Hallway Chats

Bianca is a WordPress freelancer from Jamaica who has been working with WordPress since 2005. She is the recipient of the 2017 Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp US.

WordPress freelance business website | L’attitude 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.

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Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 26.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re recording at WordCamp US in Nashville at the Music City Center.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re excited to be talking with Bianca Welds. We’re sitting here in the Music City Center with Bianca and she’s here as the recipient of the 2017 Kim Parsell’s Memorial Scholarship. Bianca is a WordPress freelancer from Jamaica who’s been working with WordPress since 2005. Welcome, Bianca.

Bianca: Thanks.

Liam: Welcome, welcome. Beyond what Tara just shared with us, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re from, what you do?

Bianca: As you said, I’m from Jamaica. That is where I live, it’s where I have lived most of my life. I was actually born in Scotland, which is where my parents were working at the time. Though I’ve spent most of my life in Kingston, Jamaica, the capital, I have actually lived in a few other places. I’ve lived in Belgium for a year when I was 18, I lived in Miami for two years while I was studying. And I spent six months in Italy a few years ago, so I do kind of take every opportunity I get to live somewhere else but Jamaica is home and it’s where I always get back to.

Tara: Yeah, it sounds like you’ve lived in some wonderful places.

Bianca: Yeah. I love traveling so I’m always excited to visit somewhere new, revisit places that I’ve been.

Tara: Excellent. Tell us a little bit more about the WordPress community in Jamaica.

Bianca: Such as it is, it is largely nonexistent in any structured way. There are a lot of WordPress users, there are a lot of freelancers that use WordPress, there are website agencies that use WordPress as their CMS. But there really hasn’t been any structured effort around the WordPress community. I have started some conversations, wanted to start some meetups from about two years ago, that’s not really gotten off the ground yet, but I am resuming my efforts when I go back this week, actually. I have identified a couple of people who are interested and so we’re going to at least start with us and then, hopefully, we can create from there. It would be great to eventually do more substantial events, maybe one day a WordCamp. Yeah, hoping to see some movement in that over the next year.

Tara: That’s exciting.

Bianca: It is.

Tara: Tell us about your journey into WordPress, how did you discover it and start working with it? Especially, if there’s not much of a community there.

Bianca: I have a technical background, I actually did a computer science degree and started out as a programmer, so I was a developer myself. And when I finally got around to wanting my own personal website, I was going to build it and code it myself. And as I started thinking about what I was going to want to put on it, I realized I was going to want to be updating it on a really regular basis. And I was like, “This doesn’t make sense, for me to have to go in and change code every time.” I started looking around and blogging was becoming a thing. Blogspot was kind of the lead hosted thing at the time. I set up a blog on Blogspot and within the first day, I was like, “Okay, this is not going to work because I want to change things that I can’t change.” Because I was still a programmer at heart and I kept wanting to make changes and I just didn’t have access. I started looking around and WordPress popped up and I was like, “Oh, this is cool.” And I realized, okay, I was going to have to buy a domain name, I was going to have to buy some hosting. And I did that and that was, I think, April of 2005. Yeah, I basically have not looked back, I’ve been using WordPress ever since. I’ve been on self-hosted all of the time. I think I’ve only ever logged into the host, WordPress.com once or twice, just to see what it looked like. Yeah, 12 going on 13 years later, I’m still using WordPress. Eventually, after the first year or two, I started helping other people who wanted to migrate from Blogspot. I helped them get set up on WordPress. That just kind of evolved into me eventually saying, “Okay, I guess I could charge people for this.” [laughs] When I realized, okay, people do charge people for this. But it really wasn’t a thing that anybody was doing around me so I didn’t know there was a WordPress community, I didn’t even know about WordCamps until many many years later. I was just kind of doing my thing. Eventually, I knew there were other people in Jamaica using WordPress but we never made much of an effort to try and build a community around it. I was always just kind of an outside observer of this virtual WordPress community. Then over the last couple of years, I guess from my part, I’ve moved out of development in my own professional life and I started kind of saying, “Well, maybe I should kind of exercise my brain and kind of get back into that.” And I started looking at WordPress development which I have not really gotten into, but that also inspired my looking at the community around it. That’s kind of how I started getting more involved and saying, “Well, maybe I should go to a WordCamp even if we don’t have any here in Carribean. Let me go to one, see what it’s actually like, see what it would take to start some meetups at home.” That’s kind of where I’ve been for the last year and a half, exploring what the community is, how it works in other places, how it might work at home. Yeah, that’s kind of where I am now. I have a side-business, I’m still not full-time WordPress freelancing. I don’t know if I ever will be but it’s something I still do on the side, it allows me to be very picky about who my clients are. [laughs] So I kind of decide who I want to work with. I want projects to interest me enough, I also do volunteer projects, which I’ve done a couple. And yeah, that’s my WordPress world right now.

Liam: I love it. Wow, that’s just so neat and so exciting to be in a position where you don’t have a local community, you’re, it sounds like beginning to realize or have realized the value of that kind of community. And now you’re on the ground taking steps to figure out how to make that happen in your own backyard, that’s really neat. We are at WordCamp US in Nashville and you said, for the last year or so, you’ve been going to different WordCamps and different places. Where have you been?

Bianca: I’ve only done a few. Traveling from Jamaica is a little pricey. My first WordCamp was WordCamp Miami which David has made sure to mention at every opportunity that he gets, that they were my gateway. Miami is pretty much the closest major city to us so that was an easy WordCamp to start with. And because I lived there, I was also really familiar. It was not too big a leap. That was February 2016 and it was an amazing experience because, obviously, that was my first time immersing myself into WordPress space and everybody was just so friendly and everybody gets so excited when they hear that I’m from Jamaica and they want to know what’s the community like in Jamaica, and everybody’s like, “When are you going to have a WordCamp so that we come to Jamaica?”

Tara: We all want to come to Jamaica. [laughter]

Bianca: Yeah, it was fantastic and I kind of spent most of the rest of that year trying to figure out, okay, when can I get to my next WordCamp? I have to kind of figure out the timing and the budget and how to make all of that happen. I was hoping to go back to WordCamp Miami this year but I had a clash in my schedule because I had something else the same weekend. But for my own professional life in a broader context, I was doing a couple of things in 2017 and I decided to fit WordPress into that because I wanted to– speaking was going to become kind of part of what I was doing strategically for 2017, and so I decided, okay, this year I’m going to speak at a WordCamp. I’ve only been to one but it doesn’t look that hard. [laughs] That’s what I told myself. But I looked at it and I realized that in general, the community seems to be very open to new speakers, less-experienced speakers, people who are newer to the community telling their stories in their way. I said, okay, everybody seems very interested when I speak to them casually, so maybe they’ll be interested if I have something presenting. So I applied to speak at WordCamp Ottawa in July. That was my first time speaking and the Ottawa community was amazing. They were so excited when they accepted my talk. Sean, I definitely count him as one of my biggest WordCamp fans right now. He was so excited to have me come. It was actually really funny because they all made a big deal about me coming all the way to Jamaica, except it actually takes less time to fly from Jamaica to Ottawa than it did for people coming from California. [laughter] I had to keep pointing out that it wasn’t that big a deal for me to actually travel to Ottawa but that was fantastic. I had a great time in July and somewhere around the same time because I think applications were much earlier in the year around maybe April, I think, for WordCamp US. And I saw the deadline and I said, “Well, why not?” So I actually submitted two talks for WordCamp US and they selected one of them. And I was like, okay, I didn’t quite expect that to happen but I guess I’m going to have to now figure out how do I get to a second WordCamp this year. Then the scholarship came up and I applied for that, and that worked out so I was like, “Awesome.” And so here I am, because I have seen the news about the previous WordCamp US events, thought about coming but just didn’t have it in my budget or the schedule to make it. I was super excited to be able to come to this one and I’ve had a fantastic time. I loved it, I’m hoping to be back next year.

Tara: Good. I love your sort of ‘why not’ attitude, you’re just going for it.

Bianca: Yeah. That definitely, I think any of my friends, if you ask them– I mentioned various opportunities that I’ve taken to go and live in Belgium when I was 18, to go live in Miami, I lived in Italy. And each time my philosophy has kind of been, “What’s the worst that can happen?” And I mean, I suppose on some level, the absolute worst would have been I would be alone and lost in a city on the other side of the world. But I don’t actually think about it like that, my thing is absolutely worst that can happen is I don’t like it and I go back home. If that’s the worst that can happen, why not take the chance? I’d rather take the chance and say, “Okay, that didn’t work for me. I didn’t like that. I won’t do it again.” Than not do it and then left wondering, “What did I miss? Would it have been a fantastic opportunity? Would I have become a totally different person if I had done it?” I’d rather take the chance and decide it’s not for me than skip it altogether.

Tara: Yeah, that’s worked out for you.

Bianca: So far so good, yes.

Liam: That kind of, let’s see where it goes, let’s give it a try, let’s be adventurous, is really interesting. And it leads me to want to ask you to share with us your definition of success, personal, professional or otherwise? And we didn’t give you much time to think about this in advance so I’m going to continue to string out this question for another few seconds while I give you a chance to think about it and pull some thoughts, realizing that it doesn’t necessarily have to be your final answer, just as you see it now or think of it.

Bianca: Well, definitely in a personal context, I do kind of have a life philosophy, which is that we are the sum of our choices. And every single choice that you make, it’s the consequences of those choices that kind of lead you in a direction. It means a couple of things, it means I don’t focus on regrets. If I make a choice and I don’t like the consequences, I don’t sit and go, “Oh my god, that was terrible. Why did I do that?” I learn from it and I say, “Okay, that was my choice. Surely, this didn’t quite work the way I want it. Let me chose something different.” What that kind of forms into is that definitely my personal life, success for me is being in that place where I am making my own choices and I’m happy with those choices, that’s a successful life for me. If I’m constantly in a place where I feel like I’m being forced into a choice or I’m miserable with my choices but I’m still making them anyway, I can’t imagine living like that but I know people that do. And I feel really bad for them because I think that’s a terrible way to live your life, and if you’re going to spend every day miserable with the choices that you’re making, I don’t know, I don’t actually understand how people can continue in that direction because that seems just wilfully painful. Success for me definitely, obviously, my philosophy makes that relatively easy since I don’t linger on bad choices. But that’s kind of what I’m always looking to do, I’m always trying to make the choice that I think is going to make me happier. What that means obviously changes. As I grow, what makes me happy now at 41 is not necessarily what made me happy at 21, but I don’t regret the choices that I’ve made and I don’t regret where I’ve ended up. I’m quite happy with my life and the way it has turned out. There definitely are things I might have done differently but that’s kind of how I define success and that’s how I always choose the direction that I’m going to go in next.

Tara: Well, it fits in with what you said about sort of taking chances and making choices that are risks than else.

Bianca: It’s similar in my professional life. I tend to use the same philosophy, my career trajectory has not been that straight lined that a lot of my friends have had. I do have friends, from we were kids, they knew they wanted to be the doctor, the lawyer, the engineer, and that was awesome and I’m really happy for them. I have some very successful friends in their careers and they’re thrilled with the path they’ve taken, they’ve reached where they wanted to reach and that’s amazing. And they look at me and I’ve only ever had one job that lasted for two years and I’m okay with it because I’ve always just chosen, if I start to be really unhappy with where I am in a job, in a particular direction with my career, then I choose something different and I move in a direction that I think would make me happier. That’s kind of been my journey. It’s been a little bit, for some people, they definitely think it’s been a meandering path without a clear direction. I am now actually finding a coherent direction in all of the stuff that I’ve done, so I’m happy.

Tara: That’s great, where do you see yourself, let’s say, in five years?

Bianca: Ooh, I hate when people ask that question. [laughter]

Tara: I think it actually is not fair.

Bianca: I hate when people ask that question, I have no idea. Because of the philosophy that I have, it’s very difficult for me to picture five years out because to a point, that kind of requires sort of a straight line thinking and it’s hard to picture a straight line from today to a point five years in the future, I don’t know how to do that.

Tara: If you’re just doing the same things that you’re doing now, that sounds like you’re happy now. Maybe you wouldn’t change.

Bianca: Right. But then I don’t know where that’s going to take me, I can’t say where that will have me in five years. I don’t doubt that I will be happy and still think of myself as a success but I mean, not be doing anything like what I’m doing today. And I’m okay with that, so that question is always a little bit tricky for me. Yeah, I never know how to say where I might see myself in five years.

Tara: If you turned that around on me, I wouldn’t know what to say either.

Liam: So I’ll ask you this, following on from that wonderful definition of success, what is the single most important thing that you do every day to keep looking for them to not let regret creep in, negative regret to creep in? What do you do?

Bianca: I would say it’s simply being aware so it’s paying attention to what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, what’s going on around me, who the people are that are around me because that obviously factors a lot into whether I like the choices that I’m making. If I don’t like the people I’m around, then surely I may need to make a different choice. It’s really about being aware, it’s not falling into that day to day rut where three years have passed and you realize you’re in the same place. That has never actually happened to me, definitely not in my professional life, hardly ever in my personal life. But that’s definitely something that I do quite a bit is just kind of paying attention and being aware. I’m not one of those people that has that daily gratitude journal practice that a lot of people recommend, I have never done that. But I’m very conscious throughout every day how I’m feeling, what I’m thinking. If something doesn’t feel right then I’ll take a step back and say, “Okay, hold on. What’s going on here? Why is this not working?” When something is fantastic or it feels great, I’d usually make a note of it, I’d make a mental note, I make a mental note and file it away and say, “Okay, this was really good. Let me pay attention to that and see can I do more things like this.” That’s what I’d say I definitely do every day.

Liam: That’s great. This philosophy you have, this looking forward, this constructive movement ahead to make yourself happy by paying attention to what you think can feel sounds very healthy and you speak about it with a lot of enthusiasm. It’s very clear you very much believe what you’re saying and you’re not just making up answers. It sounds like you’ve been doing it for a while now and I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about, is this something that you’ve done since you were a child or since a teenager? Is it something that over time you realized, I find myself not being happy when I’m regretful and worrying about the past, how did this come to be for you or how did you make it happen?

Bianca: It’s not something that I would say I was doing since I was a child, when we were children, we were very self-absorbed, we either do exactly what we’re told or we do whatever we want and there’s really no middle ground, there’s no balance, there’s no compromise. But I think definitely somewhere in my 20s, I started to kind of– partly because by then, having graduated with my first degree I was into the working world, I wasn’t super thrilled with what I was doing, I was a programmer. It wasn’t exciting to me, I wasn’t feeling challenged most of the time. And that was when I kind of started to think, I saw other people around me who seemed, I mean, people would always present a strong outer face but they seem to be happy with what they were doing, they were happy with their lives, they were happy with where it was going. And I definitely started to think from then, okay, how do I get that? How do I find where I feel good? It still took me a while to figure it out but it was around the same time that I started working with WordPress and putting on my personal site because at the time, I was actually approaching 30 and I was now doing quite a bit of self-exploration. And that’s actually why blogging kind of became a thing for me, because I was using it to– it was a very personal blog at the time and I was sharing my observations about life and about myself, and about whatever, whatever I was doing with my work life, what was making me happy, what was making me unhappy. I was doing a lot of self-exploration and I actually did start a process shortly after, maybe in about 2007, which funnily enough, this is about the fourth or fifth time I’ve ended up explaining this to somebody in the last couple of weeks, which is interesting.

Liam: At least now it’s recorded and you can send them to the timestamp in the show.

Bianca: I actually used to send people to my blog and say, “Hey, I wrote a post about this. You can just read this instead of us having this conversation.” But I started a process which took the place of setting New Year’s Resolutions. So I no longer blogged as actively as I used to but while I was still blogging regularly, I used to do what was very common at the time, which was a year in review. A lot of bloggers used to do this year in review and they’d look at what they had done through the year, and figure out what they wanted to do in the next year. I started that process but I realized that New Year’s Resolutions didn’t really work for me because it was very much, the way most people do it, it’s kind of a pass-fail scenario. You either stick to it or you don’t. Most people, before the end of January, resolutions are gone out the window and it’s, “Oh, that’s it. I’ll try again next year.” And that didn’t seem to be very productive to me, not if you were actively trying to grow and to develop. Over the last 10 years, I kind of fine-tuned my own process which– I do start, I look back at my year and I look at what worked and what didn’t. I’m not necessarily doing it in a structured way, I definitely don’t write it down in the same way that I used to. But I do still do that process, usually in the period leading up to my birthday which falls in November. That’s kind of where my year begins and ends is at my birthday. In looking at what worked and what didn’t, I start identifying what do I feel was missing overall from my entire year. And it’s usually I’m identifying a trait in myself or a characteristic that I think I should work on, that I feel would have made the year that just ended work much better. So what I do is I actually choose a theme for my next year. When I describe it, it sounds fantastic. It’s something, it just happens in my head but because I know how to explain it to people, I’m starting to kind of figure out a way to explain it. I choose a theme and it’s usually a one-word or one to three-word mantra. I’ve chosen different things. Let me think what were some of them. I’m not even remembering now. One year it was foundation where I was trying to go back to basics and go back to things that I know had worked for me in the past that I’d maybe left behind and kind of go back to those and reground myself. 2017 was actually the year of me so it was really about recentering myself and putting myself back in the center, instead of focusing too much on other people to the detriment of myself. I was doing that in personal and professional life just kind of trying to get back to what is it that works for me and makes me happy. And 2018’s theme is actually going to be self-discipline because I got quite of it done in 2017 but I think I’d have been much more productive if I have had a more structured disciplined approach around it. So 2018 is the year of self-discipline. And once I choose a theme, I use the wheel of life approach which divides your life into about eight segments. It looks at health, it looks at finances, career, relationships. And I decide, again, based on what was missing from my previous year, which areas I’m going to focus on. That’s why I don’t resolutions because, as I said, it’s kind of pass-fail, you either do it or you don’t. I choose an area of focus and within those areas of focus, I then try to figure out what habits am I going to try and develop, what am I going to work on. It ends up being less of, did I make it or not, and more of, how well did I do along the scale of getting to that. It’s definitely a lot more about the process and the journey. It means I never reach the end of a year and thing to myself, “Oh, I failed. This was a terrible year.” It’s always going to be, “Okay, I wasn’t as far along as I might have liked to have been, how can I do it better?” It’s a much more positive outlook and to me, it’s definitely far more personally inspiring and motivating. That’s kind of the approach that I take.

Liam: I’m feeling inspired just listening to you.

Tara: I know. You are very thoughtful about the way you approach your life.

Liam: I’m glad you spent that time about ten years ago, so you said, “Thank you for that.”

Bianca: Yeah, it’s been a process, it’s been a process.

Tara: Tell us a little bit about where some of this comes. I know Liam was asking if it’s been something that you’ve had your whole life, but have you had influences from your parents, and we like to also ask people about advice, what advice you’ve received that maybe has fostered this approach?

Bianca: Yeah. I don’t think anybody goes through their life without being influenced by other people. I don’t think that’s possible, so definitely I’ve had a lot of influences. My parents, for sure, I’m very close to my mom. But I also read a lot, both on and offline. So I also get very inspired by process thinkers, people who kind of take this approach, kind of breaking down what they’re doing, what they’re thinking. Figuring out is there a structure underlying all of this, is there a way I can make this better? And yeah, I guess I have just compiled things from people in my real life and people in my online life, people in books that I’ve read and just made it my own.

Tara: You’ve taken it to heart, for sure, yeah.

Bianca: In terms of advice that I’ve gotten, it’s hard to even single anyone personally because I do take advice from lots of people. One of the recurring themes that I have heard as long as I can remember is about being yourself. Definitely from my parents, my parents, they’re both doctors but neither myself nor my sister went into medicine. And people often ask like, “Did your parents want you to be doctors?” And I’m like, “I have no idea, They’ve never said.” That’s not how they were. They would never have thought to say, “Well, we’re doctors, you should become a doctor too.” That wouldn’t have occurred to them. They very much were like, “Oh, choose what you like to do. What subjects would you like to study? What would you like to do at university? Decide for yourself.” And so I’ve always kind of taken that with me. It never occurred to me that there was something I should do or I should become. I was allowed to kind of figure it out. Definitely, I’ve always taken that with me just about being myself and figuring out what’s authentic to me.

Tara: It’s a good combination of them letting you have that flexibility and you also coming back to what you talked, you kind of taking the opportunity to say, “Why not.” And doing it. Using that independence to try things out, it’s really great.

Bianca: I mean, I know definitely as parents– I mean, I’m not a parent, my sister is, you don’t– her kids are still really young so I don’t think she’s even reached this part of her thought process yet. But when I look at my friends as parents and seeing how my parents were, you’re obviously not always going to agree with what your children think with what they want to do. But you have to reach that point of sometimes allowing them to learn for themselves, basically. And I think that’s really what my parents did. A lot of times when I sort of have this decision in front of me and I go to them and I say, “Well, what do you think?” And they say, “Well, what do you think? Which way are you leaning?” And I’ll say to them, “Well, this is why I think it would work, this is why I think it wouldn’t.” And they say, “Oh, yeah, that’s interesting. Okay.” And eventually, if I pressure them, they may say, “Well, if this was me, maybe what I’d do is–” But you still need to decide. And definitely, my why not approach, they’ve kind of let me have that. So when I say, “Well, what’s the worst that can happen? I don’t like it, I come back home.” And they say, “Yeah, pretty much.” And then they support me in my going off and having these adventures, and so far, so good.

Tara: That’s worked for you.

Bianca: Yeah, so far, so good.

Tara: That’s great. I think we’re just about out of time. We’d love to hear you share with us where people can find you or they can read that blog that you’re talking about, and any other resources that you’d like to share?

Bianca: I am definitely very, very findable on Google. If you can spell my last name, you can find me. Bianca Welds, and that’s Welds with a D. I’m at Biancawelds.com and @biancawelds on Twitter. Twitter is where I spend most of my time so that’s the easiest place to find me. I really have not been writing actively on my blog but if you’re interested in pouring over my old archives, they are still there, I don’t delete stuff. All my old thoughts on a lot of this, they’re still there on my blog. I’m still hoping to get back into blogging so we’ll see what happens in 2018, as part of my self-discipline theme. Writing is actually one of the areas that I’ve noted down that I’d like to improve.

Tara: Excellent. Thank you so much for joining us.

Liam: Thanks for joining us, Bianca. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.

Bianca: Thanks for asking. It really was great, thank you.

Tara: Well, it’s a treat to actually record Hallway Chats in the hallway. [laughter]

Liam: At a WordCamp.

Tara: Clearly, from the background sound, this has been in the hallway but we loved meeting you and thanks for sharing your story.

Bianca: No problem guys, no problem, this was great.

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.

John made a mid-life career switch in 2012 and became a WordPress developer full-time, live without a net. Today, he is helping businesses get their SEO on track through his web consultancy, Lockedown Design.

Website | lockedowndesign.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 25.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by John Locke. John made a midlife career switch in 2012 and became a WordPress developer, full-time, live, without a net. Today, John is helping businesses get their SEO on track through his own web consultancy Lockedown Design. John, hi, welcome.

John: How are you doing, Liam? How are you doing, Tara?

Tara: Hey John, welcome. So glad to have you on the show. I’ve heard you on some other podcasts and loved listening to you and hearing what you have to say. Super smart stuff about WordPress, all things WordPress, and content and SEO, so we’re looking forward to chatting with you today. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself for our listeners?

John: Yeah, sure. Like I said, I’m just a regular guy here in Sacramento, California. I started learning web development when I was 38, it was just where I was at. I just needed to make a switch. So I put a couple hours into that, learning web design, learning web development. Shortly after that learned WordPress and started building sites for friends and family. Then I started building client sites and I’ve been working for myself pretty much ever since, it was around 2012.

This year, I kind of made an evolutionary shift because, for the past five years, I’ve pretty much been building WordPress sites for clients or sub contracting out to large agencies, and that’s been pretty steady. But I’ve been thinking about it, carefully considering it, pivoting to being more of an SEO company. Because I can still build the sites on top of that, but involve leveraging a lot of the positioning. That’s something that I just pulled the trigger on recently. I relaunched my site just a couple of days ago and its focus is more square and center on SEO. Definitely, I will still be talking about WordPress stuff, I’m still knee-deep in the WordPress community. But just from a client perspective and the type of challenges that I want to do. That’s something that I’ve shifted my focus, and it’s a fresh challenge.

Tara: Is that something that you enjoy? Do you find yourself more and more loving the world of SEO? I’ve been learning a little bit of it myself and I can’t say that I’m finding it very easy.

John: Yeah. And it’s something that I’ve always kind of done. I mean, I’ve done SEO for my own site. I’ve done it a little bit for client sites and very early on, a couple hobby sites that I got to rank and get a lot of traffic just for fun. It is something that I’ve always had a knack for and it’s something that I have always studied. But just embracing the responsibility of what that means to try different aspects of SEO like managing content strategy, and link building is super important. And on top of the development that you need to do that. That was the thing that I was hesitant to do because here, in Sacramento, I had really been ranking really well for WordPress for a while. I think it was number one or two for last two years. Shifting away from that, it was kind of a risk but I think it’s something that is paying off because, for one, say for example, if you build a client a site, you kind of build the site and that’s kind of it. And you kind of go off and have to go find somebody else to make the site for. But with SEO campaigns, it’s more drawn out where you’re doing a retainer work for them each month for a number of months to get them to their goal. And a lot of these businesses, because I deal a lot with blue-collar businesses like manufacturing, stuff like that, and for one, they usually have not done a lot of SEO unless they’re like a really large company. There’s a lot of improvement to be done. It involves study of their competitors and looking at them and saying, “Here’s everything to do.” For that, it makes more of a foundation because I’m doing that work over the scope of months, instead of just one month or six weeks, something like that.

Tara: Yeah. Do you find that to be a relatively easy sales process for a client like that? Are they willing to spend money for that? How do you go about that sales process with them?

John: Again, that was something that definitely went into the decision to change this positioning because a lot of people that I’ve been talking to in web development and WordPress space who have been successful as generalist, either as an agency or a consultant. I don’t know what it is but this year it’s just like, I’ve seen more people that I know that have been struggling to get business. But for SEO, I think people are more willing to pay for it, and especially businesses where there’s potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line. If they see their competitors ranking above them and they have these products that they’re selling, usually thousands of dollars if you’re talking about manufacturing, for them, the potential upside is a lot. One person said to me, “If I sell two more things per month, it’s a no-brainer to do this.” I think that people are willing to spend money on SEO, they see ROI. The hard part of selling it is there’s a lot of shady SEO companies or they use a lot of double talk, they use a lot of complex language and even person, they sent me a sheet where it’s like, “This is what the competitor sent.” I said, “Half this stuff on here is stuff that would be done the first day or you already have it. It’s just the foundational stuff, it’s not really anything that’s going to make you rank. It’s just foundational stuff.”

Liam: John, let me ask you a question if I can. You have mentioned that you’re working with clients who may have no professional experience with SEO never having done it on behalf of their business or hire a consultant. What’s your experience in managing the expectations to sense that one blowout post will not guarantee two more machines per month? And the initial setup work that you’re talking about will maybe get a company out of the box but not that much farther, again, depending on the industry and what that setup work is? How do you go about walking your clients through that understanding to the point where they know that paying you for one week of work, or maybe even for a month of work, isn’t really going to deliver the kind of dividends they’re likely to want after just one month? How do you shape their expectations when they’re totally new to the game?

John: That’s an excellent question. The first thing I tell them is, they say, “Well, what can we expect?” And one of the first things that I’ll do is I’ll give them a list and I’ll say, “Here’s you for all the search terms and here’s your competitors, here’s where they’re ranking, here’s where you’re ranking.” And I’ll tell them straight up, getting to number one, if anybody guarantees you that, it’s impossible to gauge because even the Google employees don’t know everything that goes into the algorithm at this point because they’re introducing machine learning. What I tell them is, with their competitors, I’ll usually find one or two that are doing some black hat stuff and I’ll say, “These guys are ranking well but what they’re doing, if Google catches them, they’re not going to rank as well.” I just tell them, “Here’s what I want to do, we’re going to do link building and we’re going to do content, we’re going to look at the technical SEO.” I’ll lay that out then, that’s actually a first step I do is SEO audit and I’ll say like, “Here’s everything that you need to do and here’s why, and here’s what we’re going to do.” I think it demystifies it. I think their expectations are set that we’re getting closer to the goal, and I tell them, “You can’t just sprinkle magic SEO dust on your page and rank it. It doesn’t work like that.” Because I think small businesses, they have the expectation that it just works that way. But even like a lot of changes that you make, Google might not pick them up immediately. We’ve been seeing a lot more of that lately, too. It doesn’t have an instant effect.

Liam: I like the phrase that you use is we’re getting closer to the target. I think that’s a really good perspective. SEO is a constantly moving target, and the fact that we get to number one or page one today doesn’t mean we’re going to be here in a month’s time.

Tara: Yeah, it’s not a concrete thing, I’ve been told. I was just doing Rebecca Gill’s Mastermind that she had for SEO consultants and I like, “This is how you do it, this is the right way and do it.” And I was looking at, for example, website design services and some keyword tools. Website design and web design are basically the same thing, but in another industry, another thing, there may be two different words that you’re trying to rank for. It’s not like there’s a hard and fast rule so that makes it very hard to wrap your head around as a consultant, as a person who does that, but also, if it’s hard for us, hard for our clients, your clients, it must be even harder to explain that.

John: I’m glad that you brought that up, Tara. That’s a really important thing. One of the things that I do right at the start is keyword research because for example, a client that I’ve been working with recently, they were ranking really well for this particular, there’s one particular term, it’s like a four-word phrase, but if you actually look at how many people are searching for that exact phrase, it’s like, none. But if you reverse the words or take one word out and just make it a three-word phrase, it’s like, now, we have people searching for that. One of the things, it’s like, “Yeah, you’re ranking well for that but no one’s searching for it so we need to change how we’re putting that in there.” And that got them more traffic.

Tara: Yeah, you can really drive yourself crazy with that, I think, if you’re not a patient person. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack sometimes, that one word switch can make a huge difference. That appeals to a certain type of personality, I think, not mine but it sounds like it’s yours, and I know it’s Rebecca’s so that’s a skill but it’s also a passion, I think.

Let’s switch gears now a little bit and as much as I could probably spend this whole entire time talking about SEO since I’ve been trying to learn it better myself, but let’s talk a little bit about your journey and your view of success, how you define success. You’re changing gears, you’ve really thought about what you want to do and how you’re defining success based on your business and shifting gears a little bit. Tell us a little bit about that, how you define success and where you find yourself in that path, journey? Sometimes people will say it’s not a journey but in the road pursuing success maybe, where you find yourself?

John: That’s excellent, too. I think a lot of people define success as revenue, and this year I’m going to make more money than I ever made in my life, even more than when I was working two jobs in my previous path. And that’s cool and all, but like my wife says, “Even if you got to an X amount of revenue per year, you’d probably still want more.” I’m like that. But the true success of it, where I’m at now, is to choose who I get to work with, if I don’t like somebody, I don’t have to work with them. I get to arrange my day the way that I want to. I can go spend time with my granddaughter or stuff like that, and I have the ability to do that. And I’m happy in my path. I think money is just kind of a product of the value that you’re already putting out into the universe, and if you’re truly looking out for other people, I think the money is going to come. You have to be good at what you do, you can’t not work hard at what you’re doing. But I think I’m already successful as far as that because I’m actually crafting my reality from where I wanted it to be seven, eight years ago. I’ve achieved that and I’m like, “Man, I should have aimed higher seven or eight years ago.” That gives me something to shoot for in the next phase.

Liam: I love that you’re higher than you expected to be and that you should have aimed higher, that’s awesome. John, with that definition of success then, what’s the single most important thing you’re doing every day to achieve or maintain that success as you’ve defined it?

John: Every day, I’m carving out time to work on my own business. That includes business development, whether that’s going to a local Chamber of Commerce meeting or touching base with a prospect or a client, or what I was doing the other day, sending out mailers and printing out SEO reports of people who are already spending money on AdWords and mailing them as just kind of a cursory SEO report in the mail. Anything to generate business and work on my own business, and put that first because I think it’s really, really easy to get caught up in client work. You could work 24/7 on client work if you wanted to but I think it is important to put your own business development first and that’s something I’m doing every day.

Liam: That’s great. When you’re talking about carving out time, what does that mean? Do you look at your to-do list and say, “I’ve got to get these two client things done at some point today so I’m going to take care of this.” This is development task first or is it more of a schedule issue, the first hour and a half of your day is always walk down design time and after that it switches to client focus? What does carving out mean for you?

John: Yeah, it’s exactly like what you’re saying, it’s carving out a certain amount of time each day. And something that I do as well, because I know that not every day you can do 17 things, so each day I’ll just the notes app on my phone and I’ll put in there, “Here’s what I have to get done. If I can get these things done today then today is great.” But each day there’s always something in there for me to make that I’m promoting myself. Because I think any business should work on creating new business always.

Tara: What are the things that you least like to do every day?

John: Probably email, I mean honestly. One of the biggest things that I started doing, I used to kind of look at email like all through the day and now I just botch it out, I’ll look at it maybe three times a day, that’s it. And it goes so much quicker because most of that stuff, it’s not really that important.

Liam: Yes. John, I wonder if your new focus on SEO work, where, by and large it’s not emergency driven. It’s putting in time and effort every day, or every week, or every month over time and get those returns, versus saying that project has to go live by the 28th of this month, and if it’s not live, there’s going to be real problems for client’s business. They’ve got a sale, they’ve got a launch, they’ve got something. I wonder if your new business focus lends itself to that kind of systemization of communications with your clients.

John: Yeah, I think it’s actually put a lot less, I should say it’s taken a lot of stress off of me. Because I think when you’re doing design and development, it’s always kind of a race to get stuff done. At least, that’s the way that I was feeling. And I think with SEO, it is more of like a long-term thing. It’s doing stuff each day and executing on your strategic talent to get the site traffic. I think it’s a lot less of daily pressure. I think with design and development, it gets really looked into kind of a deadline mentality where it’s always go faster, faster, faster. I think it’s given me more enjoyment of being in development because it’s not as super critical, it’s more a part of just one component of the plan instead of the entire plan.

Tara: Yeah. I think when you’re doing client work, there’s a balance between treating them with a level of urgency and being responsive and letting them know that you care about them, and valuing your own time and realizing that this is not life or death situation. I think that finding that balance in treating your clients well but not jumping at every single thing is important.

Let’s talk about the WordPress community, if we can switch gears?

John: Yeah.

Tara: I know that you said that you’re still a part of the WordPress community even though you’ve switched gears a little bit, can you tell us sort of how you found the WordPress community and how you interacted with them, both as a community member and how maybe they’ve also contributed to what you’ve learned?

John: Definitely. Around 2011 is when I first started building on WordPress. I was looking at Drupal and I think ExpressionEngine, but WordPress was the one that seemed to be most easy for me, and developing on WordPress was something that I was drawn to. Building custom themes, that’s something that I was drawn to since day one. The WordPress community, there’s been a couple of different ways that I’ve interacted with that. Sacramento WordPress Meetup definitely was where I first started interacting with it locally. Twitter has been amazing, I’ve been able to meet many awesome people, yourself included. And I have friends all over the place, and just through the internet and stuff like that. In the WordPress community, people are reaching out if you’re commenting on their blog, different things like that. That’s definitely been a long game, too, because I think when anybody comes first in the community, nobody knows who you are. It’s just being there and still showing up and trying to provide value for other people instead. Trying to see what you can squeeze out of the community.

Tara: Yeah, I think it’s a great thing to participate in a community where it doesn’t matter if nobody knows who you are, you’re welcomed no matter what. You meet people who are known and not known, if that’s the term, but it doesn’t really matter, you’re treated just as well. Most people that we’ve spoken to have mentioned in one way or another how, especially at WordCamps, their lives were turned around by the welcome that they received there. I definitely can identify with that.

Starting out in your business, and I know you’re self-employed, are there any tips that you would share with people who run their own business, any things that are super valuable tools or tricks that you find to be really helpful to you as you run your own business?

John: Yeah. When I first started, I thought it would be like just slam dunk to find business, but it wasn’t. Or at least, the business that can sustain your business, and definitely, I would say, challenge yourself if you’re a web developer, or a freelancer, or a small agency, always be challenging yourself to raise your rates and know what it takes to be profitable. One thing that I started doing recently is, I don’t know if you’ve read the book Profit First but I opened up another bank account on top of my business account and basically, I take 5% of whatever comes in the door and just throw it in there right off the top. It’s really important to not base your rate off what you would have earned as an employee as an hourly rate, but as a business, it takes a lot more because there’s taxes, you’re not going to have work coming in the door every single day. And you have to pay yourself on top of the profit of the business. What it takes to be sustainable is a lot more than what you think it is.

Tara: That’s really valuable advice for a business owner, I think, if you take your money and spend it when it comes in, you’re not going to last very long. Having a budget and a plan is something that a lot of entrepreneurs don’t start out doing. Along those lines of giving advice, and I really appreciate that, I think it’s important to share that, what advice have you received, what single piece of advice might you say you’ve received that has been the most valuable to you as you’ve moved through your career or your personal life, too, I guess?

John: Two things I would say is just don’t quit. A lot of people quit before they achieve their goal and I think everything is achievable if you have persistence and you have just the vision of not quitting until you attain what you’re after. And the other thing I would say is get out from behind your computer, don’t expect to get all your business online because people have to know you, like you, and trust you before they do business with you. And that’s going to take face-to-face interactions, so get out in your local community, go and be in a room where you’re not in a room full of developers and designers, go and be in a room where you’re the only designer and developer, and you’re going to get that business a lot quicker.

Liam: That’s a great point John. We hear so much about it in tech community, “Oh, we can work wherever we want, we can do our job wherever we are.” And you’re absolutely right from a technical standpoint, but if we’re not in front of somebody, if we’re not sharing a coffee or grabbing a beer or having a conversation with people, there’s not going to be that trust, there’s not going to be that, “He’s a good person, I would want to work with him. She’s really intelligent, I want to work with her.” It’s just an email address. That’s a super fantastic point, especially for a community that perhaps prefers to communicate online rather than in person, thanks for sharing that.

Tara: Yeah, and also that communicates only like with like, I think your point also about getting out and meeting people, being the only developer or a designer in the room is something that’s outside of the comfort zone of many of us, we like to hang out with people who we have a lot in common with, and sometimes it helps to get out and learn from other people, and broaden your horizons a bit, that is great advice. Thank you.

John: You’re welcome.

Liam: John, you have talked about transitioning away from the development and build side of things, it’s still part of your business, particularly as it relates to SEO. How have you managed to deal with clients who maybe you are having an ongoing relationship with in a sense of technical support or their businesses evolving so they want a new section of their website, they want a new template, they want a new expanded aspect of it? Are you still engaging with that, are you quietly telling them to go away, how does that work for you, how do you manage the relationship of that?

John: That’s an excellent question. I do have ongoing people that I have retainers with, I still do development for them. Essentially, I’ll let them know, “This is something else that I’m doing, do you know anyone that could benefit from that?” But I still provide service to them, I haven’t told them to go away. I do have clients that I’ve priced out where it’s as my rate has changed, they’re just, I can’t keep doing that. So I’ll recommend somebody else that’s more within their budget, and that’s fine. But as far as legacy clients, they’re great, I still have them, I still service them.

Tara: Thanks for sharing that, I really appreciate all that you’ve said today about sharing your experience, I loved talking about SEO, hearing about how you balance everything and are working through your transition with your clients. Thanks for all of the tidbits that you’ve shared with us and business advice, too. Where can people find you, John, if they’re looking for you online or elsewhere?

John: Definitely. You can find me at my website which is Lockedowndesign.com. If you want to follow me on Twitter, it’s @lockedown_, my Facebook page, my LinkedIn, it’s all Lockedown Design.

Tara: Great. Thank you so much.

Liam: John, thanks for joining us today, it was an absolute pleasure chatting with you.

John: Thank you guys for having me. I really appreciate what you’re doing with Hallway Chats, I think it’s a great thing.

Tara: Thanks for being here with us.

John: Thank you.

Tara: Bye, bye.

Liam: Bye, bye.

John: 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.

Todd is a content consultant, a WordPress fan, and native Arkansan. He likes everything from art to dirt track racing, and from rasslin’ to college football. He loves stories of entrepreneurs.

Website | grafixcatmedia.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 24.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we’re joined by Todd Jones. Todd is a content consultant, WordPress fan, and native Arkansan. He likes everything from art to dirt track racing, to raffling college football. He loves stories of entrepreneurs. Hey, Todd.

Todd: Hey, guys.

Tara: Hi, Todd, nice to see you.

Todd: Hey, Tara.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. Let’s start out with you telling us a little bit more about yourself, a little introduction to who is Todd Jones.

Todd: Well, I guess, maybe the first thing is that I am from Arkansas and probably one of the smaller states in the union. Most people think about Walmart or Bill Clinton, they think about Arkansas. We’re a beautiful state so I hope that you guys come sometime. I mean, I got into WordPress probably 10 -12 years ago, actually, with a football site. I actually wrote an article about that for Opensource.com and I just live in a small town called Conway which is a home of Kris Allen, who’s one of American Idol winners. That’s our climb to fame here, I guess, we’re about 25 miles west in i40, and in the Central Arkansas area. Grew up in Batesville, which is a home of Mark Martin, if anybody out there knows about NASCAR, you’ve heard of him. Beautiful town up in the north -central part of the state. Those things are true, I do like those things. I like art, and wrestling, and I like the stories of wrestling. I grew up watching dirt track racing. My dad actually announced as a public dress announcer at the local tribe, so it kind of got into that. Don’t see it as much as I’d like to but again, I keep up with it and it’s a unique sport in that Friday and Saturday nights across the whole country, somebody is driving a dirt race car, some oval in the cornfield or rice field somewhere. [laughter] And there’s probably millions of fans. What’s really cool about dirt racing at that level was that it might be your mechanic driving, you probably know these guys, and it’s the epitome of the side -hustle. We talk about the side -hustle in our own world. Maybe my side -hustle dial a local news site here in town, these guys, they do it because they love it but most of them, it don’t pay their salary. They might be a mechanic and they work at auto park store, they may just be a garage junkie. It’s a unique sport that way. And wrestling, I like the stories and athleticism, The old – – I think people stopped doing this, but you’ll hear, once in a while someone will say, “Don’t you know wrestling is fake?” And you just roll your eyes. It’s not really fake, it’s staged but the stories are fantastic, and I remember watching as a little kid back when we didn’t know wrestling was fake. Now it’s the best -kept secret, but it’s entertaining. I do like art, not necessarily great at it but I have enough art to be dangerous. Actually, my sister -in -law is an accomplished artist, and photographer, and talent. WordPress is a cool tool to communicate those things. I look at stories, I read stories, I like to read HeroPress every week that Topher does and in fact, I think Tara just had one on there, right? But you’ll read a lot of them and some people, they start a hobby blog or help an organization and got in the WordPress that way. That’s kind of the same with me, I had football blogs and got into WordPress because that was really the best way to publish those things and learn how to develop, and design, and break things, I can break things as well as anybody. I really have gotten to meet everybody in the community, it’s a lot of fun.

Liam: Todd, thank you so much, that was a wonderful and competent intro. That’s great, you’ve given me a lot of areas to explore and I’m not sure where to go first, but let me start with the art side of things. You mentioned that your sister -in -law was accomplished, but I couldn’t tell from your monologue if you commit to art yourself or if you’re a collector or somewhere in between? Do you paint, do you sculpt? What’s your creative outlet around art?

Todd: Canva, C -A -N -V -A, Canva. I like to go there and – – because the blog posts and some of the ebooks I’ve done, I do the covers myself. They’re not really as good as somebody really good but when I was a kid, I took three years in high school art, and one of my favorite college subjects was actually art appreciation. I used to draw, interestingly enough, race cars and stadiums, I used to draw those things. I don’t know why I really liked to draw those things but I drew those things. I used to draw a lot. Obviously, as time’s gone on it kind of got pushed out of the way a little bit.

Liam: Yeah, life.

Todd: Yeah, life. But I appreciate and I have friends that are artists in town, I like to support them when I can. Yeah, my sister -in -law did a fine arts degree and was in an ad agency for a long time and ended up doing freelance photography. She’s really good at that and won a lot of awards. But I’m not saying I’m a great artist, it’s more of an appreciator of art. I still think if I had more time I knew what to do with, I might actually start growing again. But I had a lot of fun. It allows you to be creative, try to be creative, play around with some different things. My art teacher in high school was good because she had us to try so many different things. Silk screening to painting, to sculpture.

Liam: Have you posted any of your illustrations, your drawings online anywhere?

Todd: Well, as I said, most – – if you go to MainWP, where I do most of my blogging right now, they’re a WordPress platform for updating multiple sites, and you bring me the blogs that I write, the header images, I do those myself. I just use Canva. That’s about as artistic as I get these days but I take a lot of pictures with my phone and stuff. I know that I’m not professional, I’m very much an amateur but I take those because, one, I don’t want to steal copyrighted images so I take pictures myself and there’s no chance of that. And I’m always blogging for something, and whether it’s me taking a picture on top of Mount Nebo in Western Arkansas, which I did one year and my pictures aren’t great but you can turn those into an image for a blog really easy.

Liam: Yeah, it’s nice that way, isn’t it?

Todd: Yeah. It’s better when somebody who’s a professional goes, “Yeah, that picture is – -” But there’s always – –

Liam: Sorry to cut you off there, Todd. Speaking of professionals, tell us a little bit about what you do professionally? You mentioned content, or Tara had read about – – I guess I read it. Anyway, you do content, tell us a little bit more about that, would you?

Tara: I knew about it, you talked about it.

Liam: Thanks for clarifying.

Todd: Probably my main gig right now is writing those blog posts at MainWP. I enjoy doing that and they give me a lot of freedom to do that. I’ve dealt with some health issues this year, it’s kind of held me back which, hopefully, I can get past that. I want to be able to help people clarify their story, as a – – whether it’s a WordPress agency or a company you’re working with, what is that story? Because I think stories are – – we are wired, studies are coming out every day, it seems like, to relate to stories, they’re so relatable. I get more and more fascinated about the story aspect of content, and how can we implement those as WordPress professionals even. There are many ways to do that, whether it’s a podcast or a video, a blog post, there’s – – go ahead?

Tara: Writing and blogging for MainWP and doing content, talk about how that works as a business and how it relates to marketing, for example. If you’re telling a story – – I read a lot, we probably all do, about a marketing tactic or technique of telling a story in order to draw people in for a sale or as a marketing benefit but then also as a community benefit writing a blog post for MainWP and what you do, which maybe doesn’t have that marketing component to it, has more of a community component. How do you cover those bases?

Todd: I think one good example is what Topher’s doing at HeroPress. I get those emails every Wednesday and I try to go read every one of them, and he’s got people telling their story, which is fantastic. “Hey, this is how I got into WordPress, this is why I like WordPress, these are people who helped me.” We mentioned Corey Mill earlier, he’s been a very big name in WordPress space and how he advocates for people, that kind of thing. I think telling a story really facilitates the community and it can be done both ways. When Topher does it, of course, he has person to write their story. I think it’s kind of interesting that I knew a couple of people. You did one, not long a lady in our state did one, not long ago. But then there’s the other side of it which I think – – I’ve done this from a startup entrepreneurial standpoint where you interview and you retell the story, kind of like a feature article. I did that a lot when I was writing with Talk Business & Politics here in the state. I really enjoyed it, one of the last articles I got to do, we’ve got a lady in our state who’s a trailblazer for ladies in business but period, just people, not just ladies but everybody. And she was a first woman inducted into the Business Hall of Fame in Arkansas. I had to be able to phone with her, and talk to her, and ask her questions, listen to her. And it was just a wonderful experience. I’ve got to have those opportunities more than once, and I think maybe the WordPress community could use a little bit more of that. It’s one thing for someone to tell their story, but what if somebody sat down – with Chris Lema or Carrie Dils or Dennis from MainWP and learn their whole story, and turn that into a feature. I think there’s something – – you feel like you know somebody a little better, does that make sense?

Liam: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a big part of what we’re trying to do here.

Todd: Case studies are something that – – a few people in the WordPress space use case studies, I’d like to see more people use case studies. But at the count of case studies that I do are more story -based, you have the more technical case studies, which you got to have some of those but being able to build that story out in a way that’s relatable. I think we all have a story and I just think some people stories are more interesting than others. How did this person become – – and you see it a lot in the startup world. I guess I go back to that a lot but you’ll see – – Noah Kagan, he’s somebody I followed a lot, he runs Sumo, you guys might be familiar with Sumo. And one of the first things I ever got from him was an ebook he wrote. I don’t think it’s very much, maybe ¢99 or something. He may give it away now for all I know, but it was his story. It wasn’t classic, it probably wouldn’t make an A in English class in college. I think I may have seen some spelling errors here and there, which is ironic because I’m the worst speller there is.

Liam: But that way, you always bought them.

Todd: And he’s just one guy, you’ve got a lot of people but – –

Liam: Let me ask you this, speaking of stories, and you’re very clear to me in this time that we’ve been speaking that you’re very passionate about a number of different things. And I wonder as you weave those all together into a meaningful way for your own life story, ensuring that, and that’s – – I wonder, what is your definition of success, how do you bring that all together? How does success weave into your life, how do you define it?

Todd: I think the questions you left for me are personal and professional, and I remember I wanted to go over that because I didn’ know how to answer that, but I think the word that comes to mind is legacy. What kind of legacy are you leaving behind? And I think that works professionally or personally, but I guess, I have a list of a lot of my favorite writers and I’ve never really done anything at that, but one of my favorite writers is a guy who passed away actually same year as my dad, in 2013. His day job was a professor of philosophy at USC, Southern Cal. And his side gig, if you want to call it that, was he was a minister and a Christian formations writer. His name is Dallas Willard. I watched, his funeral is on Youtube or whatever, and he left such a legacy in both worlds. The professional philosophy world, and then in the Christian formation world. I remember his granddaughter got up and, I know I’m going to blow this but – – [laughter]

Liam: Paraphrase?

Todd: Yeah, paraphrase. She was talking about him and he referred to her as a grand daughter, not a granddaughter, but a grand daughter. That’s the kind of person he was, he left the legacy, he made people feel so much more than maybe what they thought of themselves. And there’s a lot of other things he did, but that’s like an example of the idea of leaving a legacy. I think we all know people that left a legacy that’s important in our lives. I think if you may not be rich like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or whatever, but who do we remember 10, 15, 20 years later?

Liam: Legacy is well beyond money, that’s for sure. Todd, legacy means a lot to you, that’s clear. What’s the single most important thing you’re doing or you do every day to ensure that you’re leaving a legacy about which you would be proud?

Todd: I guess just trying not to screw up. [laughs] I was thinking about that question and maybe you kind of took it a little differently than I was reading it whenever I was looking at your questions. But I thought about it this morning a little bit, it was like, I was reading that in terms of achieving success, I suppose, and my thought was, just get out of bed. Sometimes, just getting out of bed, and I don’t know, maybe you guys have been in a dark period in your time, I have too and they come back around occasionally. And I can remember at times where getting out of bed was an accomplishment. And then one of the Facebook groups I’m in, Kim Dowell’s one of the administrators, this little hashtag just started up recently. I think it means something in a lot of this, and it just said, just show up.

Tara: Yeah, I kind of just say that.

Todd: Yeah, just show up. And I think you can take that so many different ways but, my goodness, part of leaving a legacy, just show up. I had a little conversation at chiropractor’s office this morning with a lady, and I was telling her how I got roped into doing a story time when I was working at the bookstore. One of the things I would do, I was a cashier and kids often get left behind in experiences like that. I would try to pay attention to kid a little bit. I think one time I did my best impersonation of Captain Jack, or a pirate. “Argh.” and my general manager heard it and she said, “Oh, you’d be great for storytime.” It took me a long time to get out of that, out of story time. But at the same time – –

Tara: Did you like it?

Todd: Yeah, to some degree I did. I like the actual storytime part. What would happen was the customers would then start asking me about books and I wouldn’t know anything about the books. I might know about some classics but not all of them. We just didn’t have enough people really is what it was, they really should have had a children’s worker back there or something like that. Plus, you have to give the kids cookies, and milk, and all that kind of stuff. But I enjoyed telling a story part.

Tara: That’s a good memory.

Todd: Leaving a legacy sometimes is just showing up. I’ll tell you one thing, my dad wasn’t perfect, I know that. But I’ll tell you one thing my dad did do, he showed at my brother’s and I’s athletic events, mostly football. When we played, I can remember in seventh grade, the very first football game that I played in for the seventh -grade football team, it was about an hour and a half away. Not only was my dad at the stands, but my mom’s dad, he brought my grandpa and they were in the stands. I don’t forget those things and I think kids don’t forget those things.

Tara: It sounds like you take those things to heart and use them in the way that you interact with people as well, Todd. I appreciate the idea of showing up and I know you show up for others. I’ve seen you in Slack and Facebook communities. Can you talk a little bit about community and sort of in terms of showing up, what you find to be the most challenging thing about showing up, and what you find to be the most rewarding, both for yourself and the communities that you participate in?

Todd: I think helping people is a rewarding experience. When you do something, I did these homepage evaluations back a couple months ago and a couple or three people who were in Facebook groups took advantage of it while I was doing them for free, but you give them the information and they really seem to appreciate it and try to implement things you said. That’s the rewarding part of it. The flip side of that is people – you don’t see it as much as you do people appreciate what you’ve done. But there are people out there who will take anything for free and they kind of have no gratefulness for it, they want you to do more.

I felt very fortunate, I felt like everybody that received that were very appreciative. I just think that is a challenge that comes up sometimes when you’re trying to help someone. And I don’t have any real recent experience with that but I know other people experienced that as well. But when you’re just trying to help somebody, you give them maybe a resource to go to or some information based on experience, and they want more information, or they want more. And it’s like, help yourself a little bit. I think we all do that, we all try to be helpful. One thing that WordPress community is very – – every WordPress community I’ve been in has been very helpful. I think I’ve learned a lot in Slack chatrooms and in Facebook groups. You always have someone, and it doesn’t matter what group you’re in because I’m in writer and copywriter groups too. You always have someone who – – they ask silly questions, they ask questions that have already been answered, they want you to do more for them. You can do some of these things for yourself. There’s a lot of empowerment in these groups.

Liam: Absolutely.

Todd: It’s the same in the writer groups I’m in. The people who lead those groups are very empowering. I have watched one group, a very respected copywriter with a lot of experience, frankly, he’s a badass when it comes to copywriting. And I’ve watched him dole out information that would take most of us 10 to 15 years to learn for free. And you’re like, “Man, somebody needs to copy and paste this and put it – -” I started to do it and put it in Evernote or something. This guy was giving some of the most – – and I’m like, “This is really good stuff.”

Liam: That’s wonderful you get stuff like that.

Todd: Yeah, and I see WordPress too.

Tara: It inspired everyone in the community to be so giving. I think that’s a great thing about WordPress community especially so that people share and that pay -it -forward idea, then you are inspired to share just as freely.

Todd: Yeah, but I think the challenge of doing that sometimes is the people not willing to – – they want more or they don’t help themselves. But I think that’s so much fewer, most people are appreciative and they work hard. I just think that’s once in a while but it does happen and it can be frustrating and challenging.

Liam: that’s for sure. Todd, let me change gears on you a little bit and ask you, what is the single most valuable piece of advice, and it can be either professional or personal, that you have ever received and implemented in your own life?

Todd: I have to go back and read what I wrote because I remember that question and going, “What can I say?” There’s a free frame that is standing out to me recently that just seems to always get reiterated. I mentioned Dallas Willard earlier, he had a conversation – – I don’t know if you guys read Christian books or anything but John Ortberg is a spiritual writer, presbytery minister. He tells a story, he found a new assignment and he was just really hurried, he had so much going on, he really felt like he needs some spiritual wisdom, so who’s to give a call to but Dallas Willard? Tells him everything and Dallas makes a pause and he says, and you can read this on, it’s been reiterated many times on the internet in different websites and blogs, but he says to John, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” And John thought about that and wrote it down, he goes, “Okay, that’s good. What else?” Dallas says, “No, there is nothing else. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” I don’t know if that applies everybody else but it – –

Tara: It doesn’t apply in Washington DC, I can tell you that. [laughs]

Todd: Well, hurry – – and see, there’s a difference between hurry and busy. And whenever I first came across that, I had to tell myself that. It’s one thing to be busy, but it’s another thing to be hurried. There’s a fine line there. Some days, you’re busy from you get up until the time you lay your head down, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re hurried, you’re productive, whatever. When you’re overly hurried – – I don’t know if I can really define what that means.

Tara: I think it’s a stress component to it, in my mind, right? When I hear her read, I think stressed out, when I hear busy, I don’t feel as much stress, I don’t know if that makes sense.

Todd: Sometimes when you’re busy, you’re doing something that you really love so you’re not really stressed about it unless you have the good stress. But for me, because I’ve had – – I don’t talk about this stuff too much but I’ve had chronic health issues for years in different areas, and whenever I get hurried, I’m not at my best. And I have to remind myself to slow down. Sometimes if I don’t remind myself that, I get reminded. I can’t put in 12, 14 -hour days. But occasionally, you can get through those. But man, I can’t speak for other people, and I’m certainly not as young as I was 20 years ago but I get a little jealous of my friends who are entrepreneurs that are in their 20s and 30s. They’ve got way much more energy and they can go way much better than me. And I’m just like, “You go. I can’t but you go.” And I watch them like they’re the Energizer Bunny. But I have to remind myself of that. I think that is a good lesson and I don’t know if that’s really a business or it’s more of a personal thing.

Liam: I think it’s both.

Tara: Definitely.

Liam: When I heard you say that, it really struck me as addressing the need for mindfulness and self -awareness and living in the moment. Because busy is having tasks, chores, responsibilities that occupy our time. And hurry implies, in my mind a focus on the next task, or three tasks down the road, or what’s coming tomorrow, and worrying about the future, or perhaps stressing about what we didn’t get to in the past. whereas, if we’re not hurried, we’re focused on the tasks of people and situations around us, and can address it in a meaningful and mindful way.

Todd: We’d probably all do well to get up and go for a walk for about an hour before we do anything, wouldn’t we?

Tara: Mhm.

Liam: Amen to that.

Todd: My friend, Austin Church, wrote a blog on Medium and I think the title was something like, ‘What’s missing in your freelancer life is not what you think or what mistake you’re making’. And basically it was this, he said he started 2009 as a freelancer. He said, “I wish I had gone fishing every month since 2009.” In other words, you have time where you’re more available, and what we tend to do, I know I do this, I start thinking, “How can I get more people to get in my pipeline or whatever.” He’s like, “Just go fishing or go hiking, go do something fun.” And it’s really hard because we think, “What’s going to happen in two months? Am I going to have enough money to pay the bills?” Always easier said than done, right?

Tara: It is. And on that note, I think it’s time for us to all go take a walk or go fishing. We’re out of time. Todd, it’s been delightful to have you on and get to know you a little bit and share your story. Thank you for sharing all that you did with us, and sharing about your community, I think, makes me want to go to Arkansas one day. We’re glad to have you on and hope to see you sometime in the future, Todd. Can you tell us and tell everyone listening where they can find you and find more about you?

Todd: I usually direct people to my Twitter first because I’ve probably been there longer than anywhere. My Twitter handle is @tjones. I’ve had that since ’08 I think, I don’t know, long time ago, back before the mass humanity was there. My website is Grafixcatmedia.com and I spell differently, so I’m assuming you’ll put it in the show notes but G -R -A -F -I -Xcatmedia.com. And I’m on Facebook as well, and LinkedIn, and all of those profiles. I think it’s Toddjonesark or something like that on LinkedIn anyway. I’m even on Instagram and Snapchat for that matter.

Tara: Okay. Thanks again for joining us, it’s really been a pleasure and best wishes to you, Todd.

Todd: Thanks for having me, appreciate it.

Liam: Todd, it’s been a pleasure, thanks for your time. I’ve loved chatting with you, loved getting to know you just a little bit and look forward to reading more of you story and your blog in the coming weeks, months, and years ahead.

Todd: Thank you, appreciate it.

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.

Robert is the founder of WP Dispensary, an online menu management software for the cannabis industry. He says he also has a “healthy” obsession with open source, caffeine, pizza and building life on his own terms.

Website | www.wpdispensary.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 23.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today we’re joined by Robert Devore. Robert is the founder of WP Dispensary, an online menu management software for the cannabis industry. He says he also has a healthy obsession with open source, caffeine, pizza, and building life on his own terms. Hi, Robert.

Robert: Hello, how are you guys doing? Thank you for having me, and just so everyone’s clear, I do have a healthy obsession with all of those things. Some would call it unhealthy but I still think it’s in a healthy realm.

Liam: Robert, that’s fantastic. Welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit more about yourself beyond what we just heard, maybe tell us a little bit more about that obsession and some of the other things you’re doing?

Robert: When I started with the web development, I’ve been doing it since I was a teenager so it’s kind of always been a part of my life. I’ve worked online over the last 10 years now for myself and I’ve just kind of built a life that I can move day in and day out of and be happy with, and enjoy all the finer things like all the extra caffeine and extra pizzas and things like that. I’ve kind of just enjoyed this quiet little piece of the corner that I can call my own.

Liam: And when you’re in that quiet little corner of your own, share with us your favorite kind of pizza?

Robert: It’s got to be a Supreme Pizza, I can’t have not enough toppings. It has to have as many toppings as possible. Supreme Pizza for sure. There’s a couple of places here locally that I can get pizzas from and they’re really good too. I’ll either order out or I stock up the freezer on DiGiornos pretty much weekly.

Liam: [laughs] DiGiorno, it’s not delivery, it’s DiGiorno. I’m originally from the Chicago area so I have to ask you, thick crust or thin crust?

Robert: Thick crust.

Liam: Nice, we can keep you on this show, we’ll keep going then. [laughter]

Tara: I love pizza too, I can probably eat pizza every single night and be happy. Because you can put different things on it and it makes it really different. It’s a diverse food and it has many food groups on it. That’s a good thing too.

Liam: Robert, you told us that you’ve been doing web development since you were a teenager. Tell us a little bit about that, how did that come about and how has that progressed? It sounds like you’re working in web development professionally now so walk us through that, how did you get started and where you at today?

Robert: When I started, the family got a computer so it was everybody’s until I decided– I was 13 maybe at the time, rebellious, and didn’t want to do the schooling how they wanted me to do it. I’d spend all my free time on the computer searching and browsing around. And then I’d get on message boards where you could make your own little forum signatures, and I started designing those. I found out about Photoshop through that. Then, eventually, I talked to a couple of people who were showing basic table-based layouts and I kind of jumped into that and was trying to learn from myself and build example pages for different things we were talking about on message boards. Over time, that turned into people saying, “Hey, can I pay you 50 bucks to do something for me?” And I’d say, “Yeah.” As a teenager, you’re not really that worried about it. After a while, it just picked up steam and I realized, hey, I can probably do this for a living, and I haven’t looked back since.

Liam: Then, what are you doing? You talked about in the intro, or Tara told us about WP Dispensary – now I screwed up the pronunciation! – I’m going to say, you go ahead and tell us the name of what you’re doing right now, Robert?

Robert: Now I’m working at WP Dispensary which is menu management plugin for WordPress and dispensaries and delivery services that want to display the different flowers and concentrates and edibles for their patients, they can do that through their website. Leading up to that, I was doing freelance work and then I also ran some affiliate sites over the last few years off and on. So I kind of just got to a point where WP Dispensary is taking off and to a point where I can make it full-time income, and I’ve set myself a goal over the next 90 days to kind of just built it as big as I can get it over this short of a period of time. And today is day 31 so everything’s going along good and I feel like I’ve made the right decision being able to jump into this more because more things have been able to get accomplished now and I can devote 100% of my time to it.

Tara: It’s really interesting, there’s so much talk these days in the freelance and small agency world that I travel in about specializing, and you sound like a perfect example of that because you’ve really niched down. How did you discover this niche and determine that there was enough business there for you to make a living from it?

Robert: It was actually by accident. When I started building some plugins, I wanted to release it to open source so everyone could get some use out of them. I was looking around and there was a website called Leafly and they let dispensaries have their own menus on the Leafly website, and then patients can go browse around the site and find one in their local area. And they have reviews down there, and their API that they had open at the time, you could grab the reviews from a different dispensary based on their ID number, and they could put it on their site. I built the Leafly reviews plugin so you could have a widget or a shortcut that would display your reviews right on your site. Leafly eventually closed their API down so the plugin no longer worked and I was kind of left wondering, “What can I do now for the industry?” I wanted to be able to jump in somehow and it just kind of let me to, “Well, if I can build my own menu system and setup that is separate from that, then the website owners can have menus directly on their site and not have to use some type of eye frame or integration somewhere else with another company. They can own it all themselves.” So I’ve built one and the original version wasn’t really nothing– I wouldn’t write a poem about it but it was something and I got it started and I just kind of kept going at it. And over time, it got picked up by other different websites would write reviews on it and then companies would be writing from now, Canada, Mexico, Italy. It’s just growing organically over time and it got to a point where it was pointless for me to spend time doing other things when this one definitely was showing me that it was worth putting more effort into it.

Tara: I’m keying in on your pun that it grew organically, by the way. I’m not going to let that slip by without mentioning it. [laughter] Can you tell us a little bit more about what menu management is? When you talk about the menu plugin and then you’re talking about menu in terms of how we think of it in WordPress development as the navigation, or a menu like at a restaurant type of menu, of the products?

Robert: More like a restaurant menu. They have different items, like concentrates would be one, waxes, and hashes, and they have the flowers so you can add in all the actual cannabis plants that you can smoke. Then there’s edibles and prerolls. A lot of dispensaries will give you prerolls for X amount of dollars, depending on where you’re getting it from. They’ll give you free ones if you order a certain amount of items. They have all these different things that they can just– like topicals for the different lotions and creams, and as a dispensary owner, you can go to WordPress and it works pretty much just like how blog posts work as its own section where you can add a new flower and then it has the meta boxes and the different taxonomies for things like aromas, what vendors the product might have came from, the process and things like that. Then it outputs it through shortcodes or widget that are built right into the plugin.

Liam: Robert, you have mentioned that this is really taking off for you. You’re on a 90-day focus. Can I ask you if most of your business is coming out of the new states in the United States where Cannabis distribution has been legalized locally?

Robert: Actually, I’ve noticed recently an uptick from Canada, a lot of mail order delivery services are signing up because they can set a website and then a patient can go on and then through one of our add-ons that we have, which connects to WooCommerce, the patient can place the order directly through the site. You get a notification on your phone once you’ve made a sale, and you can package it up and deliver it right to the person’s house form, right to the mail. Canada has it where I don’t believe it’s outspokenly, yes, we do approve of this, but it’s also they have, from what I’m gathering, from the people I’ve talked to, they have different sections that display to you how to package it and mail it properly. They’re pretty relaxed with this. I’ve seen an uptick in Canada mostly.

Liam: Okay, thank you. That’s really interesting. Let me ask you a little bit about why you chose WordPress and how you decided to go forward with that? Was that you were in WordPress and as you decided to progress this menu management system, WordPress was your preferred tool, or were you working generally as a developer and you liked what you saw in WordPress and wanted to go with it from that angle?

Robert: When I started working through getting past the table-based layouts, WordPress was the first content management system I found and I think they were using just the default Kubrick theme at the time. It was way back, and I think 2004, maybe early 2005, and it just progressed from there. I liked it enough to where I could learn and easily hack away at things and customize things. It’s just the one that I stuck with over the years. I’ve kind of toyed around with different ones but nothing really fit. Since I was able to build my life on top of open source and be able to work because of WordPress, I wanted to make sure that what I was doing was giving back to WordPress in one way or another. Because, even though I’m profiting off with add-ons and the themes, and additional support and things that I offer. I still give away the menu plugin because I want everyone to be able to use. If you want to set it up yourself and that’s all you need then you’re more than welcome to do that. I just appreciate the community so I appreciate the people that are going to use it as well.

Liam: Yeah, the community is really important when in WordPress. Speak a little bit about, if you would, your involvement with the community and how you first kind of found WordPress, maybe not as software but the wider WordPress community, and how you actively engaged with it aside from sharing your software for free?

Robert: I think Google searches was the main way that I found different things because I would– I’d have a problem, I can’t figure out how to change this up or that up. And I’d go to Google and I’d search for something, and somebody somewhere had already written a tutorial on how to do whatever it is I was looking for. You find different bloggers at the time, back then around 2005 blogging itself but on your own personal blog was way, I feel, bigger than it is now. Everybody had their own blog and were sharing a lot of things that they were learning. Now, over the years, as I’ve learned a lot through it, I’m trying to give back on my own personal blog and put different code snippets and tutorials together. This way I can make sure that I’m passing on the knowledge as well. I think that’s the best part about the community is a tutorial from 2007 is still pretty much just as relevant today as it was then. Even if you put a little bit out there now, it’ll still sit there and add on to the community over time.

Liam: Yeah, I think I’d agree with that. Obviously, some of the technology will march on but the basic approach, unless the code’s been deprecated, can– at least, if it doesn’t solve the problem, it points you in the right direction, which sometimes is all the push we need si where should I look for the answers. Robert, we’ve talked about pizza, we’ve talked about web development, we’ve talked about your business. Within all of these things, maybe you can share with us your definition of success, be it personal, professional, or a combination thereof?

Robert: I think overall, the business, personal, all of it, to me success is when you’re waking up happy every day to be able to do whatever it is you’re doing. If you’re working for a company remotely or you get up and get in your car every day and go somewhere, you work for yourself. To me, it doesn’t matter as long as at the end of the day, the people that you’re around, you’re happy with them and you’re having fun, and you don’t feel like a horrible bum every day you wake up because you’re kind of just dragging yourself to wherever it is you’re trying to go. I want people to be happy and excited when they get up in the mornings. That’s what I’m trying to do for myself every day. I’m trying to make sure that I can spread that around as much as possible. To me, that’s the gift.

Liam: Yeah, that’s a very simple and very satisfying definition. Wherever you are, be happy there, and if you’re not, work to get out of that. That’s very life-affirming. Within that definition then, what’s the single most important thing you do to either achieve success or sustain that success you’ve already achieved?

Robert: I consistently do work, in some way or another. Whether it’s sitting down for a day and doing nothing but coding, or it’s writing content, or the marketing through different social media outlets are interacting with people face to face. To me, I’m always trying to keep the pressure going and that’s the way I’m able to stay happy. If I sit for too long, I get kind of frustrated. I don’t like to be in a place if I’m not doing something productive. I’d rather just leave. I feel like as long as I’m doing something every day, I’m able to, at the end of the day, put the checklist together and say, “Okay, I knocked out five different things, I feel good about that, I’m happy, I can go to bed now and I’m comfortable.”

Liam: Do you work by yourself, Robert, or in a remote environment and where I’m going from that– go ahead?

Robert: I work by myself.

Liam: Excellent. Within that then, I wonder if you have any kind of tracking system around achieving the little bits of activity, and success, and momentum that you talk about that are so helpful to achieving that success. To give you a bit more context, it’s easy when we work for ourselves or by ourselves, to lose the forest for the trees and thinking, “We’re not getting anywhere.” Because we don’t have somebody to say, “Well, actually, you made this client happy, and remember you updated that code and what a challenge that was and you eventually figured it out. I wonder what you do, if anything, to track that and to document that, so as to help contribute to your success?

Robert: I do a few things actually, I would say. I’ve been using Trello a lot to keep track of different projects, and then I have the different boards inside of it for to-do items, or bug fixes, or different things like that. I’m able to track all that out and then I can see when I’ve knocked different items off the list. I’ll know, “Okay, I knocked all that off the list today and I’m good with that.” Then I’m also now with the 90-day pressure that I’m working on every day tweeting at the end of the day, “Here’s a list of what I’ve done.” With little emojis and things to kind of mark each of them. I’m keeping track publicly of what I’m– a brief overview anyways, not too much detail. But then on my blog, I’m blogging, I’ve blogged a couple of times now about the process and what I’ve been able to accomplish. Then I’m planning on blogging every, I’d say, a couple of weeks now, I’m looking at and doing some type of, again, another public way of saying, “Here’s all the different things that I’ve done.” And then I think that to me is more than enough, I have too many things going on in my head during the day that I’m focused on, to spend too much soaking in my accomplishment. But I see them and I’m able to feel good about them and then move on and try to do the next one. I’m always trying to one-up myself and improve things and make things better. I could sit now and leave everything alone and say, “Great, I did enough.” Then two years go by and it’s completely forgotten about because some things came along that are better, and done things in a better way, and fixed things that I might not have fixed because I’ve just let it go. I’m just always trying to push forward and I think the little things, just seeing them and being able to accept that for a couple seconds and then move on is the best approach for me personally.

Tara: Yeah, it sounds like you have a good handle on your process, documenting what you’re doing and sharing that, which helps you keep track of it. It goes to marketing what you do, but it also shares your process for others to learn from. I think you’re covering a lot of bases there, it’s just great and really interesting. It sounds like you’re focused on these 90 days, can you tell us a little bit about what that 90 days is about and what your end goal is and is this all marketing-based? What is that?

Robert: I think it’s a mixture. It’s a little bit marketing, and then it’s accountability as well to make sure that every day, I don’t want to let a day go by and say, “Oh, I did nothing today because I wasn’t able to.” Or I screwed around and went and did something else. It’s kind of an accountability thing, that’s marketing too because then the people that I’m interacting with on Twitter can kind of keep up to date with what I’m doing, maybe build some anticipation for new addons that I’m working on. Overall, at the end of the 90 days when I started, the amount of money that it was making every month was under what I would personally need and consider full-time income. To meet that goal, I’m trying to exceed that within these 90 days, even though I kind of jumpstarted before I even hit the mark that most people would feel comfortable with. I kind of just took the risk and said, “Okay, in 90 days, I know if I put my head down to it and do it all, I’ll be able to get through it just fine. And hit all the dollar amounts and the traffic amounts and things like that, that I have kind of tucked away to the side.”

Liam: I love the multifaceted, multitiered approach there, it’s all-around business growth. But it sounds like you have some very specific targets that you’re working on, not only end goals but around accountability and day-to-day activity. That’s great. Within that 90-day plan, what’s your favorite thing to do within your work environment?

Robert: Code. It’s weird because a few years back, if someone had asked me, “What’s your favorite day-to-day activity as a freelancer?” I would say, “It would be designing.” Now, it’s more I’m finding the challenges and if there’s a bug that gets reported from a customer or I’m trying to figure out a way to improve something and make it better, I get to sit and just study the code for a little bit and figure it out. It’s almost like a mental chess game for myself. That’s really where I find the most relaxation. Also, I think it’s because I get to put headphones in, the rest of the world’s blocked out and it’s just me and the computer screen. I feel like that’s where I can get my best work done and that’s really what I find the most joy in because I know doing those things, everything else springboards from that. I don’t have new add-on releases, or updates to a plugin or a theme, then nothing can get talked about as new features. There’s really nothing for me to do but just kind of sit around and I don’t want that. I’m always trying to improve and I think doing the code work first, everything else can just springboard off of it. From documentation to marketing and everything else.

Tara: Robert, tell us then on the other side of that, what is your least favorite thing? It sounds like you work by yourself and you cover a lot of different bases, what do you least enjoy?

Robert: I would say the code work as well, [laughter] because sometimes it’s a challenge past beyond what I want to deal with that day, or there’s a semicolon that just kind of got lost in the shuffle in 30,000 lines of code. It can be a headache at the same time. I think that’s also why I love it because it’s always a challenge but sometimes I just want an easier day than that. That’s why I think with the marketing and other– social media marketing, and content writing, and going to the documentation and writing more documentation, and taking new screenshots of things that have been updated in the back-end. It allows me to kind of take a break from the code, too, and there’s a healthy balance of all the different things, that I think that’s because I’m doing everything as a solo founder, that I have to juggle everything at once. I don’t really have time to get too lost in one specific item.

Liam: Yeah, that can be really helpful, especially when you’re running the business yourself, to be able to jump around a little bit and give different parts of your brain a chance to rest. Let me ask you one more question about your preference on coding and your emphasis on how you much like it, and though at the same time are depending on the day. Within that environment of coding, are you more excited to write a new add-on and think about the functionality and think about the best way to code it, or do you find bug fixes and trying to get something to work when it’s broken more challenging, more engaging? Where does the real enjoyment come from you?

Robert: I think out of the two of them, doing the new add-ons or the new enhancements to the WP Dispensary plugin itself, those are the more enjoyable overall. But then I also do get the enjoyment from when I get someone that writes me and says, “Hey, I found a bug. This isn’t working.” And I can sit down and come sit at the desk at that moment and I’m able to, in less than 20 minutes, get a fix to him. That, to me, is enjoyable because then I’m making their experience better as a customer, they can feel happy knowing that, “Okay, I paid for this product and the person behind the product isn’t just a building with 30 different people answering phones and not really being attentive, but it’s the face of the company.” And I’m also handling all the support requests. They have that little bit of human interaction. I feel like that would overall be my favorite side of things is the bug fixes and just the mental challenge of trying to figure out, “I need this to work for a payment processing through WooCommerce.” I’m trying to figure out one day and I can’t get it so I spend four or five hours on it and then I finally figure it out, I get to jump up and I might be the only one in the room at the time jumping up but I’m still excited about it. The big win.

Liam: We all know that victory code dance, right? It works, it works, it works, it works. Robert, we’ve talked a lot about your 90-day plan so I’m going to stay here for the next question. What’s been your biggest challenge within the 90-day plan? What’s given you the most grief or the hardest to get moving ahead on?

Robert: I would say managing personal life outside of wanting to just be able to– I would personally love at times to just sit for 12 to 15 hours in a room with the computer and just do a bunch of work because I know that that’s where the business is going to excel the most. But anybody with the family and people who love them and friends, things like that, is going to know you can’t always get all those hours every day without something coming up or you have to run here and do this or help this person with that. Just trying to manage, I think, the personal side of things. The business side falls in and gets the main attention, and then everything else is kind of just puppeteered, I would guess. I would say that would be the best way to say it but just trying to manage that would be probably the hardest aspect of it all.

Liam: Growing at the rate you want without sacrificing the friends and the family and the loved ones around you, that’s difficult.

Robert: Yeah, I don’t want to lock myself up in the corner for 37 days, not see a soul and never shave and see the outside sun. I’m putting myself in a prison at that point, I don’t want to do that. Just trying to find the balance of it all, I think, has been the most challenging part.

Tara: We’re going to talk a little bit about advice but I want to start with the question about what advice you would give to somebody who is just starting out?

Robert: Learn every day something new, there’s too many websites out there right now that you can go to that have free courses to learn pretty much any kind of code language you want or design skill you want. Or you can go to websites that allow you to create different graphics right on their site, and just learn that enough to where you can get an idea of what you like to do the best. But just learn something every day and as you’re learning, give back and teach other people so this way, someone coming up under you might not feel like they can do it, but then they see you doing it and they say, “Okay, I think I can do it now because so and so is making something great. I want to make something great too. You never know who you’re going to inspire so just keep learning and keep inspiring other people at the same time.”

Tara: Yeah, that’s great advice. Do you have people who advised you, mentored you as you were coming up through the ranks?

Robert: Everybody that ever wrote a tutorial and put it up on their website, or a Stack Overflow comment that has seven years behind it but it still works. Anybody that’s put that– because that’s how I’ve learned throughout the years is just reading code, reading other people’s open source code if it’s comment, if I can see certain things and how they work. I’ve never personally taken schooling for it so I’ve learned through the internet. I appreciate everybody on the internet that put a tutorial out there, even if I haven’t learned specifically from you, it’s still appreciated because it’s helping someone somewhere.

Liam: Robert, have you been to WordCamps before? Are you active in your local WordPress community?

Robert: No, I haven’t been to a WordCamp. I was trying to go to WordCamp Ann Arbor just past two weeks ago and I was trying to go, but everything with the personal life, trying to juggle it all, I didn’t have the ability to get there but I’ve already talked to the people that are kind of working it and let them know that I will be there next year. I’m trying to get more active in those things as well, plus with the business growing, I want to be able to put the business out there because not everybody’s heard about it or knows, or cares about the industry itself, so they might not have searched and seen something for this industry that’s been built with WordPress like this. I feel like the face to face and interacting with people is to me the next logical step and that’s what I’m planning on doing over the course of the next year or so.

Liam: Fantastic. That 90-day plan expanded out to 365, I love it. We’re going to circle around to that advice question. Tara had referenced advice that you would like to give, but I’m going to ask you what’s the single most valuable piece of advice, and it can be either professional or personal, that you have ever received and implemented and benefited from in your own life?

Robert: I’d say again, never stop learning. As long as you’re learning something, you can apply it and do something with it. Just learn something every day because the things I’m doing now, I didn’t know how to do some of them six months ago or even six weeks ago. As long as you’re learning, you can always grow, prevented you’re not learning something– and I don’t mean pick up a book and read a whole book that’s 400 pages in a week, and do that every week for your whole entire life, but you can learn something, there’s too much out there not too. So as long as you’re learning something every day, I think that’s the best thing that you can do for yourself.

Liam: Aside from code, which you’re actively learning every day, what do you like to learn about when you’ve left that dark room where you’ve been coding for the last eight hours and you’re reengaging with your family and friends? What do you learn about?

Robert: Actually, I stay away from politics and things like that, so I try to just listen to music and talk about new artists that are out, hang out and build something. Build a shed or work with my hands, because if I’m on the computer all day, I’m kind of just sitting at a desk so I try to just get out and do more outside activities so I’m not cooped up in the house all day and feeling like I’m caged in.

Liam: Make a shed? It sounds like you’re allowed to own a hammer, I am not. [laughter]

Robert: I have a couple.

Liam: I had a hammer but I put a hole in a pipe and the bathroom leaked and my hammer got taken away from me with just cause, I suppose.

Robert: It happens to the best of us so you should put in a request for your hammer back at some point, I think it might have been long enough now. [laughter]

Liam: I’ll take some online hammer training.

Robert: There you go, a couple Youtube videos, you’ll be all set.

Liam: Robert, let me ask you one more question if I can as I try to mess with my headphone cable here. I got myself all tripped up a little bit. We’ve talked about least favorite and most favorite things to do but tell us a little bit about within these 90 days, what are you finding that you’re the best at and does that surprise you that you’re so good at it?

Robert: That’s a good question. I would say the thing that I’m finding the most, I guess, easy stride through would be the marketing side of things. Beyond just marketing and saying, “Okay, here’s some documentation.” And showing off the new stuff that’s happened but just putting out different content and content marketing and things like that. It’s probably from the affiliate marketing and things I’ve done throughout the year that I kind of find rhythm in that, being able to put the right keywords in the right places without making it look too spammy or put images the right way and just kind of applying that knowledge that I’ve gained over into the marketing side of things, the content marketing and a little bit of social media. I use social media more as just the way to just talk to people. I have an Instagram account for both WP Dispensary and myself but I use them mainly just sporadically. I don’t really share day-to-day activities on Instagram how some people do, or I don’t use it for just pushing Instagram quotes or things like that. But I just interact with people on those and keep them more social, but I like the marketing side of things. Content marketing is probably the best.

Liam: Well, then we’ll have to be sure to keep an eye out for the content that you’re putting out on social media. And I’ll ask you now to let us know where we can find you online because we’ve run out of time with this conversation, it’s been fantastic. Before we say goodbye to you, can you just tell people where they can find you online and keep track of what you’re doing and what you’re building?

Robert: My personal site is Robertdevore.com and you can find the Instagram and the Twitter account on there as well. WP Dispensary site is wpdispensary.com. You can also find the Twitter and the Instagram account for that on there also.

Liam: Excellent, WP Dispensary. I said it right that time.

Tara: You said it right.

Liam: [laughs] Robert, thank you so much for joining us, absolute pleasure getting to know you, really, really appreciate your time this afternoon.

Tara: Thanks, Robert. Thank you.

Robert: Thank you for having me. 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.

Ani is a WordPress enthusiast from Michigan who works as a Manage WordPress project director for Liquid Web. She also runs Syntax & Salt Stories, an online journal of speculative fiction.

Website | aniking.info

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 22.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Ani King. Ani is a WordPress enthusiast from Michigan. She currently works as a Manage WordPress project director for Liquid Web. She also runs Syntax & Salt Stories, an online journal of speculative fiction.

Ani: Hey, it’s so good to be here. My name is Ani King.

Tara: Hi Ani, welcome. We’re excited to have you with us today. Can you beyond what Liam just described? Can you tell us a bit more about yourself and your background?

Ani: Certainly. I started working with WordPress just as a user about six or seven years ago, it’s hard to tell anymore. I had tried building websites from scratch, I wasn’t very good at it, and I found that WordPress made it possible for me to use my nitpicky editor skills more than my not so great coding skills to modify things. I’ve been with Liquid Web for 10 years this past October 1st. And I have kind of run that game professionally from providing direct customer support for Linux-based hosts, Windows-based hosts, to leading different teams, to creating different teams. And now I’m a project director and I’m really excited that I’m working with Manage WordPress.

Tara: That’s great. Can you back up a little bit when you say that you are looking to build websites? What drove you to that? What were you building websites for initially? What brought you into that?

Ani: Largely, I wanted to do craft blogging. I do a lot of sewing, and knitting, and drawing, and writing. And I always have some kind of hobby that you need some sort of thing in order to do it. I, at the time, thought it would be fun to connect with a lot of other, mostly women, crafters out there that I knew were running websites, and blogs, and so on. And a lot of them were using Blogger, which is where I got started. But I wanted to be able to customize more and play with it, and break it as often as possible. Because I worked in hosting, I had free access to hosting and because when you see panel, you have one-click WordPress installs and it was very easy to get started.

Tara: So you were already working for Liquid Web when you were starting to do the blogging. That kind of was a natural progression for you then?

Ani: I was, yeah. I had done a little bit of blogging prior to starting at Liquid Web but as I kind of had better understanding of, “Here’s how you can do some hosting and here are some best practices, and here’s how you can get your information out there.” It became a lot more interesting to me.

Tara: Yeah. Do you have a tech background? Is that what brought you to Liquid Web? You’ve been there a long time, I know that Liquid Web is on the radar a lot these days because they’ve launched this new Manage WordPress product, so you’ve been there for a long time. How did you get started with them?

Ani: I didn’t have a lot of technical background. I had done dial-up and ISDN support in the mid-2000s, but then I was living up north. My family and I were just looking for a way to expand from where we had been, and I had friends who worked at Liquid Web. They had naturally progressed there as part of their own technical backgrounds and helped me get a foot in the door so I can get started.

Tara: Great. It’s based in Michigan, isn’t it?

Ani: Yeah, it was started here in Lansing, Michigan in 1997.

Tara: Okay. Tell me a bit about your Syntax & Salt Stories website? I took a look at it, it’s beautiful. Where did that come from?

Ani: Thank you. I worked and collaborated with a group of, mostly, women through a critiquing site fiction, non-fiction, so on. There’s a critiquing site called Scribophile.com and I met eight or nine other women where we would work on our own personal writing together. And we found that we really had an affinity for the same genres. We loved magical realism and science fiction, we really liked it when we could help encourage other people who were terrific writers in some way, so we decided that we would launch Syntax & Salt as kind of our way, not to just work on putting our own voices out there as writers, but to start helping other people get out there. We have been open since January of 2016 and we post new issue every quarter and sometimes do special things in between just to keep engagement up and get more writers out there.

Tara: What kind of following do you have? Is it something that– this sounds like it’s a hobby, and love, and passion, is it also a business venture at all?

Ani: I would like for it to be at some point. It can be really demanding, and because my own work is pretty demanding, it’s hard to take it from that next level of, “I have X amount of time to dedicate to this and I want to make it more of a long-term and profitable thing.” From hobby state that’s in, we have eight readers, we have a lot of authors, we do a lot of social media engagement and promotion. I think that the next step is, do we continue on as an actual non-profit and start working towards grant funding, or something like that, or do we start moving towards a for-profit system, and find a way that we can engage more people and fund better and pay authors more and so on.

Tara: Yeah, I think that’s a challenge to figure out which road you want to go down and how to fit that in, because either way you go, it becomes more than just a part-time hobby when you start making it into a business, I would think.

Ani: Absolutely.

Tara: Yeah. Ani, your time with Liquid Web, and it sounds like you’ve got a lot of hobbies and things that you’re pursuing, so it’s maybe fulfilled all corners of yourself, one thing we talk about is success on this show. We like to ask people about their philosophies around success. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? What you define as success and where you find yourself in that picture?

Ani: I have been struggling with this question, I think, for most of my adult life. I think it’s a strange thing to define because there are times where I can look and say, oh, I’m very financially successful, I’ve come from a single-parent home where bills being paid on time wasn’t something we ever talked about. An adult who takes good care of his family, who is able to really maintain a level. My bills are paid on time, I don’t have to worry about emergencies as much as I did five years ago, and that feels like success. But then there are other times where I think even having that financial success is looking at what is my work-life balance fallout. And I think that that’s an area I’m not always very good at. Even being able to say that balance is a huge part of being successful and being happy. I’m still really trying to find a good way for me to maintain it, if that makes sense.

Tara: Yeah, it really does. I think a lot of us feel that way, that work-life balance phrase is pretty popular these days. But it sounds like you do make sense on things that are life more than work, even though Syntax & Salt is something that I’m sure sometimes feels like it’s work but it’s something that has grown out of the passion. I think it sounds like you have a mixture of both, but I can see that the balance when you’ve worked more for a long time and you love what you do, it’s hard to put that aside. And you’re probably on the computer a lot, I would imagine.

Ani: That’s a lot of it, but I think that in terms of what does my own personal success look like if I say, “Okay, so much time I want to be here and here’s where I’m at.” I feel a lot more periods of content than I think that I ever have. I’m challenged at work, I’m learning how to do new things pretty regularly. I’m teaching myself how to do new things, it’s part of running this magazine. Being able to use the things that I learn from both of those aspects, in addition to just talking to other people with different hobbies or spending time with my kids and my family. That feels like success. I have been talking to my kids a lot because they’re 11 and 14 and what is success going to look like for them when they’re older? And some of that comes from, okay, as a kid who’s going to school, you have certain things you need to do. And no, you don’t need to go to Harvard, or you don’t need to aim for the moon but you have to aim somewhere. You have to aim for the things that are going to make you happy. Even if that means that you’ll have jobs that aren’t always satisfying, you have to have some element of satisfaction there as you’re getting older. A lot of it comes back to that, if you don’t do the work now, you’re going to really regret it as you get older, as it takes more and more time for you to be able to do those things that you want to do.

Liam: Yeah, I agree. You have to aim high whatever high is for you, and it can be a great art school, it could be Harvard, right? But it can also be a tech school, it could be not even school but I want that job and I have to work hard to get there. To your point, sometimes we have to take the longer route because we don’t have the immediate capacity to get that ideal job, ideal role. And we’ve got to put our time in, kind of dancing our way to get there. I very much appreciate your definition of success. I want to go back to something you said earlier, but before you do, I think we should probably just mention, just officially for record that Liquid Web is our sponsor, we have them as hosting. This may, to the cynically-minded listeners sound like a big advert, that’s absolutely not the case at all. So just to get that big elephant out of the way. Let me come back to you around your work balance side projects, and I have a question because I run a little blog called Chickenmonkeydog and we write about a bunch of, basically, the quirky side of life is what we say. To Tara’s point, some days it feels like a job and other days it’s a hobby. And what gets me going, what keeps me coming back to it sometimes more than others is that I really enjoy the creative opportunity of coming up with something, and something that isn’t related to a client deliverable, or necessarily even to a family deliverable, if you will. And I wonder if you can speak about what keeps you going around your writing project. I imagine it’s a number of things but is there kind of one thing that even when– “Oh, I just wish it was a business, or I wish it was done, or I wish somebody else would manage it.” What’s the one thing that keeps you pulling you back there?

Ani: I remember the feeling that I got the first time that one of my short stories got published, and we publish a lot of first-time authors. There’s no comparison. First time you get that email saying, “We love your story so much and we can’t wait to publish it, this is incredible.” That response from people who meet– because I always send their acceptance letters out. Being the person who is the first one to say to them, “What you have done is so valuable and I’m so happy you did it.” Even when we get tons and tons of submissions and we have readers who are sick, or we have readers who are on holiday, or we have multiple readers who are affected by different weather issues with hurricanes and so on. So it gets overwhelming, and there are times where it does feel like just as much work is going into the office. Writing rejections is never fun and then some of the authors are very concerned about how we’re going to treat their story. There’s a lot of contact there, they really want to walk through everything. That can become overwhelming, but it’s absolutely that I get to tell somebody yes. And that feels really good. Then I not only get to tell them yes but then I get to present their story in a way that I think is really visually appealing. It’s not, I put my own first story up on the blog, if somebody took the time to treat my story and create or choose artwork for it and wrap some sense of feeling around it, and I really love doing that.

Tara: That’s beautiful. That is a great feeling to tell somebody yes, I think. I love the feeling of being said yes to, we all do, but I think what you’re talking about is something I don’t think about that often, which is the thrill of making someone else feel good. I mean, the ability to do that, the level that you’re talking about certainly. If you’re in the grocery store and you’re friendly with someone and say something nice, that feels good too, but the level of enjoyment that someone would get from what you’re doing, I can imagine, is great, to be validated and have your creativity validated like that. Along those lines, what would you say is your favorite thing that you do every day?

Ani: Honestly, I think probably my favorite thing that I do every day is mornings with my kids, which is not necessarily related to work or hobbies, but–

Liam: It’s more important than both.

Ani: And 10 years ago, this would not have been my answer. [laughter] But I’m really fortunate in that I can kind of set my own schedule. Through the school year now, I get at five to 5:30 and my son gets up at 5:45. I make coffee, and we have coffee together before he leaves for the bus. And then I get a little bit of time myself together before my daughter gets up, and then she usually shows me whatever she stayed up too late drawing because she does want to go to art school some day and definitely will. And I get a little bit of that time with them before their day kind of becomes their own, before it’s all about their friends and all about any drama they have going on, or something they’re trying to learn, or the things they’re concerned about, or the news. Because my 14-year-old son is a news junkie already, which is doing wonders for him. [laughter]

Liam: It sets its own challenges, doesn’t it?

Ani: It does. It’s like, I get them at the store, I get them before everything has laid all of us down and before we get to dinner when we’re all eating and I’m in a bad mood because I’m still working from my phone or my husband’s in a bad mood because he’s a stay-at-home dad and maybe his day just didn’t go the way that it needed to for him to get all of the stuff that he wanted to be done. Or the kids didn’t have a good day at school. I get them before all of that and I really like that.

Tara: Oh my gosh, it’s making my eyes well up just a little bit here when you talk about that because I’m a recent empty nester and I also worked from home, so it’s so great to hear that you’re appreciating those moments that you have. Because, before you know it, they’re gone and so to savor them, like you’re doing, I love that answer and I really value what you said. It’s truly a gift, I think, to have the flexibility. And Liam I know is in the same boat to have the flexibility to set a schedule where you can spend time with your children. I’m going to start crying now. [laughter]

Liam: I’ll take over so you have your little cry. I think it’s one of the best benefits of working from home, that flexibility to be there, and also to be there when they need it. Disruptive is the call from the school that somebody has a headache, it’s kind of nice to be able to say, “Well, somebody needs me. I’m going to go hop out where I can.” Yeah, it’s great.

Ani: I really appreciate it, I do work from the office three or four days a week just so that I’m present. But I don’t have to be there right at eight. If I’m going to take one of the kids to school– just because my daughter has not been on time once in like three years. Sometimes I’ll drive her in, but that flexibility is not common for a lot of people so I’m trying to make sure I really appreciate the fact that I have it because it does make a difference.

Tara: Yeah, it really does. I’m going to step away from that and move on to a different topic, which is the WordPress community. before we started recording, you mentioned that you’ve recently been to a WordCamp near you. Can you talk a little bit about your interaction and maybe your discovery of the WordPress community and what role you play or what role it plays for you?

Ani: I’d love to. I didn’t know a lot about the WordPress community really until I moved into my current role with the Manage WordPress product that we have. I have used it for a long time and like a lot of people who tend to be more technically driven, I tend to go Google than I do anything. I interacted a little bit on the forums but I honestly had no idea that there was this thriving community. I didn’t know what a WordCamp was. The first time that A.J. Morris, who you may be familiar with, mentioned WordCamp to me, I was like, “Okay, I don’t know what you’re talking about but sure, I’ll go.” And I went to WordCamp Ann Arbor for my first one last year and it was wonderful. Because I was like, “What is a happiness bar? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And I went to the happiness bar and AJ said, “Have some talks and head the booth, but here’s where you’re really going to probably get a chance to meet and talk to people.” I was like, “Okay, I don’t know a lot about WordPress, I don’t know how much happiness I’m going to spread around here.” [laughter] And I ended up talking to three or four people and I was mostly able to help them either with their question or find somebody. Because there were a couple of people sitting next to me who were like, “Oh, I know the answer to that.” And they were kind of listening and like, hey, I can help with that. It was such an interesting experience because I’ve been out for work meeting customers or meeting all kinds of people, but I hadn’t really gone to something where the point is community. The point is, let’s share what we know with each other. Let’s ask questions, let’s answer questions, let’s get to know each other. And I really loved it. Before going, A.J. had said, he’s like, “I know that you’ve built support teams.” Because that was my function at the time was to build a support team for Manage WordPress. He was like, “But I don’t think that you really understand the WordPress community and I think you really need to if you’re going to do this right.” I was a little like, “Come on, how hard can this be?” And he was right, and not in a, “Oh, this is going to be a lot harder than I thought.” But in a, “This is not as hard as you think it’s going to be because there is so much community around it.”

Tara: Right, that’s interesting. Impressive that you’ve jumped into a happiness bar at your first WordCamp, but it is a collaborative effort, it’s a great feeling to be sitting in a room, and if you can’t answer it, somebody else will chime in right behind you or vice versa. That’s a great thing about the happiness bar and the WordCamps. I’m glad that you’ve discovered it and are getting something out of it, as everyone seems to. Let’s talk a little bit about your future and where you see yourself? You talked a little bit about Syntax & Salt and maybe making that into more of a business, but if you talk about where you see yourself in a couple of years or five years, what do you see?

Ani: I’ve really been focusing on moving more into community engagement and management and customer experience. One of the things I can say through every job I’ve ever had, whether it’s this one or there’s any other role where I’m at, whether it was waiting tables, or bartending, or working for EMS, the list goes on and on, it’s that I really care about customer experience. Whether it’s making sure that you get your drinks refilled and you’re sitting at a table, or you are having a technical issue on your platform and you haven’t been able to get the response that you feel like you should and somebody needs to take care of that. I’d like to be the person who steps in there but I’m also– I’m Hermione, I’m a nitpicker. If you want somebody to test a plugin for you, my first question is, “Okay, how many layers of nitpick do you want me to go?” And it’s not because I think that something is bad, it’s because I think that I have a pretty keen eye for ways that you can improve something. And I think customer experience is really dependent on that keen eye. And because I’ve worked in so many different roles with people, I’d like to be able to kind of develop that sense of what do people want, how do they want it, and how do we deliver that so that I can affect things. If you’re developing your product, or if you’re doing web design, or if you’re doing something like that. This is really great but I think I can help you make it better. I enjoy that, I like that aspect of what I’ve transitioned into doing with Manage WordPress a lot, being able to say, “This is so good, let’s go a little bit further here.” That’s my hope is to be doing a lot more of that.

Tara: Yeah, I think when you’re working on something like you are that’s new and that’s evolving and sort of testing the waters and doing new things, that gives you a great opportunity to use that part of your brain.

Liam: We’ve talked about your definition of success, we’ve touched on what you like to do, we touched on where you want to go. What I’d like to do is just backward for just a minute and ask you what is the single most valuable piece of advice that you’ve received, be it personal or professional, maybe both, and that you’ve implemented in your life?

Ani: I think probably– and this is a little bit on the personal side. When I was 17, I didn’t have a very good home life. I graduated from high school in a county jail. Lots of bad choices but just kind of that failed perfectionist across the board. And one of the requirements for me to graduate and go home was that I had to meet with a court-ordered counselor who ended up being a really, really good friend over time. But the thing that he said was, “Not everyone is going to set you up to succeed and you’re going to have to figure out how to roll the failing.” And that is such a hard thing to do, because you go into every situation hoping that people are thinking about, “I want to make sure that you do a good job and you have what you need.” But that’s not always true. And sometimes even when people do that, what you put out is not going to be what they want. You’re not going to succeed at everything you do, and if you can’t roll with that and you can’t recover from it, and you can’t get back up and say, “Okay, this is really hard.” And then trudge forward. Then I think it makes it really hard to succeed at anything because failure is the first step to succeeding with anything.

Tara: Wow, thank you for sharing that. This is the second time you’ve made me cry. [laughs] I was supposed to make you cry I think. I think that isi such an inspirational message and it says a lot about making decisions, making choices based on how inspired you are at the moment and what you’re aiming to do. I think it is really easy to fail and once you’ve done that, to turn that around, I think, is very challenging. It takes a lot to dig down deep and overcome that failure. I have some personal experience with that myself and I think it’s great to see how far you’ve come when you talked about success at the beginning. Having heard this story from you, Ani, I think really brings that full circle and makes that definition of success all the more meaningful. I guess I want to say congratulations but I also want to say thank you for sharing that.

Ani: Thank you.

Liam: I’ll double up on the thank you, to share so candidly about your personal life is very powerful and hugely moving, so thank you for that. The ability to fail in a safe way is– boy, there’s a life lesson right there, just to do that, just fail. Whether it’s failing at a job, or failing at a task, failing at a relationship, failing as a parent in some episode, and to fail in a way that we’re safe and we can get back up and we can dust ourselves off, and if we need to make amends, we can do that, and if we need to dust off other people, we can help with that. You went deep on us on that one.

Tara: Yeah, it sounds like you also had a great mentor who helped you to give you advice like that and to help pull you forward. But I’m sure raising your own children is in the back of your mind as well. And also going back, not full circle, but talking about success and sort of what people’s goals are is for them. Whether it’s Harvard or whether it’s driving a truck, “Whatever is the goal, I’m going to make someone happy.” And it might not be something that brings them joy right away as we talked about. I think all of your experience wraps up into what you’ve talked about here with us today and so, again, I’m grateful for that.

Ani: Thank you.

Liam: Ani, I wonder if I can ask you– I don’t want to dig too deeply but kind of in a practical sense, how do we as humans learn to fail safely, learn to fail constructively?

Ani: I think a lot of it comes with, those who are old enough and able and have their privilege to consider failing safely, kind of passing that on and creating spaces where the people who work for us, or our kids, or our friends, or our lovers, or any of those people where they can feel safely, and the first response isn’t, “You failed and I can’t believe you’ve done this.” But where it’s saying, “Okay, so you’ve failed. Let’s talk about it, let’s talk about what that means.” My oldest son struggles with school so much and I don’t want to say that it doesn’t get frustrating because, again, failed perfectionist. But taking a step back and saying, “Buddy, we’re going to talk about this later because I’m upset right now but I don’t think that’s going to help you. I think that we have to talk about if this keeps being a problem, how do I help you move forward from it, not– I just get mad at you because you didn’t understand this or you didn’t do this.” And I think even as adults, when we work with people, assume positive intent. People don’t fail usually on purpose unless there’s a reason there. They fail because they don’t know how to do something or they didn’t have help, or they didn’t understand the tools, or they didn’t ask for help. But not usually because they just feel like it.

Tara: Right, they don’t believe in themselves or have self-confidence. Yeah, I think that’s very true, very true. And it’s also hard if your feelings of disappointment in your children if they’re failing, or your concerns about them regretting that because we all have done things that we regret. We want to protect our children from failing in their own way or as we have. Again, thank you for sharing that. I can keep going on and on but I know we’re running out of time but this is a truly– we can keep going deeper and deeper and share more and more, but I think this has been very valuable and I really love where this has gone and the message that you shared with us.

Ani: It’s been a pleasure.

Tara: Ani, where can people find you? We’ll put some show notes together and we’ll definitely put a link to Syntax & Salt, but can you tell us some other ways people can find you?

Ani: You can find me at Aniking.info. That’s my personal website. I tend to mostly pop off about things there, whether it be bad behavior in the workplace or how to behave like a better person on the internet, that’s mostly all opinion. And then the magazine site which is great if you want to read a lot of new writers because they’re awesome. Then I’m on Twitter, just @ me, @aniking, that’s it.

Tara: Great, thank you so much. I’m so glad that you were able to join us today and I can’t wait to share this with everyone so thanks for joining us Ani.

Ani: Thank you so much for having me.

Liam: Thanks, Ani. It was an absolute pleasure chatting with you and learning from you today, thank you so much for your candid sharing, we appreciate it so much.

Ani: Thank you so much. 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.