Hallway Chats

Kathy Drewien lives in Marietta, Georgia just outside of Atlanta. There she rescues abandoned, ugly, orphaned, broken, and non-productive websites for people and businesses who are ready for a change. She’s an organizer of WordCamp Atlanta and runs a local WordPress Meetup around there, too. And if that’s not enough, she’s also an organizer of WordCamp US.

Website | AtlantaWPcoach.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 31.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Kathy Drewien. Kathy lives in Marietta, Georgia just outside of Atlanta. There she rescues abandoned, ugly, orphaned, broken, and non-productive websites for people and businesses who are ready for a change. She’s an organizer of WordCamp Atlanta and runs a local WordPress Meetup around there, too. And if that’s not enough, she’s also an organizer of WordCamp US. Hey, Kathy.

Kathy: Hi, how are you doing?

Tara: Good. Welcome, Kathy. It’s great to have you on the show. I love the way that Liam introduced you, very creative and it makes me very curious about what you do so can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Kathy: I can. I thought it was very clever to talk about how I rescue ugly orphaned websites.

Tara: Yeah, that’s great.

Kathy: That really has driven out of my desire to work with people who are struggling in learning how to use WordPress. And a lot of people come to me because they have broken websites and I love teaching them how to feel powerful in their experience.

Tara: How did you get started in this endeavor?

Kathy: Let’s back up to 2006, which is when I got introduced to WordPress. At that time, I was in a totally different industry. I was a real estate broker and had built a website for that business back in the mid-’90s. 2006, it was time to update that to WordPress. And when I discovered the power of WordPress, there was no looking back in terms of my user experience. I started in it as a career because the real estate market crashed and so did I. And technology was always my go-to and I’ve been doing it ever since.

Tara: Yeah. Real estate sites are very complicated. There’s a lot that goes into them. I don’t know how it was in 2006 but it always surprises me that there aren’t more options available for real estate agents as far as self-hosted websites are concerned.

Kathy: There can be, it’s just a lot of real estate agents choose not to. They’re always available to them.

Tara: Many of them do become website experts, I’m sure, by the time they finish. Do you still work with real estate agents or agencies?

Kathy: I’m counting in my head, I have one real estate client still on my roles, so to speak. And she chose to work with me when I was teaching a two-day course. And she learned that I have real estate background. Otherwise, all the rest of them have passed by.

Tara: Okay. Do you have a specific type of client that you look for or do you have a wide variety? Tell me a little bit about how you find your clients and who they are?

Kathy: Well, I keep changing that. When I got started, I had a lot of real estate clients and discovered really quickly that that was not the ideal client for me. But I got focused in the beginning on helping people learn WordPress, so I did a lot of websites for newbies, so to speak. Whether I was helping them improve what they had installed or whether I was ‘building’ websites. I put building in quotes because in reality, I am an implementer of websites. Where I am in my journey now is I hate building websites, hate it with a passion. I don’t like sitting behind the computer and clicking all those little things. Although I still will create, I think, websites for people, which means I roll out a Genesis theme and help them match their colors. I am a people person, I’m not a website builder type person.

Liam: That explanation is making me smile. I want to explore something you said around how you discovered that real estate agents weren’t your ideal clients, something we chat with our guests kind of regularly is how do they find their niche, how do they figure out as they maybe transition into a career with WordPress. What they really want to do, what works for them, what makes their brain get excited and makes them want to jump in front of the computer, or go out and meet people and the like. Can you talk us through how you came to discern the kind of client and project work that really excites you?

Kathy: Oh, that’s a great question. In the beginning, like so many of us, I took everybody who said, “I’ll write you a check.” And it didn’t even matter to me how small that check might be, it was, “Pay me. I have to eat.” And what I discovered about the real estate industry, primarily because I was so intimately involved when I first got started, is a lot of real estate agents do not view themselves as business owner. I discovered that I wanted to work with people who wanted to put some energy into their website as opposed to roll out something and be hands-off for the rest of my life. Over the years, my clientele transitioned because I became a known entity in the Atlanta market through my involvement with the Atlanta WordCamp. Very, very quickly I began to focus on people who are new to WordPress and that’s what prompted me to start a meetup in 2011 that was targeted to beginners. And I have a knack for talking with beginners. I translate the technology into everyday southern language and my background as a therapist enables me to connect with them very quickly and very deeply, and move through the process of learning. In the last few years, it’s become very, very clear to me that my gift is that people connection. And that’s why in my business now, I’m more focused as front-end of the business and I have other people who do the technology.

Liam: That’s a really important realization and I love that you realized you wanted to work with people who wanted to invest in their website. And I’m imagining that you’re not seeing that so much from a commercial standpoint, although that certainly has its value, but it’s more you wanted to work with individuals who had intellectually invested themselves into their own website, so you have them putting their own creative energy and their intellectual power into the project so they’re kind of partnering with you and working with you together rather than you going away and making this block green and that block more square. It actually becomes an opportunity to work together with people.

Kathy: I think that’s a pretty apt description, I like your use of the word partner because I certainly perform better under that framework. I want to grow with you and enable you as the business owner to achieve your goals. And I will help structure that conversation with you. I don’t like a top-down kind of scenario. Again, I think that comes back to my first career as a therapist. That’s just where I meet people where they are and that’s my starting point. And then I guide the discussion through, what I hope are, strategic and in-depth questions.

Liam: With that understanding then, did the WordPress community find you or did you find the WordPress community? How did that relationship begin and how has it evolved? From our introduction, it’s pretty clear that you’re up to your eyeballs in WordPress community now being an organizer in Atlanta, and in US, and at your own meetup. Talk us through that?

Kathy: I found the community in 2008. I attended my first WordCamp ever in Birmingham, Alabama, which is a two-hour commute from home for me. I walked in the room and then, oh my gosh, here are my people. And just fell in love with the community and came back to Atlanta and discovered that there was already a meetup here that I wasn’t aware of because you don’t know what you don’t know.

Liam: Absolutely.

Kathy: So I attended that for a while and one thing and another, it’s called the Atlanta WordPress Users group. Out of that group came Atlanta’s first WordCamp in 2010. And I have been intimately involved in the community and was the first person who kind of– I don’t know how to put it. I ruffled some feathers when I decided to launch a meetup outside the perimeter. As in many metropolitan areas, there’s this big circle around downtown Atlanta and the meeting was inside the perimeter and I chose to move outside the perimeter and doing so, did nothing but expand the WordPress community here in Atlanta. I think through my people skills, that has enabled the community to grow quite large here in Atlanta.

Liam: Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more on that more meetups only strengthen the community. I was lucky enough to approach Brad Williams and Doug Stewart back in 2012, who were core organizers of the Philadelphia WordPress meetup. And I asked them, “What do you think about maybe another? If you think about it, maybe a meetup out in the suburbs?” And I got a very welcome, “Yeah, just do it. If you’re willing to put the time and energy, go for it. And if it doesn’t work, that’s okay, too.” And now our two meetups, suburbs and the Philadelphia one play very, very nicely together. And we’ve built a very strong community in and around Philly through WordPress. It sounds like, through your leadership and many years of hard work, you have absolutely the same thing down there in Atlanta.

Kathy: Absolutely. There are probably eight to 10 meetup groups here in the metro area and all of us are friends and all of us are involved in the WordCamp organization and play very nicely together. But it didn’t start out that way. [laughs] That took some time.

Tara: I can tell from your personality that you’ve helped put a smiley face on whatever was going on.

Kathy: That was the front-facing phase. [laughter]

Tara: Okay. That’s what you pride yourself in. Kathy, let’s talk a little bit about success. We ask our guests to tell us what their definition of success is, whether that’s in their personal life or their business life, professional, a combination of the two. We love to hear the different answers that people give us to this question that usually provokes them good thoughts and questions. How do you define success?

Kathy: I’ll tell you the definition that I came up with about five years ago. I was attending a women’s thing, one way or the other, some sort of ‘build your business’. And the question raised to the audience was, what is your five-year goal? Blah, blah, blah. For the first time ever, I wrote on a piece of paper my answer, and the answer for me was my measure of, I want to be profitable enough to be able to travel with my grandchildren who at that time had yet to be conceived. Today I have reached that goal and my granddaughter is two. That’s my measure of success. I’ve lived a long time, I don’t need to have lots and lots of money but I need to have lots and lots of time with that baby girl.

Tara: Where have you traveled? Does she live near you or did you take her somewhere?

Kathy: She lives in Birmingham. My daughter went to school there in 2003 which is why I ended up at WordCamp in 2008 in Birmingham. I travel over there once a month, I have an office in Birmingham as well as Atlanta. We go to the beach, I don’t need to go big and far, I just need to be with her.

Tara: That’s wonderful. Congratulations.

Kathy: Thank you.

Tara: That’s great. I hear being a grandparent is wonderful.

Kathy: Yes, it is.

Liam: My father often says that if he had to do it all over again, he would be a grandfather first and then a father.

Tara: That might have something to do with the fact that you have, what, 10 siblings, 11 siblings?

Liam: 11, there’s 12 of us.

Kathy: Oh, my gosh.

Liam: I love the simplicity of your success. It’s simply about enabling family connection there and buying, if you will–

Kathy: It shifted over the years, certainly, but what my definition was when I was 20 is vastly different than it is today.

Liam: Sure. It would be a little bit odd if it didn’t change, right? If time and experiences didn’t change, I’m thinking we’d either be very precocious or wildly stubborn, I suppose.

Kathy: Just wrong, however you look at it. [laughter] Aging appropriate. [laughs]

Liam: Kathy, with that definition of success, what’s the single most important thing you do every day to either maintain that success or to continue to achieve it?

Kathy: That one – I have to roll my eyes back and look at my brain to see if I can come up with an answer. There are not a lot of things that I do every day except that I think I lean towards balance, whatever that might be for that day. I live by my intuition and so if it’s one of those days where I don’t feel like working, I don’t, unless there’s something calendared, of course. I don’t know how I answer that. I’m going to have to ponder that for a while because I’m not disciplined in any way, shape, or form. I wake up slowly meaning I get out of bed very slowly in the morning. I do my reading, linger for two hours or so, and then I put my feet on the floor. And I might get into my home office by 10:00-10:30. And then I work until I don’t want to. Sometimes, that means eight o’clock at night, sometimes it means three o’clock in the afternoon. I kind of trust my own clock, whatever that might mean.

Tara: That sounds important.

Kathy: It is to me.

Liam: The tone of voice that I’m hearing you speak with as you walk us through that day and that approach makes it sound like this is not something that you decided, this is how I’m going to do it. It sounds like it’s an evolution of maybe becoming who you are and your experiences. Can you talk us through how that sense of balance became important to you and how you figured it out in a way that works for you?

Kathy: Wow. We need to jump back to whenever, 100 years ago, when I got out of grad school and began my professional life and the field of recovery of addictions and alcoholism and those kinds of things. One of the things I learned in grad school as a therapist is that most of us go into that field to address our own wounded family, we’re going to figure out that wounded dysfunctional family and somehow we’re going to fix it. And I think one of the bi-products of choosing that career path is that along the way, I do begin to heal and through my own recovery process, I became introspective and discovered my gifts for working with others. Over the course of all the years since, I have come to truly value my intuitive sense on what’s right and wrong for me and eliminated a lot of negative in my life over the years, whether that was situations or individuals. I don’t know, there’s just a lot of wisdom that comes over 40 years that I just trust my instincts.

Tara: Yeah, I think that also relates to patience, to be patient with other people, what you’re describing, what you translate into what you do now as an educator with beginners in WordPress. Because that takes a lot of patience when you know something really well to teach people who don’t and to have the patience to listen to the questions that they’re asking. It sounds like you’ve carried that through, that skill that you have with people, the people skill and this empathy and patience in your heart, I think you’re using that in a different way with a very different–

Kathy: I think that’s valid. When I’m working side by side with someone teaching, I no longer teach one to many, I teach one to one. There are a lot of times when I figuratively and literally have to sit on my fingers because I want to grab the keyboard away from the and like, “Just let me!” But that’s not my natural state. I really want people to be successful, in a way that they define it. And I’ve discovered over the last several years, that so many people come to their WordPress experience pulling their hair out and being very, not just disgruntled, but feeling stupid. They think there’s something wrong with them that they can’t figure it out. And in reality, they have installed WordPress and they’ve installed a theme, and they don’t know what they don’t know sometimes documentation is for. But they’re just lost and they just think there’s– they come out of two places, either I’m stupid or WordPress is too hard, and neither of which are true. I want to have them walk away from our time together feeling smart and empowered.

Tara: I’ve read a lot in the WordPress forums and community lately just about this subject, about who WordPress is for and who WordPress is trying to become and who they’re competing against for people like you’re describing who feel that WordPress is too hard. They have options like Wix and Squarespace and those types of things. Now we are hearing a lot about Gutenberg again and what the goals are in order to make WordPress maybe more usable for beginners, or is WordPress really more for non-beginners. What’s your feeling about that conversation? I’m sure you–

Kathy: It has shifted somewhat on the heels of WordCamp US. I had not paid much attention to Gutenberg other than, “Okay, that’s the thing.” But after watching the last State of The Word, and coming away with a better comprehension of what it’s designed to do, I’m both optimistic and apprehensive. We were discussing at my meetup earlier today what ramifications it might have on the clients that I’ve just been talking about in terms of them thinking that it’s hard. One, I’m going to have to learn how to use Gutenberg and to make the transition. On the other hand, I’m anticipating there being maybe a dip in people that are currently on WordPress switching to Wix and Squarespace until they go through that curb. There’s going to be a deep learning curve for a lot of people. I’m looking forward to the change because I think it’s a smart move of WordPress as the project. And at the same time, I’m like, “Oh my god, my clients.”

Tara: And yourself. I mean, like you said, you have to learn it first.

Kathy: Yeah, if I’m going to continue this career of teaching people, yeah. I’m not apprehensive about me learning it but I do think when you begin to have a conversation with your clients or our clients. It’s, “Hey, there’s this new thing and by the way, we’re going to have to rebuild your website. I know you didn’t ask for that but hey, we’re going to have to.” And that’s going to be a tough conversation, I think.

Liam: I think you’re absolutely right. Let me change gears just a little bit and ask you, what is the single most valuable piece of advice that you have ever received and worked into your life? And that advice can be personal, it can be professional, maybe a mix of both.

Kathy: That was one question that I remembered hearing consistently in your podcast so I was giving that a little bit of thought this morning. It’s like, “How am I going to answer that?”

Liam: Thank you for listening.

Kathy: What I am today, I am the person that gives those sage pieces of wisdom to other people.

Kathy: But when I think what I carry with me today, there’s been lots of little tidbits. I think the one that stay with me now is, don’t sweat the small stuff. And then parenthetically, by the way, it’s all small stuff. And that helps reign me in when I’m getting out of balance. It is like, in the grand scheme of life, this is just not that important.

Tara: It’s true.

Liam: Yeah, that is wonderfully simple. It’s akin to your definition of success, it just boils it all down to what is the purpose of life and what does this immediate challenge in front of me, how does that fit in? And we all have our own definitions of the purpose of life, but they’re all more or less to make ourselves and the world around us a better place, right? And we can color in the shapes a little bit differently with our own personal belief system. But just, it’s all little stuff, it’s only the big picture that ultimately matters, so to speak. And the little stuff just carries us through it. But not to get too carried away, but that’s great. I love it, thank you.

Tara: Yeah, thank you.

Liam: Let me ask you this then, you’ve talked about transition in careers, you’ve talked about the challenges of growing your local Atlanta WordPress community, you’ve talked about some of the challenges of learning about how best you wanted to be in business. Can you share with us what’s been your biggest challenge to date and how did you overcome it or if it’s ongoing, how are you continuing to work on it?

Kathy: My biggest challenges have always been personal. I am not recently divorced but going through a divorce after 30 years of marriage, or 31, was probably the biggest challenge in my life.

Liam: I would imagine. I can see that.

Kathy: I think I surprised myself counting up the years going, “Oh, my gosh. That was six years ago.” So it kind of sort of is new but that was difficult. Prior to that point, the biggest challenge in my life was recovering from alcoholism. But that is so long ago that that’s just in the past. Personal challenge more so than business, business is business. I’ll just go find something else to do if the door shuts on WordPress ever. It’s what I’ve done consistently, this is my third career.

Tara: Yeah, those are some big personal life challenges to go through. If you rack them up and make a list, those are pretty big ones. When you look back, that must give you a feeling of strength, how does that make you feel when you look back at those experiences, those challenges that you faced?

Kathy: I will use the words of my daughter, and she describes me as a strong independent woman. Over the years, I have come to believe that.

Tara: It comes across, Kathy.

Kathy: Thank you. It didn’t always use to be that way, but it is who I am, and probably started life as a strong independent child, and lost track somewhere along the line. But yes, I really, really like who I am.

Tara: Great, sounds like your daughter knows you really well, too. I have to point that out and to encourage you, that’s wonderful.

Kathy: She too, is a very strong independent woman.

Tara: I can imagine.

Kathy: Takes one to know one, right?

Tara: That’s right.

Liam: That bodes really well for the upbringing of your granddaughter then.

Kathy: Yes.

Liam: That’s great. And I love your description of how the biggest challenges are personal and that business is just business. That’s so true, that if we can, I’m grossly oversimplifying, but if we can sort ourselves out, then kind of the rest of life takes care of itself. Again, I’m drastically oversimplifying the challenges that many of us face. But if we can get to the point where you are, where we’re comfortable with who we are, we’ve developed ourselves and overcome our challenges in ways that are in keeping with our morals and our standards then. I want to say life’s easy but it gets a lot easier.

Kathy: It does get a lot easier. It gets congruent.

Liam: That’s a great word.

Tara: I love your positive outlook and the fact that you help others is great. That you help them with WordPress but there’s more than that, because you’re helping them with WordPress but that gives them a great sense of confidence, I’m sure, and self-esteem when they figure that stuff out. You’re doing way more than WordPress.

Kathy: Thank you.

Tara: Yeah, thank you for sharing your story with us. We’re just about out of time here so before we say goodbye, can you tell everyone where they can find you online?

Kathy: Atlantawpcoach.com. It’s probably the easiest one to say and the easiest one to get to.

Tara: Okay, we’ll be sure to put that in the show notes.

Liam: We’ll put links to any other, Twitter and other places for you that may not be so easy to say.

Kathy: I am @kdrewien in all things but you’ll have to spell Drewien for everybody.

Liam: We will do that for sure. Kathy, it’s been an absolute pleasure spending some time with you out here in, well, in your car.

Kathy: Yeah. [laughs]

Liam: It’s been a real pleasure getting to know you just a little bit and hearing about your journey. You’ve been wonderfully generous with what you shared with us, thank you so much.

Kathy: Thank you so much for having me.

Tara: Thanks, Kathy.

Liam: Bye, bye for now.

Kathy: 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.

Topher DeRosia is a Christian, husband, father, and WordPress developer in that order. By day, he runs iWitness Design with his business partner. Topher also curates HeroPress.com, a site that tells the stories of WordPress.

Website | HeroPress

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.

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Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 30.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Topher DeRosia. Topher is a Christian, husband, father, and WordPress developer in that order. By day, he runs iWitness Design with his partner, Tanner Moushey, and he also curates HeroPress.com, a site that tells the stories of WordPress. Hi Topher, welcome.

Topher: Howdy, thanks for having me.

Liam: You’re very welcome. Thanks for joining us today, Topher. Tell us a little bit more about yourself beyond what Tara just shared about you, please?

Topher: Well, I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan which this year happens to be snowy. It’s not snowy every December but this year’s been particularly snowy, though it rains today so we’re losing some of it. I have a wife, two kids, two dogs, little house in the city. Grand Rapids is not a very big city so when I say in the city, I mean a quiet neighborhood. As Tara mentioned, I’m a WordPress developer. Tanner and I have a company together and so what that means is that I’m doing a lot of administrative work and talking to clients, and marketing, and all the stuff that developers never dreamed of doing and are doing. But it’s all in there when you do a start-up, and it’s definitely been a start-up. We got together almost exactly a year ago, it was January 1st, and it has been a wild rollercoaster of breathtakingly great and horribly, horribly bad. At the moment, it’s great so I’m extremely happy to be here.

Tara: Tell us a little more about that, in terms of forming a partnership. I have a little bit of experience with that and I recall when people heard I was doing that, their first answer, did you ever hear, “Why are you forming a partnership? What are you doing? What are you thinking? Partnership end in divorce.” I heard that all the time, so what motivated you to form a partnership and tell us a little bit about that process? I’m glad to hear it’s going well for you as it is for me.

Topher: Yeah, I ended my time at Modern Tribe last year, about exactly 12 months ago. It was just a couple weeks before Christmas. And I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, and Tanner had two things going on at once. He was a freelancer and he was employing two people, and he was trying to do Sass and client work, and he wanted to do only the Sass. He was going to shut down the client work and he said, “Well, what if Topher came along and picked up the client work and allowed me to do the Sass.” So he pitched it and I said, “Well, that sounds pretty great.” We were just ready to form a partnership and go, and he had a nice long conversation with Pippin who said, “You should wait.” [laughs], “Think about this, practice. Get your feet wet, get used to it.” So we said, “Alright, we’ll wait three months and we’ll see how things are going after three months.” Nothing worked out like anything I’ve just described. He’s not working at his Sass, we’re both still doing client work like mad, we ended up forming the partnership in late November as opposed to March. And we learned a ton, forming a partnership is definitely far more intricate than I expected. There are more things that jump out at you that you can’t possibly expect. But no one can. I mean, I don’t think you can form one partnership and then expect the second one to go the same, it’s different every time.

Tara: Yeah, it’s a little bit intimidating because you have to talk about hard things, it’s sort of like writing a will in a way. All these scenarios, how it plays out, and they say you have to have, I don’t know, like an escape clause or something like that, all these different things that you don’t really want to think about because it’s kind of uncomfortable. But it’s really important to do that in a partnership. And if you can get over that, then I think that makes the partnership stronger, would you agree?

Topher: I would definitely agree. A number of people told me that it’s a lot like getting married, and I took that very literally. We’ve had conversations that included personal family finances. Fortunately, neither he nor I have problems with drugs or alcohol but that conversation needs to happen. If you’re going to form a partnership with somebody, you need to know if that person has ever had an issue with it because maybe it will come back. You never know. We’ve talked about really, really deep things, we’ve talked about our relationships with our spouses, deep levels, not the kind of thing you talk about in a hallway chat but the kind of thing you talk about with a counselor. Because if this thing is going to break my marriage, then I’m going to break the partnership first, and if he relies on me to not break the partnership and I disappear because my marriage is a mess, then the whole thing falls apart. We have had many, many long deep conversations about personal things that just friends don’t necessarily have, unless they’re very close.

Liam: That sounds like you’ve got a pretty solid relationship with Tanner. How did you meet Tanner, was that a WordPress community coming together or personal friends, or some other way?

Topher: It was through the WordPress community. Bits and pieces over a number of years. I saw his name on Twitter once and started following him, then I saw he was going to be at WordCamp Orlando, I think, or Miami, I don’t remember which. It was Miami because we bumped into him at BuddyCamp and he was just on my list of somebody to shake hands with. We said hi and that was pretty much it. Then a couple years ago, Paul, I’ve run a blank on his last name, worked at TenUp for a little while. He sold a company to TenUp. He had a hold of me and said, “Hey, do you want to be in MasterMind meetup?” And Tanner was one of the other people in the group. Once every two weeks, we spent an hour with a group of people and we got to know each other pretty well through that. Because now we are exchanging ideas and, I say beliefs, but it’s more like business beliefs, you know what I mean?

Liam: Kind of a business approach, and angle, and thoughts and philosophy. It’s really interesting. There we go. Topher, you were talking before this show that you’re pretty active in WordPress community and we were talking about that and how that ebbs and flows. But we also know that you mentioned earlier in the introduction that you run HeroPress and I think a lot of people who listen to this show will know what HeroPress is, but tell us a little bit about that? And I know you share the starting story of that and there’s more on WordPress TV, but maybe just skim through that in just a few seconds and talk a little bit about what that is and how that project keeps going and how that all comes together for you.

Topher: Yeah, HeroPress is something that impacts my life in a lot of ways that I would not have expected. A lot of philosophy, a lot of reasons for things I do in my life. Like, why do I do HeroPress? Why do I do that? Why do I keep up with it? The fact that HeroPress started as a failure has been significant to me. It was going to be a business and there was a Kickstarter, and it failed utterly. The entire business plan, we flushed it, it was just gone. And yet, here we are with this other thing because I kept thrilling with it, and playing with it, and twisting it, and kind of letting it be its own thing. I didn’t say HeroPress is going to be this. I just started doing things and it grew into what we have now. There’s that philosophy that failure is not necessarily an end, it’s just a point in the timeline. The philosophy that things should be allowed to grow. Obviously, you want a plan or you want to have your own ideas, and you want to work toward a goal, but don’t be afraid to let go of that goal and pivot, and pivot so many times you get dizzy. Yeah, all those thoughts over the years with HeroPress have impacted my employment, my family, my kids, my house. Every decision I make impacts me like that.

Liam: That’s pretty pervasive effect on your life. Is there one or two HeroPress stories that have had a particularly profound effect on you?

Topher: Haha. Yeah. It’s difficult for me to pick out particular stories because I don’t want to in any way imply that the others are less impactful.

Liam: Of course not. But the individual stories will affect individuals differently, right?

Topher: Sure. There are two that come to mine. One of them is not yet a HeroPress story and I don’t know if it ever will be, but the first one is a young man from Yemen. He and I worked together for about two weeks at XWP. He was in college and took a job and decided, “Oh, I can’t work and school at the same time.” He bailed out and went to school, which is the proper decision, but a while later I asked him to do a HeroPress essay and he said, “I can’t right now. My country is at war and I’m hiding in my basement.” It was, I don’t know, two years before he came back to me and said, “Hey, I can do this now.” He moved out of the capital and was living somewhere else, and was still doing WordPress stuff, still going to school, while his entire country was in flames. That was profound for me.

Tara: He followed up with you afterward, too. It’s quite incredible. You must have had an impact on him as well.

Topher: Well, I try to stay in touch with him. We only talked on Facebook. And if you know me very much, I don’t get on Facebook very much at all. But I got on specifically to find him and say, “Are you okay?” Find out if he’s still alive because I didn’t know. He actually went off the grid for a year and I didn’t know if he was dead or not. The other one is a young woman from Iran, and I don’t know if this one will be a HeroPress story or not. We did a story from a guy in Iran and I said, “Do you know any women doing WordPress?” And he said, “Yeah. Talk to this woman.” I sent her an email and she said, “Yeah, that sounds really great, I’m really interested. I’m a little busy right now, I’ll get back to you in a couple of months.” I said, “Okay, that’s fine. It happens all the time.” And then she didn’t. I sent her an email and I got nothing, she just disappeared. About a year after that, out of the blue, she sent me an email and said, “I have become a Christian, and that’s against the law here. I’ve been staying under the radar and not really to anybody. My family doesn’t know where I am. I have left all my friends and I’m just trying to get by every day.” And it blew my mind, it had nothing to do with WordPress or HeroPress or anything, she just felt the need to tell me this. And I said, “That’s great, I’m happy for you. I hope you make it.” Then one week ago, she sent me another email that said, “I have to leave. I’m going to Turkey right now, I’m leaving. I can’t stay here, it’s not safe.” And that’s all she said, I was envisioning her walking or something, in a refugee train or taking a boat or something, I didn’t know. Then yesterday, she wrote to me and said, “Hey, I’m in Turkey and some people let me sleep on their couch and I’m looking for work. So if you know anybody doing WordPress in Turkey, let me know.” There’s a HeroPress contributor from Turkey so I got a hold of him and I said, “Hey, can you help her out somehow?” That’s up to today, that’s today’s news. It’s not really a WordPress story, it’s not a HeroPress story. It’s a story of life. I know her because of the WordPress community, and she is impacting me because of that relationship. I hope someday that she is able to find good WordPress work and the community helps her bootstrap herself in a new country, and then, by all means, it will be a HeroPress story.

Liam: It sounds like it already is though, right?

Topher: Yeah, but in this case, what changed her life was not WordPress.

Liam: I’m with you.

Topher: The WordPress community might be helping her a little bit right now, just because she knows me. But I haven’t made a meaningful impact yet.

Tara: So, I guess, what is the definition of a HeroPress story, then? Is it someone who’s life has been changed for the better by WordPress or changed–?

Topher: Yeah, by WordPress and/or the community. Here’s an example of one that might seem not quite right. Wendy from Holland, the Netherlands, she was an MC at WordCamp US recently.

Liam: I was lucky enough to meet her, she’s very nice.

Topher: Yes. She is very slightly on the autism scale, had a really difficult time holding on jobs. When she got into WordPress, everything got better. She’s got a good job, she’s happy, she has family, community, everything’s awesome. Her family was a little wary of all of that. “Who are these magic people who make everything all better?” Her sister who lives in Portland, Oregon came to WordCamp US with her to meet us all, to see what this thing is that her sister is doing. I have approached her about doing a HeroPress essay. She’s not a WordPresser, she’s not in our community, she doesn’t do anything with WordPress whatsoever. But her life is being significantly impacted by the WordPress community through her sister. She has spent her life with her sister who just needs a little extra help and has been giving it from family, but now she’s also getting it from all of us, and that’s a relief from the family to know that she found her place in the world. I don’t know if she’s going to do a HeroPress essay or not, I want to have more conversation with her but I can absolutely see somebody– I’m going to pivot slightly here. Carole Olinger from Germany, purple hat.

Liam: Yeah.

Topher: She told me her mother is concerned that WordPress is a cult. [laughter] Now, Carole is very capable and responsible and I have no doubt that she can handle all that, but I could see if somebody were slightly on the autism scale, their family wondering if WordPress is a cult. “Who are these people? What are they doing with my family member?” I would enjoy having an existing family member like Wendy’s sister, saying, “WordPress changed my sister’s life and they’re good people, and this is a safe community.”

Liam: Yeah, that’s really neat, that would be a fantastic essay. Let me ask you about the logistics, if I can, of running HeroPress. You’ve shared with us some stories that give a lot of perspective to our western lives that we’re all here in the US relatively comfortable, certainly by some of the comparisons of the stories you shared. Logistically, how do you hear about things? Are people filling out a contact form on your site? Are you hearing stories through Twitter and the WordPress community, people making recommendations? How proactive are you versus responding to incoming contact?

Topher: Incoming contact is very rare. I have a form on the site and I think it’s been used five or six times out of 280 essays. [laughter] Occasionally, someone will say, “Go talk to that person. I just had lunch with them at WordCamp and you have to have that story.” The vast majority of it is me proactively finding somebody, often on Twitter. Somebody will favorite an essay and their name is using any ASCII characters. [laughs] And I think, hmm, they’re not from around here, where are they from? Geographic diversity is very important to me. If I see somebody following HeroPress, who’s from a country that I’ve never heard a story, I’m going to go talk to him and say, “Hey, tell me your story.” And 90% of the time, I get a good story out of it. I think there have been two people who have successfully convinced me that their story is not right for HeroPress out of everybody I’ve ever talked to.

Tara: Wow. And do you have people that say, “No, I’m not comfortable sharing.” Or do they always say yes?

Topher: I have had one person turn me down because she was not comfortable, and one person turn me down because she kept saying yes for several years and finally decided she just didn’t have time and was just going to say no. What that means is almost every single person I talk to about it does it. Another method I have used that I need to use more because it’s great and exciting, GlotPress, the Translate.wordpress.org, lists WordPress users who translate in all those languages. I can go look for someone or look up for whatever language they speak in Kazakhstan and find out who’s doing that translation, and if they don’t want to do it, they know somebody.

Liam: They know somebody who would be a good fit. Topher, let me ask you, and somewhat trying to keep to the format of our show here, can you define for us, and I’m going to ask you to answer in a slightly different way than we ask most of our guests, is, as it pertains to HeroPress, how would you define success?

Topher: Oh, boy. Success would be having an impact on somebody’s life. And what’s interesting is that every single person who’s ever done an essay says to me, “This was deeply significant to me. The act of writing an essay is deeply significant.” By that mark, every essay is a success.

Liam: that’s wonderful, and I see Tara is shaking her head in agreement there, and I know she’s written an essay on HeroPress. So your definition and the explanation of your definition appears, at least for the purpose of this conversation, to be absolutely on the mark. If that is the definition then, what’s the single most important thing you do every day to either make HeroPress a success or maybe to enable success?

Topher: I have to stay on top of finding people and I have to stay on top of getting it out every week.

Liam: No small tasks.

Topher: Yeah. I’m a little behind this week, it comes out tomorrow morning and I have all the stuff, I just need to get it on the site. Typically, I try to get the essay a week ahead of time and the actuality is that it usually comes on Saturday or Sunday. And then on Monday or Tuesday, I pre-publish and schedule it, and then it does its own thing on Wednesday morning. I’m doing something just about every day to move it forward. I’m talking to somebody for the next couple of weeks, I’m working on the existing essay, I’m reminding the person from next week, “Hey, you’re on, don’t forget.”

Liam: That legwork takes a lot of time, doesn’t it?

Topher: It really does. And that is one of the reasons why I put up a donation form, because all of that time is time I’m not spending with my family, and they have been sacrificing that for years now. There were two kinds of donations I was looking for. One is something to help pay the bills through that time, and then the other would be something larger to pay for WordCamps or whatever. But it is time-consuming every day, every week, for years now. But you know, you run a podcast.

Liam: Yeah, for six months. So yeah, we have some history but not like you do. Well, thank you very much for the time and energy that you do put out. I think Tara and I now have some insight into some of the work that you’re doing. And it requires a lot of attention and a lot of persistence, and it absolutely takes up evenings, and it takes up early morning, and it takes up weekends. Thank you very much for that.

Tara: Yeah, but I think what you described when you talked about success and how giving people the opportunity to share their story, and people think all the time, “I don’t really have a story to tell.” And then you give them the opportunity and it really is an introspective time but it’s also validating to realize that you have a story to tell. And I think that’s what Liam and I also enjoy about this podcast is letting people share with us their story but also their perspective on things like success and what’s important to them. And tying in the common thread of WordPress underneath that, although it’s really almost never about WordPress when you’re talking about that.

Topher: Right. I have one more story related to that if we have time.

Liam: Go for it, please do.

Topher: I was doing research about why HeroPress should be, and HeroPress is very significant in India. Indians love HeroPress, and I think it’s partly because it sort of started there. But I wanted to know why, I’ve had people tell me HeroPress is meaningful, it’s important. So I went to some friends in India and I said, “Why? You say it’s meaningful, you say it’s important. Why? Tell me why?” And I got several, very, very interesting diverse deep answers. One of my friends said that India has a history of being a colony and being a colony is a lot like being a slave. In the 1800s, India had a roaring trade in textiles, they were doing things nobody in the world did, and a lot of people patented that stuff in England and came back to India and said, “We own this now. You can’t do it unless you pay us a lot of money.” They just took that away from them, their livelihood, the things they invented, the things they did. At a broader scale in WordPress, open source, in general, is deeply meaningful in India because it can’t be taken away. It’s their own thing, nobody can take it away and say, “This is mine now.” And that includes WordPress. And HeroPress acknowledges that, it acknowledges the work that they’re doing. I have a policy of very minimal editing, I don’t fix poor English. That’s the way they write, that’s them. I’ll fix an occasional misspelling when it’s obvious but that’s about it. And a number of people said, “Really? You’re not going to change my words?” I said, “No, I’m not going to change your words.” And they were like, “That’s amazing. Everybody changes our words, everybody changes what we say to make us be what they want us to be saying.” The idea that WordPress sets an entire people group free from a tradition of conceptual slavery is just mindblowing and giving them the ability to verbalize that, to say that, to stand up, look the world in the eye and say, “Hey, this is us. We’re doing this now and you can’t take it away.” It gives me the chills.

Liam: It’s very profound, isn’t it?

Topher: Yeah. I very often say, “No one is as impacted by HeroPress as me.” Every essay is deep and impressive, and I hear about 80% more of the story than everybody else does. It’s just incredible.

Tara: We appreciate what you’ve started and I think it’s made the WordPress community better, for sure, to have this opportunity for people, but just to put a foundation underneath the community that’s already doing great things for each other, whether it’s technological or not. Sharing our stories, meeting each other.

Topher: That’s a great way to put it. Yeah, I’m not making community, I’m revealing community.

Tara: Yeah. We are going to be out of time but I do want to ask you a question that we ask everyone which is, if you could share with us the single most important piece of advice that you have received?

Topher: [laughs] I saw that question and that’s tough to come up with just one and remember who gave it to me.

Tara: Oh, you don’t have to say that. [laughs]

Topher: One decent advice is to make sure you do your best to make family first, and if you say that to my family, they’d probably laugh because I’m terrible at it. But as bad as I am, if I did not try as hard as I do, it would be worse.

Tara: That’s a very good point. I’ll remind my family of the same thing.

Topher: [laughs] Good call.

Tara: That’s good advice. Thank you for sharing that and thank you for all that you shared with us today. We’re going to wrap it up and have you let us know and let our listeners know where they can find you. We’ve talked about HeroPress but if you can share other ways people can find you?

Topher: Yes. My online handle is topher1kenobe and there’s a number one in the middle there, ends with an E. And that’s my blog address, Topher1kenobe.com and my handle on Slack and every instant messenger that doesn’t exist anymore, IRC, all of them. If you want to find me, topher1kenobe is the way.

Tara: Alright. Thank you so much. It’s really been a highlight for me to have you on the show and talk about community like this because it’s something that means a lot to me, as you know. So thanks for sharing.

Topher: Thanks for having me. I’ve been watching and excited to be here some day, and here I am.

Tara: Thank you, thanks.

Liam: Topher, It’s been an absolute pleasure, thank you so much for sharing with us and taking the time to walk us through some of those poignant stories on HeroPress, that’s fantastic. Thank you very much for your time.

Topher: You’re very welcome.

Liam: We’ll see you soon.

Topher: Yep.

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.

Sarah is a polyglot software engineer, public speaker, teacher and mentor, and hardware and robot tinkerer from the Midwest.

Website | sarahwithee.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 29.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Sarah Withee. Sarah is a polyglot software engineer, a public speaker, a teacher, and a mentor. She’s a hardware and robot tinkerer from the mid-west. She has always loved programming and technology for as long as she can remember. She lives up to her Twitter username. Hey, Sarah.

Sarah: Hi, how are you guys?

Tara: Hey Sarah, we’re great. It’s great to have you on the show, welcome. Would you just take a few minutes to tell us a little bit more about yourself and, of course, now we’re really curious to share what is your Twitter username?

Sarah: My Twitter username is @geekygirlSarah, there’s been some times when I guess some people have doubted this and once they find out, they follow me and I’m about as geeky as I sound. They’re a little surprised sometimes. I’ve been a software developer professionally for several years but when I was a little kid, I started to learn how to program on my Commodore 64 which I think dates me a little bit. But I just found it fascinating, I could type in these little commands and the thing would just do whatever I told it to, and I could build up bigger and bigger things, and do fancier stuff. It just always fascinated me. Little baby nerd me was like, “I want to do this when I grow up. I want to be a computer programmer.” I figured out in college that most people don’t actually know what they want to do. They get little ideas as kid and don’t ever follow through with being a firefighter or an astronaut or whatever. I guess I was kind of lucky in that sense. But I still love it, it still fascinates me every day. I just have always loved programming.

Tara: Wow. So you started back a few years ago and you’re following your dream but I imagine that what your job or what you do in tails of technology is very different from what you would have imagined with that Commodore 64. How have you grown and evolved with the amazing changes that have happened in programming and technology and geek stuff?

Sarah: Good question. Back then, obviously, computers were kind of a novelty to have in your home. I remember we had a computer lab in our school with 30 computers and that was it. Now there’s just computers everywhere. I have several on my desk in the form of cellphones and tablets and everything. It’s still cool that when I was young, these fascinated me because it’s magical little boxes that did things. Nowadays, we kind of have bigger and faster and better things that can go way above and beyond what we ever could have imagined, but it’s still fascinating that somewhere some computer can listen to me talk and figure out what I’m saying, and all these other different cool things we can do with technology. I guess just as I’ve learned more and computers have evolved more, there continues to be this sort of road that you keep wanting to go down and just learn more and more of all the things.

I am with a medical research institute at the moment and we have different science labs and we’re working on some of the lab management software that they have there. But I’ve done some assorted side work, too, either for fun or for pay.

Tara: Cool. What kind of education did you pursue? Are you a computer science person?

Sarah: Yeah, I did go for the computer science degree at the university but before that, I took some programming classes in high school, too, and read a few different programming books to kind of pick up other languages on the way.

Tara: Impressive. What’s it like being, I’ll ask this possibly loaded question, being a woman in tech? Because there’s a lot of talk these days about women in technology and it sounds like you’ve been in it for a really long time so you’ve probably seen an evolution there. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Sarah: Yeah. It is kind of interesting. I think a lot of people know there’s like a few women in tech but they don’t really know exactly how many, and stats typically say somewhere between 10 and 20% given the location or the company or things like that. Definitely, a pretty slim number compared to the men. I have definitely been in classes where I’ve been anywhere from the only person to maybe five in my programming class. And even with the ‘larger numbers’, often they dropped out or they just struggled and not done too well. There’s been times where I’ve had a bunch of women in the class and I’ve ended up being the only one in the end. I also know different activities I did well at school usually didn’t have a lot of women. It’s been kind of interesting in that in some ways I feel kind of alone but in some ways kind of in the more approved, really, I know what I’m doing, I can program. No, really, I can. Sometimes, I’ve just been pulled in and it’s been kind of an interesting turn from when I first went to university, I felt like this kind of loner, didn’t exactly know. It felt really out of place towards the end when almost everybody wanted to be my lab partner. They were constantly asking me questions and wanting tutoring from me. It’s kind of an interesting change but definitely my confidence had to grow to get to that point as well.

Tara: For sure. What is your primary type of programming or language that you’re working in these days? What do you prefer?

Sarah: These days mostly PHP and Javascript. In my little bio that Liam wrote, he mentioned that I’m a polyglot software developer. I do a variety of different languages, I’ve done SQL, C++, C#, Python, some other things in the past. I dabble with different things on the side and I’ve kind of switched around jobs that have given me different languages. But I know mostly PHP and Javascript.

Liam: Sarah, that’s really interesting. The different languages, I’m glad you brought up the polyglot because that was definitely something I wanted to get into with you. As you’ve grown or flown through and have been flowing through your career and learned languages and the like, has that been more of a desire to learn this language or that language? Or has it more been there’s a job opportunity or there’s a challenge, and they want me to use C++, and they want me to use C#, and they want me to use PHP, they want me to use Javascript? So you tackle these languages maybe at your own desire or more as, as life presents these challenges to you, you accept them and move from there? Maybe you could talk to us about that?

Sarah: Yeah. It’s kind of an interesting combination of both, I think. I learned BASIC on the Commodore, and once I got out of high school, in high school, it kind of changed to Individual BASIC. The first language I learned after that was C++ and that was for my college class. And a friend of mine was working on a website and he was like, “We have this ugly Perl script and kind of want to make it PHP. I had never done website stuff before. I had done HTML and CSS but not really anything dynamic. It kind of drew me in from that. I found a PHP and MYSQL book and just kind of read it and soaked it up like, “Wow, this is so cool. Websites now do whatever I want them to do.” That was kind of fun and that got me in there, and then when I went to college the first time, I guess I should say, the main language was Java and so I learned a bunch of Java really quickly. Let’s see, left that, ended up at a job where I did some ASP kind of stuff which was absolutely terrible. That was for a job. When I went back to school again, they did C++ and it had been several years, I felt like I relearned that in a way. But when I had some internships, those were in C++. That was kind of easy. Then there was Javascript which I had to learn for another job. C# which I had to learn for another job.

Liam: Let me ask you a language question, if I can, to interject here. Having been reasonably fluent in Spanish at one point, although I haven’t spoken it in a long, long, long time, I really began to consider myself fluent when I would have dreams in Spanish. That was kind of fun and interesting. And I wonder as you go from programming language to programming language to programming language if there is an equivalent of dreaming in that language or some kind of similar analogy in how you know you know that kind of thing? I wonder if you can speak to that?

Sarah: I would be lying if I did not say I haven’t had dreams where I coded sleeping. [laughter] How’s that for nerdy? Let’s see. I would say, as I’ve learned more languages, other ones have picked up a lot quicker, and I think you’ve found that from foreign languages. Once you learn one, it’s like, “Oh, this is weird.” But the second one’s like, “Hey, that’s kind of similar to the first one.” There’s definitely that with programming languages, at this point, it’s just kind of like, “I know all the concepts, how do I write it in that particular code syntax?” I guess fluency is kind of hard because most languages have kind of a core piece to them, but there’s other little add-on libraries and different things like that. I don’t know, I think it’s really hard to be fluent in more than one language in the sense of like, I can sit down and not have to look anything up ever. But in the terms of like, if you just said, “Hey, can you write me this function in six different languages?” It was pretty simple enough, I can probably sit down with you. I feel pretty familiar with all of these but sometimes there is a little bit of contact switching or I have to kind of change my brain to things like, “Oh, how did I do that in that language?”

Tara: That was a very techy question. I’m going to take us away from techy questions for a minute, although, I guess you could sort of couch this in some tech stuff. We talk about success a lot when we have guests on this show, we love to talk about what people’s ideas of success are. And I know writing code, success is a great feeling when you figure something out or you get something to work the way you want it to.

Liam: It works!

Tara: I’ve heard that happen. [laughs] That would be a very specific tech project-related success, and that may be how you define it. How do you define success in work or life in general?

Sarah. Good question. I think if you asked me ten years ago, I would have just hoped to get through school and get a job and that would have been it. And I think if you asked me five years ago, it might have been to just get through school and get a job and that job would be just interesting in some way. But what happened when I went back to school to finish my degree was I ended up in some programming competitions on the robotics team. And one of my teachers was like, “Hey, we have this competing conference, you should come to this.” And little all over the place, different kinds of doors opened and as I started going through them, I was like, “Hey, this is kind of fun.” But never would have imagined I would have done any of these things. I just never would have imagined I would have been on the robotics team and be able to say I’ve built robots and different things like that. I think success has kind of changed definitely over the years from just like, “I hope I can do something and get a job.” To, I’ve been successful and a lot of different cool things have happened in my life. I was kind of thinking on this recently that I think success now has sort of evolved to, am I able to take the things I’ve been involved in now and kind of bump it up a level, and then still manage to get there? I’ve started doing some conference speaking and my next level would be like, “Hey, what would happen if instead of me asking to speak at your conference, what if somebody was like, hey, I want you to speak at my conference?” And that happened this year. I got invited to go speak somewhere next year and that’s kind of cool. I feel like I’ve hit a level of success there where that’s happened. And then part of me is like, “Well, now that that’s happened, what’s the next thing?” What if this is like a huge 1000-person conference or I don’t know? Just another step past that. I guess for job things, it would be like I have different kinds of interests. What would it be like if I got a job doing machine learning, hypothetically? And then, can I get myself to that point and learn some more cool stuff? I think I’ve gotten to a point where different successful things have started happening that I couldn’t really have ever predicted. Part of me is just like, how about if I just take all these things and say, “Wow, this is successful, what would happen if I took it another step further?”

Tara: Considering that this is something that you wanted to do since you were a kid, though, I would think you could have predicted it maybe. [laughs] Or it’s pretty cool that you’re living out what you imagined yourself doing. Maybe not specifically in terms of speaking, being invited to speak, and stair stepping up the way you’re describing, but it’s really cool that you’re following that path that you started out loving when you were younger.

Liam: Sarah, when Tara and I were at a conference recently, we’re talking about our own definitions of success and the evolution of our definitions over time. And it sounds like yours is an evolving one. That’s really interesting, and I suppose in some ways, it’s not surprising. As we get more experience and we mature, change, get better or worse, depending on our lives are going, our views will vary over time. And with that in mind, with your current definition of aiming higher, if I can sum it up in a single phrase, looking back on the success you’ve achieved from the hard work and the opportunities that you’ve taken, what would be the single most important thing you’d do to achieve that success of getting to those next milestones, those next targets?

Sarah: Good question.

Liam: And I’ll keep phrasing the question a couple of different ways to give you a few more seconds to think. How does that sound?

Sarah. Sounds good.

Liam: And really it can be something work-focused or life-focused, or meditative, whatever you’re doing to keep yourself moving forward.

Sarah: One of the things I feel like I’ve been struggling with lately is sometimes feeling like I’m just stuck. There’s this hurdle I have to get over. And the hurdle’s kind of hard but I feel like once I get started past that, I’m over the hump and it’s really easy to kind of go downhill. In some ways, while I feel really passionate about, as I mentioned earlier, kind of wanting to learn all the things all the time. It’s sometimes hard to just find a way to sit myself down and say, “I need this, stop other things and learn it.” Not even need to but just want to stop and learn different things. I know right now I feel like I have a lot of adult things I need to do, different responsibilities and so it’s bee kind of hard to say. I really wanted to learn more about Cloud stuff, I really want to learn more about MongoDB, I really want to learn more about different things I started and not finished. I think one of my biggest struggles to my success is figuring out how do I convince myself that this little hill that just looks daunting and I’m like, “Well, I have so many other things down here in this little valley I need to do or want to do.” And just say, “No, this can wait a moment. Maybe I need to really make the [inaudible 19:58]. The times I do it, I know it’s rewarding and beneficial to me but I think it’s kind of struggle to my own success. Just how do I get going off that little hurdle.

Tara: What would you say is your favorite thing to do?

Sarah: My favorite thing to do? Anything. I’m terrible at superlative questions.

Tara: You can name a couple.

Liam: What are some but not necessarily all or the most of your favorite things to do? What do you do when you’re not learning programming?

Sarah: Kind of a surprise to myself, at the beginning of last year, I told myself I wanted to try and do something absolutely non-technical because I’m so used to being a sort of super geek on everything. I was thinking maybe I’d take an art class or learn painting, drawing, maybe do pottery. I don’t know. What kind of ended up happening through series of different events was I ended up in a women’s chorus and it’s kind of interesting because I absolutely hated to sin and I really don’t like the sound of my voice, which is also kind of funny because I started a podcast and I have to listen to my voice constantly. But yeah, I kind of went into this and I thought I sounded absolutely terrible. And I recorded me singing a song and sent it to a couple of friends and I’m like, “How absolutely horrible am I?” And a couple of minutes later, they’re like, “You’re not. You’re on key. You actually kind of have a nice-sounding voice.” I thought that’s weird. I never would have imagined this. Like I said, through a different series of events, I came to see the women’s chorus. I found that when they were getting ready to start their new concert tease and I auditioned and didn’t make it in. I just flopped the audition. And the director even said, “I can tell you have some talent, you just have no confidence and I can’t see in this audition that you have the skills to do it.” I kind of end up working with myself and trying to build up some confidence in singing a little bit more clearly and loudly and stuff like that. And I made it in the next time and so I’ve sung two concerts with this big group of like 100 women and it’s been absolutely kind of amazing in a way I never would have imagined.

Liam: Yeah, that’s a really interesting story and that constructive feedback from the chorus director that you have talent but you didn’t bring your A-game today and so I can’t judge your talent and I’m not willing to risk the entire performance or season on what you might be able to do. Can you tell us a little bit about that you then went on to come back and audition again, and make it? It speaks a lot about your ability to deal with fairly your take on board constructive feedback. And I would imagine it’s contributed a lot to you success over the years and getting onto that robotics team and learning all those different languages. What’s a good practice or a habit for you, whether it’s mental or psychological or emotional, to deal with that failure, particularly when you’ve got some kind of piece of constructive feedback where you can see that there is a way forward and you just have to figure out a way to make that happen if you want it to?

Sarah: I think in kind of the same way I got lucky as a kid and knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I kind of got lucky in that from the early age when I started learning programming, stuff fails all the time. You rarely write code that works the first time, and if I do, I’m usually concerned with what I did wrong that I haven’t [inaudible 24:08] yet. I think from that standpoint, I’m used to the idea of sometimes I just kind of do things and they don’t work. In terms of being able to say, “Hey, here’s my code, I’m missing something clearly. It’s not working, I can’t figure out why.” And getting somebody’s feedback on it that makes a lot of sense. It’s constructive, it’s not really a thing against me personally. It’s just kind of like something’s up. And I think with other constructive feedback, I really try to take it at kind of a logical surface level, like you’re just commenting on this. It could be better if you do that. And the times when the feedback is not constructive is kind of when it hurts a lot more. I gave my very first conference, it was really popular so I kind of though the next one after that like, “This could be really good or it could be really terrible.” And the first time I gave a talk after that, I got a lot of feedback from the conference and it was like, “Well, I could have learned more from a Google Search, that was a terrible waste of 45 minutes.” And these aren’t constructive because why was it bad? Why did you not learn anything? Why things like that? It’s come to a point where I’ve had to take, sort of evaluate things from, if they’re not helpful to me, I almost have to ignore them, and that’s a lot, obviously, easier said than done because I think I cried after I heard. But I think that’s kind of what keeps me going forward is when i can find those really good people that are just like, “Here’s good feedback and really descriptive ways that aren’t more about, well, you’re a terrible programmer. But more like, hey, if you did this, it would work better, if you did that, you’d have faster outcome or it wouldn’t keep crashing your whatever.”

Tara: I’m curious what that first talk was that you said was so well received. What was it about?

Sarah: It was called Intro to Hacking with Raspberry Pi and it was about– I gave it in 2015 and this is, I think, a little bit of lack on my part in that Raspberry Pi was finally around enough that it was a really common name, people have bought them and like, “Wow, it’s a $35 computer. How cool is that?” But then it kind of just at around like, “Well, I don’t know what to do with this thing.” And one of the first questions–

Liam: That was my experience. Oh, I got this. Okay, now what? [laughter] Keep talking, sorry.

Sarah: Exactly. It’s alright. I could have asked in the beginning like, “How many of you own one?” And almost half the hands go up, and I’m like, “How many of you have it sitting in your closet or your junk drawer or whatever?” Almost the same number of hands go up. So I took some of my robotics knowledge and said, “Okay, here’s an idea. How about I teach you some different projects you can create with it? Maybe you can put some LEDs on it, make it blink and do different things.” A friend of mine put one on the scratch door opener so he could text the code and it would open his garage door.” I’ve seen different ones. Some guy made a cookie making machine where he hooked it up to a bunch of different doodads. Put them in a recipe and it bakes one cookie of a different type so you could see if the brown sugar versus white sugar worked better or more flour, less flour.

Liam: I’m going to need to youtube that, yeah.

Sarah: And it was definitely kind of cool. What I did was kind of talked a little bit about, okay, everyone’s really daunted by the hardware idea and it’s really a lot simpler. Because when I went into robotics, there was some really complicated stuff, but the basics are basic. They’re not really that hard, and plus, programming hardware is not nearly as difficult as I think people think it is. I kind of wanted to show a brief overview of, here’s how to make some simple projects, we can really quickly program them and within a matter of a few minutes, you can have some cool little projects. And hopefully, this will inspire you to maybe do something in your house or whatever. Like a tweeting cat door or something.

Tara: Speaking of cool projects, we do talk about WordPress a lot on this show and I know you’re not a WordPress specific developer but I just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk briefly about your relationship to WordPress. Your familiarity with it certainly maybe isn’t as cool as Raspberry Pi but it is pretty cool, we think. So tell us a little bit about your WordPress relationship?

Sarah: I definitely do think it’s pretty cool in a way. I’ve used WordPress for a lot of different sites, kind of in the beginning. I think the trend years and years ago was everybody should make their own website and I finally got to a point where it was just kind of tiring for me to make yet another website for somebody. So I started looking into different ways to have premade site template management thingies, and kind of saw WordPress, like, “Hey, let’s try this.” And it kind of became one of my favorite ones because it’s pretty simpler to set up and super customizable, and I think easy for other people to use. I definitely abused it for, I don’t even know how many years now, probably at least 10. And I use it on all of my personal websites, as well as other websites I’ve helped design for different people. And probably the biggest project I’ve worked with it is a friend of mine owns a local magazine and he had well over like 2000 different articles, from 2004 until present. And his website was one of those custom-made things from some guy’s basement and it was just kind of this atrocious mess after a while. He kept having to call me, this thing kept breaking again. I predicted it was some other guy’s atrocious code. And so I decided, “You know what? Maybe it’s time we move this to something modern.” And kind of had to write some interesting import scripts to get his 2000 something articles and all those pictures and all those authors and everything in. But once I finally got it, it looks great and there’s still a couple of little quirks I’ve been trying to work out, but I really like just how open and easy WordPress has been to use. In terms of community stuff, I haven’t been too involved. I’ve started trying to go to a couple of WordPress meetups in town and I’m on a Slack group with different women in the WordPress community. That’s been kind of fun to chat with them a bit. And then I know a couple of people that actually work at Automatic and I’m friends with them. It’s been kind of a cool little thing I’d love to be more involved too and connect, learn more what’s going on.

Liam: Well, you’d be most welcome to get more involved with the community, regardless of how often or day to day you use it. Again, having just come from WordCamp US recently, I can tell you that there are people who have used it since it was started and there were those that were thinking about getting into it and they’ve never been to anything before. You are hugely welcome to join and get involved and attend local meetups. And there are some good people out in Kansas City from a local standpoint. I invite you as and where you’d like to dive in on that. Let me change gears and ask you one of our more signature questions, if I can, Sarah. What is the single most valuable piece of advice, be it personal or professional or maybe a mix of both, that you’ve ever received and implemented in your life?

Sarah: Oh gosh.

Liam: And it can be an amalgam of advice if that makes it a little bit easier for you.

Sarah: I know I’ve read through the questions but this is one of those I don’t know if I ever came up with a good answer.

Tara: Okay.

Sarah: You can turn your timer off.

Tara: Okay, eat your veggies maybe? [laughter]

Sarah: I had an advisor at the second university I went to. And, actually, when I joined the robotics team, there was a guy on there and he really wasn’t letting me kind of get involved. He was like, “Oh, the code’s already written.” I’m like, “It can’t be written, we’re building new robots.” And I’m like, “Can I even look at the old code?” And he wouldn’t let me. And finally, I just kept going to the adviser and like, “I’m not wanted here, I clearly don’t belong.” And she was kind of like, “No, no. Stay with it. At some point, they will need you.” And like, whatever, I’d go for another weeks and it would be a terrible mess. And I’d go back to her and I’m like, “No, seriously. I probably should go at this point. She’s like, “No, no. Keep going, it will get better.” I’m like, “Whatever.” I don’t know, two, two and a half months in, they were having like a Saturday work day and I was there and didn’t know what to do so I was just kind of sitting around. One of the guys hands me this motor and he was like, “Can you make this work?” I was like, “I don’t know.” And he ended up handing me a motor controller, which I didn’t know what that was at the time. And she was like, “Oh, you probably need an Arduino or something, here’s an Arduino.” And just handing me all these things, I’m like, “[inaudible 42:43] I’m doing.” I kind of sat down with Arduino book I found and kind of some internet resources and just started trying to look up what these parts where and what they did and how do I make this motor turn. About two hours later, I got it to finally hit a button on the keyboard and the letter returned. And little tinkering, a couple of minutes later, hit a button and letter would get the other way. This, in turn, ended up kind of developing into, “What happens if I take four motors and put them on a base?” And now this thing can drive around, and the guy that was being the obnoxious snot ended up moving away and I kind of ended up having to take over the whole programming of everything. And I still didn’t really know what I was doing. But it was kind of interesting that I don’t think she predicted that all of this would happen but it’s just kind of interesting that sometimes maybe it’s just sticking with it, even if you don’t see potential hope for future can sometimes turn out to have interesting results.

Liam: Yeah, that persistence is really valuable, especially in the face of what looked to be some pretty severe adversity at the very least, challenging situation. But do you feel like the group organizer, the advisor was encouraging you to go and stay involved because she was being supportive or more just because like, “Don’t rock the boat, just stay there”?

Sarah: I think she was probably trying to be supportive, I know she has been with the robotics team, I think, since its beginning, eight years ago at the time. And she had probably just seen enough people come and go and different things kind of change and evolve that she was probably like, “Well, I think if you stay, something good will happen.” I think she’s trying to be supportive and encouraging.

Liam: That’s great. That really does circle back nicely to your definition of success of achieving things and taking advantage of opportunities and building on constructive feedback. Thank you very much for sharing that story with us, Sarah. It brings us to what is well past our standard time. So we’ll have to wrap this up even though it would be wonderful to keep chatting. Before we let you go, Sarah, would you share with us where people can find you online, please?

Sarah: Yeah. you can find me, my biggest social media is Twitter, It’s @geekygirlsarah and I usually kind of live on Twitter. You can find me there. I started using Facebook again so I’m also on there. LinkedIn, just look for Sarah Withee and I’m the software developer, not the college professor in Colorado.

Tara: Great. I’m really glad you were able to join us and super impressed with all that you’re doing with technology and code. Keep up the great work and having fun with it.

Sarah: Thank you for having me on.

Tara: Thanks, Sarah.

Liam: It’s been a pleasure, Sarah. Thanks for being on the show, we’ll see you soon.

Sarah: Thanks, 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.

Marjorie is a digital strategist and web designer living in Southern Vermont. She is also a videographer, runs a toy company, and co-manages the Brattleboro WordPress Meetup.

Web Design/Digital Marketing | www.codewryter.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 28.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today we have with us Marjorie Ray. Marjorie is a digital strategist and web designer living in Southern Vermont. She is also a videographer, runs a toy company, and co-manages the Brattleboro WordPress Meetup. Her kids say you can always find her in a crowd by her laugh. Hi Marjorie!

Marjorie: Hey, thanks for having me.

Liam: You’re very welcome, Marjorie. How are you today?

Marjorie: I’m doing really good. It’s great to be here.

Liam: Yeah, we’re delighted that you’re here. Can you share a little bit more beyond what Tara just wrote about you? Tell us about yourself.

Marjorie: Well, I live in Vermont, a little bit above Brattleboro, Vermont. And I’ve been here about 15 years, I moved here from California, although I am from the east coast originally. I am married and have three boys. Two of them are in college and one is still living at home. I work in WordPress, about 50-60% of my day is doing websites, and the other part of my day I run a toy company that my father in law started. My husband and I run it together. It’s nature toys, there’s an underground root farm and an underground worm farm so I also raise worms, forgot to say that. We had a website that my brother did, it was a really great website, very engaging and colorful, but I could never make changes on it. And this was about 10 years ago. I had taken computer programming in college very, very long time ago, I’ve taken some different like Cobalt and Fortran and different classes. So I felt capable of doing something to the website but I just didn’t know how. And my brother, I just felt like I was bugging him if I asked for him to make a change. Another toy company in this area, Mary Meyer Toys, they had just started using WordPress and I actually didn’t know it was WordPress at the time, but one of the guys that I know was saying that they could get on their website and they could make changes to the pricing or just little typographical changes, and that was really all I wanted to do. That was the beginning of me becoming a web developer, just wanting to make simple changes.

Liam: And that was your way into WordPress?

Marjorie: That was my way in. I happened to be mentioning this to a friend who said, “Well, why don’t you take a class at Marlboro College?” Marlboro College graduate school had a open source web development program at that time. And literally, that night I just applied to the program. It was so great. I learned HTML and CSS, it was like some of the prerequisites of the program. We had courses in human-computer interaction and web standards. I learned Joomla, that was the focus at the time with Jen Kramer. She was the instructor, really great teacher, I had so many great teachers. And the nice thing about going to a school to learn web design development was that I am still in touch with a lot of those people now. Even though I work at home, which is part of one of the reasons I run WordPress is, you know, to get out and– you both run WordCamp meetups as well?

Liam: Yeah, absolutely.

Marjorie: And you know that feeling. You need to get up and be around people. We were actually very Joomla focused and then one class wanted us to keep a blog and I got on WordPress and, I don’t know. Actually, my business is Codewryter and that’s how I came up with the name was one night, just another quick thing. I was like, “Oh, I’ll just name it Codewryter.” And then that turned into my business like, “Gee, how did you think of the name?”, “Well, late at night.” That’s just how it got started for me. I, for my class project, at grad school redid that website, our company website which I’ve just redone again. And then two things happened, one was the toy business kind of became slower and we needed more income. And also, I just had people kind of started asking, “Hey–” I would say I was in this program and I started doing websites for others and I really love everything about our business. Because running that toy business, I learned a lot about marketing and just general business so when people come today and they say, “Oh, I need a website.” I know how it is, they need a lot more than a website a lot of times. They need to connect to their Facebook page, now it’s Instagram. Have they written a press release or have they done just some of the basic marketing that helps a small business. Yeah, you’re truly helping people.

Liam: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Marjorie: It’s a good feeling. And also, I have that side of me that I think you have to kind of have where you like to problem solve, in our business. It changes constantly and it seems like there’s always these little, “Gee, I wonder how to do that.” And you have to be a good problem solver.

Liam: And not be afraid to try something new too, right?

Marjorie: Exactly. And just having the confidence to just, even if you don’t know how to do something, you’d be like, “Yeah, I can probably figure that out.” That’s taking me some time. In the beginning, I would say, “Oh, I can’t do that. No, I don’t know how to do that. I should refer you.” And then it’s like, I live in kind of the middle of nowhere. Sometimes there’s not really people to refer for just some of the simple, like, “Oh, maybe I could just figure that out.” And over time, I figured out a lot of things and yeah, now I have a business.

Liam: That’s great. Marjorie, let me ask you this. As a business owner, when you are asked to go beyond your media skill set and how do you deal with that in the sense of finding a balance between pushing yourself and offering services that, at this point because of the limits of your knowledge, you’re not really qualified to provide? How do you walk that either internally or how do you engage with clients and prospective clients around that?

Marjorie: Well, I’m in a lot of different Slack groups, the Genesis Slack and different technical groups. So I feel like, if I don’t know how to do something, I have this huge support network. If I didn’t have that group of people, not necessarily behind me but that I know that that’s a resource. And also, I’ve hired people from that group and asked them, if there’s something that just seemed like that the time it would take me to learn how to do it is just not worth it, then I can hire a developer. But that’s been kind of a while since I’ve done that. Most of the things, I’m at a point now where I feel like I can figure it out, I structure it in a way so that’s it’s doable for me.

Liam: And how do you engage with the prospective client on that? What does that conversation sound like?

Marjorie: On technical issues?

Liam: When you’re getting a little bit beyond where you think you definitely have never been down that road yet, you’ve been ABC, they’re asking for D. You’re confident that you can figure out how to get to D from C, but how do you talk to a client about that? How do you position that?

Marjorie: I’m sort of in that situation now. I am learning about membership sites. I have a client that wants to have a membership site. And I told her, basically, I’ll charge a small fee but certainly not the amount of time that I’m investing in it, mainly because it’s something that I want to learn about. And that is challenging in that sometimes I will spend a lot of time learning things, and then I don’t charge for it, that’s my time learning, but on the other hand, if it’s something I’m learning just for one client, I have to charge something.

Liam: Of course. Yeah, finding the balance there.

Marjorie: I used to do video as well, I just started doing it again a little. But I found that keeping up with all the technology, everything changes so fast. It just can get to be overwhelming so I’ll only do a certain type of video now, that’s not super editing intensive because I just feel like I have to kind of get focused on a few things. Because you know how it is, there’s just so much to know just at WordPress ecosphere, that you only have so much time to be researching and learning.

Tara: Yeah, it’s overwhelming sometimes, it is. With all the things that you have inlined to learn with the new things that you tackle, how do you define success in your knowledge path, in your business, in your personal life? Any of those things or all of the above, what success means to you?

Marjorie: Success for me, personally, is I love where I live. I love my life and I don’t have the same– I think success is very versatile, I’m not a person that wants a lot of things really. Personally, I feel successful. In terms of with the client, did we meet their goals, did they get the site they wanted, are they making money with the site or whatever they came to me for, did I get a good testimonial from them, was I even able to ask them for a testimonial because I felt confident in what we did together? I feel like success is just kind of being happy in myself, and that hasn’t always necessarily been the case. I am a cancer survivor, I had cancer when I was 27 and obviously, something like that changes your perspective. I didn’t know my husband then, I had to have a lot of radioactive iodine, it was thyroid cancer. And I said, “Hey, well, I want to have kids. Is this going to–?” And they didn’t know at the time. I was kind of a young cancer patient. And then I met my husband, I have three boys, and I’m grateful for that and being able to live where I live out in the middle of Vermont, and being able to, I’ve got to say, I don’t know about you guys, I love working in WordPress. It’s exciting to me, I love the challenges and even when there are things I don’t know, I love that, that’s the part of it I love. I feel like in terms of us getting old in our brains like, “We’re going to be fine.” Because you are always firing on like, “Oh geez, I don’t want to do that.” And you’re researching stuff. Now it’s like, our brains are always being worked.

Tara: Yeah, I hear you. I agree. And thanks for sharing your story. I’m glad that you’ve come this far and have children and family, and that your life sounds like it’s very full and happy. That sounds like a great definition of success to me. And when you talk about getting older, and the three of us are not in the category, I’ll say, although no one can see us.

Liam: Age is relative.

Tara: I think this is saying that it’s really good for my brain and I’m really happy about it. I also feel sometimes, though, that, gosh, I wish I were 25 or 30 years old and had the opportunity to look ahead to grow a business that can grow with what’s happening with WordPress. Because sometimes now, especially with Gutenberg and the changes that are coming along, there are some days where I feel like, I’m just not going to go down that road. I’m just going to give up on the changes because there’s no more time. I don’t know how you feel about what the future holds for you or how you view your business developing and growing over time, given the changes that are always happening in technology and especially in WordPress, what we’re seeing coming down the pike.

Marjorie: You know, I had that same feeling a couple of weeks ago. I thought, oh gosh, what am I going to tell my clients about Gutenberg because it’s an unknown. And I just thought, hey, so I downloaded Gutenberg. I started a new site, I’m actually trying out some– I normally work with Genesis, I’m actually trying out this Beans theme – I just thought I like to play. You have to have some time to just play around so I thought, you know, I’ll just try to get ahead of the curve if I can. And this week, I have had a lot of calls and refferrals, so I thought, you know, I think I’m going to be fine. But I think it’s normal to get into that place in any business. “Oh my God, what’s coming down the pike?” You just keep plugging away and trying different things. And I feel like being with people. In our business, it’s easy to not be with people or you’re just communicating with clients. And I’m grateful I have some folks that I can meet in person and have lunch with and they’re designers, and WordPress people, and marketers for branding people. I feel like it might morph and look a little differently but I’m in it for the long haul.

Liam: Marjorie, the part of your definition of success that resonated with me was being happy in yourself and a lot of the aspects that you used to describe that, you love where you live, your family is gathered around you in a wholesome and constructive way, your business is exciting, work you’re doing is exciting. What is then the single most important things you’re doing to continue that success or to achieve an even greater level of personal satisfaction or self-satisfaction in a healthy way?

Marjorie: I think for me, it’s sort of the simple things. I try to get outside in nature, I try to go for walks if I can. I know you’re both runners. I think things like that just help so much. I guess I’m not the greatest exercise person but just being out like walking by a stream. But I always start my day with, I like to read different– I don’t know, either The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz, or Eckhart Tolle. One of those kind of– even Dale Carnegie, How To Stop Worrying is one of my go-to books. Or Chicken Soup For The Soul, any kind of spiritual or just positive thinking kind of books. I try to do that every morning when I’m having my coffee. I don’t always read something, sometimes I just knit. But–

Liam: [laughs] Some form of inner peace.

Marjorie: Yeah. It’s sort of like how I start my day. I just have to kind of– and then that gets me thinking about what I need to do. I usually have an ongoing to-do list that I keep on the computer so I’m not obsessed with– I kind of know what to do first and I find that’s really helpful, just to be very organized.

Liam: I like that.

Tara: I do too.

Liam: You had mentioned this a need and the desire and enjoyment you get from getting out into the community, especially since you work for yourself from home in the woods. And Tara had read earlier that you are one of the organizers of the Brattleboro Meetup group. Tell us about your involvement with the WordPress community? How that came about and how you stay involved or what you’re doing with it now?

Marjorie: When I was at Marlboro, we had an Adobe group and I got involved with that, I was helping to run that group. Then that group kind of, Adobe stopped supporting a lot of those groups so we kind of folded. But we had such a great core group of people and many of them were WordPress people, or designers, or photographers. So we started– I guess, I basically started the– I say I co-manage because I just turned it over to WordPress so now I’m co-managing with them. Just so that we have the support of the actual WordPress community. It’s really nice. We don’t meet every month. We skip the holidays and summer but it’s just nice to get together. I run that meetup with help, with other people. We try to get everybody in the group to speak, and just kind of keep hitting people up like, “Come on, you can do a five-minute thing.” And try to get everybody involved. Then I go to other meetups, there’s another one down in North Hampton that’s a great meetup. And I go to the WordCamps in Boston and Maine. I’ve been to WordCamp US when it was in Philly, I couldn’t go this year.

Liam: WooHoo! Philly!

Marjorie: Yeah. And I volunteered, I feel like the more you, basically, put out, the more you get back. Volunteering was a great way to meet people, so yeah. And then I feel like I’m in other little groups around the area, just being a mom with kids in school. I’ve met a lot of people that way. Because most of my business comes from people I know or referrals. And then there’s another, it’s a Brattleboro area tech group that I go to sometimes, and I’ve met people in that group that refer me a lot of business. Yeah, good old-fashioned networking is still alive and well.

Liam: You heard it here first. [laughter]

Tara: Marjorie, I like how you talked about how you start your day. You’ve made me rethink my decision to read the paper because that’s, while I have my coffee, it’s certainly not as calming and self-reflecting and self-affirming as reading something like you do or knitting. I really like that. [laughter] Oh, we just heard a laugh. I was waiting for a laugh.

Marjorie: [laughs] Yeah, great. Okay.

Tara: Okay, I was going to have to pull out some WordPress jokes later.

Marjorie: Oh, no.

Tara: What would you say is the most important thing that you do every day?

Marjorie: Oh, the most important thing? Huh. I’m drawing a blank. I mean, I immediately think of my kids, my husband.

Tara: Sure, it doesn’t have to be work-related.

Marjorie: Yeah, my greatest joy is having kids and being married and staying married for 25– it will be 25 years this year.

Tara: Congratulations.

Marjorie: I guess, probably, to be honest, the most important thing I do is my husband who is an artist and we work different hours. He’s kind of more of a night owl so he kind of sleeps in. That’s why in the morning, it’s nice and quiet when I have my coffee. Later, he’ll get up and come out and will sit in front of this window that we sit in front of that faces basically the forest, and we’ll have our coffee together. I mean, a lot of times we’re just goofing around and basically making fun of each other. Humor’s kind of a key for us but that’s probably one of the most important things, honestly, that I do because it’s like connecting, it’s like our little routine. We don’t do date nights, a lot of these other things other people do. We have our own way.

Tara: I love that.

Marjorie: Sometimes that, it might be like, I’m in the middle of something where I can’t figure something out or I’m stressed out. And my husband’s pretty calming and funny. Yeah, I guess I’ve got where I do these simple things that kind of save me. I’m a person that can get anxious pretty easily. I think I have all these– now that I’m talking to you guys, I realize I have all these built-in systems to keep me kind of on track.

Liam: Sounds like you’ve got a pretty wonderful relationship with your life partner, your life mate, your husband, that’s important time to figure out what that routine then supports you. I’m sure the routine supports him in ways as well, that’s really important and I’d love to hear about your focus on that.

Marjorie: Yeah.

Tara: So you both work from home? You’re both around each other all day long?

Marjorie: Yeah, we are.

Liam: [laughs]

Marjorie: That’s why the morning’s nice, I have the house to myself. Yeah, my husband, we have the toy business which is sort of the same thing year after year. We tried developing new products ourselves, because my father in law invented the kits that we still sell. And we spend a fortune coming out with these kits. It just wasn’t really our– we inherited the business through his father in law, that part of it, the product development part was not our forte, even though we tried for many years. And my husband always really just was very artistic. He’s just done a lot of different other businesses and he kind of always came back to doing art. And a couple years ago, I posted– he never wanted to be on the internet at all. And, “Oh, that Facebook, ah.” And I posted his stuff on Facebook and he got all these likes. He was like, “What? Hey, post it online again.” I was like, “Well, you can get your own Facebook page now, dude.” I think that was like a Father’s Day gift, I made him a Facebook page or something. Since then, yeah, I don’t know how, I don’t even check his Facebook, he’s got like three or four thousand followers, he’s big on this site called Artfinder which is in the UK but they sell all over the world, and he’s totally become very tech-savvy as well.

Liam: What’s his name?

Marjorie: His business is Rich Ray Art, it’s on Artfinder. He sold quite a few works on there this year, he was like the number 12 artist or something at one point, and it’s just incredible what you can do online.

Liam: Absolutely, it is. Especially as artists who struggle to find an audience where they struggle to find a community to accept their art, or at least enough of a community to support the ability to pay monthly bills so that he’s able to do that in a way that empowers him to have the life he wants and also create the way he likes, it’s fantastic.

Marjorie: Yeah, it’s pretty incredible. He’s learned a lot doing that. And we learned from each other. We really do, especially, his dad was such a marketing genius and I think he’s got that in him where he’ll just try different things. If one thing doesn’t work, you try something else and you just have to keep at it. Yeah, we’re really lucky that we’re at this place. If somebody had told me a few years ago, “Oh, your husband’s going to be doing this great thing online with art.” I’d think, nobody sells art online. And it’s like, hey, you never know. People can pursue their dreams, it’s amazing what they can do.

Liam: Absolutely they can. Marjorie, let me ask you one of our biggest questions here. What is the single most valuable piece of advice, be it personal, professional or otherwise, that you have received and implemented or integrated into your life?

Marjorie: Yeah, there’s so many ways I could go with that question. I think just in terms of my business with WordPress, the advice is to charge what you’re worth, it has been really helpful and I’ve received that in a number of different ways. People would say it on blog posts and I had a fellow developer friend tell me that. I think it’s something that at the time I’d think, well, I’m trying to. And I feel that it’s just something that I slowly grew into. In the beginning, I just didn’t know how to charge and I would charge probably almost nothing. Then I put all this work into something and it just didn’t feel right. I think over time I’ve just continued to charge a little bit more, a little bit more until now, I feel like if someone comes to me and I say, “Here’s what it costs.” And they’re like, “Oh, that’s too much.” It’s like, I can’t really work with that person because I’m spending so much more time than you’ll ever know learning what I know. And you don’t have that knowledge and I do. And I think I still probably don’t charge like other might charge because I’m out in the rural area but I feel like that’s been really helpful advice.

Tara: Yeah, that’s an evolution that you’ve described. We hear it from a lot of people, I know I’ve experienced it as well. When you’re starting out and you don’t have much experience. It’s easy to sort of learn on someone else’s dime and so as a result, you don’t charge as much maybe. But then as you know more and more, you get the experience, you become more confident to charge more. And what you’re worth is, I could hold up my fingers as quotes, that’s a really hard thing to wrap your head around, especially where we have sometimes imposter syndrome or we feel like we aren’t as good as other people or those types of things that question our abilities, but what you’re worth, as you just said, is really you’ve put a lot of time in learning this and you know a lot more than most people.

Marjorie: Yeah, and having other people to talk to about like, it can also be, “Hey, what would you charge her this?” And if they say a number and you’re like, “Oh, wow. Gee, I don’t know if I could charge that.” But, you know, you kind of see what is the market charging. I think it just comes over time in wanting to just get better and better at something. Now I feel fairly confident about that.

Tara: Yeah, that’s great.

Marjorie: But it’s taken kind of a long time too.

Tara: Go ahead, Liam.

Liam: I was just going to say, speaking of time, we’re coming to the end of ours, we’re wrapping up on 30 minutes here. Before we let you go, Marjorie, please share with us where we can find you online?

Marjorie: Well, my website is Codewryter.com, that’s the easiest place. I’m @marjorie_ray on Twitter. My website has all my contact information but I’d love to hear from anybody if you want to connect. It would be great.

Tara: Great, it’s been great having you on the show and thanks for sharing your story with us, Marjorie.

Marjorie: Thanks for having me, I really enjoyed talking with both of you.

Liam: It’s been a real pleasure, Marjorie, thanks so much. Bye, bye.

Marjorie: Thank you, 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.

Kendall is a WordPress technical lead at Kanopi Studios. He lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

WordPress business website | Kanopi Studios

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 27.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Kendall Guillemette. Kendall is a WordPress technical lead at Kanopi Studios. He lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Hi Kendall.

Kendall: Hello.

Liam: Hey Kendall, how are you? Thanks for joining us today.

Kendall: Thanks for having me.

Liam: Our pleasure. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, a little bit more than Tara shared?

Kendall: Yeah. I’ve been in the web development business for about 20 years, started kind of right out of college. Got a job at a regional marketing firm, basically doing pre-press work, and that involved in I taught myself web development and have grown in that realm. And I started working with WordPress specifically about 10 years ago, and kind of have taught myself that the whole way. I have an arts and design background. The technical side of things has been kind of no formal training but have definitely spent a lot of time and energy diving into that. Yeah, and then on the personal side of thing, like I said, I live in Portland, Oregon. Married, I have two little boys and love being outside, and I love baseball. Those are kind of my vices.

Liam: Baseball. I heard the World Series was fantastic. Would you agree with that assessment?

Kendall: Yeah, it was one of the best ones in a while. Although, last year probably would take the cake for me. I’m a Chicago Cubs fan so that was pretty special for me. But, yeah, this year was really exciting to watch.

Liam: Yeah, I’m from suburban Chicago and I like Wrigley Field because it’s a nice beer garden but I’ve got a lot of family who were just thrilled to see the Cubs win. Why are you a Cubs fan? That’s interesting. You’re pretty far away from the Cubs.

Kendall: Yeah, I grew up in Chicago, in the suburbs out west in Glen Ellyn. That’s where my Chicago fandom comes from, moved out west, lived in Seattle for a while but moved out west about 10+ years ago as well.

Liam: Cool, cool. Your story about how you got to where you are today, the print designer in me picked up on. You started doing pre-press work. Tell us just a little bit about that, we enjoy chatting with people who’ve transitioned from print to web turn, I both have done, so it’s always interesting to hear how others have walked the road.

Tara: It does look to be a little something about your age, though. That means you’re not 20. [laughs]

Kendall: Yeah. I studied art in college mainly painting and printmaking. There’s not a lot of job jobs up for that. And I knew someone who started the original design communications company. They started doing CD Rom development and multimedia slideshows, that shows my age a little bit more.

Liam: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Kendall: They hired me, I think, as a web guy or something at very non-discrepant terms at that point.

Liam: Right, those early days?

Kendall: Yeah. But they were doing work for a toy company so they shot all of the products, they photographed them and they all made it to be outlined, and the background’s knocked out, and things like that. That’s kind of where it started and from there, they needed help on basically maintaining websites more than building new ones. I’m trying to think of a name, it was this really arcane strange development platform. It’s totally gone, I’m glad it’s totally gone because it was horrible. But yeah, I started on that and then started working on HTML, CSS, hand-coding stuff from there. A lot of Flash development too. That’s actually where I learned more of my coding, scripting skills was doing Flash development.

Liam: Flash Actionscript and you could actually write that kind of stuff?

Kendall: Yeah.

Liam: That’s cool. I knew just enough how to be just absolutely dangerous. If it worked, woohoo, but if it didn’t, oh no. I was out of luck. You told us earlier that you got into WordPress about 10 years ago. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that? What caught your fancy and what kept you there or how did that come about?

Kendall: Yeah. My sister worked at a non-profit and they needed a website. And I think I kind of heard about WordPress, I don’t even know how I initially heard about it but thought that that would be a good solution. So actually, the first WordPress site I coded, I didn’t use themes and basically, looking back I’m like, “How did that even work? I have no idea.”

Liam: [laughs] We all have that same story, right? “How did that happen? How did it work?” But go ahead.

Kendall: Yeah. I was like, “Oh, let’s give this a shot.” And did that and then didn’t really get involved with the community per se but I kind of was able to access more stuff online and figure out how to do things right or more right than I have been doing it. And I’ve tried to keep doing that.

Liam: That’s a great phrase, more right, as we look back on the things, both design and development, right? Which we did three years ago. Oh, jeez, alright, well, that was younger me. Although, every once in a while, it’s nice to look back at our old work and say, “I still kind of like that, I’m pleased with that.”

Kendall: Totally. I did a Javascript interactive map at this point probably eight years ago or something like that. I think it might still be in use and every time I think of that, I check it out and I’m like, “Yeah, that was cool.”

Tara: Yeah. [laughs] Now there’s probably a plugin for that that you could use in a third of the time.

Kendall: Yeah, it was all hand-coded. Pure Javascript. No jQuery or any sort of framework.

Liam: Going old school. Well, I suppose that was the only school at the time, right?

Kendall: That’s right.

Liam: You said you didn’t initially get into the WordPress community. You just went in alone and googled and blogged like a lot of people do. Would I be correct in understanding that you since have been more aware of the community, have become more active, or are you still flying solo as it were?

Kendall: Yeah, definitely have tried to, over the years, build a network of people to connect with whether it’s through meetups or, been to WordCamp in Seattle and Portland here. And I’m actually going to the WordCamp US, I go this week or whenever this comes out.

Liam: When it happens. We got you.

Kendall: Yeah, definitely trying to get more into that. Most of my work has been for clients and I haven’t really pushed towards releasing any of this stuff that I’ve made, as a plugin in a repository or anything like that. Although I know that that’s something that I want to be doing more of personally and I know at Kanopi, that’s something that we really strive to do is contribute back to the community. That’s definitely something that’s kind of on my personal growth list to get more into contributing code and also trying to work with younger developers, kind of mentorship kind of thing.

Liam: Let’s talk about your work at Kanopi. I think, if I remember correctly, Tara said you were the senior WordPress developer, senior WordPress lead. What is work like for you at nine to five or whatever hours you keep? What are you doing work-wise? What are you building, what are you developing? Are you themeing, are you more plugin, are you on back-end, a little bit of everything? What keeps you busy?

Kendall: Yeah. What we typically do, we support a lot of sites. We basically maintain our client sites after their site has been developed, whether it’s by us or by somebody else. That’s kind of maintaining security but it’s also adding features, extending what they have. And then for clients who want to build a new site, that’s a lot of– a lot of the work that I do is architecting, planning, trying to scope and budget, and then manage the process of delivering on that and working with other developers in the company to try and execute things and build them to the specification and scope that we’ve determined.

Liam: It sounds like you’re in a more senior role where you’re guiding and steering ships rather than writing code and pushing out.

Kendall: Definitely steering code. That’s one thing that I like at Kanopi is that I get to wear both hats in that way. It’s not kind of sitting up in an ivory tower, it’s definitely getting my hands dirty and working with the code, and working with the business requirements and things like that. That’s definitely something I enjoy. Prior to Kanopi, I was freelance for about 10 years and I definitely wore all the hats in that role.

Liam: Your hat count was pretty big, wasn’t it?

Kendall: Yeah, but it’s been nice to have a great team of other people to work with at Kanopi and I focus on the things that I excel at.

Tara: What prompted you to make the switch from freelancing to working for an agency and are you distributed or do you go into an office?

Kendall: Yeah, we’re all distributed. That company is all distributed kind of throughout North America. Canada, United States, and what prompted the move, it’s kind of an interesting story. I had no intention to take a full-time job at an agency. Like I said, I’ve been doing it for 10 years, I was very much in the flow of working for myself. A really good friend of mine, he works in the Drupal world, Kanopi also works in Drupal as well, he said, “Oh, I’ve got this friend and she’s looking for a WordPress guy.” And I was like, “Well, can’t hurt to talk.” And so we had a conversation and it was a cool culture, it was nice and it was distributed so I could keep my day to day really similar. Like I said, I’ve got two kids at home. I’d like to be around with them, my family, so that was important to me. Yeah, one thing led to another, we tried it out on a trial basis and everything clicked and it was going smoothly so I’m happy to be at Kanopi and it’s a good fit, I think.

Liam: That’s awesome. How long have you been there now?

Kendall: Full time since April but I started working with them around December of last year, so about a year.

Liam: About a year? That’s awesome. Let me switch around to one of our bigger questions here and I’m going to ask you to define success, whether it’s personal or professional or both, how would you define it?

Kendall: I would say success is not making the same mistake twice. That’s personal and professional. I guess that answer pre-supposes a couple of things. One, that you’re trying new things. So when you’re trying new things, you often fail, and I think that that’s where we learn. Learning by making mistakes.

Liam: That’s a wonderfully simple answer. I very much appreciate your view on trying new things, push yourself, make mistakes, don’t make them again. How far down the experience of life do you carry that? I can tell you a list of mistakes that I make every single day and they’re not necessarily horrendous terrible things but they’re things that I am actively working on. How do you measure that success, how do you try to not beat yourself up as it were on those little things that aren’t life and death but overall, you’d be better for, as you said earlier, not making that mistake again?

Kendall: Yeah. I think that I try to have a bit of a mindfulness practice. I think even spending a little bit of the time considering those things makes a huge difference. I guess, to get to your question, how far down do you take that? Pretty far down. For me, personally, I’m pretty thoughtful about every part of my life, probably sometimes to my own detriment. But I’m also pretty happy with my life and so I feel like, for me, that’s because of that practice of thinking about my life and decisions, and mistakes, and successes, and celebrating those.

Liam: I’m going to follow you down that path of mindfulness, and if you can, share with us one of your more productive, I’ll call it a technique, maybe it’s not, ways to maintain that mindfulness, let’s say, when you’re in the thick of life, whether it’s your two wonderful boys perhaps aren’t being as wonderful as you’d like, or that deadline is looming closer than you’d like and your colleagues at Kanopi are wanting that bit of code up and going, how do you maintain that?

Kendall: I think that’s a really great question and I think that’s the hard part about it for me. But big part of it is just trying to stay slow like within myself. Whether that’s even just simply sitting at my desk taking a deep breath, stopping what I’m doing, standing up, and even if it’s just stretching, something that’s, I guess, reminding myself that I’m a human being. I think it’s a big part of it, I think there’s a big culture, especially in technology that we’re robots or that we can just sit down and code for 18 hours straight, and it’s like, “I’ve done that.” You know? That’s not healthy for me. I don’t think it’s healthy for anyone but it’s certainly not healthy for me. And to just try and remember that working crazy, crazy, crazy unrealistic hours for extended periods of time is not something that’s sustainable, and that’s kind of a broad answer to your question. A more tactical technique type of thing, I think, would be breathing. I think breath has a lot to do with it. Taking time to sit with yourself and breathe.

Tara: Yeah. That’s part of meditation. I love what you said, I wrote it down. You said, “Reminding myself that I’m a human being.” I think that’s a really interesting way to look at your day and how you approach things. The fact that you say you approach everything so thoughtfully but bringing it back to the idea that success is never making the same mistake twice assumes that you’re going to make a lot of mistakes, no matter how thoughtful you are. Does it bother you when you make mistakes or do you just say, “Oh, there’s one time and I won’t do that again”?

Kendall: Yeah, I think sometimes it certainly does bother me, and it’s kind of what Liam was saying about having some things that are consistent struggles or what have you. Those things bother me in general, but specifically, I try to have an outlook that is more positive, I guess.

Tara: If you are reminding yourself that you are human, isn’t that what you say is that I’m only human so I’m not perfect. I think it’s good to remind yourself of that on both of the levels that you’ve talked about. It’s a hard thing to keep top of mind and to not beat yourself up when you make mistakes, but when you’re thinking about yourself as human. But that makes a lot of sense to me when you say that.

Kendall: I think that both personally and professionally too, in my life, I’ve spent some time running away from mistakes and that’s a sure fire way that you’ll never get away from them or never overcome them. That’s been a part of it too is sitting with the mistake and being like, “Yeah, that was a mistake.” Taking responsibility like crashing servers or what have you, any of those things on a professional level, those are harder to escape because there’s things that are broken or things that don’t work or whatever. But even that instead of being like, “Oh, it was so and so. The client did this.” There’s a lot of different ways that we can try and shift that, and try and assess the situation and take responsibility for it and I think that only helps build good teams too, if everybody’s willing to take the responsibility for the things that they were responsible for, actually.

Liam: Yeah, I really agree with that, both in negative or difficult situations but also in positive ways where the team can say particularly to clients, “Hey, our team did this. Mary did that and Tom did that and Angie handled that. Yes, I’m the primary client contact so it was us, it was me but really they’re the ones who carried all the weight.” I think that kind of sharing of positive and negative responsibility is fantastic. Let me ask you this, within work then, what is your favorite thing to do? You said you liked to code, you liked to jump around a lot about that but is that troubleshooting, is that writing new functionality, is that saying, “I want to find the right plugin and then I want to tweak it in this way”? Where do you really get your groove on at work?

Kendall: I think the thing that I like the most is trying to take business requirements and turn them into something that actually meets those business requirements. And that can look a lot of different ways but mainly what I mean by that is more of architecture, figuring out how we can accomplish that goal. That’s typically done in a planning phase. And then I do enjoy implementing that and seeing it actually work but I think that the biggest thing for me is kind of the creative side and I think that that ties into my creative background, but the creative side of, “How do we solve this problem?”

Liam: Yeah, that’s cool, that’s fun where you’re taking what is effectively an email or a bullet point list or a note from a conversation, and how can we breathe life into that in a way that is engaging visually, that is well-coded and well-built so that we can look back at it and, at least by the time we launch it, still like it. And then, hopefully, like with your Javascript map, look back at it eight years later and still say, “Yeah, I like that. I’m still pleased with how that turned out.” Let me ask you this, we’ve talked about your definition of success and the way that you worked towards that by being mindful and being aware of your breathing, and really trying to think about what you’re doing as you’re doing it so that you can do it in a way that you want to do it. What has been your biggest challenge to date and how have you either overcome it or dealt with it? And you can go personal, you can go professional, you can share as candidly or as reservedly as you’d like.

Kendall: Yeah, I think for me, this kind of goes back to reminding myself that I’m human, work is really important but it’s definitely not the most important thing in my life. I would say that building and establishing my relationship with my wife has been the biggest challenge for a lot of different reasons. One is that there’s such a strong mirror to myself, it’s kind of undeniable and I think some people probably choose to deny it or dodge it or whatever, but that’s not the road that I’ve been down. I think that that’s when the biggest challenge is to kind of come together with another human being and try and build a life together. It’s challenging and it also has paid off in a huge way.

Tara: I think one of the challenges I find is I take my spouse for granted a lot because we’ve been together a long time and he’s kind of there and puts up with me working a lot. But I realized that I don’t take any of my clients for granted, I don’t take my work for granted, I value that and nurture that way more than I nurture my personal relationships in a lot of ways. So I think that is a huge challenge, I definitely agree with you there.

Liam: And it’s ongoing, right? If we’re in a longer-term relationship, we’re constantly evolving for better or for worse. We’re either making more mistakes or not as individuals. And then we’re also trying to do it as a couple which is great when it works but it’s a lot of work. And that’s not to say it’s not enjoyable in its own way. We’re going deep in this episode, aren’t we?

Kendall: Yeah.

Tara: [laughs] It’s the holidays, you know, all those warm cozy feelings floating through the air, all the guilt you feel for not spending those quality moments by the fireside. [laughter] Yeah.

Liam: Funny. Okay, getting us back on track. Kendall, what’s the single most valuable piece of advice, be it personal or professional, that you’ve received and implemented in your life?

Kendall: Never stop learning. I think that has always been something that I remember growing up hearing about being a lifelong learner. I wasn’t super awesome at school but I always loved learning and I think that’s a distinction that doesn’t make sense to some people and really makes sense to some people. But for me, continuing to learn, I think I view learning as not something that’s other, it’s something that’s kind of integral to myself and so I’m always curious to figure out how things work, be it relationally or technically, or whatever. I think that that for me is always be learning, stay curious, and try new stuff.

Liam: And that ties back with your success, right? Don’t make the same mistake twice. If you’re not learning, you’re going to make the same mistake twice.

Tara: Yeah, and there’s always something to learn, especially in this environment that we find ourselves in. Things are always changing and there’s an endless stream of things to learn.

Kendall: Sure. I mean, there’s always things to pick up and there’s always one thing that working at Kanopi– like I said, I was freelance for 10 years, pretty much solo the whole time. And now coming into a more group environment, learning from other people in that way, these are the people who have life experiences and who have professional experiences that are different than mine and deeper in some areas than mine. Always being willing to learn new things about that and how we do things differently or better, or at least learn a different way to do it and then kind of assess and see if that is something that would be good to implement or learn.

Liam: At the risk of running our episode long here today, I’m going to ask you a question about learning and your least favorite thing to do within your new job at Kanopi. How are you learning to adjust to that and or like it or cope with it or manage in? Whatever your least favorite thing to do now that you’re in a work environment that isn’t just you.

Kendall: Yeah. The first thing that is my least favorite is keeping track of time.

Tara: Oh, me too.

Kendall: And I understand that it’s obviously so vital to a business and to make sense of what we’re all doing, especially as it’s more than just me or a small handful. We’ve got a bunch of people so I kind of understand what they are all up to, tracking time is the biggest thing to me that really has been difficult. How am I learning to do that? I don’t know.

Tara: Oh, come on, I really wanted you to enlighten me here. [laughter]

Kendall: I’ve tried a few things actually since I started. One is setting aside some time to layout my day so I can be even making a calendar that’s like, “Okay, from here to here, I’m going to overcome this.” And that works a little bit, I’ve tried that. That’s kind of like timeboxing. And then there’s always getting pulled into a meeting or the client has an urgent thing, whatever. That kind of falls apart sometimes. For me, that’s definitely the biggest struggle and I don’t know, maybe I can come on again and talk about it, if I ever learn how to do that. [laughs]

Tara: That would be great. I think I tried every tool that’s out there and you know what I have to do after we’re done with the show? I have to go back and look at the, there’s like a live tracker that I use, I have to go back and look at that to try to record my time after the facts because I was too lazy to push the button. How hard is that, right?

Kendall: For me, I try and look to get commits, I try to look at Slack, calendar events, it’s kind of like this amalgamation of different artifacts of my day.

Liam: With that, I’ll have to say that we are out of time, we’ve lost the track of it ourselves.

Tara: Good segway.

Liam: Thanks, Tara, thanks. Appreciate that. Before we let you go, Kendall, please share with us where people can find you online, please.

Kendall: Yeah, work is kanopistudios.com. Personally, I’m on Twitter, my Twitter account is @k3nd477 and I talk a lot about baseball on that. That’s definitely my personal account and yeah, that’s pretty much it. I don’t know if you want to, I do a baseball podcast called Stolen Signs. Twitter is @stolen_signs and I do another podcast about environmental sustainability and integrating that into your life and that’s called Group Project.

Liam: Awesome, that is very cool. Well, we’ll have to have you on again to learn about how you’re doing on timekeeping and to hear about some of these other podcasts. Kendall, thanks so much for joining us today.

Tara: Thanks, Kendall, great talking to you.

Kendall: Awesome. You too.

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.