keeping us in the know and keeping us on top of what’s going on. But in terms of regular life stuff and engaging my creative side, I always listen to new music. That is always something I do absolutely do every day without question. I probably logged an insane amount of hours listening to music this year already, it’s not even half a year yet.

Tara: Do you listen while you code?

Ebonie: Oh yeah, absolutely. And I’m a very eclectic person, I don’t only listen to metal. I love dance music, it’s my favorite kind of music, actually. But yeah, I’m always listening to new albums. I’m actually someone who reads album reviews and sees what’s coming out and adds to my calendar because I’m excited and nerdy. [laughter]

Tara: Are you also a musician, or you’re just a, not just, but you’re also passionate about listening to music.

Ebonie: I play guitar, that’s just something I do to act like I can be a singer/songwriter, which I’m never going to do. [laughs] I’m mostly into reporting. I go to live shows and I actually do write album reviews as well. I’m one of the dorky people who talk about album reviews and music on YouTube. [laughs] I’m definitely IT support, I’m not a musician but I try to make my mark with supporting music and all that stuff.

Liam: Ebonie, let me change gears a little bit on us and just swing a little bit back towards WordPress, if I can, and ask about your involvement with the WordPress community and maybe share some of your thoughts around the WordPress community as it relates maybe to kind of achieving your goals and/or your successes, and kind of learning and you can talk about inclusivity and diversity over the course of the conversation. Maybe you can share some thoughts there?

Ebonie: I think the WordPress community is definitely the most accepting community I’ve been in so far. It’s like one of the few I’ve been in. But when I previously started learning to code, kind of trying to get involved with other meetups for specific coding languages, it wasn’t as easy to jump in and kind of arrive as a newbie and kind of expect to be helped. Not that you’re expecting to be helped but kind of being welcomed.

Liam: Sure.

Ebonie: When I arrived to my first WordPress meetup, it definitely felt a lot more comfortable. I didn’t feel like I was an outsider, and I was welcomed and people were asking, “Hi, how are you? Welcome.” That seems like small but it’s definitely going the long way when a community recognizes when a new person was there and brings them in and accepts them and makes them acknowledge just to make sure they’re having a good time and all that stuff. That was definitely one aspect that stood out in the WordPress community, but I feel like a lot of people, as well, which I think is awesome, are enthusiastic about WordPress. Which makes you enthusiastic when you’re talking to them. When I entered my first intro to WordPress class, early last year, and Tracy Levesque, my boss, she taught that. I remember saying in the class and we were introducing ourselves– because I had recently come to decision, after completing my interactive mechanics fellowship where I had built my first really crappy theme, but I built it. I had come to the conclusion–

Liam: Functional. [laughter]

Ebonie: I came to the conclusion that I wanted to be a WordPress developer. We were going around class introducing ourselves and I just said, “Hi, I’m Ebonie. I love metal music and I want to be a WordPress developer.” And then Tracy was jumping up and down being super excited. [laughs]

Tara: Tracy is wonderful. I’m going to ask you a question about advice, and I think we already know probably what the worst advice you ever were given, which was to tell you that computer science was not for you. What would you say is the best piece of advice that you’ve ever been given and that you’ve implemented in your life?

Ebonie: Best piece of advice, and this is compiled over reading multiple self-help books about meditation and yoga and all that stuff. The best piece of advice would be to encounter everything with a beginner in mind which basically means to don’t go into situations expecting you know what’s going to happen or how it’s going to go because as someone who was always pressuring herself, one of the notorious things I’ll do is I’ll create a to-do list with the items for one day, and always expect to complete it. When I think about that statement, always approaching things in beginner’s mind, that influence means to slow my line down and really think about what I’m putting on my plate and allow myself time to process things and to take breaks and not always be moving all the time. That to-do list is capped down for three things, which I’m happy with. And you end up being happy when you can actually complete your list.

Tara: Yes, I am totally onboard with that, that is great.

Liam: There’s so much packed in that, right? That massive to-do list gets into time management, it gets into the psychology of managing your own expectations and imposter syndrome and self-worth and all of that. It sounds like that beginner’s mindset, which I love, I have not heard that phrase before so thank you for sharing that, of really just slowing down, thinking about it, trying to not put the horse before the cart, get to what you can get to with– that’s really valuable, thank you.

Tara: Realistic expectations.

Ebonie: Yes. And just trying to be present in everything you do since a high paced world and we’re always trying to do three things at a time. It’s actually more beneficial to do one thing at a time and be really into that one thing because then the quality of that one thing is going to be amazing.

Tara: No one else can see this but because we’re on video with you. We started out this call seeing your adorable little dog. What role does your dog play in your development and metal music lifestyle? Tell us about your dog?

Ebonie: She plays a big role because she is someone who will be proud of me whenever whatever happens. Right, Cookie? [laughs] She’s just a very warming animal when I think about it. I don’t know, it’s kind of weird when you think about it because I’ve never been asked that question so I haven’t thought of it in that aspect. But coming home to see her and being excited after I’m coding all day to chill with my dog because he’s a really big cuddler, as you can see. He would like to be in that position the entire time. He warms my heart for sure.

Tara: A few guests have mentioned their close relationship with their dog and I’m actually out of town working remotely and brought my dog with me this time and I am so grateful for my dog this week. So shout out to dogs and pets that support us in our quest for–

Liam: Dogs everywhere, dogs everywhere.

Tara: Yeah. And laughter, too, sometimes, but yeah. Ebonie, we are out of time, unfortunately, but I’m sure your dog will be glad to have your full attention in a few minutes. Can you tell us where people can find you online?

Ebonie: Sure. I’m very active on Twitter and my Twitter handle is @metalandcoffee_ , and I have my really bare bones portfolio site called Ebonie.me. And yes, those are two places you can find me.

Liam: That is awesome. Ebonie, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been a real pleasure spending time with you, chatting with you and getting to know you. Thanks for joining us.

Ebonie: Thank you for having me.

Tara: Thanks, Ebonie. Take care. Talk to you soon.

Liam: Bye-bye.

Tara: Bye.

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

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

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

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

Lindsay Halsey and Lori Calcott are co-founders of WP SEO Hub and partners at webShine, a search engine marketing agency in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. They focus on running profitable campaigns for their clients and teaching business owners about holistic SEO practices.

Website | WP SEO Hub

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 45.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Lindsay Halsey and Lori Colcott. They are co-founders of WP SEO Hub and partners of webShine, a search engine marketing agency in the rocky mountains of Colorado. They focus on running profitable campaigns for their clients and teaching business owners about holistic SEO practices. Hello, Lindsay and Lori, welcome.

Lindsay: Thanks for having us.

Lori: Hi there.

Tara: Hi. I’m so glad you’re here, welcome. Can you each tell us a little bit more about yourselves after Liam’s introduction?

Lindsay: Sure. This is Lindsay. I live in Basalt, Colorado. I’m the mom of two young children and a wife, love working and playing in the outdoors and focused on WordPress SEO as the main part of my career.

Lori: I’m Lori Colcott. I live in Aspen, Colorado and I also have a family with two young children. I’ve been in Colorado for over 20 years but grew up in Pennsylvania and have been marketing about 20 years, search engine marketing about 12.

Tara: Great. Tell us a little bit more about Colorado? Sounds like a beautiful place where you live. Did you go there, both of you, with a great love of skiing or what brought you to Colorado?

Lori: Yes, I sort of have the typical came out for the winter and never left story. I came out after college and planned on being a ski bum for winter and that turned into pretty much a lifestyle and a commitment to living here.

Lindsay: And I made my way to Colorado in between working as a mountain guide. I was looking for a home base when I wasn’t traveling to mountaineering destinations around the world, and Colorado seemed like a fun place and every year, I found myself spending more time here in Aspen and last time on the road, until now, I live here year-round full-time.

Tara: Do you work there more than you spend time outside? Are you able to split running your own company, is that the way that you approach your recreational life? Is that on par with your work life out there? I get the impression that out there that’s the way a lot of people are so that’s why I ask that.

Lindsay: There’s a pretty good work/life balance in the Roaring Fork Valley and so it’s common custom for businesses here to extend their employees and team members that flexibility to go for a run in the mountains over lunch or to enjoy a morning powder sky on a good snow day. That’s certainly part of our culture here, but we do find ourselves in the office much more than we do out in the mountains and that’s well and good.

Tara: Thank you for sharing that reality. [laughs] But that’s really cool, I’ve heard that before and I think that’s a great things about living in the mountains is that culture. Very cool.

Lori: I can actually ski home from the mountains in my bedroom door. That helps get you out there.

Liam: Now you’re just showing off. [laughter]

Lori: So I say sometimes, I don’t ski hour-wise a lot but maybe more often just because it’s convenient. Instead of going to the gym, I could go up the mountain and make a few rounds.

Tara: Yeah, it’s like walking out the door and going for a run for you or something. That sounds like that’s– well, you got to put more equipment on, I guess.

Lori: A little more dressing prep but yeah.

Liam: That’s just kind of mind-blowing for me. I used to be a downhill skier, in the sense that I was at the top of a hill and I went down it on skis. But I grew up in Illinois and downhill skiing is maybe a 300-foot hill. The last time I did real skiing was in Alaska and I haven’t been in a long time. I can’t drag my family to go again so I just watch the Olympics and wish. You’re making me very envious, you two.

Lori: We feel fortunate.

Tara: Can you tell us your story of how you started a business together, how you started working together and how that’s going for you?

Lindsay: Sure. Lori and I started working together about 10 years ago at a larger web agency. We were both in the search engine marketing department. After a couple of years there, Lori had just started her family and I was thinking about wanting to start a family. We both found ourselves considering going the freelance route to create greater flexibility in our day-to-day work life. We had very complimentary skillsets so I focused a lot on SEO and Lori focuses a lot on pay-per-click advertising and specializes in Google AdWords. Over time, we sort of started discussing what a partnership would look like in going out in a freelance business world and we took that leap of faith about seven and a half years ago.

Liam: That’s really neat. I wonder if I can explore the business relationship. You’ve talked about your different areas of professional service focus. I imagine as the work comes in, you divvy it up, if it’s pay-per-click, then one of you handles it, and if it’s SEO stuff, the other one handles it. But how about things like business management, business strategy, making sure people get paid, making sure that the clients pay you, how does that get divvied up? And when you’re thinking about that, was that a conscious decision that one day Lindsay said, “I’m going to do it.” Or maybe Lindsay wasn’t doing it so Lori said, “I’ll do it.” How did that all come about?

Lori: Yeah, I think over the years, we’ve each just kind of found our niches within those required tasks that need completed to run a business. We’ve just sort of divvied them up kind of organically as the company grew. Lindsay has a little bit more experience in economics and numbers so she does a little bit more of the book side of things. I’ve kind of taken on the health insurance and that side of things. Yeah, it just ends up being whoever sort of jumps in and has a little bit more of a knack for it.

Lindsay: I think from a bigger picture concept, we’re 50/50 business partners in all of our ventures and it creates a very collective and collaborative atmosphere in our partnership. That helps to create that balance and we know each other so well over the years, we can tell when one of us is a little more stressed or has a big project deadline that they’re working on for a client. And kind of just like you do around the house with chores and things in your own family life, the other one can kind of pick up a task and lend a hand. That’s been a key part of our partnership that’s been one of the contributing factors to success.

Liam: And I’m interested because you seem very happy with each other as we chat on this video call. I wonder how do you two deal with this stress that might come up with running a business if something went badly or how do you decide if Lindsay wants to go one way and Lori’s thinking, “We should probably go the other.” How does that work as a partnership? How do you resolve that?

Lindsay: That’s a really good question. We’ve been super fortunate over the years to have not run into too many overarching questions. We tend to back each other up so if one of the elements is I’ve been working with a client and for whatever reason the project’s not going very well or the project relationship with the client’s going well, I can talk to Lori and get some insights. She’ll understand if it’s sort of my field that this isn’t a good project for us to continue on or direction, even though that may reduce our collective revenue and things like that. On the smaller scale, that’s been pretty easy. We definitely, as we’ve evolved, our search engine marketing agency is called webShine and continues to grow and do custom search engine marketing projects. But this year, we’ve cofounded WP SEO Hub and now we’re moving into a new space as founders and in startup worlds. It’s leading to much larger questions and that has created, not necessarily a divide where we fall on two either sides of the scale, but an even greater appreciation for having a sounding board to make decisions that sometimes feel well outside of the scope of our expertise or experience.

Tara: It’s so important and you’re very fortunate. I know you know this but you can work together and find that balance comfortably. I would say Liam and I in working on projects together had a similar experience where we sort of just kind of fell into where our interests or gifts or skills or whatever lie. It makes it so easy when that happens naturally, but there are some things that probably neither one of you like to do that you have to kind of step up and do as well.

Lindsay: Yeah, it’s like running a household.

Tara: Yeah. I also know from having formed a partnership myself that we heard all the time, “Don’t form a partnership. Partnerships end up in the courtroom.” Or we talked to a lawyer and the lawyer said, “The only time that I ever talked to partners is when they are breaking up.” Did you get a lot of advice and did you do a lot of planning and prep or was it so natural that it just kind of came together?

Lori: Yeah, I would say the latter. It always felt fairly natural and in a broader sense, I think we both have similar goals and lifestyles. Sort of blending our two lives together in a sense hasn’t been too much of a struggle because at the end of the day, we’re very similar in what we want the day to bring and the outcome to be. That really helps, I think.

Tara: Well, let’s talk about that a little bit because we ask our guests about their thoughts on success and what success means to them. Maybe you can each take a turn and we’ll see if you have similar views? [laughs]

Liam: And we are recording this.

Lori: I guess, personally and professionally, I define success through the quality of my relationships. For me, a good day both on the personal and professional side has a high quality of relationship time. Collaboration in the office, time with my children, time with my husband, and then, ideally, a bit for myself. That, for me, is kind of a success and what I strive for long-term.

Lindsay: Yeah, and I would say success is really looking at the overall picture of the quality of life and that I can have time with my family, support my family, do the things we love, and balance stress to the point that it’s not the overarching factor in life. Yeah, just really finding a nice balance between work, family, friends, recreation, kind of the overall goal.

Liam: Perhaps not surprisingly I hear a lot of similarities between your two definitions and they’re both unique in their own way but there’s definitely an emphasis on family and on loved ones and on work as means of fulfillment and not as an end to itself. Let me ask you about that then, as business owners and also as just individuals, what’s the single most important thing you each do every day to achieve or continue success that you’ve garnered so far?

Lindsay: That’s a really good question. As moms, business owners, and now founders, there’s really no one day that’s the same because consistent routine is pretty hard to come by. one of the things that I focused on after having had children and finding my time fragmented in a new way is to do one thing for myself every day. Some days that’s something big like getting to go skiing with friends for a half day or something like that, and other days it’s something really small like reading five pages before I fall asleep at night. But the conscious part of that is that I try to define what that moment was so that as the days and the weeks roll by, I don’t feel like I’m losing myself too much to work and family life and there are still some defining moments that are just me.

Liam: And do you define those at the end of the day or do you set them out at the start? Sounds like probably at the end upon reflection.

Lindsay: Typically, upon reflection but some days, it’s a little bit more conscientious. By Wednesday, if I haven’t gotten any exercise in the work week, it might be, “Okay, I need to do something for myself today. And that’s going to mean not getting this task or project done and leaving for a long lunch break.”

Tara: Lindsay, I love the deliberateness that you’re expressing about that in terms of not just doing something but really keeping track of it and making sure even if it wasn’t in your plan that that was the thing that you did for the day, that you can look back and say, “Oh yeah, there was that thing I did.” I think that’s great that you’re keeping it in mind and being mindful. I always think of the analogy of putting the mask on when you’re in the airplane and they tell you when you’re with your kid to put the mask on yourself first and then put it on your child. You need to take care of yourself in order to take care of everyone else. That’s excellent, good job. How about you, Lori?

Lori: I would say at the end of the day, it’s nice to look back and have some sort of balance in the day. Every once in a while, you have one of those days where it’s like, “Wow, I don’t feel like I succeeded well at work, as mother, or–” There’s just no balance and you end the day being like, “Wow, what just happened?” There’s a good check-in to be like, I need to be conscious of where I spend my time and make sure I’m feeling that balance in making those moments throughout the day where I do sit down and just hang out with my kids for a little completely undistracted, or go for that walk if nothing else and clear my mind. Yeah, just taking each moment in chunks if you have to and making the best of them.

Liam: Again, I’m hearing similarities in answers here and I like that and I think that’s pretty neat and speaks volumes about your partnership. How do you, if you do at all– and this is maybe a little off-topic, I’m going to ask it anyway. You both have a huge focus on work/life balance in a very practical way. It sounds like it’s a huge personal priority for both of you as individuals and then probably together as business owners, how or do you take that to your sales and marketing messages when you’re looking at clients and discussing opportunities? Does that come up in a relationship, the early days, how does that work?

Lori: That’s a really good question and something we should probably do more of. I think a big component of our success to date in business and in our partnership has been in our communication with clients. We’re very quick to respond and we like spending time with clients, not just being behind our computer doing search engine marketing. In that, we tend to be a bit too available and to not always set those boundaries. That’s something that in sales and onboarding process I think we could both do better is to give people those guidelines. And then we also struggle with, yes, we do have working hours but because we do take flexibility in our work schedule between nine and five, we often find ourselves making up for a couple of lost hours at the end of the day or early morning. I tend to work on Sunday afternoons while my little ones are ideally taking a nap. Then clients start to get accustomed to us being available on, say, a Sunday because I did respond to an email and we sort of train people to believe that we work 24/7, and work ethic and responsiveness is great. Then, on the other hand, at times it can be a bit too much and an area that we need to draw more boundaries.

Tara: We’ll send later a tool that you can use with email. Once you realize what that can do for you in terms of not letting your client know that you’re working on Sundays is a great tool and tip someone gave me a while ago and I love using that. Sometimes I’ll catch myself at 10 o’clock at night replying to something and being like, “Oh, wait, no. Don’t reply at 10 o’clock at night, set for the morning.”

Lori: That’s a good tip. That’ll be our takeaway from today’s talk. We will go and take action on that.

Liam: Outstanding. Let me ask you, what’s been your biggest challenge to date? I’ll ask you to focus on either getting your partnership up and running or launching your new WP SEO Hub, maybe one or the other, if you could focus on that?

Lindsay: Professionally, the biggest challenge to date has definitely been launching our latest venture, WP SEO Hub. There are so many unknowns which makes it very exciting and fun and stimulating. I feel like every hour I’ve spent working on this new venture has been challenging and fun and just what I needed sort of when I was feeling a bit stale in my agency career. It’s been very inspiring. But it is a new venture and for me, it has been more challenging and scary than some of the other more personal moments in life like starting a family and getting married and some other big pivotal moments. This one has felt a bit more challenging but also very exciting.

Liam: How about you, Lori?

Lori: I would say I agree. Professionally, WP SEO Hub has definitely put another layer onto our work life that every once in a while we look back and say, “Wow, we actually had it pretty easy before when we were doing two ventures.” But at the same time, we don’t regret it at all. I did write AdWords book a few years back and in some ways, it’s similar to that where we were doing our daily work and then I would go home and write at night. That was definitely challenging, I had two small children at the time so my quiet time was basically 10:00 to 2:00 AM was when I would sit down and write. But that’s a little different from WP SEO Hub in that there was a due date and an end date. It did at some point completely end and this just kind of keeps and hopefully continues to keep growing and growing.

Liam: Right, for better or worse, it won’t end.

Lori: Exactly.

Tara: When you talked, Lindsay, about the challenge and the fear associated with starting business, why do you think that is? What is the most challenging or frightening part of starting this new venture would you say?

Lindsay: Well, there’s a financial component so that’s definitely a bit of a leap of faith of how much do we invest in ourselves and in our business versus just like every other freelancer. How much money do you keep in your business and how much do you take out. So, that is definitely a challenge and something that kind of makes the skin in the game seem a bit larger. When we started webShine, we had two computers, we both worked from home, we had no teammates or employees, so we had exceptionally low overhead and it did not feel like there was a financial leap of faith. There’s definitely that component with WP SEO Hub but that’s balanced for me by there is the opportunity to grow in a new way and to reach a new market that we can’t in our custom search marketing work. I’m really enjoying one of the challenges that’s sort of a small component of what we’re doing is speaking at WordCamps. As a former mountain guide, I was very accustomed to teaching and speaking in groups and leading in the mountains. I haven’t done that professionally in business since then. There was a big gap in time where that was a missing component of my life and I’m enjoying the nervous energy and preparations and things like that, but are going into getting prepared to speak at a WordCamp or to be on a podcast and to do things that are just a bit new and different for us.

Tara: Yeah, we can relate to that. Both Liam and I have spoken at WordCamps, too. It takes a lot more work than it seems like it should, I think, and it is a little bit nerve-racking, too. I think you get over it but never completely over it.

Liam: I think if you do get over it, you don’t care anymore.

Lindsay: That’s good to know because I’m not getting over it. Each time, I feel like I’m going back through that same process of putting a lot of effort into the talk and then getting nervous before it, and then enjoying it in the moment. That’s been fun. But I think for us and kind of back to that life in the mountains and career, one thing that mountain guiding, ski patrolling in our community here is it’s very community-oriented and a very collective sense of energy. That was also something that was missing a bit from my professional life, when I made the turn into SEO I found it a lot less collaboration and a lot more competition. People sort of keeping their cards close to home in a way that I wasn’t really accustomed to in working in the outdoor industry. One of the biggest delights of this past year has been becoming part of the WordPress community and seeing how welcoming and collaborative and innovative it is and feeling that same energy that I was getting out of a previous career, but now in something that’s in tech.

Tara: Yeah, the WordPress community is very supportive. In terms of starting your business and starting this product, WP SEO Hub, where have you guys turned for advice on starting up something like that? Have you made mistakes? How are you following that path towards building a product in a business never having done anything like it before?

Lindsay: We have learned to reach out to this welcoming community and try to get to know some of the players that can be sort of mentors in the field for us. We’re working right now with Chris Lema and he’s helping us on the product development side kind of almost taking a step back from where we started and really looking at the goal of the product and how to position it in the WordPress marketspace and that’s been very valuable.

Lori: Yeah, I think finding mentors in this space, speaking with customers and prospects and getting feedback and just asking really, “Hey, can you give me five minutes of your time and take a look at our website and let us know what you like, what you don’t like, what’s confusing?” So really trying to ask a lot of questions. And then we’ve also started engaging in a small community here, the Aspen WordPress Meetup, and that’s been a really fun group of diverse different talents and another way to get some input and guidance as we grow our business.

Liam: I’m going to steer us through one of our signature questions here and maybe I’ll start with Lori because we started with Lindsay last time. But I’ll ask you both and I’ll give you both time to respond. What’s been the single most valuable piece of advice, personal or professional, that you’ve received and implemented in your life? Or one of the most valuable, most challenging thing. What’s something that somebody told you and made an impact and you’ve carried it with you and seen the benefits of it?

Lori: Sorry, this is going to be a tough one. Do you want to go because I know you have an answer already.

Liam: Alright, well, let Lindsay chime in first. Tag, you’re it!

Lindsay: I’ll jump in and give Lori a moment to think. I guess a very valuable piece of advice that I’ve received, although I cannot claim to have implemented it properly is the concept of going slow to go fast. It comes out of working in the mountains, working as an IMT that when there is a crisis at hand, the first thing you want to do is go as quickly as you can to fix the problem, especially if in mountain situations, there are occasionally life-threatening consequences. But at the end of the day, slowing down will let you go faster. That has been something that in the mountains I found much more natural and in business, I definitely have to make a more conscientious effort to follow that advice.

Liam: That’s solid, I like that. Slow to go fast. Did that give Lori the time to–? [laughter]

Lindsay: We’ll see.

Liam: or did she go too fast?

Tara: Did you google it? [laughs]

Lori: I would say, in a similar vein just spending a lot of my young adult and adult life in Colorado, in the mountains, but coming from Pennsylvania, a lot of times, it just takes pushing yourself that little extra bit that you didn’t think you had in you or that you could do, things that maybe you want to turn around but the summit’s right there and you think that that’s the only option but then you push through and you realize that it wasn’t nearly as difficult to get there as you thought it would be once you made up your mind to do it. I guess, our work life is very similar, it’s just kind of setting those goals and persevering to get there.

Tara: Yeah, I think both of those are great advice. Lindsay, your go slow to go fast reminds me of something I’ve been reading about lately and learning about meditation and sort of mindfulness is the idea of responding and not reacting. I feel like a lot of times when having sort of started a business, a lot of times, you don’t have the advance time to plan things out so you end up reacting a lot to things because you have to instead of responding to them thoughtfully or working it into your plan. I think you’re right on target with that idea of going slow to go fast. Of course, starting a venture like this and, as you said, putting some capital into it with the product, Lori, your advice about going for it and not being afraid of the summit is also really applicable to what you guys have done. I think you have both implemented that in what you’re doing it seems to me anyway.

Lori: Thank you.

Lindsay: Thanks.

Lori: We’re trying.

Liam: We have just a few minutes left so I’m going to throw another kind of sideways question at you, I’m sorry. As you’ve built a partnership together, you’ve launched this new business together, and I’ll ask this of both of you, what’s something you’ve found that you’ve discovered that you’re very good at that really surprised you that you either are good at it or could get to be good at it and now are good at it?

Lindsay: That’s a very good question.

Liam: Sorry, I’m really putting you two on the spot today.

Lindsay: Yeah, I think that the biggest thing that I feel like I’m getting better at is problem-solving and trying to find the joy in that, and trying to think creatively about problems small to large. That’s definitely a bigger component of what we’re doing now in managing a new business and balancing all of these different acts and something that I certainly had to exercise more and doing quite a bit more of now.

Lori: And I come from a science background and always thought I’d be more of a science researcher and so when I ended up in marketing world, it seemed like a pretty big leap but then finding myself back in the search engine marketing side of things, it is nice to have all the data and the numbers and to be able to really quantify what we’re doing in some way. That’s one thing I have the data skills in me but it’s nice to be able to apply them in a marketing sense.

Tara: Excellent. It’s nice when you discover those things and you’ve really put those to good use working together. And we are running out of time, we are out of time. I want to thank you both for being on our show today and for sharing your story, I think it’s an inspiration in terms of having a partnership in a business which is challenging but you guys seem to have made it work really well, and I look forward to seeing good things happening from your agency and your product. Can you tell us where people can find you online?

Lindsay: Sure. People can find us at Wpseohub.com and thank you so much for having us here.

Liam: You’re very welcome, it’s been a real pleasure getting to know you and thank you for entertaining my less than predictable questions today.

Lori: Thank you.

Tara: Thank you so much. Alright, bye.

Liam: See you later. Bye.

Lori: Bye.

Lindsay: 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.

Simon is a journalist and editor and publisher of Today News Africa on Todaynewsafrica.com. A digital newspaper publishing from Washington DC but focusing on Africa. He was forced to master and to love WordPress in order to thrive.

Website | Todaynewsafrica.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 44.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Simon Ateba. Simon is a journalist and editor and publisher of Today News Africa on Todaynewsafrica.com. A digital newspaper publishing from Washington DC but focusing on Africa. He was forced to master and to love WordPress in order to thrive. Hey, Simon.

Simon: Hi, Liam.

Tara: Hi, Simon. We’re so glad to have you on this show. Welcome, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Simon: Yeah, thank you, Tara. I’m so happy to be here today and thank you for having me, thank you for inviting me. This is a big privilege. I know you have thousands of people you will have invited but you decided to invite me so I’m glad to be here. My name is Simon Ateba, I was born in Cameroon, in the French-speaking part of Cameroon. In 2003, I traveled to Nigeria to learn English. That’s why I still have this French accent. I went back to Nigeria and then I learned English and I went to the school of journalism where I spent seven years. I first spent five years doing public relations and advertising, mass communication. And then I did a post-graduate diploma in public relation and advertising. After that, I worked for one of Nigeria’s big newspapers and one if Nigeria’s big news magazine. I was there for a couple of years, on to 2015 and I realized things were changing. People were no more buying newspapers, everyone was reading online. I resigned and decided to form a digital newspaper that was named after me. In 2017, I moved to the US and I relocated to Washington DC and so I rebranded it and gave it a name, Today News Africa on Todaynewsafrica.com.

Tara: That’s so interesting. Your journey from advertising into journalism. You studied journalism, though, right? Can you describe for us a little bit the environment for journalism in Nigeria and why you decided to come to the United States?

Simon: Yeah, first of all, as I said, I wasn’t born in Nigeria, I was born in Cameroon. Nigeria, I went there because I wanted to study in English. I used to speak only French then, I didn’t know anything in English. But I realized everything was coming from the English world, the computers were coming from the English world, the phone, technology, business, everything was either from the US or the UK. And I said, “You know what? Maybe I need to learn English.” I looked for places where I could go. The only place I could really go was Nigeria because Cameroon and Nigeria have an agreement. You can travel from Cameroon to Nigeria without a visa. And you can stay there for three months and after three months you can renew. I decided to go to Nigeria, and I go there and learn English. And I started from the very basic, “Happy, happy, shall we be when we learn our ABC.” [laughter] It was really hard and I remember going to the bank and trying to fill a form and no one could really hear me, and they gave me a form in there like, “You need to fill this.” I wanted to open the bank account and I had money but I couldn’t fill the form. The word I couldn’t really know was next of kin. They gave me these, I asked them, “What is next of kin?” … “But you don’t know what next of kin is?” I said, “No, I don’t know. Do you have a form in French?” And they said, “No, we don’t have any form in French.” It was really hard and I spent an hour in the bank trying to fill the form. Eventually, I was able to fill the form and I decided to go back to school. So I went back to school and learned English. And I did one year starting English and going to all the churches, going to all the places. I did everything I could everywhere I knew that people were having a gathering, I would go there to listen to people, to try to be with people, know how people talk, hear people talk, hear people speak. After that, I went to sit for an exam to go to the school of journalism in Lagos. And I passed and eventually I was admitted and I became the student president at the school of journalism. And there I couldn’t speak English. Eventually when I graduated in 2010, I was the best student in editorial writing and that was like the most difficult cost to doing the school of journalism, because you needed to write perfect English, you needed to think really well, and I was able to do it and I was giving money for doing it. That was really something that was great. Eventually, because I became so successful and covered all the election and went to different places, I got a grant in 2015 from the Ford Foundation to do a report on Nigerian refugees in Cameroon and Chad. When I got there, they arrested me and they accused me of being a spy for Boko Haram. I was a suspected Boko Haram terrorist and he was really– I was there for almost a week and people were protesting everywhere in Cameroon, in Nigeria. Amnesty International issued a statement, human rights watch. Even though it was a sad situation, it gave me publicity. It made people know who Simon Ateba was, what he was doing. Then people got to know where I was going, I was an investigative journalist. I’ve done thousands of stories before but it didn’t really attract the attention that my arrest in Cameroon attracted. And because I became that popular, I became a frequent guest on TV shows and people would ask me, “Tell us how were you arrested? What did you eat there? Did you feel like dying? How was it? How many days?” I also learned to do a few interviews like the one I’m doing today with my African accent. It was something that brought me to the limelight, it was this sad event that brought me to limelight. But also I learned a lot from it and it allowed me to– they did a TV documentary on me. I did 50 TV interviews and radio interviews, I was everywhere because people were trying to understand what Boko Haram is and the situation in West Africa terrorism, politics. Yeah, I’ve come a long way as a journalist. But in 2015, I decided to– because people were no more buying hard copies, and I decided to leave and to form a digital newspaper. But I didn’t know anything in WordPress so I hired this guy from India and several of them, and I paid them. I ran out of money, I didn’t have money anymore and they kept charging me for little things. I wanted to update a new plugin which only would take a week, I needed to change the visual aspect of my website, it would take two weeks, and it would take $200-$300. After some time, I couldn’t bid them anymore and I decided, maybe I should learn this thing. I’ve learned English really well, I came from a place where I could speak only French, I didn’t know anything in English. It took me years but eventually, I mastered it. “Maybe I can learn WordPress.” That’s how my journey into trying to learn, trying to understand and trying to master WordPress study.

Liam: Wow.

Tara: I know. I really want to go back and hear about all the things that you’ve been interviewed about with your arrest but I think we only have a half hour.

Liam: Yeah, there’s a lot there. Certainly, one string that I’m picking up on is you’re not afraid of challenges and your ability to persevere. That’s quite a story, Simon. Thank you for sharing that with us.

Simon: Thank you.

Tara: Going back to the question of what brought you to the US, had you been here before? What brought you here?

Simon: That was quite a successful story. From this website I set up in Nigeria, I began to have a lot of people who have written me. I was having thousands and thousands of people going there so I established my authority, people knew me because I was on TV. In 2016, I went to the US embassy and decided to come and cover the US presidential election. Everyone was talking about it, it was the first time we thought a woman was going to be the president of the most powerful country on Earth. It was a big thing for me and I decided to cover it in New York, but I had friends who live in DC. I knew all the accreditation, I could be here for some time because I came weeks before the election. In 2016, I went to New York to cover the presidential election. I went to Clinton’s campaign headquarter. She thought that she was going to win, we thought that she was going to win. But as the results started coming in, we realized she was not going to make it. Even though I was supposed to be really fair and not really have– I wasn’t supposed to take side, I needed to remain objective. I felt sad. So after the election, I decided to go back. That was my first time in the US, I’ve seen how things were being done here. I’ve seen how journalism was being practiced here. I’ve seen the freedom people had to take pictures, to interview people, to do so many thing that we couldn’t do under a dictatorial regime in Africa. I decided maybe this is the place I should really practice journalism. I also knew that being in Washington DC, it was the right place because that’s where you have all African heads of state, all African businessmen, that’s where they come every day and that’s where I knew I would have access to them. People that couldn’t meet in Africa, people head of state, and ministers, and businessmen, and religious leaders that I couldn’t have access to in Africa. I’ve had access to them here because when they come here, they don’t have all the security men around them. They are more accessible. So I realized Washington DC was a great place for me to set up an African newspaper and have access to all these resources, all the libraries, all the people that come in. There was also a huge African population there. So I moved to the US to do my business so that’s what I’ve been doing since I came back in April 2017. On 17th of April this year, it’s going to be exactly one year since I moved here.

Liam: That is so impressive and so powerful and very moving in many different ways, Simon. And to be perfectly honest with you, I’m struggling to not just dive completely into all of that because it’s so incredibly interesting and very, very different than what we’ve heard before on our show. Absolutely thrilled that you’re joining us today. Let me try to steer it a little bit of the way into some of the questions that we like to ask our guests and to ask you to define success. What is success to you in a personal and professional way? What’s your definition of success?

Simon: I think success to me is to be able to do some of the things that I’ve been able to do, go from being an ordinary journalist, writing articles but being unable to understand WordPress and decide, you know, maybe I can learn this thing. And the ability to have learned WordPress, to design website, to know how to fix bugs, to be able to add any plugin, to be able to do every single thing that I want to do on my website. How do I post articles, how do I post pictures, how do I use videos? The ability for me to do it and to now teach other people to be able to tell other people, “These are the things that we should do. You need to be careful about the plugin, these are the essential plugins that you need to have. This is how you design your website, this is where you can go to buy a theme.” Being able to do all those things and being able to build something from scratch and moving from Africa and being in Washington DC and joining other people who were already expert in WordPress and learning from them and seeing how every day I kept improving and to me, that’s what success looks like.

Liam: Yeah, that’s a great success definition. That ability to learn and to share, you certainly in the span of this conversation have talked about learning English and learning not just to speak but to write to the point where you’re getting Ford Foundation grants on the back of writing that. I’m guessing that French, you might have grown up speaking it, but you probably speak other languages as well coming from Cameroon. Perhaps you eve write other languages as well. But then to go on and study advertising, and to learn journalism and then not just to stay as an academic journalist, if I can put it that way, to becoming a working, practicing journalist with the very scary stories of being arrested and to be simple about it, all the challenges that come with that. What a wonderfully positive definition of success. Let me ask you this. Again, trying to keep with our show a little bit is, to continually achieve the success that you have, what’s the single most important thing you do every day?

Simon: I think two things. The first thing is that I keep doing the same thing. I have this schedule, I almost sleep on my website, I wake up with my website. There are breaking news that come from Africa because of the time difference. Usually, I wake up around 4:00 AM our time but it’s already 10:00 AM in Nigeria, West African time. I scroll to my email to see if I received a statement from a government agency, from one of my reporters. I try to post them. First thing is I keep doing the same thing. The second thing is I read a lot because I came to realize that you can’t be a leader if you’re not a reader.

Liam: Oh, I like that.

Simon: Yeah, if you want to be a leader, you need to be a reader. So I read a lot. I don’t finish them, that’s maybe one of the challenges that I have. I read one book and then I see another book, and then I move to the second book but I read something every day. I also pray a lot, I have this small group in church. I go to the District Church in Washington DC. Great church, great people. We meet every Mondays and every Sunday. Being with those people and being able to go through my Bible and also doing the work every day. I keep doing the same thing every day, I keep reading every day. Those are the three things that have kept me. I keep practicing also because I’ve realized in WordPress, there are new things that happen every day. There are new plugins that come into the market every day, there are new ways of fixing bugs every day, there are new ways of posting videos. One of the ways that also makes me to keep being ahead of many people, especially where I come from is because I try to ‘cheat’. I will go to Huffington Post, I will see how they do it. I will say, “How do they do this?” I will go to Washington Post, I will see how they do it. I just saw breaking news on NPR and when they published a new story, they share it on Facebook, I see breaking news that appears on Facebook. I don’t know how to do it. I’ve seen it a week ago in The New York Times. I try to see how these newspapers, these digital newspapers look like. And I try to imitate them, I try to cheat, I try to learn, I watch a lot of YouTube videos. I mean, as I said, I have so many videos that I watch every day. When I can’t do it, I try to read on Google and then I watch video and try to see how I can fix it.

Liam: Yeah, that approach to learning, you’re calling it cheating and it’s in air quotes. And I get that and I’m smiling as I say this, but that’s the very nature of learning, right? That’s what books are. We’re cheating by studying the words of the masters that came before us and that’s what going to classes– we can figure it all on our own or we can sit in the room and take notes while somebody who knows it tells us that. I love that work that you’re doing to constantly learn by exercising your mind and your brain on a number of different levels, the practical of growing your business and your newspaper, but also the spiritual through church, and the mental through reading. You are living what you are trying to achieve and that’s great.

Tara: Yeah, what you achieved is pretty amazing. It’s interesting, we are a WordPress-focused show but there’s so much here to talk about. But I will talk about WordPress and one thing that we’ve heard from all of our guests is the role that WordPress has played in their life and in their– maybe not in their success necessarily, but in how they make a living. It seems like WordPress, I know you’ve embraced it and it’s helped your website operate and function the way that it does. It’s also, I think, something that you become master in so that you can help others as you said and do some work in WordPress. Talk a little bit about what your plans are with your website as well as with what you want to be doing with WordPress on the side or how those two things work together. Certainly, it’s staying on top of what’s new which is great.

Simon: the first thing is that I couldn’t have achieved any of this without WordPress. My website is built on WordPress, Todaynewsafrica.com. Everything I do on it, even when I’m trying to learn, everything is WordPress from the way I build it to the way I manage it every day. As I said, I watch a lot of YouTube videos and try to see how other people do it. I intend to have the most popular and the most professional WordPress website that focuses on African news. You know, I cover the State Department, the Pentagon, and different government agencies here. Often times when I attend these things, I’m the only African in the room. Most times, I’m the only black person and with this African accent that people find hard to really understand. Sometimes they’re talking about Africa and I’m the only African in the room. And there are, like, 150 journalists and there’s no one from Africa except me. So I’m trying to build something that will be really good representation for Africa, being able to ask the right question and give the right answer. I want my website to be a place where people can find answers, where people can come with questions and to find answers because at the end of the day, that’s the main thing. If you build a website that doesn’t answer any questions– if it’s my platform a place where people can come, sink in knowledge, where people can come trying to get value, trying to get answers to their question. If someone asks me for instance, “When is the Nigerian presidential election?” They should be able to come to my website and know, “Yeah, it’s going to take place in February 2019.” And, “How is a Nigerian president elected?”, “Yeah, he needs to have 50% of the vote.” I’m trying to do this platform that we give people answers about Africa. In a nutshell, that’s the platform I’m trying to build. I want it to grow and I want it to be recognized and I want it to really provide, as I said, answers to people who come with questions.

Tara: And you have reporters back in Nigeria that work with you or do you go back and forth at all?

Simon: Yes, I have people who work for me. I have one reporter who is here in the US, he lives in Maryland. I have a few reporters in Nigeria, in Cameroon, in Ghana, and someone in Kenya. I have a few freelancers who are no regular but from time to time they say, “Hey, we can do an article on this.” But one good thing that I’ve done to be able to pull all this through was to really connect to government agencies, Amnesty International, human rights. making sure I know when the issue statement by human rights abusers. Also, to be connected to all the government agency. If the government of Cameroon or Nigeria leaves a statement today, I should be able to receive it at the same time The New York Times, or CNN, or NPR are receiving it. A statement is a statement, so it is what you make of it. I’ve been able to build that platform and I have all these statements that come from all over the world and I have these reporters who send their articles. Sometimes I need to rewrite them because most people don’t really understand how you write to an international audience. There are people who don’t know where Africa is, they don’t know how many countries there are in Africa. They don’t even know where Cameroon is, where Nigeria is. So when you are writing for them, you need to be able to give them perspective so they can make sense of what you are telling them. “What is Boko Haram? Is he a person, is he a terrorist organization? Is it a country?” When they send those in I will write them.

Tara: It’s amazing what a newsroom has become and where it can be located. I mean, really when you think about all the time. Simon, something else we like to ask our guest is about advice. I’m sure in all of your experience you probably have received and given a lot of advice. Would you share with us the single most important piece of advice that you’ve received and implemented in your life?

Simon: I think here in the US, I don’t know if I’m well-placed to give advice but I’ve seen the generosity of people. When I go to YouTube and I see people who release knowledge for free, I see and realize that everything is almost out there. You can become any single thing that you want to be now if you have YouTube, if you have books, if you have Google, if you are willing to access those things who can become anything because there are a lot of people who are ready to give knowledge and who are putting knowledge out there. All you need to do is to access it. I will tell people, “I don’t know, maybe you should just study website and write about your life or something. If you don’t know how to do it, go on YouTube, go on Google, go on any others, encyclopedia, they will teach you how to do stuff. That is the single most– biggest thing that I’ve learned here in the US, the generosity of the people, the fact that people give knowledge for free. Someone just wakes up and says, “Okay, today I’m going to teach you how to build a WordPress website and to do it from scratch.” And another person will say, “I will teach you how to make a website fast.” And another person will say, “I will teach you how to iron your clothes, how to cook this, how to do this.” All those things like that, and these people are giving all these things for free. I will just tell everyone, go on YouTube, go on Google, go on Quora, go on all those platforms and access the knowledge that is already there.

Tara: That’s great advice, thank you for sharing that.

Simon: You’re welcome.

Liam: Simon, we’ve got just a couple of minutes left and I wonder if you could share a little bit about your involvement with the WordPress community. We were chatting before we started to record our show here that you’re active with your local meetup there in DC and in Northern Virginia. Tell us a little bit about how you found that and what you make of it and how are you involved?

Simon: Yeah. There was this strange thing that happened to me. I was trying to post this story one day, I never knew anything about the meetup in Allington, beautiful place. I was trying to post this story on my dashboard and I saw it and I saw that there’s a WordPress meetup. I had so many questions and I decided to join them the next time and I got there and I saw all these people. The first day I go there to the WordPress meetup in Allington. I met someone who showed me how to reduce the size of my picture and made my website fast. Because he solved the biggest problem that I had and I decided to go there every day and I began to volunteer. I met different people there. Tara who made a presentation, different people who taught us about plugins, how to monetize your WordPress site, how to expand it, how to be careful about the plugins which you use. So yeah, I learned a lot and I may volunteer. I’m going to be there tomorrow Wednesday just to volunteer and try to learn from people and share knowledge.

Liam: That is awesome, I love that. So you found it in the WordPress dashboard and said, “I’m going to find out more and learn.” I absolutely love it, I absolutely love it.

Tara: We’re lucky in Arlington that you found it. Simon, thank you so much for sharing your story. I wish we had a lot more time there, so many more things to talk about your experience and journalism and what’s happening in the world but we’ll have to save that for a meetup, you and I. Thank you very much. Can you tell everyone where they can find you online?

Simon: People can come to my website first, Todaynewsafrica.com, they can also follow me on Twitter at @simonateba. They can also maybe send us an email, contact us at Todaynewsafrica.com.

Tara: Great.

Liam: Simon, thank you so much for joining us. It was an absolute pleasure having you on this show. My only regret is that we only had half an hour. I feel like we could have been there for half the day or half the week and maybe even half the year chatting. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Simon: Thank you, Liam. Thank you, Tara. Thank you for having me.

Tara: Thanks, bye-bye.

Liam: Bye.

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

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

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.

Yvette is a WordPress enthusiast living in The Netherlands. She attended and volunteered at her first WordCamp in Miami in 2014. Yvette has been on the WordPress Marketing Team since WordCamp Europe in 2017.

Website | Inbound Marketing Bliss

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: Today’s show is brought to you in part by Liquid Web.

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Liam: Liquid Web is offering Hallway Chats listeners 33% off for the first three months. Go to Liquidweb.com and use the coupon code, HALLWAYCHATS, all one word, to sign up.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 43.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Yvette Sonneveld. Way back in 1999, Yvette taught herself HTML and CSS using library books and notepad. In 2005, she fell in love with WordPress. Yvette tended and volunteered at her first WordCamp which was WordCamp Miami in 2014. Yvette has been on a community rollercoaster ever since WordCamp Europe in 2017. Hi, Yvette, welcome.

Yvette: Hey, Liam. Hey, Tara. Thanks for having me.

Tara: Welcome. We’re glad to have you here, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself after Liam’s introduction?

Yvette: Yes, sure. I’m Yvette Sonneveld, obviously. 44, mother of two amazing kids, married to a lovely husband, moved back to the Netherlands about one and a half years ago, after we lived abroad for 16 years. Worked freelance from home, which is amazing because your balance with family really works out. I am a total WordPress community junky now.

Tara: Oh, I can relate to that. Were you living in the States when you were living abroad or where were you living?

Yvette: No, I actually lived on a small island in the Caribbean called Curacao. I lived there from 2001 to 2005 and then again from 2008 until 2016. And in between, we lived in Ontario, Canada for three years.

Tara: Wow, that explains how you were able to go to WordCamp Miami in 2014, I guess. You were relatively in the same general area at the time?

Yvette: Yes, it was about two-and-a-half-hour flight and the island we lived at that point didn’t really have internet marketing conferences so I had to fly abroad all by myself and that was so scary.

Tara: Oh. And what was it like living on a small Caribbean island? Were you doing WordPress while you were there?

Yvette: The first time, I wasn’t. First time I was a part of that period. I was working on building my business, I was still coding in HTML and CSS at that point. The second time, I actually adopted WordPress back when I lived in Ontario. When I got back to Curacao, I was working with WordPress already. And with my kids, I had a baby the second time so working from home was just perfect and people were really starting to adopt WordPress so that would count wonderfully well, actually, yes.

Tara: And I can imagine how difficult it would be to be living in a beutifull Caribbean island with a baby and try to prioritize some WordPress work in there. What was that like? Was it a good escape for you? Is it kind of a gradual evolution of your exposure and experience due to those circumstances?

Yvette: It was a little bit of both. One of the things that I really loved about Curacao is that even though you wouldn’t expect it on a small island, it does have all the facilities.My daughter would go to daycare for a few parts of the day each week. And then I would still do some work when she was having naps. And my son would sort of move around all that, he would have school in the morning, so I’d work in the morning, then in the afternoon, he would always need like an hour of screen time to kick back, and then we do some work there, too.

Tara: I know it is such a vacation place, it’s hard to imagine, actually, doing work there. It must have been a challenge. But it sounds like it’s setup for that, once you live there, I assume it’s like anywhere else. Once you’re living there, it’s not as much of a novelty, the novelty wears off.

Yvette: Yeah, it’s as horrible as it may sound. At some point, choosing between going to the beach or going to the beach or, hmm, maybe going to the beach.

Liam: Now you’re just rubbing it in. [laughter]

Yvette: It does get boring, not well.

Tara: Yeah, and you can only drink so many fruity-rum drinks, I guess, before it’s likely to take its toll on you. [laughs]

Yvette: That too, absolutely. And even though it’s a small island and the weather is always nice, you have to put food on the table too, work needs to be done.

Tara: Sure. How old are your kids now?

Yvette: Right now, they’re eight and 14.

Tara: Okay, so they’re a bit older. Have you seen your business evolve and progress and grow as your children have grown? Did it start out small when they were younger?

Yvette: Yes, absolutely. But with all these national moves, it also goes like in phases, especially when we knew that we were going to move back to the Netherlands. I intentionally cut back my business for more than one and a half years because I knew that this transition was going to be huge with them in this age, and then we’re so very aware, and my son in his teenage years, that had a huge impact so I had to prepare for that. Then when you sort of minimize your business for one and a half years, you do lose clients. Before, what always happened was that I would bring my clients with me that would stick with me for usually anywhere between six months and two years, and then started dwindling away because they were starting to miss the face-to-face contact, and that would give me the chance to start building up my business again. And here, because I really wasn’t working very much, I lost clients earlier, which I totally understand. But when I started my business back up spring of 2017, this whole community thing really helped because all of a sudden, I knew so many people. Even though I am Dutch, I didn’t know one single WordPress person in the Netherlands. And then in Paris, I got to know many more WordPress people from the US but also a lot more from Europe.

Liam: I’ve got a two-fold question for you is, tell me a little bit about your clientele and how it’s evolved the type of individuals or businesses or organizations that you served as you’ve moved around from Curacao to Canada and back to Curacao and now back to the Netherlands. And then really going back to your intro about this community rollercoaster since 2017 since you’ve just touched on the community and how that’s helped your business. After you tell us about your client base, tell us a little bit about how you got involved with the community and what’s that meant to you, what has it meant to your business as well?

Yvette: Yes, let me start with how my business evolved. Way back when I started coding, but also had a background in hospitality and services marketing, what started happening was that people would approach me to create a website. What would happen was that they wouldn’t even have any clue of who their ideal client was or what their competition did. Neither did they have any sort of decent-looking logo so getting those things and some logo design. But over the years, I realized that I needed some sort of niche or some sort of specialization to be able to continue to compete. On the tiny island like Curacao, there’s not a lot of people that do WordPress development for smaller businesses. They usually work with bigger businesses. That really helped. But over time, I started specializing in real estate clients and financial services industry clients. That helped me get sort of that specialization, and since I still continue to work with businesses that had teams of up to 15 employees, they were still in the position where they loved to work with a generalist. I found that sort of sweet spot for me where I could do different several things. From marketing to creating web pages, sometimes still websites, but also writing copy where helping me not to get bored and get that variation in my day, and serving them well because they didn’t have the general knowledge to work with specialists. And I didn’t have the budget to work with specialists, they would really help out with someone who was sort of– I’m the general practitioner. Some people with businesses on a higher level, they need to brainstorm but when your business is still under 15 people, you are pretty well off with generalist.

Liam: Sure. And then let’s transition, if you would, into WordCamp Europe. Tell us about that and the community?

Yvette: Looking back to that WordCamp, I remembered signing up for the WordCamp realizing that this was going to be an event for 2500-3000 people and that sort of freaked me out. What I already did back in Miami to deal with that panic zone where I sort of feared I would end up in, was to sign up as a volunteer so I did that for WordCamp Europe, too. But then there were like 300 volunteers. So I was, “Okay, what if I go day earlier and also do this contributor thing?” I had no idea what they do there. I always thought it was just for techy people, just for back-end developers, etc. But now they’re telling me they’re having a marketing team, too. I know some stuff about marketing. Let’s just go there and see how things play out. There were a few people from the US, amongst them Bridget Willard, and they sort of expected that they would have five, six people show up for the marketing team, right? All of a sudden, there were like, I don’t know, 35.

Tara: Wow.

Yvette: There was a lack of tables, there was a lack of chairs, nobody really knew how to solve that. That is one of the things, I think, that I am good at. And I would see someone struggle, then they switched lips and I just go into help mode. I started arranging tables and chairs. Before I knew it, I was speaking to one of the other guys who mentioned that his team needed to get some more direction, and he was thinking about some sort of approach to management. “Hey, well, I work with Asana, I work with Trello, what do you think?” And he was a big fan of Trello, so before we knew it, we were organizing all those tasks. With the result, all of a sudden, I was just in the middle of the marketing team. That was one part but a lot of the marketing people were speakers, too. And then a lot of the Dutch people that I somehow came across, who were also very friendly and encouraging and welcoming, they were speakers, too. When I had this sort of on my bucket list but it was still in the page five or six, let’s say in five years, because that’s way too scary still. And they started encouraging me. “If you have a story to tell, why don’t you just sign up and see how it goes? The first time you probably won’t be picked anyways. And if so, then you have this deadline and you’ll figure it out.” Nah, not quite ready for that. Then I was invited to participate in the interview with Bridget and Jen on their Blab show. I can do that, that’s friends, and I sort of like that. I did that and they kept nudging me about the speaking thing. At some point, I somehow found the courage to send a proposal for the talk and like, “Okay, let’s do this about my way of using volunteering to keep out of freaking out mode and getting to know people like that.” And I guess the organization liked that. Other than I totally expected, all of a sudden, there was this email like, “Congratulations, your talk has been picked.” I’m like, “What?”

Tara: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Yvette: “I don’t know if I’m ready, you guys promised that I wouldn’t be picked at first.”

Tara: Now you have to prepare your talk.

Yvette: Then I had to prepare my talk, yes. I did that and then I had the most, most amazing MC who was so encouraging and she was an MC during WordCamp Europe as well. I thought she was a rockstar, and then she told me that she had been freaking out and she said, “You know, the one thing that helped me so much was this–” Was somebody that told her and she shared that with me, that the one thing that keeps me going within this community and keeps me finding the courage to stretch again and again is that this lady once told me, “You know what? We are the WordPress people, we want you to succeed. Nobody wants you to fail, everybody wants you to thrive and to succeed.” That’s still like my mantra, that helped me so much.

Tara: That’s a great segway into the question we want to ask you, which is about what is your definition of success, either in your work life or personal life, or both?

Yvette: That’s a great question and I really try to think about that. I think there’s a few ingredients that I count to what success is. The first one is being able to let go of perfectionism because it kills your energy, it kills joy, and I have been trying to mold myself to whatever I thought other people were expecting of me for years and years. And it didn’t make me happier, it didn’t make my friends happier, simply didn’t work. Once I was sort of able to let go of the perfectionism and just be who I was, and help people from a perspective of helping, getting paid for it, sure. But being able to just sharing, I will help you, I have expertise, but I don’t promise that this will work. It is like health care, right? Web development, internet marketing. Just that openness, that honesty, letting go of perfectionism, that’s a big ingredient of allowing me to grow to this point. And another thing still is instead of molding to what I expected that others wanted me to be, finding my kind of crazy instead. Finding the people around me that would just accept me for who I was but also encourage me and believe me and nudge me to keep growing. I think that is two, and then three is always looking for balance, balance between time for work, time for family, time for friends, time to recharge, time to hustle, finding balance. And not that I’ve always worked, not that it always plays out, but keeping that in mind definitely helps.

Liam: Sure, sure. That’s a pretty comprehensive definition, it’s letting go of that emphasis on being perfect and finding a community or building a community around you that supports you where you are perfect, but also accepts your flaws. And then looking for that balance of the many aspects of your life and trying to balance it when you can and being okay if it gets out of whack, and then just adjusting it and not seeing it as, “Oh my gosh, I’m totally not managing a good balance.” It’s, “Okay, I’m not having a good balance, I need to fix that.” I think that’s a very holistic and healthy approach. Thank you for sharing that, let me ask you then, what is the most important thing you do every day to either achieve or maintain your definition of success? How do you get at that every day?

Yvette: There’s few things I try to do, one of them being trying to really take care of my body, my soul so that I’m able to be there for others, too. I mean, I’m a woman, I’m a girl, I love chocolate and I love red wine.

Liam: I am not a woman nor am I a girl but I also love chocolate and red wine. [laughter]

Yvette: But again, everything in balance. I try to make sure that I really get a lot of fruits and veggies and water to keep my system healthy and balance that out with a decent portion of stuff that are maybe even not so healthy. Other than that, I really try to get a lot of fresh air into my system, to get the cobwebs out of my brain and to bring my heart rate up every once in a while. I really find that keeps my energy level at a much better rate. If I don’t do things like this within a day or two, three, I find my energy level drop. That is what I do and I really try to stay connected because I can just talk to my computer and drum out code and copy and plans, but if I don’t find time to recharge as well, again, my productivity will drop and whatever I do just lacks, despite that people like what I bring.

Liam: What do you do for connectivity or getting out and getting fresh air, what does that mean for you?

Yvette: There’s a few things that I do. Again, here in the area, I’m pretty well connected with WordPress friends, but also, all of a sudden, I live much closer to my friends of my youth and my college time. They were a 10-hour flight away for years and now all of a sudden, it’s a one-hour drive so I really make time for them, and then family, of course. When it comes to being outdoors to relax, recharge, and workout, there’s a few things I do. I love to just go out on my bike in parks, I play tennis, I love that, and just go for a walk.

Tara: I was going to ask you about bicycling because that’s one of the things I think of when I think of your country. When I think of the Netherlands, I think of the bicycling.

Yvette: Yeah, that was one of the things when we moved back one and a half years ago, and I still can just enjoy to hop on my bike and be at a grocery store within three or four minutes. Whereas before in Ontario, in Curacao, I had to be in my car for 20 minutes. Yeah, that’s so easy here.

Tara: And all of the cars are very familiar and comfortable with cyclists there, too, I don’t think there’s the tension between cyclists and motorists, as there is in the US. Being a cyclist myself, I’m super sensitive to the stereotypical aggressive cyclists who makes the drivers have to slow down and that kind of thing. [laughs]

Yvette: No, they’re very used to them here. There is so many bike paths to keep bikers safe. I mean, kids nine, 10 years old go by bike by themselves independently to school here so we have to make sure that they’re safe.

Tara: Yeah, that’s really neat. What is your favorite thing to do every day? Is there something that you have a routine of something that is your favorite? Or maybe there’s something in WordPress that you like to do, that’s your favorite thing to do in WordPress? One or the other or both?

Yvette: I love variety. For so many years, I tried to do what people tend to say, like a routine in the morning so I get productive, it just doesn’t work when my body screams that I need to go outside. I just better go outside because I won’t get any work done. When I come home after I drop my daughter off at school and my head says, “I have this one idea.” And I just need to sit behind my computer and write down. I do that, I think I sort of learned to live with the winds of my not-so-standard system. I think if there’s one thing, it’s that I live for variety.

Liam: That’s really interesting. I find myself in a similar vein and variety is one of the aspects of the way I try to craft my business is providing a variety of services, when to be well-rounded, but to also maintain a professional interest. Yvette, I’m going to change some gears on you, speaking of bicycles, change gears on you, and ask you about, what’s the single most valuable piece of advice, be it personal or professional, or maybe a mix of both that you’ve ever received and incorporated into your life?

Yvette: I remember that question and I remember what I– there was on thing that I remember that I did write down to prepare for it before this conversation. And that absolutely is find your kind of crazy. Make sure that you’re surrounded with people–

Liam: Find your kind of crazy? I love it.

Yvette: Yeah, find your kind of crazy, I don’t try to be whatever somebody else, or what you think, that’s first– people not only try to conform to others, but they try to conform to what they think others want them to be.

Tara: I love that.

Yvette: I’m 44 years old, it took me at least 36 years to figure that one out. Now that I’m able to surround myself with my kind of crazy, the creatives and the nerds, I just dare stand up and say, “I’m a nerd and I’m proud of it.” If there is one thing, yes, that is the single best piece of advice that someone ever gave to me and it makes such a difference in my life. I really, really try to teach my kids the same thing, especially my son in his teenage years, he’s under so much pressure. The things that he needs to do, and things that some of his wannabe buddies sort of want him to be. You know what? Find, stick to the friends that you can really feel you can be yourself with, and invest in those. And the other ones, you know, they’re good to hang out when it suits you and don’t get pressurized, just be yourself.

Liam: That’s so valuable. It’s kind of a silly phrase but it’s such simple and such valuable advice. I wonder how you came to that conclusion. You somewhat jokingly said it took you 36 years to figure that out, is that something that you figured out, I’ll say, in a professional environment and then applied to your personal life? I know they interweave. Or did you find that out personally and then start to think about how that would work in the professional? Kind of which came first? Where did that revelation come into your life and how did you embrace it?

Yvette: That’s definitely a story of a good stew where you would just have a lot of stuff simmer over time and then you taste again, “There’s still something missing.” And that stew sort of started with the fact that I was bullied as a kid so I tried all the recipes to fit in and in the end, I didn’t work out. I tried working with psychologists and yes, they helped me sort of accept me for who I was and sort of deal with what I was dealing with but in the end, I was still thinking small and I was still dealing a lot with what we know call Imposter Syndrome. This is one of the things, I still remember very much that in this spring of 2014, I wanted something different and I was done with playing small and all imposter thing, and I wanted to find another way to deal with this. Then I decided to give myself stretches, challenges if you will, and one of my first challenges was to travel to a foreign country to go to an internet marketing conference and present myself as a professional. But I had to go out of my regular circle to do that. That was impossible, I had to go out of my comfort zone to start practicing that. And that first marketing conference was WordCamp so that’s how I got into this community. And then every time I challenged myself to go to a new conference or try something new, I would grow again and again so it would encourage me to keep seeking those sort of experiences. And then a friend that I got to know during a very small mastermind group that I did in Pensacola in 2015. She sort of shared that at some point and it stuck, she was the one that said, “We just need to find your own kind of crazy.” And it stuck, and I’ve tried to do that ever since.

Tara: Did you discover that while you were traveling to different countries? Because I imagine that that could either be a help in terms of meeting new communities and adjusting to life in different countries, and changing your friends, and meeting new friends. Or did that come, like you said, in 2014 and changed the way that you approached being an expat, I guess?

Yvette: I think it had a lot to do, of course, living in different countries and adjusting yourself, changes in ways, it makes you more flexible, if you will, because you have to find a new group of people to interact with every single time. But ever since I started hanging out with WordPress people, too, and other internet marketing professionals, I found that a lot of business owners that run businesses based on sort of creative services are very sensitive, too. I think that makes sense with this great MP and sensitivity go along, they just go hand in hand because you cannot be creative without being sensitive. I experience that so many among us had felt like being the square peg in the round hole. And the more we started hanging out together, the more we felt sort of comfortable with each other because we all had felt like that. I think that’s sort of the way that this whole your own kind of crazy started growing on me. Because we are in a way very alike.

Tara: Yeah, have you looked for that domain? I’m tempted to look it up right now.

Yvette: I have had so many domain dreams and ideas and I have recently cut back. I just can’t still even find the focus. I’m still planning to find more focus for blogging but I’m going to stick it to just one domain. Too many ideas, it won’t work.

Liam: Good idea. Yvette, I think I can speak for Tara and from me when I say that we absolutely love your kind of crazy. We are out of time, thank you very, very much for joining us. I’ve really enjoyed your candor and your story and the way that you shared it with us. Thank you very much for making the time for us today, it’s been great chatting with you.

Yvette: Well, thank you, Tara, and thank you, Liam, for having me. That was lots of fun. Yes, if I can inspire other people to also find their kind of crazy and be a bit more happy in this crazy world then that just makes me so crazy happy.

Tara: Well, I’ve really enjoyed chatting with you and I’m going to check on that domain for you anyway. [laughter]

Liam: Yvette, While Tara looks up that domain name, can you tell us where people can find you online?

Yvette: Yes, my business website is Inboundmarketingbliss.com. Inbound marketing, I think most WordPress people sort of had forever that term, and bliss, it’s just something that resonates with me because it’s contentment and that perfectly imperfect kind of stuff.

Liam: There we go. Thank you so much for joining us, lovely to chat with you, have a grea t afternoon.

Tara: thanks, Yvette.

Yvette: Likewise, and take care. We’ll talk soon. Bye-bye.

Tara: Bye.

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

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

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

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

Birgit Pauli Haack has been a web builder for the last 22 years and is still fascinated by it. Right now, she is learning JavaScript for the third time and evangelizes for the upcoming release of Gutenberg in WordPress core. By day, she runs her own web agency Pauli Systems.

Website | Pauli Systems

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 42.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Birgit Pauli-Haack. Birgit has been a web builder for the last 22 years and is still fascinated by it. Right now, she is learning JavaScript for the third time and evangelizes for the upcoming release of Gutenberg in WordPress core. By day, she runs her own web agency Pauli Systems. Hi and welcome, Birgit. Nice to see you.

Birgit: Hi, everybody. Hi, Tara and Liam. Thank you so much for inviting me on your podcast. I listen to it quite often and it’s good to hear the personal side of people. I love it, thank you so much for inviting me.

Liam: Well, thank you for that very flattering welcome. We’re just so happy to have you here today, Birgit. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself that Tara didn’t share with us?

Birgit: Well, I live in Naples, Florida. This time of year, I shared this with a few hundred thousand people and more that come as snow birds to Naples and stayed the winter here. I’m married for 25 years and my husband works in IT but for a big company, we have no kids and we love to travel together. I do a lot of things besides my web business, and I think it will come up throughout the questions and answers here.

Tara: I look forward to it, let’s start by acknowledging your accent and where you come from and where you started, not only physically in terms of where you grew up, but where you started in your path towards WordPress. I’m leaving that really open for you.

Liam: And I’m just going to interject and say, I hear your accent, too, Tara Claeys.

Tara: Thank you.

Liam: Go ahead, Birgit.

Birgit: We immigrated to United States 20 years ago in 1998. That’s where my accent comes from, it comes from Germany. Born and raised in Munich and that’s where I actually joined as a hobby a free internet service called– there was CitizenNet in Munich and that’s where I first learned how to build websites and curate sites. Journey to WordPress was quite a few years later. 2009, I started doing it seriously, researching it for a non-profit internet service provider that had services for non-profits, amongst them content management systems. Back then, it was started in 2009 or something like that. By the time of 2010, it was highly outdated and the developer disappeared or had other things to do as a volunteer, so we had to make a choice on, “Okay, what’s next for those non-profits that we served?” And after I looked for quite a few months for content management systems, back then I probably tested about 10 or 15 to see if it works not only for the non-profits but it was also how a tech team would be able to manage onboarding and supporting things just on a volunteer basis. WordPress was a one-trick install with a ton of information available on the internet that people who would use it could self-study, could actually google stuff and find out how things work, how to operate a PDF or how to create a button, or these kind of things. So we selected that and in summer, we migrated about 40 non-profits to the new system.

Liam: One summer?

Birgit: One summer, yeah. Back then, I did weekly migration workshops where everybody came and it was kind of work-along kind of thing and I helped everybody out. But What I found very helpful and what really astonished me and I knew that we were on the right track with that choice was that the techies would go away in those workshops and communicators, the newspaper editors, the membership chairs, those who actually want to directly talk to their supporters, and members came in and were just empowered to communicate online just with this tool. That was really democratizing publishing, as the mission is with WordPress. And it was real life. You didn’t have to talk about, “Okay, how can I change the font from green to blue? What a designer would do?” They just said, “Well, if I can do that, I can do so much more.” And they would have very creative discussions from the workshop and I felt really happy about that.

Tara: That’s a great example of how WordPress can spread, like you said, beyond the techy people and I think that’s definitely one of the goals. Some people might debate that, that we’re going in the direction, maybe too much for those people but I’m going to ask you about Gutenberg since that was in your intro and what you’re doing with it, what you think about it, how you’re integrating that into your workflow with your clients?

Birgit: I had the same questions, how do I get my clients on Gutenberg. I was in Europe when Matt Mullenweg showed the first video demonstration. It was not a live demo on stage like it was in WordCamp US but it was a video on how Gutenberg works, and I was fascinated by it. I had the feeling that it would be a similar step from the content creators as it was back then in 2010 with non-profit editors. But right after I got back from Europe, I heard all these voices in the community. Of course, the negative voice is always louder than those that are inspired. I felt the need to curate all those community voices and find out what everybody’s saying but also what are tools there, what is information that is really helpful for people. So the question, okay, when will it be released and what will it mean for plugin developers, what will it mean for theme developers, how consulting businesses would work on it? But by the time WordCamp US came about, it really how a whole lot of pushing in the United States, with the finale of the on-stage demonstration by Matias Ventura who’s the lead developer. There wasn’t a whole lot of talk about releasing and about how to integrate it for some work that you do every day. But after that, a few scenarios kind of came about. Gutenberg will not be released in April. [laughs] Just to kind of make that clear. I don’t think that Matt Mullenweg said this. The team is working very hard to make it as painless as possible for a site owner to migrate to Gutenberg. There are few things that need to happen. One is the custom post types need to work. We’ll have a feature to not enable Gutenberg on when it comes to pass. And the plugins that work with the content itself that’s in a post have a way to convert whatever they do into a block. That is in the editor. I curated all this information on Storify, and I did probably about 40 updates since June and December. Where I curated was the tweets that are out there, blog posts that are there. I didn’t do a whole lot of writing myself about it, but then in December, Adobe announced that Storify is going to come to end of life in May 2018. That kind of made me stop a bit and kind of think about, okay, how can I make this a little bit consistent and not all the hard work can go away. In January then, I started a website called Gutenbergtimes.com and a Twitter handle, @gutenbergtimes. That’s where I now curate and I will move all those Storify updates over to a Gutenberg-driven Gutenberg Times website. And this is fascinating what information’s already out there. There was a two-part question, I think, Tara. You also wanted to know how I work with my clients on Gutenberg?

Tara: Yeah, how you see it integrating.

Birgit: I think they will love it. We are right now in the process of creating the staging sites and making copies of the more complex websites that we maintain and that do work with people and make them– on the station site, we test everything out, we test the custom post types, we test the custom fields, we test the editor itself, see that the themes that we built are still displaying the blogs right. And we do a kind of an all-out plan with the clients. Either schedule training and then also, “Okay, is there a solution for the problem that we have?” If not, we connect with the plugin developers, we connect with the theme developers and then see how we take it from there.

Liam: Would it be safe to describe the way that you integrate and interact with clients is really as kind of a– I don’t want to say a project management person because it’s clearly much more about. You’re a technologist, you’re an integrator, you’re a collaborator and coordinator, and you’re bringing together all the different parties and potential stakeholders to ensure that the non-profit has the best web experience that it can. Would that be a fair way to–?

Birgit: Yes, that’s fair. I have been a developer for many, many years. With WordPress, you don’t have to touch so much code anymore because a lot of good smart people that came before me have solved most of the problems. It really is more like, for many, many people that all– all my life is not as easy as the normal life. Translating lead generation, the experience of going from maybe signing up as a volunteer or maybe giving a donation. It’s hard for non-technologists to translate that experience in an easy smooth pathway and what happens afterward. You need to have a thank you email, you need to have a thank you page and all this. Yesterday, I talked–

Liam: So you’re walking them through not just the actual technology in the sense that we’re going to use this plugin and we’re going to use this tool to maintain that functionality? But you’re actually coaching them on the actual processes involved so they can appreciate it in non-technical terms so that they– more importantly, their target audience–?

Birgit: Yeah, I have found that it doesn’t really matter what technology you use, and technology is actually– in implementing something, the technology, most of the time, unless it’s really fairly complex and it’s really integrating with different kind of services. It’s most of the time not a problem, it’s the communication part of it. It is, what happens afterward when the technology happened, how integrated is it into normal processes, yeah.

Liam: it’s a lot like design, I think. Good design, good technology should go unnoticed in the user experience. The user experience should just drive it forward. Speaking of user experience, and of individuals and people, let me steer us towards one of our more prominent, more regular questions, to ask you about success, Birgit. What is your definition of success, be it personal, professional, combination thereof, can you share that with us?

Birgit: Success is when I build something, when I learn something, or discuss something and I’m better than before after that process. Not only that I am better off monetarily, that’s actually just a secondary question or aspect of it. It’s more like, did I get my best and was it helpful to other people or did it reach its goal? And even when I’m not as successful, failure is actually– I learn the most when I have a failed project. I have found in my life, I never get it right the first time, especially with technology. But even processes, you kind of need to go through multiple iterations to get it to a place where it’s good enough. If we make a step forward every day, that’s success for me.

Tara: Does that translate beyond your job, beyond the technical side? Do you translate that into your personal life as well?

Birgit: It does, although I’m not so much stuck between work and personal life because when you’re married to a technologist, yeah, there’s a lot of technology you have to deal at home as well. [laughter] Not only the Amazon Echo or Google Home.

Tara: Do you have it making your coffee for you? When you think about doing something, trying things and failing, and finding success in your daily life, what is the most important thing that you do every day?

Birgit: That’s easy, I get up from bed. [laughter]

Liam: Very direct.

Tara: That’s important.

Birgit: That’s really important. Whatever I do, there’s always a tendency to say or find reasons not to do it. Sometimes they are built up so much that you actually are not starting to do it. And I find starting and taking everything a little bit less serious and kind of find where it takes you, it goes back to the, “I’m not going to get it right the first time.” The work teaches you how it wants to be done and you need to just let it. I don’t know if I can make this a little bit clearer but the journey is actually the goal, pretty much. Also, when I go from A to B, gather the roses, look at the landscape, look out from your mobile phone what’s around you. That’s kind of an approach that I try to do every day.

Tara: You mentioned getting up out of bed and actually, this morning I had a really hard time with that. [laughs] I usually can get out of bed, this morning I could not get out of bed so I realize that I can really relate today to the idea of just getting started and just getting out of bed. What would you say is your biggest challenge in getting started on things?

Birgit: My biggest challenge is– I don’t know, I have so many shortcomings. It’s hard to say that’s the biggest one, it really depends on the project.

Tara: Okay, just name that comes to your mind?

Birgit: I have a challenge to think bigger sometimes. To not get bogged down by the minutia, although I know– and I need a lot of big picture before I actually start. I need to know more about the theory, I need to know more about the purpose. Then I kind of can see the process that can get me to my goal in terms of my work. Sometimes, that’s hard. Especially when it gets to new technology. JavaScript learning, that is not a purpose in itself, it is, “Okay, what do I want to do with it?” And I have a project that would be very fitting. Just to get started, the biggest challenge right now is to clear my schedule for it. To actually sit down and say, “Okay, what do I need?” I can’t shut off the internet but I had a very good– there was a very good talk at the WordCamp Miami last weekend about the zen mode, being on an airplane and still being able to do your work. John Blackbourn had a very good talk about that. I’m going to go back and feed that and make my environment so I can get off the internet which is just the biggest timewaster ever. Right? [laughter]

Tara: Yeah, it certainly can be but I like your insightful answer about thinking bigger and I think it sounds like you’re already doing that with your Gutenberg Times. You do carry things with this open big-picture approach, which makes you successful.

Liam: I’m almost the opposite where I like to just, “Okay, let’s get in the car, let’s go, let’s get going.”, “Wher are we going?”, “Well, first stop is coffee and then we’ll go on.”, “Okay, where we’re going now?”, “Well, let’s get on the turnpike.”, “Okay, where we’re going now?”, “I don’t know, let’s try west.” Every once in a while that comes back to bite me in ways that aren’t always enjoyable, but I get that tension between what is my macrocosm of what’s happening here and how does it relate to the very specific microcosm I need to address. Finding the balance between knowing enough that we feel empowered without getting lost in the, “Oh my gosh, all the information, all the knowledge needs to be here before I can do anything. That’s a challenge. Especially, I think, in technology that changes constantly. It’s difficult to know when do I learn JavaScript, now or– well, is it being used enough, is it being used in ways that interest me? Do I care and do I want vanilla, do I want Vue, do I want React, do I want strawberry, do I want chocolate?

Birgit: It’s like buying The White Album all over again.

Liam: [laughter] Awesome, awesome. You talked about the single most important thing that you can do is getting up and getting started. Your wonderful analogy of just getting out of bed. What’s your favorite or one of your favorite things to do around work on a daily basis around addressing your challenges, around supporting your clients?

Birgit: I think my favorite part is when I can bring information that’s not available online and find the best way to present it, either supporting open information. It really doesn’t matter if it’s a collection of pictures, or is it a series of blog posts, or is it a book, an author that has published her book but it needs to get to the audience and we look through it and say, “Okay, are we able to put it in small tube or chunks so people can get a taste of it. Or is it how do we do the process from working with a learning company that wants to take offline learning online and how to walk them through it and what content needs to be produced, in which form.” It’s the lead generation on the funnel with the commercial part but it’s also an experience for the user. I’m building that step by step and bringing the customer along is my favorite part of that.

Liam: Yeah, that sounds like a really enriching experience in that you’re taking something in one environment and introducing it to another environment in the hopes that it would bring value to others. That’s pretty neat, thanks for sharing that.

Birgit: You’re welcome.

Tara: I’d like to know a little bit about your favorite things that are not work. So you live in a beautiful part of Florida and you said that you and your husband like to travel. You mentioned getting out and smelling the roses somewhere in between all that tech stuff. [laughs] Tell us a little bit about what you like to do when you’re not sitting in front of your computer.

Birgit: My husband, Christian and I, we have a ritual every morning. We make breakfast together and we do it to soca music which is we– three years ago, we went to Trinidad and that was all around there. We’ve been in buses and the bus ride, I had the same music over and over again. It’s very energetic. And if you want to look it up or get a taste of it, we are big fans of Machel Montano. In that part, we have this ritual in the morning and if the weather is fine or not too cold pretty much, it’s fine I’m sure, but not too cold. And we are not too tired, we actually run in the morning before breakfast, together, two miles. We talk about things that we’re going to do. That’s my favorite time of the day, when I try to– sun is already up, it just comes up over the Golden Gate Canal and it kind of shimmers on water. That’s just beautiful, I want to stop and take a picture. Sometimes, I do this. If you go to Instagram on my account, @idx. You see some of the pictures from the Golden Gate Canal in Naples and it’s always pretty much the same thing. We do this once for three years and it’s really beautiful. If you’re not at home and you’re traveling, we love to explore a city on foot. We walk cities and when we go away, we pick cities. We are not going to go for beach vacation because we have 15 minutes to the beach and we can do this any weekend. We are city kids and we love it. I take a lot of pictures.

Tara: Do you have a favorite city or favorite couple of cities that you visited?

Birgit: I like my hometown Munich, there’s always a new aspect to see and just to come back to it. Next one up is Venice, Italy. It’s a beautiful city and we love that you can just walk it. There are no cars in the city and it changes so much but it never changes. It’s like coming home, so to speak. And when we used to live in Europe, we’d spend every 18 months or so, at the latest we would go back to Venice for about three or four days and just walk it and see things.

Tara: That’s lovely. I think you’re the second or third guest we’ve had on here who has a ritual of having breakfast with their spouse, which I think is amazing. I look forward to the days when our life is setup so that my husband’s around to have breakfast because that is a good time of day. Although we tend to read the newspaper and drink coffee even when we are together. [laughs] But music sounds like a good plan, too. It sounds lovely.

Birgit: Don’t get it wrong, we both have our laptops in front of us.

Tara: Okay. [laughter] Thanks for clarifying that! That makes me feel a little bit better, I was envisioning deep conversation over coffee looking out.

Birgit: That’s probably happening while we are breaking eggs and putting– we have eggs and spinach and avocado every morning. We site next to the oven and that’s where we have our little conversations.

Tara: really nice. That sounds like a good ritual to share with everyone. I’d like to also ask if you have some advice that you’ve been given that may be the best advice you could think of that you’ve ever received and implemented in your life that you’d like to share with us, too?

Birgit: One of them is, “Be grateful, count your blessings.” That is something that is not in our general culture. It’s always imperfect and you need to get better, better, better. But rest and be grateful for what you have is the best way to find peace. If you’re always thinking how imperfect your life is compared to others, that doesn’t– be grateful. The other one is, “Stay in the moment in times of sorrow.”

Tara: That’s great advice.

Birgit: I worry, too much.

Tara: Yeah. That’s excellent advice. I really appreciate you sharing these things in combination with a lot of the tech talk that you shared with us today, Birgit, because you know a lot about what’s going on in WordPress and technology but I think what you shared about your approach to life and how you start your day has been really interesting and helpful for me to hear about. So thanks for sharing that.

Birgit: You’re welcome, thanks for asking.

Tara: Sure.

Liam: Our pleasure. I find it interesting, your advice that you’ve implemented as being grateful. I’m just tying that back then to getting out of bed and just the realization when we wake up that, hey, we are awake. That’s a blessing, right? It’s another opportunity to do something right, or to learn something, or to make strides. Or you can just get out and enjoy. I like that holistic approach and it seems to be that you’ve tied together these various pieces of lead systems and practices in a way that is coherent and consistent.

Birgit: I hope so. [laughs]

Liam: Of course, right. It’s easier said than done and I appreciate we all have good days and bad days, and good weeks and bad weeks. Some days we’re not thankful for anything. In other days, we are. But that’s really, really great. Thank you so much for that.

Birgit: Sure. Tomorrow or the next life, you never know what happens first.

Liam: Wow, there you go.

Birgit: It’s a Buddhist thing.

Tara: I think we’re just about out of time here on that inspirational note. Thank you so much for sharing with us today, really appreciate all that you had to say and getting to know you a little bit better. Where can people find you online?

Birgit: Thank you for having me. You can find me on Twitter. My Twitter handle is @bph, which are my initials. My direct messages are opened, just ask me to follow you and then we can connect. Everything else is probably there. My business website is Polysystems.net. My non-profit is WP4Good.org. That’s a WordPress community for non-profits.

Tara: Great, thank you. We will put that in the show notes and we’ll also get a link to your music that you mentioned as well.

Birgit: Thank you.

Liam: Birgit, thanks so much for joining us. It’s been a real pleasure.

Birgit: Thank you, bye-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.