Hallway Chats

Joe Howard is the Head Buff at WP Buffs. Hailing from Washington, D.C., Joe drinks nine cups of tea every day.

WP Buffs | wpbuffs.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:Today’s show is brought to you in part by Liquid Web.

Liam: We sure know that there’s a lot of choice when it comes to hosting your WordPress site. Liquid Web is the Managed WordPress partner you’ve been waiting for. Whether you’re a business owner, an agency, or a freelancer, Liquid Web has you covered when it comes to performance, uptime, and ease of site management.

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Tara: And now, the conversation begins. This is episode 6.

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

Tara: I’m Tara Claeys. We’re here today with Joe Howard. Joe is the head buff at WP Buffs. Joe is from Washington, D.C. He tells us that he drinks 9 cups of tea a day.

Liam: Joe? Welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Joe: Howdy guys. Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Liam: I bet you are if you are halfway through nine cups of tea!

Joe: Oh yeah! I’m on number four right now. I am drinking out of my NASA mug. So yeah. There’s a lot going on.

Liam: Awesome. Joe? Tell us a little about yourself; who you are and what you do. We know you’re from DC but fill in the gaps for us please.

Joe: Sure Liam. I am indeed from the nation’s capital Washington DC born and raised and now back in the district. Like Tara mentioned, I run a company called WP Buffs. We are the CTO for entrepreneurs and small businesses that run WordPress websites. We provide ongoing security performance review, maintenance, and any ongoing support issues that people need for a monthly subscription. That’s my role in the WordPress space.

Liam: That is awesome. So you said that you provide a CTO role. You work in a lot of a support. You kind of do whatever a client needs to be done within their WordPress builds. Tell me a little bit about (if you can) how you got into WordPress from the start. As your interest and involvement in WordPress grew, how did that eventually become what you doing today with WP Buffs?

Joe: So my origins in WordPress happened a long time ago. When I graduated college, I actually graduated with a major in mathematics and education. So I came back to DC (like I said I was born and raised here). I came back to DC and taught high school math for a couple years. Actually, nothing related to WordPress at all. After I finished two years teaching in DC public schools I decided to transition to something else. I wanted to join startup. I proceeded to work for a few very small marketing agencies. By very small, I mean I was the first employee at these companies. As the high title of Director of Operations I got to do some of everything. With our digital marketing just we chose WordPress as our CMS of choice. It’s a great choice for people who aren’t highly technical and don’t want to be involved with all the technical work or have to do it. It allows us to create customized solutions for people as well at the same time. That’s how I got into it. My background is in digital marketing and WordPress, the happy medium of both of those two.

Liam: Thank you.

Tara: How did you go from being a teacher to marketing and digital communication?

Joe: That’s a very good question. When I decided that I wanted to transition from teaching high school high school…I always enjoyed the challenge of being a teacher…teaching in public schools in an urban environment is definitely difficult. I like embracing a challenge like that. When I was selected to a school where I would be teaching (the school was actually selected for me through my program) I didn’t feel like the staff around the school was in a position to help the students succeed. When I was transitioning away, I knew I wanted to do something else where I could really climb a mountain that had its serious challenges. I wanted something where I could really pick my team a little better. I thought and I still think that regardless of how big a challenge, if you have the right people on the team you can you can move forward and figure it out. I thought start being in a startup is a great place to be. Probably the real reason I got into digital marketing was because it doesn’t take a lot of education to start doing. I’m someone who likes to jump in and start tinkering and figuring things out. Although I wasn’t starting off with big clients at first I started off doing smaller projects (you know the company started doing smaller projects) and digital marketing was a space I could really sink my teeth into right away without having to take 20 weeks of online courses or go get a second degree or anything like that. Digital marketing is changing every day so it really just requires constant education and experimentation. That’s really how I went digital in the first place. It’s been great to me so far.

Liam: That is awesome. As you transitioned from teaching into digital marketing you worked for a few startups. I don’t know if you’d use the term startup to describe WP Buffs…but you’ve transitioned again and you’re running your own business and you’re growing that. Over the course son of your career and in your professional life (let me ask this question and in two parts) how would you define success today for you? What’s your definition of it? How has that changed over your career?

Joe: Well success is hard to measure because are so many ways to measure it and none of them are right or wrong. They’re just really dependent on what you know as an individual when considering success, I would say (for me) before I started WP Buffs I really saw success in a more financial sense. How much money was I making and was my company making money for me and for my staff. As I transitioned into being an employee and also doing some government contract work as well and transitioning from that to really running my own company, I’ve really kind of taken on this entrepreneurial role. In a way, I think success is just a lot about how authentic you are to yourself and how happy you can be doing what you’re doing. There are lot of millionaires out there who are not happy because they are just trying to make another million dollars. Where does that stop? Once you hit a billion are you then successful? No, you need to get another billion. I’ve got to catch up with the other guys. That’s kind of an empty journey. I think I figured that out over the last few years. Although a financial situation is important, it’s not my primary form of happiness. I’m happy running my own business. I’m happy helping people with their WordPress sites. I’m happy that I get to work in the WordPress community every day. How lucky can I be? The WordPress community is amazing. Liam, Tara, and everyone else that is so friendly; that’s worth more a few extra bucks in my pocket.

Tara: Wow!

Liam: Wow! I couldn’t agree with you more on so many different levels. Tara? Go ahead.

Tara: How did you find the WordPress community?

Joe: Like I mentioned, I am in Washington DC. Over time, I started getting more and more involved in the WordPress DC Meetup. I think that was my first introduction to the community. So Tara, I met you there probably two or three years ago at this point. I heard other people give talks and then I started giving talks at the WordPress DC Meetup. I’ve joined you in Arlington Meetup. I’m giving a talk next week at the Baltimore Meetup. I think the Meetups kind of started my introduction. Then a couple of years ago, I found these things called WordCamps. I was like, what are these? People get together and it’s like another level of a WordPress Meetup. How did I not find these things before? You know when you buy a piece of software…Meetups were exactly what I need. I saw these WordCamps. I was like boom! This is perfect. So since then I’ve been hitting up a lot of WordCamps. I’ve been at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I’ve been to Miami. I’ve been to Baltimore and WordCamp US for a couple years. They’ve been great. I’ve actually hired people who I met from the WordPress Lancaster Meetup. The community really is vibrant. That’s how I kind of got started in things. I’ve started speaking at more WordCamps and giving back to the community. Hopefully, I will continue that upward trajectory in the WordPress community.

Liam: That is awesome! Now that you are running your own business you have lots of fun things to do. Tell me about your workday. What is your favorite thing to do and get you out of bed?

Joe: Well what gets me out of bed may not be my favorite thing to do. What gets me out of bed is answering customer requests (not just customer requests) but making sure that our customers are happy. When I wake up, the first thing I do is check my email to make sure that there’s nothing that’s gone terribly wrong in the middle of the night. I built WP Buffs as a remote team. The fact that we handle WordPress security for so many people, we have to have someone available 24 x7. So things are getting handled 24 hours a day. My highest priority at this point is making sure customers are happy and that were providing really good service for people. The first thing I do is make sure customers are happy and that nothing has gone wrong and that the ship is headed in the right direction. My favorite part of my day is probably just working with my team. As anyone who’s started a small business start up knows at first you’re doing everything. You’re managing the accounting, you’re handling all the customer requests, you’re growing the team and you have a hand in every pot. As time has gone on, I’ve taken on more of the role of a people manager with my technical team. I’ve got six developers who do an assortment of tasks now. I’m managing that team. We have some happiness the engineers and more support staff. I’m not sure if that phrase is trademarked by WordPress. Don’t sue me WordPress, I’m sorry. We have people manning the helpdesk. We have US based people and non-US based people. I’ve taken automatic approach on things. Yeah, that is probably the favorite part of my day. It is really having so many moving pieces happening at one time and really kind of being the quarterback behind that and making sure that my people have the resources that they need. The team is great. Everyone who I have hired (I think I’ve gotten pretty lucky in hiring so far), everyone’s turned out really well. At least for the most part hiring has turned out pretty well. I get to manage people all day. They really do the magic. I’m just kind of a puppet master in the background making sure things don’t go horribly awry. They do an awesome job. So really, it’s about the team.

Tara: So it sounds like you are the main customer service point of contact with your customers at the moment? So when you say you go with that when you wake up and you have 24 hour services, that is challenge for you? How scalable is that?

Joe: I mentioned a few minutes ago that we just hired Becky Weaver out of WordCamp Lancaster. She is fully managing the helpdesk at this point. She’s done an absolute fantastic job with almost no mistakes. She is answering emails left and right. She has taken our culture and the tone that we want in emails. We want to be efficient with people and get them changes fast but we also want to make them smile. It’s a customer service business and we want people to have fun while they’re working with us. That’s really important as well. She’s taking all that in stride. At this point, I am just making sure that there are no websites down and that I don’t have an email from someone. Although I’m not in the day-to-day execution of things all the time anymore, I am the head guy. I’ve got to make sure that things will work out well. A lot of times in our ticketing system someone will assign me a task or they’ll tag me in something and say hey! We want to make sure that this is done right according to the systems we have in place. Sometimes we get things that are outside the scope of systems or are fringe things that happen. We don’t have a system for that. So I will help create something for that. That’s what I mean by making sure that all the trains are running on time.

Tara: A follow up on that…so it sounds like you have a lot of websites that you didn’t build or that you’re not hosting. I know issues happen on websites. They go down because of server issues, plugins, or things like that. Do you have permissions to interact with hosts on behalf of your clients? What kind of guarantees can you provide if they are on bad hosting? How do you handle that?

Joe: That is a very good question and probably a little more complicated than I have the time to totally answer. We offer hosting. We partner with a few different hosts. Who you host with is going to depend entirely on your website. You have certain applications and functions for your website. If you have a certain amount of traffic, that’s going to dictate where you want to host a website and what kind of environment is necessary for you. If you have a small personal blog that gets a hundred visits a month, you’re probably fine on shared hosting. If you have a website (we have one customer with us who gets 6 million page views a year) which is significant. You want to host a high-powered, vps dedicated server for something like that. So we partner with a few different hosts. We suggest that people host with us. It allows us to have full control over their environment .

Tara: Yeah, that makes sense.

Joe: As you guys know, I’m sure you’ve gotten clients before who are on a GoDaddy shared server and they just don’t want to know upgrade to the third level. They’re hitting their execution limits and they’re mad at you. They don’t know why their site is not working. It requires more investment in the hosting infrastructure. We urge people to host with us because we have full control over everything that’s required for a managed WordPress hosting provider. Also, part of our job is education. Hosting is a big part of WordPress and a lot of people don’t understand it well enough to either do it themselves or just to manage it themselves. If you’re on a shared server you have a lot to do. You have to make sure the PHP version is up to date. You have to make sure you’re caching is correct. Are you caching to your server or are you doing caching through a plugin? These are things you have to think about. A lot of people need some guidance there. We have people that host with us but we will let them where they feel comfortable. We will try to guide them in the right direction.

Liam: That’s cool, Joe. I’m going to change gears on you a little bit here.

Joe: Go for it.

Laim: You told us earlier in the conversation that for you now success is around authenticity and being true to who you are. I imagine you’re rolling that kind of ethos and thought process across your team. Within that, to achieve success (particularly with the new company) what is the single most important thing you do on any given day on a daily basis? What is the single most important thing you do?

Joe: When I was starting in digital marketing and starting in WordPress I really had this idea that I had to be this buttoned up company. I didn’t put humor into what I was doing because I had to be serious. I had serious clients and that was my role. As I have moved into building my own company, I really decided that if I’m not going to build a company or work in a place that’s not authentic to me and what I want to do, then was is the point? I’m not going to be happy doing work that I want to do. If you go to WPBuffs.com it’s not super serious. It’s somewhat informal. It caters to the crowd of entrepreneurs and small business owners who know that the security and performance of their site is important. They want to work with someone who exudes a little bit of personality as well. To answer your question, I guess the most important thing I do on a day-to-day basis is really make sure that (the term company culture gets thrown around a lot) I’ll try not to use it that sense. The way we do things is really important. It’s not just the final product, you know? Did we get your header color change to the right color? Does your website work across all devices? Yes. Those things are important but we have to do it our way. I think the most important part is the managing of people and making sure that we’re at a place where our customers are happy, our employees are happy and like working with us, and continuing to provide a service that’s good for everyone. I think a lot of a lot of companies …while their primary goal is on the customer…which it should be… I think a lot of companies make the mistake where they have to break their necks and do everything possible without regard to themselves. I think that’s a little dangerous. You have to prioritize a customer but you’ve go to do it your way. You have to do it in a way (like you said) that’s scalable. If you try and kill yourself for these clients, you’re going to get a year and in and you’re going to be totally tired of it all and want to toss it all out the window. We’re doing things our way. It’s actually been really helpful for us because we get clients who understand that. They have been to the website. They know our tone. They know how we work. So when they sign up they have the expectation already that these guys are cool. They are going to do great work but they are going to do it their way and that’s fine. I think in that way we’ve grown in a way that is scalable as well. We have a lot of customers who really appreciate what we do. They like to email us back and forth. They just don’t email when we say thank you and respond with a gift of Leonardo Dicaprio with a cheers thing. They gift back. That makes the workday more fun. That’s important to me and it’s important for the team as well.

Tara: I admire what you have built. I’ve seen your emails and they are super fun. They do inspire happiness. I think that’s great what you have built. I think you have given a lot of thought to that. What you say with all that you’ve done and learned, what’s been your biggest challenge either in your personal life or your business life or blending to two together? If you have overcome it, how have you done that? What are you doing to overcome that challenge?

Joe: Yes. I’m definitely still trying to overcome that challenge. Still a small company still a lot of growth to do. Still a lot of big dreams have yet to be met. But working there. There a lot of challenges. Every day comes with challenges, so to quantify one or two as the biggest one or two is difficult. But in terms of matching my personal life to professional it’s been a challenge to build a company from scratch and do it kind of while also building a network of people in the WordPress community, friends. Trying to wear every hat is exhausting, as a lot of people WordPress space know. Whether you at work in a design agency or you’re a freelancer, wearing a lot of hats is almost part of being in the WordPress space. Trying to grow up company from the ground up that that is profitable and that is sustainable it is really difficult, there are so many moving pieces. Trying to balance making sure that my staff gets paid every month with what’s my goodie bag to take home every month – I don’t have the set salary at this point. I will try to pay a mortgage and pay bills with leftovers after the customer’s work gets done, to know the employees are paid. Someone will probably tell me it’s not the best way to do it but it’s the stage of startup we’re at right now. That being said, financially we’re doing better than I expected at this point, which is good news. But the like I said: still a long way to go. The challenge of being a financially stable company is always a challenge. Even within just finances, there are a thousand things you can do affect your financial situation. Which 3 to 5 do I have time to focus on? That’s what really is the key. That’s definitely a challenge for sure.

Liam: Great answer. We’re going to swing around to the question that we like to ask our guests: What is the single most valuable – oh, we’re starting cup five, folks! He started pouring cup five! What is what is the single most valuable piece of advice, whether it’s personal, professional or otherwise, that you have received and implemented in your life?

Joe: My, I was going to say “wife,” but future wife, has always been so supportive of what I want to do. I’ve worked in a bunch of different industries. I’ve been a high school math teacher, I’ve worked at digital marketing startups, I have done government consulting work, and I’m now running my own business. I’ve tried a lot of different things. Since I met the future Mrs., she’s been so supportive of everything I want to do and when it came to transitioning from doing government consulting, which is a pretty financially comfortable position, to running my own company where I don’t know what my salary is going to be – she did not skip a beat, she did not hesitate because she knows the importance of living in a way that makes you happy, to put it quite simply. I think that the government contract work was just not something that really vibed with me and now I get to run a company every day that that totally vibes with me and it resonates with me, it resonates with my customers, and it brings me happiness and my staff happiness and that is worth however many millions of dollars you want to make doing something – if it doesn’t vibe with you then it’s not worth it. So the advice I’ve received that’s been the most valuable has probably been: Do things that allow you to learn about yourself; a lot of self-reflection, self-awareness. If you can prove that and build a company around that then you will be free from work, quote unquote. Now I feel like I left work when I left government consulting – I haven’t I worked since then. Somehow my company still makes money and it’s the best of both worlds and on that note … there are 7 billion people on this planet. It doesn’t matter how you do things as long … there is a niche for everything. If you want to be hard-nosed and serious some people like that. If you want to have more fun and send gifts to customers like we do – I am not saying everyone has to do that – but if you do want to do that you shouldn’t hesitate to because there is a customer base out there that will want you to do that, especially in the WordPress space. I think people focus a lot on – they want to do research on an industry to find a business it’s really going to work in that space, and it’s great but you really have to factor I, “Is this going to make me happy? Is this going to be a business I want to run in five years?” I have a ton of ideas about different businesses I want to start and I’m trying not have shiny objects syndrome and really focus on WP Buffs for now, but it’s important to really tell yourself, ask yourself … will I want to do this in 5 years? Because 95% of ideas – well 80% of ideas – are probably horrible ideas. 20% are good and then probably 2% or 3% of those ideas are to be ones not only that are good ideas but that you really going to want to be pursuing in the long-term and that’s important. No one starts a business and then you have billion dollar valuation one year later. Businesses take time and I’ve definitely learned along the way that this is no a flash in the pan. If I want to build a business it can take years. It’s not going to take off next month and Boom! Snap your fingers, good to go.

Liam: I love how the advice the you were given by your bride to be … that you are following her advice. That’s really cool. It speaks well for your future marriage, which is awesome. She sounds like an incredibly intelligent woman.

Joe: She is!

Liam: The idea of being authentic and following your dream, not in a silly kind of way but in a practical well-thought-out planned way it is absolutely awesome. And I think with that we’re going to wrap this conversation up with that, because that’s a great note to end on. But before we do Joe, just share with us wherever people can find you online, websites and social media.

Tara: Oh, I’m going to check out the before and after!

Laim: Joe, thanks that it’s been a real pleasure having you on.

Joe: Thanks, Liam. Thanks,Tara.

Joe: It’s been a pleasure.

Liam: Thanks for the listening to the show. We sure hope you enjoyed it much as we did.

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.

Sara Dunn is the founder and project lead at 11 Web, a remote web agency based in Battle Creek Michigan. Her tiny team of four obsesses over design, WordPress (of course), local SEO, and clients online needs. Sara recently started a video series about specializing.

https://11web.com/

@sara11d

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

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

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

Liam: Today’s show is brought to you in part by Nice Work. Nice Work is an established WordPress digital agency that strategizes and creates better user experiences for your clients that are authentic to your company’s voice and culture. We increase awareness, followers and conversion. For more information, look up getnicework.com.

Tara: And now, the conversation begins. This is episode 5.

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

Liam: I am Liam Dempsey. Today we are very lucky to be joined by Sara Dunn who is the founder and project lead at 11 Web, a remote web agency based in Battle Creek Michigan. Her tiny team of four obsesses over design, WordPress (of course), local SEO, and clients online needs. Sara recently started a video series about specializing.

Liam: Sara? Welcome!

Sara: Hi guys. Thanks, Tara and Liam for having me on.

Tara: Hi Sara! We’re happy to have you here. So Liam gave a nice introduction. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Sara: Sure. You bet. My company’s name is 11 Web. We’ve been in business for about five years. I have a fully remote team. We are all very grateful to work from wherever we are. I’m here in southwest Michigan in Battle Creek, which is a lovely small town. I just love the opportunity that WordPress and Digital Marketing gives us to work from wherever we are. When I’m not working, you might find me traveling, hanging out with my husband of five years or our French bulldog Jetta.

Liam: I like traveling. Where have you been? Where do you like to go?

Sara: Everywhere. I love international travel. I love going to Europe. We took a wonderful trip to Croatia last year that was just transformational. I love the Adriatic Sea and everything there. So as much as I can get to Europe, I absolutely love to do that. My husband and I travel a lot in the US too. Thankfully he has a job that takes him all over. I’m very grateful that I have a job that I can take with me. Whenever he goes, I usually go with him.

Liam: That is awesome. I like that. I’m heading to Europe in a few weeks. I’m excited to go back.

Sara: That’s good! Where are you going?

Liam: I’m going to Germany.

Sara: Wonderful!

Liam: I’m going along with my wife on her job and taking our two children with us. We’re all pretty excited to go. So let me ask you a little bit about how you first got into WordPress, how you found it, how that came to be. Maybe you can even role in (if it did) how it affected your decision to go into business for yourself.

Sara: It’s really interesting. When I meet a lot of people, they ask if I went to school for web design, design, computers or something like that. There answer is no. Absolutely not. I do come from a family of computer science majors. I actually went to college for international business. I did end up with a minor in marketing just because I loved the course work. Website design and WordPress was not a direction that I went immediately after college. I actually started a different business. That’s quite a long and winding story. To be honest with you, the most fun that I had in that business was making the website for it. It was something that I took a lot of time to learn. I enjoyed every second of Googling, figuring things out and teaching myself. Another opportunity arose where a friend of mine needed help with a website (it was where their company had paid $5000 to have a website developed on Dreamweaver). A year later they just needed to update a phone number and add their Facebook link. That agency wanted to charge them another thousand dollars. I said, “that’s crazy!” I made a website before. I said we could put it on this thing called WordPress. That will allow you to make any change like that in the future without having to call a professional to do it. My journey to WordPress was really out of necessity and then realizing that it could also help other people. After I had helped that person, someone else found out I knew how to do this. It was just a hobby that grew and grew for about a year or so. Before I realized it, I really liked doing my hobby a lot more than I liked doing my first business. It was probably a good direction that I could take.

Liam: That’s awesome. So as you’re developing your love of WordPress and realizing that your hobby was much more entertaining and fulfilling to you than your day business (as we call it) what specifically was pulling you into WordPress? Was it the design? Was it the content capacity with development? Was it a combo of all three?

Sara: No actually since I had very little knowledge it was just the fact that it was an open source platform, a CMS that allowed anyone to make their own changes. That was the only reason I started with it because I could one-click install on GoDaddy and figure out how to customize a theme from the theme directory and go from there. I don’t quite remember how WordPress came to be or how I found it. I’m sure it was just through searching around and reading articles about the easiest to make a website yourself. This was years and years ago. I thought it was a pretty good way to go.

Tara: So it sounds like you and have embraced WordPress. Can you talk a little bit about how you discovered the WordPress community?

Sara: Oh my gosh! I’m embarrassed by this, but I developed on WordPress on an island for about four years. I didn’t know a lot of other people that did what I did. I didn’t know a lot of other WordPress users. I don’t know why. I think I was just more focused on finding people I could help and finding clients instead of “masterminding” with others or trying to find that type of support. I love this question, Tara, because this is really a new thing for me. It was only last year that I went to my first WordCamp (after working professionally in WordPress for four years). I decided to go to WordCamp, Ann Arbor which is only about an hour from where I live. It was amazing. I loved meeting other people that spoke my language. I learned so much from the speakers and presenters. I met several people who I followed online. Since I am completely self-taught, there were several people there whose blog articles I had read and learned something from. That was so cool! To meet those people, make those connections and realize that they existed in real life (not just words written in a blog post). Since WordCamp Ann Arbor last October, I’ve just been more intentional about connecting with people in the community. I’ve gone to another WordCamp where I was actually grateful for the opportunity to speak at that Wordcamp. It was WordCamp Jackson a few weeks ago. I have plans to go to more. I’d like to point out that WordCamps and in person events aren’t the only way to get more involved in the community. I’ve also connected with a lot of people on Twitter and joined the officehours slack group. I’ve connected to several other Slack groups (including one that’s all about women in WordPress) which I think is fascinating and wonderful. So it has been through the year a lot more intentional to get connected with the community, and I really liked it.

Liam: Wow. You’re all in now. That’s pretty intense. I want to let you know that there’s absolutely no need to be embarrassed about coming to WordPress from a vacuum. As Tara and I have heard over the course of our conversations with so many people, that’s the same experience as a lot of people. I’m raising my hand up. You can’t see it in the podcast, but I was exactly the same way. I probably used it for two or three years before I got involved at all. Like you, my experience was Oh my Gosh! Where has this been all my life? How did I exist before this? That’s fantastic. I really love how you have gone on from just that initial experience to being a lot more intentional about your involvement, activity, and role within the WordPress community.

Sara: Yeah. I think I realized that it has so much value for business development and for connecting with people and solving problems quicker. I didn’t need to just suffer on Google. When a client had an issue I couldn’t figure out, I didn’t need to just complain to my husband that there was a certain situation that was rubbing me the wrong way. There were actually people who had probably gone through something like that before. For example, Diane Kinney somehow has gone through everything before. She’s a great resource. There are many people like her who are willing to say this is how I dealt with a similar situation in the past. I really appreciate that type of community and support.

Liam: Yeah. I think that’s one of its greatest strengths. It is the willingness and ability of those who have traveled before us to save us the trouble of the mistakes that they’ve made. To get back to the idea of being intentional, I want to ask you what is your definition of success? How do you define that in either a personal or professional way (or both)?

Sara: It’s such a good question. I think when you own your own business you get to decide what personal and professional success looks like together instead of separately. I’m not just trying to climb some corporate ladder. I love that having my own business allows me to decide what I want life to look like. As I think about success (for me and my business), I think it’s really the freedom to learn and explore and to always have opportunities open that you can take. I really believe in a flexible lifestyle. My entire team works from where they are and sets their own hours. Since I am able to do that and I love it, I want to empower my team to do the same. Because of that, I’ve been able to work with some amazing people with unique situations. My graphic designer works from home with her two young children with her. That is something that’s really important to her and values. That is the freedom that our success together allows for her. I think that’s great. One of my other coworkers is a retired computer programmer and project manager for the government. So even though she was ready to be done with her first career, we have the freedom to work together. She can still have really fun engaging work and the number of hours that she wants to have. So success is that freedom; learning, exploring (traveling for me) going places, meeting people of new cultures and seeing amazing sights. Someone asked once a similar question that was a little bit different. How do you know when you have enough success? I like to think that someday I’d like to go somewhere and go to the best restaurant in town and not worry about what it costs. I love to eat, and I love to travel. That’s the ultimate experience for me. That is really the pinnacle of success.

Tara: I love that. That’s great, and that’s a great question. When do you know that you have enough success? Is there ever enough? Where do you find yourself on your journey towards success?

Sara: We do have a lot of freedom. I think that we continue to learn and explore. It seems so strange to be like I feel successful. I feel really good about my personal and professional journey right now. I try to keep that positive perspective in mind. It’s a good place in this journey, Tara.

Liam: I love that. You are successful where you are right now. That is fantastic. That leads us very nicely to our next question. To maintain the success that you’ve achieved, what is the single most important thing that you do every day?

Sara: The most important thing…it’s funny because we are talking so much about freedom… and doing what you want. But I am someone that is very structured and very intentional with the time that I do take to work. The most important thing I do every day is a plan. I choose every night at the end of the workday to sit down and look at what’s been accomplished. I have a daily planner that I really love. I look at anything that’s not checked off and rewrite it into the next day. I write out my schedule for the next day. I like to define three seeds and three weeds. A seed is something that you plant. You should be planting things every day, whether that’s sending out a proposal, reaching out to a past client (anything like that might help your business grow). Maybe it’s being on this podcast today and getting out there and doing this very thing of applying to speak in a podcast. Maybe it’s a conference or something. So I like to define a few seeds for each day and then a few weeds. So weeds are the things you don’t want to do, that you are dreading or maybe you pushed off a couple of days before. You just don’t want to do it. I like to write those down, and then I think it’s really important to do those in the morning. Do it first thing when you’re fresh. You’re ready to go. It’s not the end of the day when you’ve been tackling a lot of other things. I do those weeds before I open my inbox in the morning, which is really important.

Tara: Eating the Frog is another way to talk about that. There is a book about eating the Frog and doing the hard things first that you don’t want to do. I am really bad at that.

Liam: David Allen.

Sara: It’s just so hard.

Liam: It’s Getting Things Done by David Allen. What if the worst thing you had to do was eat a frog? Once you got that done the rest your day would be incredible.

Sara: I find that a little gross, Liam.

Liam: I didn’t make up the phrase.

Sara: I’m going to go with pulling weeds. (laughs)

Liam: All right. I’ll give you that.

Tara: I love the seeds and weeds idea. The planning is also critical. I’m a tool person. So it sounds like you actually handwrite your list. I found that no matter how many to-do lists or planning things I have if I write it down, it’s sure to get done. Somehow the digital things are sometimes harder to keep track of so I love that you use that method.

Sara: There’s something about a pen and checking off a physical box that just feels really good.

Tara: I think that’s true. What would you say is the biggest challenge that you face.

Sara: In the past or currently?

Tara: Either or both. How are you working on that challenge? How are you working to overcome it (or how have you already overcome it)?

Sara: Currently my biggest challenge…I say this as a future focus…because it’s not something that wears us down in the business every day. I’m currently challenging myself to think about specializing the work that we do at my agency. For so long (the five years that we’ve been going) we’ve been the agency for anybody with a business and a checkbook. We take on all types of projects, and it’s really exciting to work with so many different kinds of clients. I think that we can have a bigger impact and just become better known as experts if we specialize in something particular. What makes this exceptionally challenging for me is…number one… I love learning. I love doing different things. I feel like every time I learn something new about digital marketing; I decide that is what I need to do forever and into the future. I’m currently toying with Google Adwords a little bit. I love SEO. I’m reading a book on designs. Learning makes this particularly challenging and the fact that I enjoy a lot of the things that I’m learning about. The other challenge is the fact that nothing has just naturally presented itself as the right specialty for the agency. You hear about certain industries or certain agencies that are focused maybe on a particular industry or type of client. You hear about others that specialize in a particular service. We do eCommerce, or we do SEO (something like that). We always have done so much of everything that nothing has risen to the top as you know what? This is the thing that we really need to keep doing. Or this is the type of client that we need to keep working with. It’s been a bit of frustration. I know we want to specialize. I know I’d like to try doing it. I’m not really sure what direction to go. I don’t feel like there’s enough information out there about specializing a web agency, branding, and brand positioning. That’s one of the reasons I recently started just a little video series. It’s not very serious. It’s just regular ongoing where I talk about the challenges of specializing and documenting that journey. I don’t want to come across as someone with all the answers. I have zero, and it is a challenge. So that’s the biggest challenge I’m facing right now. I do not have the answers to it, but I do feel like I’m slowly getting there.

Tara: I think that’s really exciting and it makes me feel nervous for you in a way because when you think about specializing that means saying no, right? I think that’s a challenge if you said anyone with a checkbook that needs a website that you would build a website for them. You do get some variety that way. It kind of keeps you from feeling bored or burned out. I understand that having a specialty could allow you to really drill down on your content and understand an industry. What happens when you go down the path of the wrong industry, and you discover that this industry isn’t right? They don’t want to spend money or whatever other reason…then you need to turn to another. So are you considering that this is a journey where you may try out a bunch of different specialties or specializations before you land on the one that is right?

Sara: Absolutely. I continue to be scared of all those things. Those things terrorize me. One of my videos recently was about my biggest fears and choosing the wrong specialty. I’m in a mastermind group with this wonderful woman who told me you know what? You will never fail at this. You will only pivot. You will only learn something from the choices you make. That’s one of the things that’s keeping me going. It’s not allowing me to get paralyzed as I think about doing this because once we decide on something I do want to do it wholeheartedly. I’m open to the idea of it not working and needing to pivot from there. So I don’t feel like this is a decision I’m making for my business that we have to live with forever. It’s not that way, and I think it’s going to have so much value that even if I choose the wrong thing and do the wrong thing, it’s just an investment in the future of possible growth and possible differentiation. It may not easy, but I do you think it’s going to be worth it.

Tara: So are you saying no to people that come to you who are not in those specialties in the meantime while you’re developing this? When do you cut that off?

Sara: I don’t know if the specialty is. I feel like I’m going to reach a point where I declare it and them I’m going to do more “nos”. As I think about this,

Liam: Sara? Do you have a timetable for your decision process? You’ve explained to us that you’re open to different kinds of specialties. You’re exploring opportunities; you’re considering different avenues, and keeping a mindful eye opened up to all of it. In your mind, you have you given yourself a timeframe? For example, I’m going to consider it for a year, 18 months or something to that effect?

Sara: I’m glad you asked that. In one of the Mastermind groups I’m a part, we set 90-day goals. So my goal for the last 90 days (that ended at the end of spring) was to have a specialty decided. What ended up happening was I just chose something, went after it, and did a lot of market research. Ultimately, I decided it wasn’t the right direction. So my goal for this round of 90 days is to back off a little bit and stop asking so much of myself, stop forcing it so much and just see what kind of work is coming our way, what kind of work we are enjoying and making some lists. We are not trying so hard to make a decision if is not something that I think is going to work. I’m not quite sure so far if I can really force myself into it. I can just continue to take the right steps. Sometime after this 90 days, I’d like to push again a little bit more to make a decision. I needed to back off for a short period and not put so much pressure on it.

Liam: Yeah. I think that’s really important. The value of letting the decision (not come to you) like sitting around waiting for it to be delivered like an Amazon package. I also love that you took the time and you explored a particular specialty option as part of your goal. You ultimately made the decision that it wasn’t right for you. I think that the value of that kind of exercise of should I do this and putting significant time, energy and resources into finding that out…I don’t know what you spent…cumulatively maybe it was two, three or four days… some people might say, gosh that’s ages. Think of the money you could have made. Think of the headaches you would’ve endured if you didn’t do the research and you did a day and said yes. Then six months down the road you have all these client’s projects and obligations that you don’t want. So that’s awesome. It’s a lesson with great value. Thank you.

Sara: I think that concept of specializing, as an investment in your business is really important. It doesn’t just happen when one day you are only going to work with realtors, and the next day a thousand realtors contact to you say hey I hear you only work with realtors. It definitely is something that takes time and effort. I have no delusions that this is easy or is not an investment in the future of the business.

Liam: Yeah. I think I agree with that. It just takes time. I know from my own experience of running my small businesses that for the first few years of the business, what do you specialize in? I don’t know. I still just get my head around it all. I like it, and it’s enjoyable. This is fun, and that is not fun. Ok. I know if I learn that little bit that is not fun. So we don’t specialize in that. What we do specialize in… I don’t know just yet. So I get that. I really appreciate where you are in and love your thoroughness in approaching it. Let me change gears on us again and ask you what I think it’s becoming our signature question (I’m not sure yet) we will have to see what of the listening public thinks. Sara? What is the single most valuable piece of advice (it can be either personal or professional or both) that you’ve ever received and incorporated into your life?

Sara: Wow! That puts a lot of pressure on this question. I don’t know if something is coming right to mind that is the best, most valuable advice that I’ve ever received. But something is coming to mind that has spoken to me recently; It was a quote that I saw from Guy Kawasaki.

Liam: That is a very valuable one. There is no gray line anymore, or black line or any colored line between personal and professional on the Internet is there? Oh, it’s on LinkedIn it’s professional. If it’s on Twitter, it’s personal. I’m not so sure I agree with that. That’s great. Thank you for that. Let me ask you one more question if I can. We’ve got some time left, and we didn’t get a chance to really explore this. Because you work with similar clients as I do and I our approach is being methodical (at least mine in theory) is similar to yours. I’ve got a paper schedule. I’m not a pen guy. I am a mechanical pencil person. What is your favorite thing to do it work every day? We talked about what’s the most important thing but what’s your favorite thing to do?

Sara: My favorite things to do in this business are probably not things I get do every day anymore. I’m really grateful to have a small team. That means that a lot of the development work has been taken away from me at this point. I love some days when I can just help my team out with the project (maybe we’ve to a lot going on). We will stop if we don’t throw some more hands at it. I love when I get to go in and help my team build out a website, do some CSS customization, and hang out in the code for a while. I turn on the music on Spotify and just make the website look like the design (or how the designer envisioned). I find that really fulfilling, to take something from a blank page or even just basic content, give it styling, give it design, give it personality, work a little bit with the messaging and copy. I really still enjoy getting down into the project even though my role now has a lot more to do with strategy, planning and project management then it ever has before. When I can get into a project and really dig, that’s my favorite thing to do at work. My least favorite thing to do is email. I do a lot of things to try to reduce my email load. It feels so unproductive to sit in my inbox and react to things that happen as opposed to moving forward on things that I had planned.

Liam: Yeah email. (laughs)

Tara: I think you read my mind right there. That’s mine.

Sara: Yes. That’s why we have BaseCamp, and that’s why I do hangouts with my team. I don’t want it all happening just through my inbox. That’s crazy, and I refuse to do it.

Liam: Human contact is fantastic. I like that. Sara? We are out of time. I’m going to say thank very much for joining us. It’s been an absolute pleasure chatting with you and getting to know you just a little bit. Before we say our goodbyes can you let people know where they can find online, please?

Sara: Sure. If you would like to check out my agency, it’s 11 web at 11web.com. I’d love to connect with you on Twitter. My handle is @Sara11d. My favorite place to hang out is Instagram. If you love Instagram as much as I do, please contact me there. It’s SaraDunn11.

Tara: I think you also have an account for your dog. Would you like to share that with everybody before you go?

Sara: (Laughs). Yes. My sweet darling French bulldog Jetta does have her own Instagram account. People can choose to see pictures of her. I can stop spamming my account with a thousand photos of Jetta. If you would like to follow her, its Jettalafrenchie.

Tara: Great. Thank you so much. Sara? It’s been great having you here. Thank you so much for joining us.

Sara: Thank you guys. This has been great. I love what you’re doing with Hallway Chats. I cannot wait to listen in the future.

Liam: Thanks so much Sara. We’ll see you soon! Bye!

Liam: Thanks for the listening to the show. We sure hope you enjoyed it much as we did.

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.

Calling Surprise, Arizona home, Scott DeLuzio is a WordPress developer with a number of business-focused plugins to his credit. Working from his home, Scott is building his business around the sale and support of suite of WordPress plugins.

https://scottdeluzio.com

@scottdeluzio

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 4.

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

Liam: I’m Liam Dempsey. Welcome everybody. We’re here today with Scott Deluzio. Scott? Welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

Scott: Thanks for having me.

Tara: Hi Scott! So you are a plugin developer from Surprise Arizona?

Scott: Yes I am.

Tara: What else can you tell us about yourself? What do you do with plugins and how long have you been doing it?

Scott: Sure. I’ve been developing plugins since 2013. I’ve been working on a number different ones. I think I have 13 plugins on the WordPress.org plugin directory. I have a number of other premium paid plugins that I work on. I have Conditional Check Out Fields, which is a plugin for WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads that basically allows for different checkout fields based on the input in the customer’s cart. I have a WP In post ads which allows bloggers to easily monetize their site by placing ads in the body of their post and WP CRM system is a CRM built into WordPress. It’s a free plugin but has a number of paid add-ons that I sell. I am working on another plugin as well to help affiliate marketing folks and other agencies to be able to easily file a tax return in terms of 1099s for their vendors, contractors and things like that. That’s something else that I’ve been working on. Nothing is out officially yet but that’s something that’s been in the works for me.

Tara: That’s a pretty wide range. So tell us a little about how you started working with WordPress. It sounds like you must know a good amount of code and PHP. How did you get started with that?

Scott: Sure. So when I first started working on websites (this was in in the early 2000s – 2001 maybe) my father was starting a consulting business. I asked him what I could do to help. I was in college at the time so I had really no marketable skills or anything like that. I wanted to help him out because he was kind of going it on his own. So he said, “build me a website”. At that time, it was something I had not done before. I didn’t know a single line of HTML or anything else. I didn’t even know what to do. So when I reminded him of the fact that I had no idea what I was doing with that, he said to go buy a book and figure it out. So I did. By today’s standards, the site that I built was probably crap. At the time, I was proud I was able to get something published. I didn’t know anything about hosting, domain names or anything like that.

Tara: Do you remember what the book was?

Scott: No. I still have it. I don’t remember the title of the book right now. But I do still have it. I can get that to you.

Tara: Did you build it in HTML?

Scott: Yeah. I actually used Microsoft FrontPage.

Tara: Frontpage! Oh! That’s how I started too.

Liam: That is awesome.

Scott: You had to build every single page on the site. It was not an easy task but it was a good learning experience with how to get my feet wet with how websites are structured and built. Then while I was in college I got an accounting degree. It had absolutely nothing to do with website development or anything like that. When I was in college I built websites for family or friends because I enjoyed it. It was interesting to me. Over the years I continued learning and my skills kind of evolved. Basically, I am completely self-taught on all of this. I started with that initial book and went on to do other tutorials and things like that to try to enhance my knowledge of what it is I am actually trying to do. Are there better ways of doing what I’m trying to do (and everything like that). The seed was planted back with that first website. I think over the years, it just kind of grew and got me to where I am today.

Tara: Have you found any learning systems that have worked best for you? You said you started with a book but I know there are a lot a lot of tools online. What have you relied upon?

Scott: So at first I was using that book basically as a crutch. Anytime I was doing anything I’d go back to the chapter was that was in that book. I kind of take that similar mindset and move it online today. There’s so much information online that pretty much whatever it is that you’re trying to figure out, there’s some information out there. Not all of its good information so you kind of have to vet out the good from the bad. This stuff will just get you into more trouble. I’m able to go out and search for the information that I’m looking for. Over time there are people you learn to trust because you got some good information from them in the past, either from their website or from other places. You tend to go back to those sources first to try to find answers to new questions that you might have. You’re not just relying on some forum post where someone was having some problem and couldn’t do whatever. You’re not just relying on the answers you get there. You’re going to more trusted sources. I’m not as big on the forums for the support or learning but going to trusted sources that you have vetted out over the years.

Liam: That’s a really valuable way to do it, isn’t it? You learn what you need to Google.

Scott: Yeah.

Liam: Then once you know that, you begin to learn who trust and who knows their code and systems. Who hasn’t fallen into the pit that you’re currently looking over? Who can help you put the ladder across and not fall into that pit? It takes some time, doesn’t it?

Scott: It does. Over the years when I was first starting I was finding stuff where who knows how good the information was at the time. I would use some of the information I found and only later find out that there’s a better way or that was a completely terrible way to begin with.

Liam: Copy, paste, and hope.

Tara: Yes. That’s how you learn.

Scott: Exactly. I suppose it’s not a terrible way as long as you’re not doing it on a live site. There are certainly better ways out there to accomplish that. You’re right. It does take a little time figure out who to trust and the good information that is out there.

Tara: How did you get connected with WordPress? When did you start using it?

Scott: I don’t remember the exact year that I started. I had started a blog while I was in college. I was using FrontPage. So for every page I created for the blog… it wasn’t really a blog. It was a series of pages that I threw up on the site. It was getting to be such a pain to work with. I came across a WordPress article. I think I was just searching for something that was easier. That was probably my initial dive into Google searches to find the answer to a problem I was having. So I came across WordPress and I tried it out. I installed it and it was so much easier. Once I did my copy and paste migration from all my old posts into the new site I was hooked. I really liked it. Over the years I built a number of different sites that were all WordPress based. I don’t think I worked with anything else other than testing the waters on other things just to see how they worked. Every site that I’ve used so far has been run on WordPress in some form or another.

Tara: Did you have another career or were you doing this on the side? You said you started using it in college. After you graduated what did you do?

Scott: Yeah. So when I was in college (I was in college for accounting) so I worked in public accounting for a number of years along with finance. So I was doing the WordPress and website stuff kind of on the side. It definitely wasn’t a full-time thing. I wouldn’t even say it part-time. It was just kind of sporadic. As I had an idea that I wanted to create a site for, I went out and built something. If I don’t do something for a couple of months then things change. So I have to go out to learn and catch myself back up on what’s going on with the new changes in technology and everything else. So it was way for me to continue to learn how to build sites and everything. It wasn’t until about 3 ½ years ago where I decided to leave my job. I jumped into website development and WordPress full-time where I started working for myself. I love it. It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do…work for myself and be my own boss. Work my own hours and schedule along with everything else. It’s great! I have no regrets.

Tara: That’s great. That’s really great to hear.

Liam: Scott? When you made that transition, did you transition to the point where you saved enough money in your day job where you said hey! I’ve got x amount of time. I’m going to give it a go. We’re you burning the candle at both ends where you were 9-to-5 in public accounting, then from 5 to 9 in the evening doing development work on the side. How did that transition happen?

Scott: It was kind of where I was doing a little bit of work during my last job on nights and weekends with the goal that I would be saving some money. I knew I wanted to have a few months of living expenses socked away (knowing full well with most businesses when you first start) it’s not going to be people throwing money at you. I knew that it was going to be a challenge. I think the first month where I dove in full-time I was barely scraping by with one client by the end of the month. I was starting to rethink the decision I made on whether or not that was going to work out long-term. But the next few months started turning around. I did start getting a lot more clients. Primarily, they were local to this area. They were local businesses that I was helping out. Like anyone else starting a business, I had to kind of do that legwork, pound the pavement and get out in front of people. I had to let know who I was. You just can’t build a website and expect the phone to start ringing off the hook.

Tara: Right.

Scott: So I was going out to different networking meetings and everything else trying to get out in front of as many people as I could. That was part of that. I don’t know how much business necessarily came from networking meetings or if it was through the other interactions that I had with people from around the area. Really, it was a lot of hard work in the beginning. It should be. If it were easy, then everybody would be doing this.

Tara: Did you have some mentors while you were doing this? When you were switching and doing this as business versus doing favors for people (where you’re probably not charging them what you charge now) how did you know what to charge? How did you set up your systems and your business to be a web developer? It sounds like your focus right now is your products but you started out as a Unicorn… a designer, developer, website builder…correct?

Scott: Right. Yes, I did start off as a website builder working for mostly small businesses who have a site that was maybe built 10 years ago. It looked like it was built 10 years ago. It needed a facelift. Those were the clients and the primary market I was going after. Over the years, I enjoyed that work less and less and enjoyed the development side more and more (the plugin side and selling the products). That was kind of a new challenge for me. Over the years I had built a few plugins that I released on the repository but I never really did much with it. I never marketed the service for building plugins or anything like that. I just kind of put them out there. If they were being used, great. If not, oh well. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just something that I had put together. It was either a need that I had or I saw maybe someone else could use something like this. I decided that I enjoyed that work much more. At the beginning of this year, I decided to scale back the amount of client work that I was doing and focus more on the plugin and product side.

Tara: Interesting. That is going well so far? We are a couple of months into the year.

Scott: Yeah. We are a few months into the year. It is going well. It was a bit of a transition…kind of like when I quit my previous job and started working for myself. There’s the little bit of the unknown. It this even going to be something that pays the bills or am I going to have to go back and start doing more client work? It’s going well. It’s good. Like I said, the first couple of months it was hit or miss. I wasn’t sure how great it was really going to be but I think it’s moving in the direction. We’ll see in a year out how this experiment turns out.

Tara: Well that actually brings us to one of our key questions we like to ask people which is about success and how do you define that? It sounds like you transitioned a couple of times now in your career. Each time it sounds like you’ve been successful. How would you define success?

Scott: I’ve had jobs in the past where I hated getting out of bed every morning. I’d roll out of bed and think to myself this is going to be torture. I’m driving into work and doing this job to basically pay the bills. It wasn’t something that I really enjoyed doing. To me, success is not having to do something like that. It’s being able to find something where you can jump out of bed and be excited about going to work. You can start working and really get moving with something that you enjoy doing. To me, that is success. Obviously, there are still bills that need to be paid and you need to make some money at some point but if you can pay the bills and do the thing that you enjoy then I think you are successful in your career.

Liam: I like that definition. That’s a good one. I’m always intrigued by people when they have an avenue out they stay in jobs or careers where they are not happy….obviously, there are people who don’t have the option…we spend so much time at work as adults…eight hours a day, five days a week and often it’s longer than that. If it does not fulfill us in some meaningful way, it can certainly be soul crushing depending on how much we don’t like it. At the very least it makes it hard to enjoy the other 16 hours of the day. It is the most productive part of the day and if it is just an exercise in frustration and futility…so yeah. I like your definition.

Tara: There is probably something to be said for liking your boss. If you are your own boss (that may not always be the case) but at least you have a little more control.

Liam: Your annual review is going to be a little bit easier and at least a little more polite.

Scott: Sometimes my boss is a jerk.

Liam: You can tell them off without any problem.

Scott: Yeah. Exactly.

Tara: Is your office in your home?

Scott: It is. We have an in-law suite that’s off the house. My commute is basically a walk across the driveway. I’m still home. I don’t have to get in the car drive anywhere but I’m not in the house where my wife and kids are usually. My kids are running around and screaming their heads off and everything like that. That will really hamper productivity. It will put a damper on productivity there. Having space where I can mentally say ok. I’m at work now. I’m here. I’m at work and can do my work. At the end of the day when I shut down, I leave my computer in the office, I go back to the house and pick up our normal family life. I don’t have to think about work when I’m over there. I worry about work when I’m here.

Tara: Yeah. You don’t sneak back over after the kids are in bed to do some more work?

Scott: Not much. I try a really have that separation between work and home. I do on occasion (if there’s something that is pressing) try to wrap-up for the morning or something like that. If something urgent came in I’ll step over to work on that. For the most part, I try to keep those two separate.

Tara: That’s important and it’s difficult when you’re doing client work because they are on that same 9 to 5 schedule necessarily.

Scott: There’s lots of little fires that need to get put out sometimes. That gets difficult too.

Tara: Yeah. So you are still accessible even though you are in your office? Your computer is there?

Scott: I try to make it less convenient to have to go do work. If I bring my computer into the house then I can just pop it open and start doing work. But it’s that little mental barrier. If I have to walk across the driveway, I have to open the door, take out the computer and start working. That’s enough of a hassle for me to do say well this will still be a problem in the morning.

Tara: Yeah. I like that. That’s great. Scott? What do you think is the most important thing that you do at work every day?

Scott: The most important thing I do at work every day? I try to keep a consistent schedule. I try to get into the office around the same time. I try to handle the emails or the customer support type things at a certain time during the day. I try to keep a consistent schedule throughout the day. It doesn’t always work out where that consistency is going to work but do I try to make it so that every day I know what to expect. I don’t have too many curveballs coming to me. That to me is important for being successful. It is a little bit of consistency during your day.

Tara: Ok. I think that’s a hard thing to do also when you are working for yourself. Is to be consistent.

Scott: A little bit of self-discipline is involved there to make sure that you’re not hanging out too much on Twitter, Facebook or whatever. You have the computer in front of you. You have just a couple letters to type and boom! Twitter is there. You can end up blowing a whole day just scrolling through that. You need to know what to focus on at certain times. It is important.

Liam: So within that structure then (the structure of consistency or the consistency of structure) you can go either way on that, what’s your favorite thing to do at work? What’s your favorite task? What do you get excited about?

Scott: I like solving problems. Whether that problem is a customer coming to me and saying that they have an issue with something (not necessarily that they have an issue) but they’d like it if one of my plugins did something else or had something additional. Thinking through the problem…I’m not saying that I need to jump on every single feature request that comes through…I could be sitting here for years trying to please everybody…but when someone comes to me with a feature that I think is valid and would be a useful addition… trying to figure out the best way to implement that into the plugin as a whole and doing it the best way possible to solve a problem is something I really do enjoy doing.

Tara: Do you have a favorite project that you’re working on at the moment?

Scott: I was talking about the 1099 plugin that I’ve been working on. I like that because it kind of merges together two of my skills sets with the tax and accounting side and the plugin development side of things. It’s really coming together doing two things that I have a background in. I like making that into something that’s hopefully going to be useful for lots of people.

Liam: Cool. I like that. So kind of related to this, over your wider WordPress web development and Microsoft FrontPage career; what has been your biggest challenge? That could a project, a recurring issue or a mindset for pulling into your list where you have that visual space…how did you get to where you are today? When living in your bubble of success, what has been your biggest challenge?

Scott: Since I work for myself, the biggest thing has been getting involved with a broader community because on most days it’s me and my dog in my office. That can be a challenge. I have gone a whole week where it’s just been me sitting in my office with my dog. I go back into the house at night and see my wife and kids for a little bit. At the end of the week, I realize I haven’t left my house or office. I haven’t talked to anybody or even gone to the grocery store. For me the challenge is getting out, meeting new people and things like that. So getting involved with local Meetups, WordCamps and other events like that is a great way to get out and meet new people. You tend to start conversations with people you otherwise would not have an opportunity to meet.

Tara: I think there are a lot of Meetups in the Phoenix area if I recall.

Liam: I feel like your dog is a pretty reliable partner. Maybe you want to give your dog a little shout out on the podcast? (laughs) What’s your dog’s name?

Scott: My dog’s name is Roxie. She’s an almost 9-year-old English bulldog. She usually just sleeps the entire day because she’s lazy.

Liam: That’s what I try to do.

Tara: I’ve got a dog to get out. I’d take him for a walk and chat with our neighbors but he doesn’t like anybody. He barks at other dogs. I have to walk quickly past people. I am not accomplishing that goal. If your dog sleeps all day it sounds like she is not getting you out either.

Scott: She doesn’t really want to out for a walk especially in the summer around here. It usually gets too hot for her so she just usually sleeps the day away.

Liam: We’re coming up close on our half hour time here. I want to ask you if you what is the single most valuable piece of advice (business life or otherwise) that you have received and probably then implemented?

Scott: It’s been (I forget who gave me this advice now. It was a while ago) it’s been to get out of my comfort zone. Take some risks. Even if that risk seems like it might be more than I can bite off, jump in any way. There’s going to be a time when I’m going to look back and say I really could have done that. It could have been something great but I didn’t. Now it’s nothing. I think that’s something that is a valuable piece of advice. There are so many things that I wouldn’t have done if I didn’t have that advice. I would not have started my own business and working for myself. I would have taken the safe route and just stuck with the same job for years and years. Maybe I would have hated going to work every day but I would have had a steady paycheck. I would’ve had all the benefits that come with a steady job. I wouldn’t have had that definition of success that I mentioned earlier of being happy with what you’re doing.

Liam: I love that! I call that cliff jumping. It could be a small 3- foot cliff.

Scott: It would have to be because I’m afraid of heights.

Liam: I am too. I can kind of edge up to them. I willing to tackle it but I have a little fear. Scott? This is been a fantastic conversation. I’m pretty sure I can speak for Tara when I say it’s been an absolute pleasure.

Tara: Yeah. I loved talking to you.

Scott: It’s been great. I’m glad to be here.

Liam: Where can people find you online? Where can they check out your plugins and keep an eye out for updates on the 1099 project that you’re currently on?

Scott: My website is Scottdeluzio.com. I’ll probably post some updates there. You can follow me on Twitter @Scottdeluzio. I’ll be posting regular updates to both of those places.

Liam: Awesome, thank you. Scott? Have a fantastic day.

Tara: Thank you for joining us.

Scott: You’re welcome.

Liam: Thanks for the listening to the show. We sure hope you enjoyed it much as we did.

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.

Angelina Simms works with brands and provides support to help growing communities. She helps bring awareness to causes that she cares about. Angelina often hangs out in the library where she tells us that she’s always in search for the perfect apple cider.

https://angelinasimms.com/

https://twitter.com/angelinasimms

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 3.

Tara: Today we have with us Angelina Simms. I’m excited to talk Angelina. She works with brands and provides support to help growing communities. She helps bring awareness to causes that she cares about. You can often find Angelina hanging out in the library and she tells us that she’s always in search for the perfect apple cider. Hi Angelina!

Angelina: Hello.

Liam: Hi Angelina! Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and who you are?

Angelina: I live in the Philadelphia suburbs west of the city. I work in digital media, digital marketing and consulting for small businesses, startups and personal lifestyle brands…pretty much anyone – that agent’s spokesperson for anyone who has something to promote. I connect them with their intended audience and help grow their community.

Tara: How do you use WordPress to do all of that?

Angelina: WordPress comes in where I help manage content on their websites. I make sure that their plugins and their themes are up to date. I integrate that with social media so with the content on their WordPress site I push it out to the social media realm. I get out there and share it with the world.

Tara: Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you learned how to do what you do and got started in it?

Angelina: A lot of trial and error. A lot of people said we need help. Try this out. I’m going to say all the way back to maybe 2007 may have been my first time to do anything online with social media. I knew what WordPress was but was not actively using it. I just tried it out with the .com. Then in maybe about 2011 or 2012 was my first .org website. It was about running and it was awful so I just took it down. My very first real website that I did was for my son’s father. He has a heavy metal website. That was the first real website that I ever did. I had no clue what I was doing. It was kind of a birthday present and it grew. He’s met a lot of very famous rock stars. That was the very first project that I ever did. That needs a good theme update. When I get around to it (it’s not priority at the moment) when I get around to that I will probably redesign it since I have better WordPress skills these days.

Liam: I think that can probably be said for all of our first websites. They can use a serious theme update when we get around to it.

Tara: So it sounds like your start was in social media?

Angelina: Yeah I went an event with a friend. It was a Tweetup. I was living in Long Island at the time. It was a Long Island Tweetup and we just got together. At the time all I knew was how to use was Facebook. There was a friend there who was really into Twitter. We got to talking and I started following him around to different events. That was kind of how I got started. It was more trial and error getting to know more about what goes on in the social world. I was going to more conferences just getting my name out there. I don’t think I ever professionally started using it until about 2014. I met a nice lady on Twitter. Her client was about to go on a TV show and I had no clue that was her managing the Twitter account. She invited me out to coffee one day and somehow someway I ended up managing about 5 or 6 Twitter accounts with her agency for about 3 1/2 years. (Yeah, 3 years). That was pretty exciting because the clients go on Fox, QVC, and MSNBC…the major networks.

Tara: Wow! That sounds like a lot of pressure. I know when I interact at all with my clients Twitter accounts it makes me nervous. I’m afraid I’m going to tweet something from the wrong account.

Angelina: Yeah, it’s hard to remember what person you are in your head at the moment. But it’s fun.

Tara: Is Twitter your preferred social media platform?

Angelina: I don’t know if it’s my preferred. It’s the one I’m most active on. I’m better at being more social on Twitter. I do kind of like YouTube and Instagram more, but for some reason I feel more at ease talking to strangers on Twitter.

Tara: I wonder why that is? Do you have different personas on different platforms?

Angelina: I think I’m about the same on most but I don’t know.

Tara: You use them differently?

Angelina: Yeah. There’s pressure to be more visual on Instagram. I don’t know what I want people to see about me.

Tara: Right. How do you manage the social media with your clients? Do you schedule your posts?

Angelina: Yeah. There’s some scheduling. A lot of my responsibility with the agency was mostly scheduling when I was full time. I dealt with some interaction, campaigns and Twitter chats (all that fun stuff).

Tara: What are some your favorite tools for managing your social media?

Angelina: Usually it is whatever people tell me that I have access to. Lately, I’ve been doing HootSuite. I’ve been exploring with Sprout. I don’t get to do it too much anymore because I’ve been taking a change of direction with my digital media consulting. I have a day job now as a client data manager for an investment agency. So I don’t get to play around with the tools as often. In my spare time (maybe with doing some WordPress projects here and there with friends maybe I’ll get to see what else is out there. There’s a loT of great new up-and-coming tools that are coming around.

Tara: Yeah. I’ve been hearing some buzz about different things. So one of the things that we talk about a lot on this show is success. It sounds like you have taught yourself a lot of skills and your path has evolved and grown. How would you define success?

Angelina: Success is anything that helps make me better and those around me better. We’re supporting each other. That’s what it’s all about to me. If we don’t grow as a group then what are we really doing? It is my whole take on everything.

Liam: Yes. I love that definition. Thank you for sharing that. So if group success (or group support group and camaraderie) is of value, then presumably you’ve engaged with and enjoy the WordPress community in some way shape or form…maybe you can tell us a little bit about how you first encountered the software…but how you first encountered the community? How do you stay involved with and get support from the community?

Angelina: I first encountered the software by accident because I was just researching different platforms online. I couldn’t decide if I was going to use WordPress, blogger or something else. Obviously, WordPress won. I started to see things on line and see all these events. I never knew if it was right for me. I moved back to the Pennsylvania area in December 2014. I saw that there was a WordCamp coming up. I might have noticed it in the spring. So I saw there was a WordCamp coming up (actually it was WordCamp Philly). That was my very first WordCamp. I was very excited because I saw there was a beginner’s track. I thought I should go because I considered myself a beginner. I quickly learned that I wasn’t a beginner. So I found myself wandering around all the different rooms and meeting everyone there. That’s how I felt more at ease. I’m still here hanging out today with all the Philly WordPress people and the Philly burgs people…volunteering and organizing WordCamps…and eventually becoming a board member for Women Who WP. I’m doing all kinds of different WordPress things.

Tara: I love all of that. One of the things I love most about what you said is that you went to this WordCamp and signed up thinking that you were going to go on the beginner track. Then you quickly realized that you weren’t a beginner. There’s a lot of talk about imposter syndrome and how we always think that we don’t know anything compared to everyone else. I think it’s awesome that you went there and discovered that you knew way more than you thought you did. That’s terrific. That’s one of the great things about the community. I heard that you recently worked on the board for Women Who WP. I love that organization. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Angelina: That was pretty surprising. I was up late at night and I got a Facebook message with a bunch of women in Ocean County, California. They were messaging me back and forth. Hey! We want to know if you’re interested in joining the board for Women Who WP? So I’m like really? We’ve had a couple rounds of interviews back and forth. We had a couple of bios and pics later and I was announced as a board member. So at the moment because I’m all the way on the East Coast there is a lot of evangelizing and sharing the message. We’re encouraging other women who are interested in starting their own official Meetup because they are now registered with the Meetup foundation to get started and get others involved.

Tara: I know that Philadelphia has a really vibrant WordPress community and a really vibrant Girl Development It Community, so I would imagine that this one would fit right in there. Do you think you are going to start one there?

Angelina: I don’t know if I personally will start one but I will be very supportive. I do know there’s a member in the Philly burbs Meetup who was interested in filling out an application to start a Philly Women’s Who WordPress. Whenever that gets going I’ll be there 100% of the way. I do know there is a lot of interest. I recently spoke at Drexel University last Wednesday on social media and growing communities and the people in the audience there (especially the women of course) were very interested in learning about Women Who WP coming to Philly. They were more interested in WordCamp coming up. So I did a little spiel on that while I was there. Actually, I got a couple emails before I hopped on with you guys asking for more information about Women Who WP and the Philly WordCamp.

Tara: That’s excellent!

Liam: Yeah. Thank you so much for the support. That is hugely valuable (particularly when you said about I’m not sure if I’m going to start it) but I’m certainly going to support it. That’s just as important…remembering to register the Meetup page and do some of the initial organization. The community really needs people to come out support it, promoted it with social media and jump in where they can. That’s awesome. I’m really excited to see that Meetup come together and will certainly support it any way that I can too as well.

Tara: It sounds like not only have you gained a lot from the community but you also give back to it a lot. I see you are organizing and volunteering at WordCamps in your area. You actually inspire me to do the same. I think that’s great. You’re really a big part of the community.

Angelina: I appreciate that a lot. I learned that I could be involved. I don’t necessarily have to be a developer (although I am interested in learning along the way) but I learned quickly that I could do all these things and still meet all these cool people that have all these superpowers using WordPress. I don’t really have to be on the command line if I don’t want to be. It’s one of the things where I want to encourage others. You can be a content manager and still be very active and supportive in the community.

Tara: Great!

Liam: Here’s to that.

Tara: In your variety of capacities that you have in the WordPress community in your day job you described, in your social media management and client work that you do, what would you say is the most important thing that you do every day (whether it’s in your job or in your personal life)? What’s the most important to you on a daily basis?

Angelina: On a daily basis, the most important thing I do is help myself and ask did I help someone else? Did I have some kind of impact to make their day better and make my day better? I can help people all day long, but if I’m not helping myself first, what good am I to anyone else? It’s a bit of a team effort there.

Tara: Can you tell us a little bit more about how you do that? How do you take care of yourself that way?

Angelina: With self-care. I do a lot of meditation and practice mindfulness. I used to be into running but I’m taking a break from that right now. So I’m walking. I want to be doing some yoga and stretching, I guess. I’m not a fan of yoga, but I try. I try to stretch and make sure those muscles are warm and active as best as I can.

Tara: Stretching is hard.

Angelina: Wandering around the library makes me happy. That’s always fun.

Tara: What section of the Library?

Angelina: All of the sections! I grew up in the library. My mom worked in the school library so it was almost like punishment putting books away but I gained a skill at the end of the day. I can find my way around without help and help people find stuff in the library, which I did last night actually.

Liam: I love that. The library! So I have to ask you…do you borrow books from the library or do you rent them? I never get my books back on time. I always have to pay the fee. It’s really frustrating.

Angelina: I almost owned a book the other day. (laughing…several) But the librarian told me to consider it a donation to the library. So I looked at it that way. I really wanted the book that I was checking out. I wasn’t leaving without that book.

Liam: I’ve done the math recently on my own fees. It’s getting increasingly more valuable for me to just buy a paper copy on Amazon then to get it from the library by the time I get it back (and I don’t live far from the library).

Angelina: I set an alarm on my phone to see if I can actually get the book back on time. It’s a little personal challenge for myself to see what happens.

Liam: I never thought of that…a personal alarm. Just set a calendar reminder. I love that. Thank you. That is awesome.

Tara: One more thing for your calendar Liam.

Liam: Laughs. Thanks Tara.

Tara: After we talk about what’s the most important thing (sometimes this could be the same) but what is your favorite thing that you do everyday?

Angelina: Favorite thing? It is same thing really. I don’t know how to do anything else.

Tara: Take care of yourself. Is that what it is?

Angelina: I’m not going to claim I’m the best, but it is what I know how to do. It’s in my core and is what I do.

Tara: That’s great. When you started in the new day job you said you that you’re managing a few balls in the air in addition to your volunteer work. What would you say is your biggest challenge and how are you overcoming it? Are you overcoming it or how do you deal with it?

Angelina: The biggest challenge I think is doing “adulting”. Doing adult things. I’m used to working at home full-time, so its kind of like oh! I have to put pants on today and go to work. So just making sure that every day things that people do when they leave the house to go to work… now I have to make sure I’m ready to go. It’s like practicing having a schedule and making sure my lunch is ready. When I go to work and open my tote and realize that my lunch is not in there. I’m so proud of myself when I remember to bring my lunch with me. It’s little things like that where I have to remember that go on in the outside world. I know a lot of freelancers and developers that work from home. Either they chose to work from home or they transitioned back into the workforce. Those are the little things that you forget about. You have to learn to appreciate them all over again.

Liam: That can be very hard especially since it’s not like college. At college you had your Monday-Wednesday-Friday class and your Tuesday-Thursday. So you know you could (if you had to) if you didn’t have any clean clothes you could wear the same clothes on Monday and Tuesday because you wouldn’t see the Monday classmates again until Wednesday. You can’t do that at a 5 day of the week job. They catch onto that pretty quickly, don’t they?

Angelina: In fact, everything but my sandwich was like that the one day. I was like Oh Man! This is not going to work.

Tara: So have you started implementing any strategies or tools (since I’m a fan of tools) that you use to help remind yourself to put on pants?

Angelina: I’m trying to have a regular laundry schedule. I’m not going to say I’m failing at it but it’s coming along. There’s been a couple of days where I have been ahh…I’m going to wear those khakis again. I don’t think anyone is going to notice. It’s different. I can’t roll out of bed and wear a WordCamp t-shirt to work. I’m not going out to shop because I’m not really a big shopper for myself. I’m learning how to treat myself more and enjoy doing things for myself. I have to have more than just t-shirts when I’m going outside.

Liam: That’s hilarious! I’m going to change gears on us just a little bit if I can. Angelina? You’ve talked a lot about supporting the community, growing the community, advocating for the community and opening doors for the community. We talked about your definition of success and your favorite thing. But life is real. Even our favorite things bring some job tasks or chores that we don’t like. So what is what is one of your least favorite things that is important when it comes to growing community and supporting a community? What is it that you just don’t like doing but it has to get done so you do it anyway?

Angelina: When I get those emails from the WordPress organizer asking you to do the five-minute talk at a Meetup. When it is all said and done, I am happy that I did it, right? But I’m like…I don’t really want to do it. I want to interact with people and tell them what is going on with the next WordPress thing. At the end of the day, I think it’s a love/hate thing. No. I don’t want to do the talks. I know everyone says you have things to talk about but in my mind, I still don’t. I appreciate it when I go to things that aren’t WordPress…like when I spoke last week at the University…I had plenty to talk about. I felt very competent because I feel like the WordPress community and Meetups and WordCamps help me be more competent about doing that. So I’m not going to ignore any emails that come my way asking for five-minute talk.

Liam: I appreciate that. I guess what I’m trying to get around to understanding from your answer is it that you don’t feel comfortable talking in a WordPress community because you feel like you’re not advanced enough? Did I understand that correctly because might not have.

Angelina: Maybe. When I first starting out going to WordCamps and I was like oh! I want to speak at everything. Now it’s kind of like, well I think I saw a lot of stuff. I kind of want to hang back and fill in any missing gaps. I know I will see people in the hallway and be chatting with them…hallway chats. I find out what they need and I feel like I’m focusing on them and helping them get referrals and any resource they might need. I enjoy doing that and following up with them afterwards.

Liam: Yes. I totally understand that. It’s much more of you see yourself bringing a lot more value behind the scenes supporting the community, making connections and ok if they need me, I’ll stand in front of everybody and talk to them about stuff. But I’d rather make connections backwards. I like that. It makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

Tara: I think finding a balance of the two expresses that you necessarily didn’t want to do it. Afterward, you’re glad that you did. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

Angelina: It’s something like that. I guess a good middle ground for me would be like maybe an emcee or something at a conference…someone who interacts but not for too long.

Tara: Yeah. I could see that. Can you tell us about a tool that you use that you can’t live without?

Angelina: My favorite social media tool… or me personally…I like buffer because I can just drag-and-drop on the go. My favorite WordPress tools? I don’t know. I’m still exploring favorite WordPress tools. I don’t really have favorites. I just like to try everything. If anyone else needs help I like to understand their needs and give them a recommendation. I don’t get to personal with the tools because they come and go. They’re always evolving.

Tara: True. The Shiny object syndrome.

Liam: I also feel that the user interface for tools always change. So you tell a client on Monday here is how you log in to whatever it is. Here’s how you do it.

Angelina: Say when it’s not very good…say it’s good on web but it stinks on mobile or vice versa…I kind of want through my hands in the air and walk away.

Tara: That’s true.

Liam: Absolutely. Angelina? Let me ask you one other big question here on hallway chats. What is the single most valuable piece of advice (either professional or personal) that you’ve taken on board in your life and implemented?

Angelina: Don’t sell yourself short. That would be it right there. There have been several times I was told with talks, jobs or clients that I was told I wasn’t the right person. The supportive community (especially in the burbs with WordPress or Meetups) or even the ones I’ve met on line… that say Angelina…get your butt out there and do it. You’re the person for the job. Even talks outside of WordPress…are you sure you don’t want someone else? I can recommend another person I know. They are like no. We want you! To prove that, they may reschedule an appearance 2 or 3 times. I tried to recommend someone and they are like you’re still going to do this. You learn not to sell yourself short because I have something to contribute (even though many times I don’t think I do). We all have something to contribute even when we doubt ourselves.

Tara: Absolutely! I think that’s been the theme of this talk with you. It’s come up a couple of times that you have to have confidence in yourself but that the community really can validate you in that way too. You really do know more than you think you do. Thank you for sharing that.

Liam: I love how assertively and quickly you responded to that question. We’ve asked the question in all of our interviews. Your answer was by far the fastest and the most emphatic. It’s clear from your emotions that you clearly believe that piece of advice and that you do everything you can to deliver. So thank you very much sharing that. That is really powerful stuff.

Tara: I want to ask you about something else. Tell me that your apple cider obsession.

Angelina: I don’t know how it started. Just from hanging out with people…you don’t want to be that one person with a glass of wine while everyone else is drinking beer. One day I said “let me try this cider”. I fell in love with it and then I was like let me try other ciders. I started looking online. I found there are actually cider festivals and there are cider 5k’s and all kinds of things. It’s something where I took a break because when it was the Super Bowl, I went a little overboard with the cider. I realized Oh My God! How many calories are in one these things? So I took a break from that but I’m definitely getting back into it now because it’s summer time and just doing it moderation. I’m starting a new personal blog soon. It will cover museums and libraries and funky things that I like. I will be checking out cider events anything apple related as well. I might get around to that. I’m going to have some fun there.

Liam: That is awesome! So share with us (if you will) some of your favorite current favorite ciders. What do you like these days?

Angelina: Angry Orchard. I’m drawing a blank now…I tried an Irish cider Sunday…I went to brunch with a WordPress friend and tried…I can’t remember the name of it…

Liam: Magners?

Angelina: I think so. It wasn’t as sweet as Angry Orchard but I would try it again.

Liam: Do you like you like cloudy ciders at all? Have you had many of those?

Angelina: No. I kind of like to be able to see through what I’m drinking.

Liam: That seems reasonable.

Angelina: If I was a beer drinker, I probably would not like any of the stouts because I know what’s in there. I’m open to exploring different things as I probably have to as I go through with my new blog trying new fun things and explore that personal side of myself.

Liam: So let me share with you if I can…we’ve got a little bit of time. A cider driven social media story…here you go…ready? Have you heard of Commonwealth fighter? It’s made in Philly.

Angelina: No.

Liam: It’s a very dry cider. I know you said you like sweet so it might not be your top favorite.

Angelina: I’m open to trying it.

Liam: So my brother was kind enough to share some with me. He left me a few of them and I finished those up. I went to my local beer distributor in Philly area and they didn’t carry them. So I tweeted the brewery and when they made their delivery the next week to my local beer delivery place…as soon as the delivery was done…they tweeted at me…hey! It’s there. About 20 minutes later I popped into the beer distributor and the guy behind the counter was like how did you know we had this? We just got it. We never had it before. We ordered one case. They just sent it to us.

Liam: Yeah. They did it for me. I love the Internet. Thank you Twitter!

Tara: Very cool. So Angelina? We’re coming to the end. I wanted to ask you where people can find you? I’m really interested if you have a new name for your new blog?

Angelina: I have the domain. I bought it last year on my birthday. I just didn’t get around to it because I was doing other things. I’m working on content right now. The domain is called Archivedangel. I’m archiving experiences. That’s where it came from. I’m not quite sure exactly when it will launch. Hopefully, before the end of the year. On the interwebs you can find me where most accounts are under my name @AngelinaSimms and Angelinasimms.com.

Tara: With two m…s correct”

Angelina: That is correct.

Tara: It’s been a pleasure getting to know you better. I loved everything you had to say. I can’t wait to share it. Thanks so much for joining us.

Liam: Thank you for joining us Angelina! It’s a pleasure as always.

Liam: Thanks for the listening to the show. We sure hope you enjoyed it much as we did.

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.

https://chrisandjude.com

https://www.facebook.com/chrisandjude/

Success with WordPress Course

Carrie Dils, host of OfficeHours.FM podcast for freelancers. OfficeHours.FM is a weekly podcast focused on freelancers, small business owners and other delivering WordPress based products or services.Carrie interviews thought-leaders from the WordPress ecosystem and beyond to discern and share lessons learned.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Chris and Jude Warden, who are the co-creators of the Success With WordPress series of online courses. Hi Chris, hi Jude.

Jude: Hello.

Chris: Hi there.

Tara: Hello, welcome. We’re so excited to be talking to you guys today. Would you guys introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Chris: Who, me first?

Jude: You go first.

Chris: Okay. I’m Chris, so I’m the male voice. I started off as a designer, a long time ago, about 15 years ago and I’ve grown as a designer, I’ve managed studios and all that kind of stuff and I got into WordPress about 10 years ago and I’ve been using it for our clients in our web business, for the last seven years and I’ve also developed a bunch of commercial WordPress themes as well and our latest endeavor is selling online courses for WordPress.

Jude: And I’m Jude and I have a completely different background. My background is in use work and training and development but when I had our first son, and when I say our Chris and I are a married couple. When I had our first son, I decided not to go back to work afterwards, it just wasn’t going to fit in, and so I joined Chris running the web design and development business that he had started up while I was pregnant and then we sort of took it from there really.

So, I’ve been doing the business and finance and admin side of stuff of the business, and then got a little bit involved in the WordPress themes side of the business, planning out some of the themes for Chris to design and develop and then with my training background, this is really our sort of first joint endeavor that we’ve done together with the online courses, with Chris bringing all the real knowledge and me structuring the courses and making sure that we are meeting the learning requirements and we’ve got a real kind of clear guidance on where we are going with our courses.

Liam: That is a fantastic coming together, I love that. Thank you for sharing that and it’s clear you’re very aware of training. Chris, I love it, “I’m the male voice.” [crosstalk 00:02:23].

Jude: Well we have to do that because our names are … Either of us could be the male or female with our names. We had a phone call earlier, someone asked for me and Chris went, “Jude’s a woman.”

Chris: And I’m not Jude.

Liam: Dang that Beetle’s song, dang that Beetle’s song but no, I just appreciate the awareness of it, that speaks a lot about what I imagine the quality of your courses are, is you appreciate this is a podcast going out on audio and I know we can see each other, because we’re with video but the podcast is just going to published in audio. So, that’s fantastic.

The story then is that, Chris you were working as a designer. You got into WordPress, you really started to like it, you were using it … I’m just going to ask you a little bit and then I’ll get onto how Jude got involved and what you’re doing now. Tell me a little bit about what first drew you to WordPress? What you liked about it and how did you first start to use it?

Chris: Okay, I was a junior web designer and I was building school websites, so it was my first job. My mum found it in a tiny little column in the local advertiser paper and I was building websites on a CMS, content management system but it was a bit spoke one and I realized that all that we were ever going to do with school websites and although that was interesting at the beginning, I thought I want to branch out so, I’d heard of WordPress but I actually started looking at it properly, I’m sure you remember that The Kubrick theme that was one of the first, main themes of WordPress and I started to just have a play around with that before I knew any PHP or anything.

So, I looked at it then, that was probably, I don’t know probably 10 years ago, and then I got a new job as a senior web designer where we did more … We were using another bespoke CMS but I started to get involved with some freelance work on the side and started to look at Word, Joomla and Drupal and after having a nightmare with Drupal and Joomla!

Liam: WordPress it is.

Chris: Yeah WordPress it was. It just made more sense to me and nothing was really hidden and everything’s in PHP, in normal statements and I just thought, I get this, as a kind of fluffy designer, as I liked to describe myself in those days. I actually started to understand how to code and logic works. It wasn’t until we decided when our first son was due, that I was just basically an email monkey, in the company, because I’d moved up from senior designer. I was managing the studio, overseeing a team of web designers and developers and .net developers and we were working for some massive corporate clients, and I think I had about a thousand emails one month, all for me and I was like, “No, I’m not doing this anymore.”

Liam: That’s a lot of email.

Chris: Yes, it’s a lot of email. So, I thought right okay, said to Jude, “Let’s just go for it.” And so we set up our company and at that point I was looking at WordPress and MODX, which had come on the scene between and the first site I did was actually with MODX but it was a real learning curve to get working and then soon after that I realized their upgrade path wasn’t very good and WordPress, one of the main things I love about WordPress is, everything is backwards compatible and you can keep upgrading from old versions and still actually have a working site at the end of it.

So, that’s when I properly went into WordPress and I started freelancing through another company, kind of white label work, where I was building out the designs for them in WordPress.

Liam: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Chris: And it grew from there and then I came across a guy called Orman Clark, who was selling WordPress themes on his site called Theme Forest and that was, kind of, in its infancy. I think that was about five, five and half years ago. That’s actually before WordPress putting their theme customization API, so I had to write my own theme options, which was a little bit of a learning curve. Took me about six to eight weeks to write my own and I decided to start selling themes on Theme Forest and over the next four years after that, I think I’d developed about 30 to 40 commercial WordPress themes, which were on Theme Forest and alongside that, I was still building bespoke WordPress projects for clients, so that included themes and plugins and basically anything I’ve ever wanted to do, with building a website, I’ve been able to do through WordPress and that’s why I just love it so much and recommend it to everyone.

Liam: Well, that’s a great statement for it right there, “Everything that I’ve wanted to do with websites, I’ve been able to do with WordPress.” That’s awesome.

So Chris, you had this design career, you grew up through the ranks there, so to speak, and then you transitioned to your own business and you were doing some client work, you were selling some themes and then at some point you and Jude … Depends on how your business was going, said, “We need to dom something a little bit different or wouldn’t it be fun if we did something a little bit different or wouldn’t it be exciting?”

Maybe Jude, you can tell us a little bit about how you got involved and how this whole online training course system came about and where that’s going?

Jude: Well it came about really because, through working with our clients and at the process of handing over the website to them, Chris would always create a handover document for them. He’d always give them some training on using WordPress and how to take control of their site, so they weren’t having to come back to ours for every little thing that they needed to do or every little update they wanted to make, and then when we had the WordPress theme business as well, Chris’ level of support for the client who bought the themes was absolutely fantastic. It’d be commented on so much by people who had bought his themes and all the reviews on Theme Forest and again it was almost like training those people and as much as he only had to give support on bug fixes and things like that for the theme, he would invariably go above and beyond and be helping them set up the theme on WordPress and giving them help on how to use WordPress as well.

So, naturally Chris was starting to essentially train people from that point of view but we didn’t think about doing the online courses until Chris went to a business event in London with a friend, they were hoping to go to a networking-

Chris: It was a speed networking, yeah.

Jude: A speed networking night.

Chris: You had 30 seconds each to talk, you and the other person to talk.

Jude: So, yeah, they wanted to go and do the speed networking. They turned up, it was full and so they thought, “What else are we going to do for this hour until we can go to the next speed networking session in an hours time?” And he stumbled across a talk by someone called Shaa Wasmund, I don’t know if you are familiar with her? She is quite big in the business world over here, she’s an MBE for her services to business and she was talking about the fact that she want to have more freedom in her work and she’d worked with some really fantastic people in the past but she wanted to go out on her own and get out there and basically help other people start up their businesses and one of the ways she was doing that, was through online courses and so, Chris listening to her speak thought, “Why don’t we do this? Jude’s got a training background and yes, she’s doing nicely within the business doing all this admin and finance and everything else and keeping him on track.” But it made so much sense and we’d always had the passive income from the themes coming in but the WordPress theme market was getting really over saturated and to actually get your theme out there, getting it to stick, getting people to buy it was getting harder and harder.

So, we thought let’s try the online courses as another way of creating that extra income for the business and we’re still doing the client work but have that other revenue stream and to do something that actually meant we were working together, seemed like a really good idea, a really exciting idea really, so that’s why we started doing it.

Liam: That’s really neat and I love that openness too, well what am I going to do with the next hour? Well yeah here’s what I’m going to do and then you went home and you guys talked about it. That’s great. So, what is the status of your online courses now? Is that all out and live, and what kind of courses are you offering?

Jude: So, we’ve got our Success with WordPress series of courses, which there are four courses in the series and those four courses are all live, they are out there to buy from chrisandjude.com website but we are also combining all of those courses into the Success with WordPress Master Course, which works out better value for people to buy the whole master course. We’ve got a couple of little extras in the master course as well, that don’t come with the individual courses and that is being launched on 29th June, so we are gearing up towards that now.

We have just started recording a series of free tutorials aimed at people who need to get a website, or want to refresh their website, some people who don’t even know what platform they want to use for their website. We’ve got a series of six tutorials, that we’re releasing for free, starting next week on Thursday, on the 15th June, and that’s all leading up to us launching the master course at the end of the month.

And then we’ve got some other offers that we’re going to put out there as well, that includes the master course, plus some of Chris’ time in coaching calls and doing website reviews and things like that, So that’s where we’re at, at the moment.

Tara: Wow, you guys are busy.

Jude: Yeah.

Tara: I have about a million questions I want to ask you about how everything’s working and marketing and all of these kind of things but what I really want to talk about now, because I love the title of your course, The Success with WordPress, and it ties into a question that we ask of our guests, which is how you define success? Whether it’s success in your business, in your life. Sounds like you’ve made a choice to leave the corporate world and the email inbox craziness that you had going on, so now that you’re doing this together and sounds like you have a focus on your family. Tell us a little bit about what success means for you.

Chris: Yeah we were discussing this, this morning and I think because our personal life and our business life are pretty much intertwined, because we both work with the same business, we think mainly the success is the freedom that comes around having your own business but also having professionally, having people look up to you, respect you and actually take your advice as solid advice that can be trusted. I think that’s one of the main factors, is just being seen, not necessarily as an expert but as the go to people that, “Yeah, they know what they’re talking about, we can trust them.” And if we can grow the success with WordPress courses and other online courses we’ve got planned in the future, then hopefully we can start building up a bit of a monthly revenue that will create that freedom for us as well and then the more freedom you get, the more we pour into the courses, so everyone will benefit really.

Jude: Yeah the freedom is a real key thing for us because we do have two small children and just being able to be flexible and spend the time with them when they’re little, when we need to spend the time with them, like it’s fantastic that Chris gets to go to all the celebration assemblies at school and the sports days and everything like that, which we know that William is so lucky to have both of his parents at all those things because most people have got at least one parent who’s got to go and do the nine to five and can’t get the time off for all of those events.

So, yeah we do feel that, that flexibility from the personal life point of view and the respect in the actual sector that we work is the key for us when it comes to success.

Liam: Yeah that flexibility is hugely valuable, especially as parents, I get that. I was at the third grade end of school party earlier this week at two o’clock in the afternoon, so that was a real gift and to be there, especially in our current culture, to be there as a dad is not something that is commonly possible or smiled upon and that we’re able to do that, is great.

You really struck a chord with me when you were talking about, not necessarily being the expert but being trusted and I think that’s such a valuable point of you really know your stuff, you know what you’re talking about, you know what you don’t know, right? That’s almost as important as what you do know and to conduct yourself in a way that people will trust you when you say, “Hey, the answer is X.” They know they can build their business or progress their own efforts based on that and that’s a really, really powerful definition of success is knowing that you’re in a position where people trust you. That’s great.

So, within that definition of success then, what’s the single most important thing you do either as individuals or collectively to achieve and maintain that success? The single most important thing you do, yeah, every day. Let me say it that way, every day.

Jude: We were talking about this and we think just getting up every day and going and doing it, basically, because we work for ourselves and we are the only ones who can go and do it, there’s no one else to rely on, we can’t sit back on our laurels and think, “Someone else is going to do this for us.” Is just that consistency and we also think, communication between us as well. I think everyday we have a conversation about where we’re going, is what we’re doing right at the moment? Do we need to re-address this? Are we focusing on the right things? And trying to process information and advice we get from other people and that communication and consistency, I think, are the two things that are the important things that we do day in, day out.

Chris: Unfortunately, that conversation’s usually just before bed. So, we either end up getting into bed too late or that we can’t sleep because we’re thinking about what’s happened in the day but I think communication is key. Obviously, we’re lucky that we’re married and we don’t squabble, that makes things a lot easier but I think consistency and communication is the key.

Jude: Definitely.

Tara: Yeah, can you tell us a little bit more about how you do work together as a married couple? I think a lot of people in the WordPress space work, either, as solo printers or if they have employees or contractors or business partners but I think it’s less common to have both partners be involved in the business at the way that you two are and so, I’d love to hear more about how you make that work. What the challenges are that you face in being married couple with a business, together? I’m sure they’re many advantages as well, can you talk a little bit about that?

Chris: I would say it took a long time to get right. At the beginning, we were at each others throats, I would say, for most of the time. It was difficult because I’d never worked with Jude before and any position I’d been in, in my career, I’d always been in charge of people and Jude is used to being in charge of people as well.

Liam: Yeah, I see how that would have been a challenge.

Chris: We worked it in the end, I think just by taking a step back and just assessing what we wanted to get out of the business and that the fact that we were both there to help each other and we weren’t there to work against each other and then all of a sudden, it just slotted into place and it was just everything went really smoothly all of a sudden.

Jude: I think that when it slotted into place was, when Chris started the business he worked from home and then when I came into the business, we still were working from home and so we didn’t really have that physical divide between our home life and our business life but then when we got an office, which was in the town center, it was that we had to physically have to travel to work, I think that was when the difference started because we were in a different environment and it’s like, “Right, we’re working now.” We kind of went into a more professional mode.

We also had another guy come and work with us in our office as well, so then we were not just a married couple anymore, we had someone else there too and so we had to act professionally. So, yeah I do think that was the changing point for us, taking the business out of the home environment but now that we’re much more used together, I mean it’s been nearly seven years now, we work from home sometimes. We work in the office sometimes and it doesn’t matter anymore. Now that we’ve established our roles in the business and we’ve got the dynamic right between us as a business pairing, as well as, a couple, it seems to work much better, but yeah it did take time, but it works really well now.

Liam: Yeah, I can tell from the interaction between you two that you clearly like each other a lot and love each other a lot and are very comfortable communicating openly with each other, in front of people you don’t know [crosstalk 00:20:05] It’s going to be broadcasted on to the internet.

Let me ask you about the decision to get an office, an out of home office and you had said that was a pivotal point for your relationship as business partners. Was that something where you both decided, “Hey, what if we worked outside of the home? That would give us the distance.” Or was it more of a, “Hey, the business is doing well, we need a bit more physical space. I can’t keep all this here, I can’t keep all that, if we had an office somewhere we could go there.” And then after a few weeks or months of going, you realized, “You know what, this was a really smart decision because we have this ability to communicate so much better because we have a different mindset.” Can you talk a little bit about that?

Chris: We were starting to get more client meetings, so the work that I’d started on when the business is very much white label, sort of a secret freelancer resource but then we started to get more actual proper clients and I would go out and travel to them and then there’d be the awkward question about, “Oh, we’d like to come and see you in your office.” And “Well, we don’t really have an office. We could meet you in a coffee shop.”

Jude: Spare room?

Chris: Yeah, so then we thought we’ll start looking around for a cheap office in the center of town and we found one fairly quickly.

Jude: We did and also the days I was working, our son was not in the house, he was off being looked after by the grandparents, but the days I was around, Chris was trying to work upstairs. Our little boy knew he was upstairs, so wanted to go and see daddy but daddy was supposed to be working and so that was another driving factor as well, that Chris’ productivity levels on the days when he was being visited by a little visitor frequently or can hear shouting or crying. iF he’s trying to take a phone call and he’s got a two year old screaming at the bottom of the stairs, didn’t work so well.

So yeah, that was another factor as well. We did need to split that family and business like from that point of view as well.

Liam: Mm-hmm (affirmative) That’s great. I love how that came together as a, sounds almost like an added benefit in the logistics of planning the business and growing the business … Enabled you to communicate better.

So, you’ve talked about how Chris you started getting into WordPress and then Jude, now, you got involved with his business and it’s now the family business and you’re growing it into a training business all around WordPress. Tell me a little bit about how you engage with the WordPress community in your neck of the woods and how you first got involved with that and how you continue to be involve with it?

Chris: We probably should mention we’ve got a Facebook group that we set up for the support, it’s called Support with WordPress actually. I’ve been randomly helping people who knew that I did WordPress over Skype and Twitter and I’ve also joined a bunch of Facebook groups as well, WordPress related Facebook groups to try and help people and the WordPress community is great but I think I’d say on the most part, it’s mainly aimed at other developers and people who come in who are entrepreneurs or small business people or start-ups, sometimes they don’t even know what WordPress is, let alone how it works, and I found that a lot of the other Facebook groups that are around, it was very much a kind of … Obviously it was free and it was great that people were helping but someone coming along with perhaps it is a stupid, simple question and they’d just get the response back from other people in the Facebook group saying, “Well Google it.” Or “Oh that’s such a simple question.” And they’d be mocked.

I got involved in a few conversations in various WordPress related Facebook groups saying, “Look, you guys are being mean to people. There is really no silly question, just answer the question and move on and if you don’t like it, don’t answer it.” I got a bit fed up with that. So, we just thought, “Oh, we’ll set up our own one.” And the idea of our one is that it’s nice and friendly environment and it’s geared towards entrepreneurs and start-ups and people who are known techy people.

Jude: And Chris is also like, since you’ve been running your own business, going to various, not WordPress specific but various web meetups in the area and now you do run your own web meetup as well in the nearest town, with a couple of other web guys called Meet and Geek, which is on a Wednesday evening in a pub, once a month but it’s another way for him to get into the community and support other people and have a night out [crosstalk 00:24:45].

Tara: I love the range that you are involved and the patience that it seems like you to work with people who are starting out with WordPress and that you’re recognizing the kind of attitude that’s needed to make them feel welcome. So, I think that’s great.  Did you receive help like that when you were starting with WordPress? Where does that appreciation come from, for you?

Chris: I think I’ve always liked helping people, that’s one my of things that I think is in my DNA. The first help I got with WordPress was just Googling and looking at the WordPress codex and WordPress forums and getting help that way. I don’t think I got any specific help from a specific community that I can actually think of. I think I just learnt stuff on the way and got help when I needed it.

Jude: Yeah, I can’t remember you getting any specific advice or anything. It was just find your own way type thing, wasn’t it?

Chris: That’s one of the great things about WordPress is, you can go off and Google it or find a blog post and just do stuff with it, information is very freely available.

Liam: It’s a real selling point for the CMS, I totally agree with that. So let me ask you folks this question. Now that you’re growing this online training business and Chris you said you like to help people, it’s in your DNA and Jude, trainings been your professional background for a long time now. Can you tell about, within your day-to-day business, what’s your favorite thing to do about your work, your career, your business?

Jude: I think for me, now that we’re doing all of the training stuff, it is being there and talking to people. I love doing the Facebook lives that we’re doing. I love the fact that although now I’m doing my training in front of a camera, I’m actually there training again because I had such a big gap between actually doing the training in my career previously to starting doing this. I’m loving the fact that I’m there again and delivering information and helping people out and it’s in a completely different area of work but it’s still the same kind of feeling and that same kind of opportunity to have that engagement with people and yeah, I like being the center of attention, standing up there everyone looking at me.

Liam: Excellent and Chris?

Chris: I do love helping people but I think the thing I like most about the profession it sitting down in front of Photoshop, with a blank canvas and designing something. That’s definitely my favorite thing to do. Just sitting there and designing for hours on end.

Tara: That sounds like you guys have a good match between the two of you. So, you’re still doing some client work then? So you like that still, Chris?

Chris: Yeah, we still do client work, yeah.

Tara: Tell us about where you live. Sounds like you’ve got a nice community there and you’ve found a great place to have your office in your town. Can you tell us about where you are?

Chris: Yeah, so the nearest town to us is a little quintessentially English market town called Romsey and actually our office is in the second oldest building in the town, so I think, is it Tudor?

Jude: I don’t know.

Chris: It’s got wooden beams. It’s wooden beams in there and it’s got a curved-

Liam: That would be Tudor.

Jude: Yeah, there we go.

Chris: And it’s got a curved door as well, which is the original door, which is amazing. Everybody comes and visits us, comments on that.

Jude: We live in a little village just outside of Romsey, which is quite close to Southampton, that’s one of our nearest cities and we’re close to Winchester as well. We do love where we live because we are so close to both Southampton and Winchester, we jump on a train and we’re in London in an hour but where we actually live we have views of horses and fields and we walk up the road and there are some alpacas in a field. We feel like we’ve got the best of both worlds, don’t we? Because we are nicely close to everything we need to be close to but we’ve got a nice rural feel as well.

Tara: That sounds lovely.

Liam: Yeah that’s fantastic. I very much miss that. I have the same set up just outside Oxford and it was a really nice little village outside Oxford, so I could go into Oxford, I could take the train or the bus into London and be there but I could also, you know, every afternoon at four the horse clip, clopped past my home office window, which was kind of nice, “Sorry, can’t hear you. There’s horses going by.”

Jude: [crosstalk 00:29:27].

Liam: So let me totally change gears on you and we’ve talked about this idyllic, peaceful location where you folks live but what’s been your biggest challenge to date?

Jude: We’ve got personal challenges and professional challenges.

Liam: Of course.

Jude: We were talking this morning, with our professional challenges, the thing that we struggle with the most is, we love doing the client work. Chris loves doing the design, he really likes talking to the clients and really getting their ideas out of them, so he can make them become a reality on the web but we do struggle sometimes with the clients who don’t pay their bills and so we’re having to chase them and it’s that side of the business that we are less fond off, aren’t we?

Chris: Yeah, I’d say trying to build up a recurring, not a passive but just a recurring revenue month-on-month is a tricky thing to get right. We tried it with the WordPress themes. It sort of worked until everyone jumped on the band wagon and it was just too much saturation out there and I think the work involved was a bit beyond what we were able to put in at the time, as we actually sold the theme business as part of setting up the course because I really think the courses can make a difference to people whereas the themes was kind of, not selfish but selfish in the fact that I wanted to make recurring revenue for our family but I think, if we can help people and make money at the same time with our courses, then that’s a win-win for us really.

Liam: Yeah and I think that’s a really important point is, money is a valuable tool, right? It’s useful. You’ve got children, they need to eat. You’ve got a mortgage or rent, you’ve got to pay that, it’s difficult to live indoors if you don’t and tying the ability to cover those human needs in a way where you’re giving back to the wider world or community through your work and through your effort, is just fantastic. I love that. I love that.

So, let me ask you what, maybe in another 50 episodes will become our signature question. What is the single most valuable piece of advice, personal or professional, that you have heard, received and implemented in your lives?

Chris: Stay consistent I’d say was the-

Jude: Yeah. I think consistency is absolutely key, whether it’s in the way that we work with clients and Chris does have a process that he goes through each time so that he knows that he’s setting up a project in the right way with a client but equally with our themes, like the consistency in the support that Chris gave and the consistency in the products that he delivered and then obviously moving onto the courses, doing the same thing.

Chris: We’re consistently in our Facebook group every single day, making sure that people are on the right tracks and understanding things and trying to add value all the time as well.

Jude: So yes, just that keep going. Keep doing it.

Liam: Keep moving forward. Keep moving forward and it’s clear that you both really believe that, because Chris it took you all about of eighth of second to respond to the question and Jude you jumped in right away and said, “Yes, yes, yes.” So it’s clearly a mutually held belief.

Tara: You guys are in sync.

Liam: SO, thank you both very, very much for joining us today, before we say official goodbye to you all, I’ll just ask to share where people can find you online. You’ve mentioned Facebook and your Succeed with WordPress but maybe you can rattle off a few URLs and locations for us.

Chris: Yeah, so our website is chrisandjude.com and you can find all of our course there and you can actually find a link to our Facebook group and our Facebook page there as well but you can find us on Facebook as Chris and Jude and our group on Facebook is called Support With WordPress.

Jude: Yeah.

Chris: And we’re on Twitter under Chris and Jude.

Jude: And on Instagram. We’re everywhere really.

Liam: As Chris and Jude, yeah there’s a theme there.

Jude: Absolutely.

Tara: I’m sorry that we’re out of time because I do want to keep talking to you and hear more about your business, so I’ll look forward to seeing your launch and following you guys in your progress along your path with your courses and I hope to see you again online sometime soon.

Chris: Yes, thank you for having us.

Jude: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Liam: Thanks. Bye.

Jude: Bye.

Tara: Bye.

Chris: Bye.

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