Hallway Chats

Pritesh leads growth marketing and operations at BlogVault, MalCare, WP Remote. Previously, he co-founded and sold Uninstall.io. He’s an entrepreneur at heart who loves challenging the status quo. Pritesh says he is a hardcore growth geek.

Twitter | @priteshvora

Preferred Pronouns | He/Him

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 132.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we’re joined by Pritesh Vora. Pritesh leads growth marketing and operations at BlogVault, MalCare, WP Remote. Previously, he co-founded and sold Uninstall.io. Here’s an entrepreneur at heart who loves challenging the status quo. Pritesh says he is a hardcore growth geek. Welcome, Pritesh. Thank you for joining us.

Pritesh: It’s my pleasure. Thank you, Liam and Tara. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Tara: Nice to have you here today. Can you tell us more about yourself, Pritesh?

Pritesh: Absolutely. Hey guys, I’m Pritesh, and we are WordPress plugin makers. I’m from the absolute other side of the world, from Bangalore, India. It’s just about past evening here. I lead growth, marketing, and operations, as Liam said, for four of successful WordPress plugins of our company.

The first one is BlogVault. It’s a cloud-based WordPress backup and staging service. The second is MalCare, which is a high-performance WordPress security solution. Third is WP Remote, which is a new Gen WordPress site manager solution for agencies. And lastly, Migrate Guru, which is a completely free migration plugin for the WordPress community. So that’s what we do.

Tara: I just learned about Migrate Guru last week. And man, it was amazing. It was great. I’ve used BlogVault with different hosts, but I hadn’t been aware of that plugin. And it was a real lifesaver for me last week. So congratulations on that. Pritesh, tell us your background. How did you get started and all this tech stuff in Bangalore?

Pritesh: That’s an interesting story. I’m an engineer by background —a software engineer. India is a decently sizable country. So, I was born in the eastern part of India, born and brought up, did my education in the eastern part of India, completed my engineering, and then got off. I was placed, through our college campus, in one of the largest software companies in India, where I had to go from east to the western part of India, in Mumbai, which is the largest city in India.

I spent a few years there with that company. I got one of the best opportunities while staying in that company, and I stayed in United States for a few years, and went through Europe and United Kingdom. After spending around five, six years, it just felt like there was something which was missing in me. And I have always wanted to do more, contribute more, find ways in which I can contribute more, and make someone’s life better. And that’s when I jumped a ship from a multinational company. I was pretty comfortable in that place, and then jumped the ship from that multinational company and joined a really, really, really small startup, which was based out of one of the most premier institutes of India in the south of India.

So I started from east, went to the west, and then moved to the south of India. We were working out of a small college dorm. Just two people trying to make a difference in the world at that point of time. With all the enthusiasm and excitement, the only thing we wanted to do was go by Steve Jobs’ words: “make a dent in the universe.” I can now look back at it and smile and say how naive that was, how childish we were. But I loved the energy and enthusiasm and the fun. The most important part was the fun that was involved in building that product startup and scaling it and growing it to do certain things.

For various reasons, we scaled that startup, and then eventually we had to shut it down. It did not scale to the levels that we wanted. And that led me to get in touch with a couple of other colleagues who I had been working with. And that’s when I made my move to Bangalore. So, I came to Bangalore, we all got together, and we built another product called uninstall.io. It was the first of its kind product which helped detect mobile app uninstallations, and helped, essentially mobile app owners.

So if you are an Uber, our product would let you understand who has uninstalled your app and why did they uninstall your app. So it was analytics around mobile app uninstallations. Again, it was a childlike moment when, with all the enthusiasm and excitement, we build this product and we scaled it. We were part of Microsoft’s accelerator. We raise some money around it from some of the prominent investors in the country and outside, including 500 startups from the United States. And eventually, the business was doing decently well, and then we got a nice opportunity where we were acquired by a company in Southeast Asia.

All this while, I’ve been working on either mobile-related products, where mobile is at the center of everything that we do. Funnily enough for me, mobile was a really advanced technology or structure that we were working on. Then I met Akshat, who is the founder of this company, after my acquisition. He threw me a challenge of, you know, that we are about WordPress-based company.

I’m going to be honest here. Literally, I had no clue about what WordPress is. And I used to think, “Isn’t that a really old technology? Isn’t that something which is used by people who are not able to get hands-on the latest like Angular.” There were a lot of buzzwords going around, right? NodeJS, AngularJS. So I had my own sort of apprehensions thinking, “I don’t know, do I really want to go take a step back and look at a technology which has been stagnant for quite some time, essentially, PHP related products? Or do I want to move to the next stage of technology, which is AI and ML, machine learning, and all those things?”

But Akshat told me more about WordPress as an ecosystem as a product, the impact it has on the power of publishing that’s there. Although I’m going to be honest. I was still not convinced about all of that. But heck, yeah, I thought, “You know what, it’s a good challenge.” The product has been growing, the product is solid, the team is solid. They’re getting decent traction. And it’s a real challenge to see take them from where they, from X to 10 X. And that’s the challenge which excited me and I joined this company, I think almost two and a half years ago, when there was just BlogVault—that’s all we had as a product.

After seeing the inside of WordPress, after spending some time, for more than two years now in WordPress, I understand how it feels and what the community is, and how wrong was I to just measure it based on technology.

Liam: Pritesh, that’s quite a story you’ve shared with us, and there’s a lot of things I could spend all day chatting with you about. I do want to go back to one of your earlier statements that I wrote down. And I think it’s probably the biggest understatement we’ve ever had on this show. And you said, “India is a decently sizable country.” That’s hilarious. You’re awesome. I love it.

But your journey to WordPress is really interesting to me because I am not a tech-focused engineer. I am a designer and a marketing consultant. Tara has a similar lien to me. That you kind of came to WordPress with what might be perceived as kind of a typical “Oh, it’s WordPress. It’s old. It’s out of date. It’s PHP. It’s simple.”

And then you’ve learned and really enjoy it now. I wonder about, it sounds like your new role in terms of growth-focused is less code-driven, code-focused, programming-focused and more kind of marketing community-focused. Is that correct? And if so, how do you feel about that transition? What’s been that been like?

Pritesh: For me, product is as the center of everything. And having an engineering background, a software engineering background gives me that edge where I’d love to stay close to technology. I’ve built, to the extent even when I left programming per se, the bug inside me made me develop a few automated Excel tools. Because I just love automating things. That’s why I’m always very close to the product as such.

For my own startup, the startup before that, I was still in the marketing and business and growth role, where it’s a small team—you’re practically everyone, barring the coding part. And you play all the roles, including support. So the product has been at the centerpiece of everything. Things have really not changed.

I want to use a product and be convinced and love and take that passion into the market. And to be passionate about something, it’s extremely essential for me to fully eat my own dog food. It’s not the best way to describe it, but yeah, until I eat my dog food, and I realized I cannot translate that passion into growing or translating it into the communication that we put into it. Does it answer your question?

Liam: Yeah, it totally does. It totally does. It totally does. And those non-tech leaning folks who have never heard the phrase “to eat your own dog food,” which I remember the first time I heard it 10 years ago, and you just go, “What?” it means to use your own product or run your own code and use it in your own life. Pretty much eat what you cook kind of thing. I’m sorry, Pritesh. I think we stepped on each other. I’ll let you talk. Go ahead.

Pritesh: No, that’s it. I’m just saying I’m not sure if I like what I cook.

Liam: Let me ask you a question about the WordPress community because if you shared with us it was clear that you weren’t familiar with it, and you started looking at it from a tech standpoint. But Akshat was kind enough to slow down and chat you through that a little bit. I’m guessing you’ve probably been to at least one WordCamp now. And if so, what was that like for you? What was your first WordCamp like?

Pritesh: Wow. That’s quite an experience. You hit the nail right on its head. Me being an outsider has been a very different perspective on how we look at things. There are advantages as well as disadvantages because I do not understand a lot of nuances related to WordPress, which are so commonly taken for granted. I think I joined mid-year, in June or July, and spent a few months just trying to set up things and understanding of what we do, build the basic foundations. And then Akshat and I spoke and he said, “You know what, we should go attend WordCamp US.” I’m like, “Okay, you know what, that’s fine. Let’s do that.”

And so, the first WordCamp that I ever attended was WordCamp US. I had not attended any local or any regional WordCamp. And the first one that I made was to WordCamp US. That in itself was quite an experience for me. I’d spoken in a lot of conferences when I was in the mobile ecosystem because it was part of one of the strategies to grow our business as well. And the atmosphere of those conferences versus what you see here in a WordCamp. It’s just like North Pole, South Pole. The whole mindset is different.

The normal conferences have these sales mindset, let’s get business done mindset versus a WordCamp, which is more like a family picnic and mentoring session. It’s more like an accelerator or a camping session, where there’s more of a personal feel to it than business.

Tara: I love the idea of a like family picnic. That’s a great analogy it is a lot like that. And the more you go, it’s like a family reunion because you see people you’ve met many times before. So that’s a great analogy. I love your passion for what you’ve done and startups and the energy that you convey, that you bring to and get from these types of projects. Pritesh, I’d like to ask you a question we ask everyone which is about success and how you define success. Can you share with us your definition of success, what it means to you?

Pritesh: Sure. This question, even when I was filling the form, it threw me off a bit, to be honest. You do keep thinking about it. You don’t get asked such things so regularly, so often. When I was trying to fill the form, it gave me an opportunity to just think a little bit. When I filled the form, I just felt something as a placeholder, to be honest. But then I went back and I really thought about it. You know, what does it really mean after a few years that I’ve spent in this company and the kind of work that I do.

So, success, I equate it to something that can bring you joy or happiness. First of all, it’s extremely subjective. But the way I would see it is if we can unite or get a bunch of people together to help achieve a mission that can make a difference in someone’s life. It doesn’t need to be millions of people. But as long as it makes a difference in someone’s life by uniting a bunch of people, achieving a mission, I think I would call that a success.

Tara: You sound like a leader and as somebody who enjoys working with other people. I know right now we are recording this during social distancing and Coronavirus times, but do you work from home alone or do you work in an office with other people?

Pritesh: Wow, that’s one question which…you’ll not believe it. It’s something which is probably common in western countries. But for us, we are a company which is culture towards working from the office. Every one of us is placed in an office together, working together from office space. So when this Corona thing happened, it was like we had to make an overnight adjustment to working remote.

And I’m going to be honest, it wasn’t easy. We are not used to working remote. We are so used to seeing people face to face, doing that verbal communication, fighting about something, getting someone from the team, and asking them to get into a room, “Okay, let’s try and do this. Let’s get this thing done. Get this out of the way.” As in how things move along. There’s a lot of momentum, a lot of energy when you are in a physical space.

So suddenly when we had to go remote because of the Coronavirus virus situation, none of us were prepared. None of us were ready for it. So it took us almost a week to just get used to the fact of how do we align ourselves, how do we align our goals while working remote? The way we started initially, it was like, for every small thing we would set up a meeting. We would set up a call, we would set up a meeting to discuss everything because we are so used to that doing that in the physical space. The colleagues are sitting right across the table and you get into a verbal communication and nail it out.

But now gradually we’ve learned the hard way that there’s no better thing than written communication. Written communication can take care of avoiding so many meetings and can make you usually productive. And so many meetings can just be avoided if you master the art of written communication.

Liam: Yeah, that transition from office space to remote is interesting. I was out just riding my bike around my neighborhood in suburban Philadelphia in neighboring neighborhoods and bumped into a friend. And he had a very similar experience to what you had, Pritesh, where he goes into the office day in day out for years, and all of a sudden, he’s at home and he’s not seeing anybody. And the normal way of the way that his company got things done and did the day to day stuff is totally upended. And so we’ve adjusted. And he’s finding some value in it now, but it definitely threw him for a loop in the first week or two as well. So I think that experience is probably somewhat common across the world.

Pritesh: I’ll tell you what, there’s a small difference, especially when you work in India. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I can share what happens in India. Culturally, there are a lot of families who still live with their parents. Either the son or the daughter is doing well and they live in a different city than their home city, and they get their parents from their home city to the new place. So what happens is, traditionally, parents are used to seeing their kids go out every day and work, you know, get out of home at nine o’clock, get back by seven o’clock. You know, you’re expected to go out.

So if you don’t go out, it is assumed that something’s gone wrong in office. Either you’ve been let go or something’s going weird. So the first few days, you know, you suddenly start seeing weird reactions. As in they’re confused. As in what the hell is happening? Why is he working from home? Doesn’t he have any work? Has he been fired? Is he out of work or what is going on?

Liam: That’s pretty funny. Thank you for sharing that. Let me ask you another question that we like to put upon our guests. And it’s about advice. Pritesh, you shared that you grew up in the east of India, you move to the west of India, and then you moved south, and now you’re kind of in central. So you’re a man about India, if I can put it that way. And I imagine in your life, in your journeys, in your travels, you’ve picked up some advice along the way that you’ve found useful. I wonder if you can share the most valuable advice that you’ve ever come across or have been told and successfully implemented in your life?

Pritesh: Sure. Something that I learned the hard way. I’m not going to say I learned it the smart way. But something that I learned the hard way was about two things. First was that skill trumps knowledge. In my early days, I used to just keep reading stuff, watching stuff hoping to learn new things. Let’s say SEO. I would put in hours and hours just trying to learn and learn and learn. And I would wait until I’ve consumed everything before I moved an inch. And by the time I’m finished learning, I suddenly realize that I’ve lost almost three months or six months just trying to learn it, and I’ve done nothing. I’ve achieved nothing. And that made me even more angrier.

This was a pattern I started seeing that I was just trying to avoid doing it, and I was in the notion that if I learn more and more, I’ll automatically be able to do better. Unfortunately, even after spending hours and hours just trying to gain knowledge or trying to learn, when it came to implementation, even after it was three months, it still felt like day one for me. All the time that I spend did not just make me suddenly better right on day one. It was not like I was performing at the best when I started implementing it on day one.

When this happened, I got really angry with myself. I was like, “I’ve spent so much time. I wasted so much time doing this, just trying to learn.” And when I started actually implementing it, I was still on day one and I have not achieved what I could have achieved if I spent less time. So I made a resolve—and this was something which I discussed with one of our colleagues as well from the industry—and I said that skill is more important than knowledge. Skill will only come once you start doing things rather than just learning things.

It’s extremely important to just go out there and do it than wait for the perfect time or moment until you have known everything. And you’ll think that once you know everything, you will be able to do it better. But that’s never going to happen. So that was a very important lesson I learned. And it really stuck with me because I am able to implement that today. And I see that even if you put like a whole week just learning, and when we go to implementation, we see we’re still on day one, and 90% of that project is still unknown until we start implementing it. So now we made a rule, we run small growth experiments, we make certain hypothesis, but our aim is to move fast, fail fast, and win fast. That’s one thing which has stuck with me for long.

Tara: That’s great advice and insight. I totally agree with that. I think there is such an endless amount of learning that can be done. I mean, SEO, for example, how many free SEO courses and webinars do I sign up for because I think I’m going to finally have all the answers. But until you’re actually doing it, you really don’t know what you’re doing. I mean, you can speak about it because you’ve absorbed all of this information, but it doesn’t make you good at it. I guess it’s sort of having perfect be the enemy of the good you. It’s the same concept of knowing everything before you do it. It’s you’re never going to do it and you’re never going to do it well until you put it into practice. I think that’s excellent advice. And I totally agree with that.

I also like the – what did you say? – fail fast. You have to not be afraid to fail when you are executing things that you might not completely know. You’re going to probably break things and make mistakes. And you have to not be afraid of that. So thank you for sharing that advice.

Pritesh: I’m happy to.

Liam: That’s especially true in technology, right? That which we learned today, you know, SEO, Google changed something when we go to sleep. So wake up and it’s the algorithm is different, the user interface is different, best practice is different, development processes, Gutenberg. There’s always something new and different and changing. That if we try to know everything, it’s some kind of attempt at learning that will never succeed. Excellent advice. Thank you, Pritesh.

Pritesh: Sure. Glad to contribute.

Tara: It also I think carries on to the entrepreneurial spirit that you have as well. So your role with BlogVault with Akshat’s company, I assume has evolved. Do you feel like you would like to start another startup on your own again or was your experience doing that once enough?

Pritesh: It’s like tasting blood. Once you’ve tasted it, you want to go back and do it again. I don’t know when, but I have a mission here. Until I accomplish that mission, I’m going to definitely stick around. Akshat did give me that opportunity. He’s been kind enough to give me that freedom as well to do it. And once I hopefully achieve that vision or mission that we have in mind, then I’ll start thinking about it. But definitely, it’s something which is going to happen sooner than later.

Tara: Well, I’m sure you’ll keep adding value to that company. And I look forward to seeing what you do from here on out, Pritesh. We are unfortunately out of time, and so we need to wrap it up. Can you share with us where people can find you online?

Pritesh: Sure. I’m there on Twitter, although I’m not so active. @priteshvora on Twitter.

Tara: Thank you so much for joining us. Great meeting you.

Pritesh: It was a pleasure. Thank you guys so much for inviting me and making it so comfortable. It’s been extremely informal. And I really appreciate you guys for doing this without any expectations. I mean, it’s brilliant. And that’s why I love WordPress. I’ve grown to love WordPress as a community.

Tara: That’s very kind. Thank you. We enjoyed hearing your insight and story.

Pritesh: Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Liam.

Liam: Thank you, Pritesh. Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. You’re delighted that you’re part of the WordPress community, despite the old technology, haha. And I look forward to seeing great things from your work and your career. Thanks again for joining us.

Pritesh: Thank you so much. Bye guys.

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

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

Cate has wandered around WordPress for the last five years speaking, organizing, and being an engaging human. Currently, she’s building out a family business and investigating how to expand HeroPress into a new kind of membership site.

Twitter | @mysweetcate

Preferred Pronouns | She/Her

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 131.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today we’re joined by Cate DeRosia. Cate has wandered around WordPress for the last five years speaking, organizing, and being an engaging human. Currently, she’s building out a family business and investigating how to expand HeroPress into a new kind of membership site. Hi, Cate. We’re so glad you’re here.

Cate: Hi, thanks for having me.

Liam: It’s our pleasure, Cate. Thanks so much for joining us here. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself more than what Tara shared?

Cate: Sure. I’ve been around website development since about 1996. My husband is Topher. He’s a longtime developer. I like to say that he started building websites before the internet had pictures. We’ve been married for 22 years. I homeschooled both of our girls who both graduated. The youngest graduated last year. So it’s really nice to be done with that. And I’ve been transitioning into whatever I’m going to do with my next stage of life.

Having a family that’s so deeply ingrained in WordPress, I wanted to see if that was something that I could pursue too. I’ve done a lot of ad jobs. I’ve done some work for WPSessions. I’ve done some work for Tom McFarlin. I’m really good at content related things, a lot of the soft business skills, the things that are starting to develop in WordPress as viable potential career options. And it’s kind of led me to building out a family business that encompasses the development work Topher does occasionally along with the things my younger daughter Sophie is interested in, a more of a management implementation kind of level, and then the content work that I like to do.

So it’s really helping do the extra things that websites need. It’s no longer enough to just have a website. You need to have a website where people want to be. And we’re looking at putting in the time to build out engaging websites or to add engaging aspects to websites to help improve customer loyalty and to actually better represent the business and its personality on the website.

Then of course, we also worked via HeroPress. We’ve had here press for about five years. It’s been a really interesting adventure. It’s been a little bit like the mistress in our family. But it’s also something that we are looking at turning into something that is community membership-based where people in the community can support some new content initiatives to help build better resources for other people who are entering the WordPress community, particularly in places where resources aren’t as easily accessed.

So, third world countries, just anywhere around the world. Even where I grew up just two hours north of where I am here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the opportunities are difficult to find. And so if we can turn HeroPress into a place where not only people are inspired but can come to find actual practical help, we think it’d be a real asset to the community.

Tara: Sounds like you have a lot to share.

Liam: Can you share a little bit about HeroPress, if you would, just for folks who don’t know what it is. Maybe just a minute or two. I know we can probably go on for hours but just a minute or two.

Cate: HeroPress is a collection of essays really in its simplest form, and always will have the aspect of being a collection of essays that people have submitted about how they have used WordPress to change their life, how they found work opportunity a creative outlet. It’s everybody from kids who were homeschooled finding a place in technology to single moms. Or I know one of the ladies had quit her job to stay home with her mom. When her mom passed away, she needed to reinvent herself, and WordPress is how she did that.

We also have a lot of people, particularly from India or Indonesia where people have been able to not just build a career for themselves, but really build an opportunity for their extended family and even their communities at large. Because the opportunities for income when you can work remotely, it just improves everybody around you.

Tara: I think Liam and I have taken inspiration from HeroPress and spoke to Topher earlier on in our journey down this road of speaking to people similarly, speaking to people all over who use WordPress and for whom WordPress has made a difference in their life. But HeroPress has become so broad. I mean, how many people have contributed to it? I mean, it’s got to be hundreds, right?

Cate: I don’t have a number which I should have, but it is huge. What we’re finding is it’s not just helping the people who are submitting the stories, but automatic has it up on their internal Slack instance. And we’re hearing stories from people who are feeling kind of burnt out or feeling kind of frustrated with giving back in WordPress. You know, how challenging it can be to give back to an open source project. And then they’re seeing these stories and they’re not looking for a new job, they’re not looking to improve their life necessarily, but it’s improving their morale. And that’s just a huge outlet that we’ve never anticipated happening.

Tara: Do you and Topher work together on it as a team? What role do you play in the HeroPress other than it being the mistress?

Cate: We’ve been through a lot of startups and a lot of different opportunities, a lot of job changes. And so anything that Topher was doing that took time away from the family was challenging. Even if it’s only five hours a week. It’s difficult to have two kids you’re watching and just pull in an extra thing. But it’s something we’ve always all been committed to.

Topher and I don’t necessarily work the best together. If we want to stay married, we do a little bit better if we keep things kind of separate. But what we’ve decided is I’m going to take over…we’re actually turning HeroPress into a business. Because with a nonprofit, we have to give up a lot of control that we don’t want to give up. We need to build a board, we have to do a lot of things that we’re just not interested in. But by making it a membership site and a business, he can continue on as the chief executive officer, and he would still be the primary person who handled essays and contacting people on that side of things.

And then I would have my own lane, as it were, where I would come in as an operations person, the Chief Operating Officer, and handle more of the content creation, marketing, social media – all the things that I’m really good at that he doesn’t have the time for. He’s still involved. Maybe down the road, it would be something that he would take on in more of a full-time aspect, but right now the idea is that he’ll stay on his side and I’ll stay on my side and we’ll build something really cool together – apart.

Tara: I like that concept. My husband and I are similar. We don’t work well together on projects simultaneously. We can get in each other’s way or no not necessarily compete with each other, but fight over his way. His way is going to go, I think.

Cate: And we’re still going to collaborate. We actually had a conversation today when something came up that we’re still going to collaborate, we’ll still make decisions. The plan is we’ll still be together, but implementing it’s going to work a lot better if I have the freedom to do what I need to do and he’s is out of it a little bit. And then I don’t interfere.

This has always been my challenge. I’ve never been overly involved in HeroPress because it was mostly essay based and I’m a writer. At my core, I’m a writer who actually does quite a lot of editing. And I wanted to stay as far away from his essays as possible because it’s really hard for me to not dive in and start editing and tweaking and manipulating and wanting things to go a different direction. And that’s not really what the essays are about. They’re supposed to be personal. They’re supposed to be real.

Tara: I mean, obviously, you and I have met and spent time together and you’re well known in the WordPress community, and I think have become more so as you become more involved. But as you said, Topher has been in this space for a long time. How does that work for you guys as a couple and also as a family because your daughters now are involved in WordPress too? How much WordPress is in your house? What part of your life does that play and I guess how does that work together for your family?

Cate: It’s really fascinating. Because our kids are interested, our family is very submerged in WordPress. My first WordCamp as an attendee was my daughter’s first WordCamp. So we all went to WordCamp Chicago in 2014, and they got to go and be attendees. They were 12 and 14 at the time. We got to our spot, we split up. They went to their sessions, I went to ours. And that’s kind of how we’ve handled it.

So at home, there’s a lot of WordPress that gets taught. One of the things we’re looking at doing is a podcast ourselves kind of around our kitchen table talking about community things. And the girls are excited about being a part of that. Sophie particularly has been interested in coming on board to do a variety of things. My older daughter, Emma, has a lot of the same skills that I have. And so she’s enjoying being separate for a little while but has also expressed some interest.

However, when we’re out at events, one of the things we try really hard to do is we don’t necessarily use our last name. When we introduce ourselves to people, we do it by first name. I don’t always try to be close to Topher so that there’s some separation. And it’s not because I don’t want to spend time with him, although generally, the things he’s talking about are things I’m interested in hearing anyway. But it’s about having the opportunity to be individuals and build our own relationships. And the girls have done that too, where they have their own friends, with adults in WordPress.

So at homely talk about it a lot. It is definitely an aspect of our lives, a primary aspect. But when we go to WordCamp, we try to be autonomous as much as possible. One of my favorite moments was at PressNomics this last year that I was talking to a guy and he’s like, “Oh, have you met this guy, Topher?” I was like, “Oh, I just love you so much.” That was impossible.

Tara: Hopefully he saying something nice about him, which anybody wouldn’t say anything…

Cate: Well, he was from Chicago and we’re in Grand Rapids, so it only like three hours away. Obviously, met Topher at some point. But it was really great to be able to be…and particularly because I went right from college to having kids to being home. So I was my parents’ child to being my husband’s wife to being my kid’s mom. Having the opportunity to have some autonomy is nice.

Liam: I respect that a lot. I mean as we get older, we’re somebody’s younger sibling and then we’re somebody’s partner or spouse and then eventually you’re junior’s mom and junior’s dad, junior’s bus ride and junior’s coach. I get that. Especially with somebody like Topher who’s so active in the WordPress community, and so gregarious and so nice to be with. He’s a wonderful, wonderful guy in practically every way so that a lot of people know him and like him because he’s so noble. I totally respect him for that. Going in there and do our own thing, and, you know, inevitably they’re going to know that we’re related Topher. And that’s a good thing. And that’s a nice thing. I certainly respect you for that.

Cate: It’s been good. I have different conversations with people than he has, and so we learn different aspects of businesses or different elements of the community in different ways, which has been really helpful.

Liam: Cate, I want to ask you one of our two signature questions here, and it’s around success. And the question is, how would you define it? And maybe it’s a personal definition, maybe it’s a professional definition, maybe it’s a mixture of both. Cate, how do you define success?

Cate: That’s a funny one. I grew up on a farm, and my dad was a marine, and success meant you got it done. You got it done right and the first time and you didn’t go to bed until it was done right and hopefully the first time. The definition I have is accomplishing something, which has been a real challenge as a parent because in reality, you accomplished nothing for like the first 20 years of parenting, and you just hope you get it right.

But I’ve really learned that success isn’t about what you accomplish; it’s about showing up and trying again the next day. It’s about learning from your mistakes and growing from them. Because you can’t always accomplish things, or at least even when you do, they don’t always look the way you thought they should. But that doesn’t mean you fail. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t an accomplishment. It just means that that turned out differently than you expected.

Liam: I liked that definition a lot. I think that it’s pretty clear that you spent some time thinking about that and have referenced a number of different factors in your life and growing up and transitioning maybe from the way your parents thought about success to the way that you think about success. And not that one’s better than the other, but we each have to figure it out for ourselves.

Cate: Oh, you’re welcome on. I’ve seen them change too, which is really cool. Over time. I think that’s one of the best things is that we’re always growing into our best self, if we take that opportunity. We all start with whatever we start with, and it’s what you do with it that really matters.

Tara: We are in a strange time in the world and in the community, in the country, and I think there’s a lot of thought going into the idea of being your best self. How are you handling that? How are you facing this shutdown COVID time and combining that with your thoughts on success and your plans for HeroPress? How’s that all fitting together?

Cate: That’s actually interesting. For one thing, I guess in a lot of ways, the plans for HeroPress came out of the shutdown. I’m always intending to go another way and ending up someplace completely different. That is like the one theme in my entire life. And so I’ve been busier than ever through the shutdown. I would really like to have some time to just be bored. But as I’ve been, I’ve been really slow to choose what I do next.

When I left for college, I had one plan for what I was going to do, and got there and realized that I had a million opportunities. So I’ve been intentionally taking time to look around to learn some things and be patient which is not my strong suit. But to be patient and kind of watch things evolve and kind of let things come to me a little bit because I have the opportunity to do that. And so the direction I intended to take with my other business has shifted, but happily.

This opportunity that came to expand HeroPress, it actually comes out of a failed job interview. I applied for a job last Monday, like within a couple of hours was told that I would not be getting a second interview. But as I was applying for the job, I was looking at it and thinking, why don’t I do this for HeroPress? This is exactly what I could be doing to drive this forward.

And so I’ve been trying while things are shut down to look for the opportunities that are there, to build the relationships that I can build, to use the resources that I do have. And I look at it and think about what life is going to be like next because it’s not going to be the same. A big part of that As a lot more things are going to move online. People are going to need more online resources. They’re going to need more help getting started. And so that’s channeled a lot of what we’re looking at for HeroPress.

Tara: That’s exciting. I think that what you’re trying to do with HeroPress sounds really interesting. And because HeroPress is pretty well known, I think that you’re starting off with something that already has a great reputation in the community. So I hope that it goes smoothly, and I look forward to seeing what happens with it.

We like to ask our guests another question, which is about advice. And so I’m going to ask you if you have received any advice that you’ve taken to heart and put to action in your life. You’ve talked a little bit about your upbringing and your approach to work and getting things done. But if there’s any advice that comes to mind that you find meaningful that you’d like to share?

Cate: Yeah. Actually, I found a quote to sum it up. It’s one of those things that I’ve heard in the community a variety of times. Teddy Roosevelt said, “The comparison is the thief of joy.” One of the biggest challenges I have coming in where I am is that almost everybody I know has been doing something businessy. They’ve been good at something for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. All of my friends are successful. And sometimes I just feel like a fish flopping around on the beach because I’m still figuring out what next looks like. I’m reluctant to rush but I’m always afraid I’m behind. And it’s exhausting.

I made a commitment when I started this that I wasn’t going to just drop my family and walk away. I mean, I spent a long time building relationships here. I’ve invested a lot in them. And they’ve had some challenges that have made it necessary for me to step back just as things start to get going. And what I’ve had to really accept is that my journey is just going to look different, that my success is going to look different, that what I build is going to look different. And that’s okay. We’re all supposed to be different. I can’t be Tara. I definitely can’t be Liam. But I can’t compare it to anybody else because I don’t compare to anybody else. And that’s okay. That’s what it’s supposed to be.

Tara: Thanks for sharing that. I think it’s really important to be open about that idea. We hear a lot about imposter syndrome which is similar to that idea. But I think it’s so easy to compare yourself to other people. I do it all the time. First of all, things always look better than they actually are. People always look more successful than they actually are. I know I can make it sound like I’m a lot more successful in air quotes than I am, and social media, of course, everybody looks happy and perfect. And we’ve seen a lot more coming out in our community about people being honest about challenges that they face, whether they’re having mental health challenges, other challenges that they face in their careers and their businesses. So it’s really important to be open and honest about that.

I mean, I’ve had many conversations with you and I think you seem very confident and I think you’re extremely talented and delightful to be with. So to hear you say that you compare yourself to others when probably a lot of people compare themselves to you it’s helpful to hear, right? To share that you’re not the only one that feels that way.

Cate: So it’s nice of you to say, but I have to say confidence is my hardest one. And it’s a practical aspect. I’m profoundly honest, which is not always the best thing. Particularly about my own struggles. Like I have a hard time going into a job interview for a job that I’ve never done and say, “Oh, yes, I will be outstanding at this,” because there’s 100% chance that I’m going to be a miserable failure at this. I mean, people fail all the time of things for a variety of reasons.

And coming from a situation where I’ve worked for the last 20 years pretty much by myself, I’ve not had job evaluations, I don’t get raises, I don’t get any positive or very little positive, constructive feedback. I do get quite a lot of constructive feedback but it’s not always positive. And that’s fine. And that makes sense. But it makes it really difficult to get started doing something else because I don’t want to lie to somebody about like, I feel like I’m good at something and I have some reasons to believe I’m good at something, but I can’t walk into a job interview and say, “Oh, yes, I’ve been good at this for five years.”

Because I may have been doing it for five years, there are so many things I’ve done over the last 20 years between being a teacher, helping Topher with contract work. I’ve been deeply involved in startups and nonprofits. Basically, I’ve been involved in much of everything that Topher’s done, but not ever with a title or a salary or with a job review. And so it makes it difficult to present that knowledge to people and get respect for it. I’ve spent a lot of my life being just Topher’s housewife. And so it’s difficult to figure out how to work with all of that.

Liam: I think we see that a lot and particularly in this economy where a lot of folks are increasingly finding themselves out of work and need a career transition. “I’m smart, I can do things. I know how to do things. I’m computer savvy.” Have I9 ever done that? No. But I figured out how to do all the stuff I’ve done so far.” And having the capacity or the wherewithal and also a little bit of the luck there to be able to convince somebody, “Now, she doesn’t know how to do it yet, but clearly, she can learn. We all did, and one of the smartest folks in the world. So somebody else can hopefully learn.” That’s tough to step into a job interview and you’re effectively saying, “Trust me on this, I got it.” There’s a lot of reasons, personal and cultural, why folks don’t want to give people the benefit of the doubt or the trust.

Cate: And on the flip side, I’ve seen that in a small business economy like WordPress tends to be, the wrong hire can be devastating It can be a huge setback to your business. And so it is a difficult thing. And no matter how much you may like somebody, no matter how much you may respect somebody, it’s a difficult thing to step forward and trust them.

Tara: What do you think as a mom, as a parent, of course, we, as parents, we multitask and we absorb a lot from our kids, as you talked about, you don’t get a bonus or a raise or a job review, but you do get a lot of feedback from your children, I’m sure. What do you think that they take away from what you’re transitioning to? I imagine that you’re modeling for them. I know your kids and the really great relationship you have. What do you think about in terms of that?

Cate: I’m really excited. When I was their age, the idea of just stepping out and starting your own business was not something you could do for a variety of reasons. I mean, if you had the right set of finances behind you, particularly being in Michigan, particularly being in northern Michigan, there’s not a lot of money, there’s not a lot of opportunities. So it was not something that ever crossed my mind. Where my girls have been through three startups, they’ve been through multiple job changes, they’re not afraid. Like at age 10 or 12, they started talking about what their business might look like when they became adults.

And now I’m really happy that they’re home, that they’re here while I’m going through the hard part of all of this so that we can do it together. They get to see what it looks like. They get to learn from what I do? I’ve helped them with jobs, resumes, with cover letters, with interviews. I’m really thankful that they’re seeing both the good and the bad of it. Because they can see the bad of it and know that that’s okay, that that’s normal, that’s what happens, that everybody’s gone through that. And we can just support one another through it. That’s always been our theme as a family.

We live in a 1300 square foot house that only has one bathroom. There’s no hiding anything. We’re all home together all the time. And so we go through everything together. And in doing that, we’re all stronger for it. Because we get feedback from their perspectives, they get feedback from our perspectives, and we just tackle it together.

Tara: Are they going to work with you in this new business?

Cate: Yeah, actually. They’re pretty excited. I didn’t do it intentionally, but both girls ended up with really strong communication skills and writing and editing, as well as technical skills. They each have their own career. Sophie and Emma are both incredible artists. They have a lot of potential in the future. And as jobs come in for me, particularly now that I’m going to be doing more work with HeroPress, as things come through my typical services business, I can funnel those off to them, still be the supervisor but helps them build a good resume and some good skills to move forward with. And plus, the company’s left a little open-ended so that as they find things that they’re interested in, they can choose to include them in the company if they want to.

Liam: What’s been your biggest challenge to date with thinking about and approaching this pretty significant transition that you’re dealing with, that you’re going through and working on and all those other types of phrases?

Cate: My biggest challenge is freelancer PTSD. It’s been an ugly 10 years.

Liam: Cate, what is that? Be specific there.

Cate: It is literally…obviously not to the same depth as a soldier coming back from war. I don’t like chaos. I love change. Topher loves chaos. He doesn’t mind chaos. He loves chasing the next shiny thing. He loves trying new options. For him, every new thing, every job change which has been about every year and a half has been something spectacular and wonderful and he’s moved on to something new and fun with new coworkers and new resources and often a slightly different kind of job. It’s never the same thing over and over again. So his is always fun.

I’m always scrambling to figure out what time zone we’re currently working in, how to shift the girl’s schedule around it, when’s dinner going to be. It’s like moving houses every time he changes jobs. And so he doesn’t do any of that because he’s working because that’s how we set up our family. So I’m doing all of it for managing…We started when the girls were 8 and 10. So through the entire teenage years, I managed all their feelings, I manage all household things, I managed everything that wasn’t Topher working. And I’ve had to put things on hold that I wanted to do. I’ve cried myself to sleep wondering how I was going to pay for such and such and such.

And so as I look to step forward into yet another startup, yet another entrepreneurial adventure, I have to have the courage to be willing to take on the truth that it’s going to be hard, it’s going to have setbacks, it’s going to be miserable sometimes, and I’m going to really hate it because consistent that’s how…if you listen to anybody’s story.

I listened to Dre Armeda talking about this. It really, really hit me – at the first Prestige Camp, I think it was, he talked about what it was like to start their business and sleeping under the desk and not seeing the family. And it was my first time actually hearing somebody else who’d gone through these sorts of things. And the flip side of it is that that’s what it’s like to start a business. I mean, it gets better as we learn and we don’t do those kinds of things over and over again, but at the same time, it’s like having a baby. As much as you may learn how to deliver better or get better drugs or whatever, the birthing process is still the birthing process. And it’s the same way with a new business, with freelancing.

So I have to battle wanting to keep doing that knowing that it’s going to be painful, knowing that there are some things that really scare me. If I hear Topher say something random that was linked to an event in the past, then it will strike fear. Like I’ll almost freeze. And so that’s what I have to overcome to want to continue or to build something new now.

Liam: That was very bravely put. Thank you for sharing that. There is much more to unpack on that than we have time for I’m afraid. Before we say goodbye, I’ll thank you again for joining us. And I’ll ask you to share with us where folks can find you online, please, Cate.

Cate: At some point, I will have a website up at atypical.services. Still in process. I tweet at @mysweetcate. And then I’ll have a presence on HeroPress. I’ll be put here very shortly as things evolve.

Tara: Cate, it’s been really great having you here. I wish we had more time. And I’m sure you and I will have more time another time. Thanks for joining us today. Really, really appreciate you being on Hallway Chats. Give our best to your family.

Cate: Thanks. Thanks for having me. It was really great to talk to both of you.

Liam: It was an absolute pleasure. Thanks for taking the time with us.

Tara: Bye.

Cate: Bye.

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

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

Liam and Tara review the past year of the Hallway Chats podcast, discuss their views about success, share advice and announce plans for year 4.

Tara on Twitter | @taraclaeys

Liam on Twitter | @liamdempsey

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions, and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 130.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Tara and me. It’s our anniversary of podcasting on this show.

Tara: Yay. Yay. Yay

Liam: Yay. As we’ve done in years past, Tara and I are going to effectively interview ourselves, and we’ll review the past year. We’ll ask ourselves our signature questions of what’s our definition of success and what’s the best advice that we’ve ever received and implemented. We really like this opportunity because we get to go back and either listen to previous years answers or read those transcripts, or depending on how the past two weeks have gone in the run up to this recording, do absolutely neither of those and just see how we feel this year. And then subsequently after we record this, we check to see if it’s similar to last year.

Tara: That would be me. I don’t know about you, but I’ve not looked back at last year.

Liam: I did listen to last year’s show early this morning. I got up and I put it…

Tara: Oh, okay.

Liam: I can share with you that you did not listen last year, to the year before that either.

Tara: I think that’s a good honest way to approach it. Maybe.

Liam: No, I like that. I like that. I read the transcript last year of the previous year. But this year, I did not read the transcript, but I did listen to the show. We’ve known for a couple of weeks that we were going to record this today. We’ve planned this out a little bit. So I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about success and advice as it relates to this show.

Tara: I think about that all the time. Anyway. I’m a pretty introspective person so it’s on my mind a lot. My answers will probably be the same or very similar. So sorry to bore people, but we’ll see. Maybe not.

Liam: Well, no, it’s a good thing that you’ve got a podcast about this topic.

Tara: That’s true.

Liam: And you’re interested in it.

Tara: Yeah. Well, given our current quarantine situation, that might impact our answers a little bit, what we talked about, right?

Liam: I think so. I think so. Do we want to dive into those or should we start maybe with sharing a little bit about what our plans are for the show for the future, for the coming days?

Tara: Yeah, we can do that. We just had a little chat offline before we started this. So we can maybe summarize that a little bit.

Liam: The reason I share that is because you didn’t listen to previous year’s episodes. But we talked about it in the previous two years episodes.

Tara: I do recall that actually.

Liam: I’m sure you do. I’m not trying to put you on the spot or be mean to you. What did we talk about? What did we agree, Tara?

Tara: We agreed we’re going to keep going.

Liam: Yay.

Tara: I think we both discussed the fact that this podcast is something that’s out of the realm of our ordinary day to day tasks and that we value that. That as much as we might begrudge sometimes, the extra effort that’s involved, it’s not enough of an effort that takes away from the value of meeting new people and having conversations that open our eyes sometimes to things we didn’t know about and introduce us to people all over the world. And that has a great value. So it’s worth the effort. That’s what we’ve agreed on.

Liam: Yeah, I think that’s a pretty succinct review of it. That the things we learn, the people we meet, the experiences that we have, the positive experiences far outweigh the tedium of producing a regularly scheduled podcast. So yay, one more year. Yay.

Tara: Yay, one more year. So here we go. Kicking it off.

Liam: Alrighty. Do you want to go first?

Tara: Do you want to look back at the past year a little bit and talk about anything that we learned or that struck us, particularly?

Liam: Yeah, absolutely. I think every guest that comes on our show share something that touches me positively and I find a connection to. I don’t feel like any of our shows have ever been a waste of half an hour. That said, certainly, some aspects have stood out more than others in my engagement with the guests and with the episodes. And that’s probably more about me than about the guests or anything else.

We were both chatting before the show started about recently we talked to Nigel Rodgers who lives outside Harare in Zimbabwe. And he was sharing with us about the challenges of getting power in his home on a consistent basis and how that’s changed in light of the Coronavirus and what the previous regimen was for him. I certainly invite folks to go and listen to that episode with Nigel, a really great guy, and it was a great conversation. But that really stood out for the both of us as a challenge that you and I on the East Coast of the United States just don’t have to deal with, and that we’re very lucky to be where we are when we are. For no merit or fault of our own, here we are. That was a powerful point.

Tara: Yeah. That’s something I hadn’t considered before. I do really appreciate speaking to people in other parts of the world. And we’ve had the great privilege to be able to speak to people in India and Europe and Africa. So, I think I look forward to meeting more people from other countries in the new year. And we’re both hoping that we can gain more of that.

Liam: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s so easy to slip into a microcosm of around us. But that’s not healthy or really enjoyable in the long run. It’s great to get folks from different places and different cultures and so many different things about them compared to you and I that really makes a big part of the enjoyment that I get from the show possible.

Tara: Yeah. I look back also in this year, and we’ve had some very good conversations with some African American guests on our show about the diversity or lack thereof in WordPress and technology, about opening our eyes and our language to diversity subjects, to gender equality, to racial equality and those types of issues, which is a conversation that I enjoy having more and more and learning more about and trying to be a better citizen, a better part of the world in being aware of all of the different people around me. So I also look forward to having more of those types of conversations because they educate me and hopefully educate our listeners, too.

Liam: I’m with you on that. I think the perspective of others whose experience cultural experience is different from ours is always great to hear. We can only walk our own lives. We can only wear our own shoes. But to have the opportunity to speak with people who have different shoes and have walked a different life and to, in some way, see the world through their eyes is very, very powerful and meaningful. And it’s a great way for us to learn and understand that which we might have not understood at a previous point in time.

Tara: Exactly. I’ve learned a lot through this show, I think, in the past year in addition to meeting people.

Liam: That’s about it.

Tara: We appreciate people coming on and being willing to talk about those types of things, too. I think that’s important.

Liam: Yeah, it doesn’t come without a cost or risk, right? We see that every day in the media and social media and in the news, that speaking up for the rights of those who others dislike or disapprove of or despise, can be very, very dangerous. And any number of voices. So yeah, very, very grateful to our guests for their bravery and their candor and their sharing, with not only you and I, but clearly with the wider community who listens to our show.

Tara: All right. What’s next?

Liam: In our previous episodes, we have talked about success and then advice. So maybe we change it up and talk about advice and then do success last. How does that sound to you?

Tara: I think that sounds pretty good. Sure.

Liam: All right. So, what is some advice that you’ve picked up along the way that really has worked for you that you’ve implemented and really worked well for you?

Tara: Now, if I had really planned better and thought about this, I would have looked back at the transcripts of other episodes because I think we’ve had guests that have shared some really great advice with us.

Liam: Absolutely.

Tara: In a nutshell, I would say, we’ve heard from a few different guests the concept of not being afraid of failure and not letting perfect be the enemy of the good. Those are my words, but I think we recently spoke with someone that shared some advice along those lines. So, I think that message guides me a lot in decisions that I make. Maybe sometimes mistakes that I make by acting too quickly on things. But I think that not being afraid to fail is a personality trait. But it’s also some advice that can be shared that is sometimes hard to implement, but that can really help you approach circumstances, challenges with a little bit less fear.

Liam: Yeah, we have heard that. And I think that’s a very important piece of advice. And it’s a challenge to adhere to and to embrace. But it certainly has its merits and its value. I totally agree with that. Good share, Tara. Good share.

Tara: Thanks. Off the top. I didn’t plan it at all.

Liam: You’re amazing that way. That’s why I like podcasting with you. So I guess that’s over to me than now. All right.

Tara: Yes. Have you scoured all of the past episodes?

Liam: No, no, no. I certainly kind of glanced at some of them. But I’ve been spending a fair amount of time in my own head in advance of the show thinking about this. Clearly, everything we’re doing and thinking about is influenced by COVID-19 in some way in these days. And we’re all trying to figure out a way how to make life happy and as smooth and easy as possible. You know, very, very difficult, very challenging, very fluid period of time. And I don’t mean that in we’re being mean about it, but that’s just what we’re trying to do.

And increasingly, what I’m finding —and is a practice that I don’t know where I heard it. It comes in a lot of different forms. I don’t know where I first encountered it. But it’s certainly in books and in Instagram shares and famous philosophers and the like—but the simple message is we can’t control what happens. All we can control is how we respond.

That kind of ties in don’t be afraid to fail. But it also allows us to not accept responsibility for all the chaos in the world, and also not worry about all the chaos in the world. I don’t mean not like be empathetic and sympathetic to those who are suffering terribly. I don’t mean that at all. But if we can be empathetic and we can donate more, in days when we could leave our house, we could go and help in some kind of volunteer contributory way. But we don’t have to let it emotionally overwhelm us or really just kind of become like this massive weight of all the terrible things that are happening right now on so many different levels. That doesn’t have to affect our sense of inner peace and inner joy. We can always control how we respond. So we can be unhappy, but still deeply joyful and peaceful.

Tara: Yes.

Liam: We can only control how we respond.

Tara: And we can control that. So I just signed up for this online course. It’s through Coursera, but it’s the top enrolled a course at Yale. It’s by Laurie Santos, and it’s the science of well-being. It’s about happiness—really about what happiness is about. And that’s kind of the crux of the message is that you can control how you respond to things and it’s up to you to determine your response, and whether or not you take it positively. The power of positivity. That’s part of the course as well. I recommend it actually. I’m in week two.

Liam: Week two out of how many?

Tara: Six I think.

Liam: Okay.

Tara: It’s free if you don’t take it for the certificate, which I’m not doing.

Liam: Say it one more time. What’s the name of it again?

Tara: I believe it’s The Science of Well-Being on coursera.com.

Liam: Thank you.

Tara: It’s just lectures. Watch a lot of videos with the professor.

Liam: Go to watch a video.

Tara: Yes. It’s not too hard. Invest in ti.

Liam: I like that. I’m going to check that out for sure. I think is easy it is to say we can control how we respond. It’s really helpful for me anyway to better understand the science, to understand the emotion, to understand the physiology, and all the different ways that we can think about how we respond. Because we all are wired slightly differently. Sometimes we’re wired really, really differently. And having an understanding of how all that works and affects our thoughts and emotions is very, very helpful.

Tara: Yeah. I don’t think you’d find anything in the course at least to where I am now that is a revelation of something that you haven’t heard before. Gratitude. If you are a grateful person, you’re going to be happier. Those types of things that we kind of know. But when you’re reminded of it, and when it’s pointed out the science behind it and all the studies that have been done, it just kind of drills it into a little bit more as to what’s significant.

Liam: Yeah, I agree with that. And to have somebody who’s professional focus is on the Science of Happiness, say, “No, no, here’s how it is.” And that’s really helpful. We take the two plus two equals four. But at some point, somebody actually went to the trouble of proving that mathematical or scientific way. And now we just don’t care about it. I mean, not that we don’t care about it; we just rely on it so. But talking about emotions publicly, in supportive ways, is a relatively new phenomenon in modern society. So it’s helpful to have scientific input and insight. Thank you.

Tara: Thank you. All right. Now you’re going to go first on the success question. You want to talk about success? Is your answer is changing from last year’s, since you looked at what you said last year?

Liam: Yes and no. No in the sense that it continues to be a valuable focus for me to as much as I humanly can, as often as I can, as constantly as I can, focus on my relationship with God. That I find that when I focus on that, even though I’m right in the middle of talking to you and engaging with you, and I’m really paying attention to you and listening to you and eager to hear what you say, and eager for you to listen to hear what I say, if I can do that in a way that is mindful of my place and existence and my place in God’s will for me, then that empowers me to live as lovingly and truly as I possibly can. And if I’m doing that, then I’m always making the right choice.

I don’t always live as lovingly and positive and as in keeping with God’s will as I would like, but for me to focus on that and to have that mindfully in my sense of awareness, ties into things like don’t be afraid to fail. If I’m really, really loving, you haven’t had a conversation, I’m really loving you, I love you as a person, what I say to you might not resolve the argument, might not fix the problem that you and I are struggling through. It may not get us to where we need to be.

But if I’m thinking about how much I value you as a human in our relationship, then the way I see things and what I say and all the things that make human interaction what they are, it won’t be wrong. It might not be the most effective but it will be right in some way shape or form. And you may not understand because we’re looking at each other and we’re talking, you might not embrace what I share with you, you’re going to respond how you respond. I can’t control that.

But if I really am focused in my perspective on God and on love, then whatever I put out there, will be put out there with love. And is it perfect love? No, of course not. But it’s as close as I humanly can in that moment. I think I’ve refined my definition to try to give it a little bit more practical implication. And that helps me kind of walk through my day in ways that I find more rewarding and more beneficial and more satisfying at a deep, deep level.

Tara: Has the quarantine, the shutdown, Coronavirus impacted that answer at all?

Liam: You know, in some ways, it’s sharpened to the value of it for me. Over a few years now, I’ve really been focused in trusting the higher power, that all will be right if I trust God, if I trust the higher power. And I don’t mean all will be right in the sense that I’m healthy, my children are healthy, my wife is healthy. I don’t mean that all will be right in that there will always be money in the bank. I don’t mean that. I don’t even mean that aside from all will be right in my ability to love God and try to do what God wants me to do.

And just trusting that and working to actively trust that has really, really enabled me, empowered me to not—I’m going to put it in air quotes. You can’t see this because it’s a podcast—but not worry about Coronavirus things. I don’t mean that I don’t ever stress about it or that I don’t think it’s a terrible thing or that I don’t feel the stress, and anxiety, and frustration, and sadness, and fear. That’s enveloping our world, especially those who are very, very directly affected by it. I don’t mean to say that.

But I can be very unhappy and very concerned about the world around me and still on the inside be deeply peaceful and joyful. Because joy and happiness are very different in my mind. They’re related, but they’re very, very different. And so I can look around and see everything in the world and in my own life—my life’s not perfect. Not by a longshot—that it’s all the more important from my perspective to focus more on God. And to really go back to that advice that I really embrace is all we can control is how we respond.

Tara: Yeah, those two ties together. I like how you brought that back around because they’re very related.

Liam: Thank you. Thank you. But enough of my pontification. Tell me your definition of success and how it may or may not have changed in the past 12 months.

Tara: It’s probably very similar. I think one thing that this COVID time has highlighted in a somewhat disappointing way is that we are still ourselves. When this started, I think I had this hopeful moment of, I am going to become the person that I wanted to be. I’m going to stop working at five, I’m going to play the guitar, I’m going to do all of these things, I’m going to do puzzles, I’m going to appreciate and savor every moment. And that’s who I really want to be and this is the opportunity to do it. And it’s been disappointing to learn that I have not done those things and that it’s been what 10 weeks now, and I am still the same person who can’t stop working at the end of the day, who always finds things to do that are at my computer.

And conversely, though, I think it has allowed me to, not necessarily develop new habits, but continue to be contemplative about the idea of success as it relates to me constantly working on myself and being better. And so, being disappointed in myself for not stopping working or not paying enough attention to my husband, not savoring the moments, those are all things. And certainly, as my faith relates to that, that is that I’m human and I can strive to always be better. But I am human and I have loved anyway. And so I need to love myself anyway.

So bringing all of that into the fold of being successful for me is always being aware of how I can be better while also accepting who I am and loving who I am and being kind to myself as much as I can. So I think that’s an evolution that I’ve come to over the past year because that acceptance and that self-love has not been something that I’ve embraced or been super aware of. It’s very hard. I don’t succeed at that all the time.

When you talk about worries, I have come to a point where I do realize what I can control and what I can’t. And so I really don’t spend a lot of time with intense worry about things I can’t control. But what I do worry about are mistakes that I’ve made, that I deeply regret, where I haven’t been that person that I strive to be, where I’ve been less kind, or just done things that have not been things I’m proud of. So, I do worry about those things because they impact my view of myself. But I do also try to bring in that self-love and forgiveness. So, I can give that to myself, I think instead of my lifelong habit of looking outward for love.

And so success for it’s being able to find that ability to accept who I am and forgive myself, and focus more on that versus looking for everybody else to accept me and forgive me. That was a little bit deep. I could start crying a little bit right now. I hadn’t thought about putting that into words, and I hope that what I just described doesn’t sound pathetic.

Liam: Not at all. Not from my perspective. I think it’s really powerful what you shared that. Coming to a deep and committed understanding that you as who you are just by your very existence has a deep and measurable value. Regardless of what mistakes you’ve made or will make or are making right now, we still have deep, deep value in our not only lovable but loved. That’s not a realization that everybody can embrace for any number of reasons, and that you have. And I support your embrace of it.

I agree with your perspective. It’s hugely important, hugely empowering and sets up a lot of things like being able to forgive ourselves for past mistakes and repeated past mistakes. You talk about, “I didn’t close computer at five again today. I’m working on it. It’s okay. I’m not a bad person because I didn’t. I’m still good. I still have value.” So that’s great. And no, I love that you shared that. And I could definitely see that you were connecting with what you were saying in a very real way. And that you’re so willing to share that and be open about that speaks volumes of how committed you are to that belief. Thank you.

Tara: Thank you. I listened to a podcast yesterday about enneagram. Have you done any enneagram stuff? Do you know anything about that? It’s like a personality rating. Kind of like a Myers Briggs but it’s a number scale. I have a few friends who are really into it—people I follow on social media who are really, really into it. And I’ve taken like the free, cheap tests online to get my number or combination of numbers. And so I listened to this Brené Brown podcasts that I saw was shared online. So I listened to that yesterday.

I was listening to all the different personality types and the descriptions of sort of the strengths and challenges of each personality type. One of those really talked a lot about what I just described, which is that sort of looking outward for love, never feeling that you are worthy of it if you don’t get it from outside. So I’ve been thinking a lot about that. That’s probably where some of that came from. Anyway, if anybody’s interested in that podcast, it’s on Brené Brown’s podcast, which I’ve never listened to before, but it’s one about enneagram. It’s a little bit interesting.

Liam: That’s a good sharing today, Tara Claeys. Lots of good sharing.

Tara: We’re out of time, Liam.

Liam: We are. We are. It’s been another year, Tara. Thank you.

Tara: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you and I’m grateful for this opportunity

Liam: Me too. Me too. And thanks to all of our wonderful listeners and transcript readers for being there and for being there for our guests. Not so much for being there for Tara and for me, although we would certainly appreciate it. But we were just looking at our statistics before we hit the record button today, and it was delightful to see that we’re getting about 110, 115 listens per episode. And as we’ve shared a number of occasions, to think that any of our guests would be able to book a slot at a WordCamp where they’d show up in their talk would be 30 minutes about them in their lives, and it would have 110 people in the room just wanting to hear about them is fantastic. It’s just wonderful. We’re so grateful to the community around the show that support our guests’ so wholeheartedly.

Tara: And thank you to Liquid Web for continuing to host our website. We really appreciate that. Also, I’ll give a shout out to Evalyn who transcribes our podcast for us every week from Nairobi.

Liam: Yeah, Liquid Web, Evalyn, they’re both fantastic. The support team around us that makes this possible is great. They’re unsung, they’re very little seen, and it’s great that we’re having a moment to slow down and publicly thank them. Already. Well, with that, we’ll see you in the next episode.

Tara: Yes, we will. Have a great day, Liam.

Liam: You too. Bye-bye.

Tara: Bye.

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

Oliver is a 26-year-old entrepreneur who has built three companies today and is very active in the cybersecurity landscape. WordPress folks would know him as the founder of a website security company called WebARX.

Twitter |@OliverSild

Preferred Pronouns | He/Him

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 129.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we’re joined by Oliver Sild. Oliver is a 26-year-old entrepreneur who has built three companies today and is very active in the cybersecurity landscape. WordPress folks would know him as the founder of a website security company called WebARX. Hey, Oliver, welcome.

Oliver: Hello, there.

Tara: Hi, Oliver. Welcome. It’s nice to meet you. And thanks for joining us on Hallway Chats today. Would you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Oliver: Sure. First of all, thanks for inviting me. I’m very happy to be here. I’m a 26-year-old entrepreneur. I’ve actually been into cybersecurity from very early stages or very early ages. I got into it when I was I think 14 or 15. It happens to be in a way that in many cases, people get into cybersecurity from gaming. So that’s really how it happened with me as well. But eventually, I started to found a company that was mainly working on web development. That’s how I got into WordPress. Before that, I was working with Joomla, Drupal, other content management systems.

Over the course of managing businesses and doing web development and most of technical stuff, I also created a co-working space, which of course right now is closed, but yeah, it was an interesting experience. And now for the past four or five years, really, I’ve been completely focusing on website security, and especially the security that includes components within your websites. So WordPress, people would understand that this, for example, means plugins themes – anything that you plug into your websites.

Tara: Where are you located?

Oliver: I’m in Estonia. I’m traveling a lot. But I’ve been moving back and forth from London. Right now I’m in Estonia at home. But mainly in Estonia.

Tara: Is there a large WordPress community there where you are in Estonia?

Oliver: I wouldn’t say that there’s a large community in Estonia, but there’s a large community in Nordics in general. Finland is with a very active kind of community for WordPress. But in general, Europe isn’t that kind of big. In most of the cases you still kind of communicate with community all over the Europe. WordCamp Europe was last summer. So a lot of people went there all over Europe. So not so much happening in Estonia. We are actually organizing WordPress meetups under our co-working space. So we have been doing them for I think three times this year. Still I wouldn’t call it a big community, but it’s its existence kind of.

Liam: Is that something you’re looking to transition to an online meetup in light of everything that we’re seeing in the world right now?

Oliver: We’ve been actually doing coffee mornings because the people who would usually be in the co-working space, obviously can’t be there because of what is going on in the world right now. But we’ve been kind of finding a way how to still stay in touch, and understand how everyone is doing and so forth. So we were trying to do weekly coffee mornings where we just discuss how’s everyone’s projects, how’s the business going, kind of personal level as well like how everyone is doing and so forth. I think after kind of transitioning through the environment that we are right now, I think more and more kind of meetups and events like these are going to be online. I think it’s going to be kind of the new method eventually.

Tara: I’m impressed with your entrepreneurial spirit. You’re a young person and you’ve done a lot already at your young age. Did you grow up in a household where that was encouraged or what influenced you and taught you how to kind of go out on your own and make things into businesses?

Oliver: I would say I have an influence from my mother, but I wouldn’t say that it’s an influence directly towards intrapreneurship. She was always very supportive, whatever I did, even though, for example, I didn’t do very well in school. So instead of that, I was always trying to find things that I wanted to do. If you would talk to the teachers from my school, they would say that I always had my own ideas, what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do them, so I didn’t really follow all the rules. But I guess the support of understanding that this is who I am, and this is how I want to go with things allowed me to just continue to pursue whatever I wanted to achieve and allowed me to just really work on the stuff I wanted even though some people would have said that school would be would have been much more important at this stage.

Tara: Is it relatively easy to be an entrepreneur in your country?

Oliver: It’s very easy. I mean, Estonia has the highest number of startups per capita. Basically, our country rebooted after the occupation. So from that point on, everything went online. Right now I could take my phone and I can register a new company in 15 minutes and open a bank account as well from my phone. So I could do all these things online now. All the government services, everything is online. I think it’s made so easy to go through with all these things. Even accounting, taxes…For example, in Estonia, I don’t need to do tax declarations, everything is automated because they get this information from the banks and so forth. So once in a year we just log in to the tax website, click “declare now” and it does everything and then transfers the money back to your account.

Tara: Wow. I’ve heard that Estonia is is pretty advanced in technological things. I wasn’t aware of that, as far as entrepreneurs go. But I know like your public transportations pretty advanced there too, right?

Oliver: Yeah. I think it’s easier for a country to kind of evolve with technology that fast if they have to reboot. And also for the reason that if a country is so small and you don’t have a lot of legacy systems that you need to kind of first, either get rid off or try to basically suggest people to start using something else. And then they are like, “Things are working. Why should we go to a new one?” I think we kind of managed to grow something good out of the not so good times as a country. But yeah, I think it’s going really well for us right now.

Liam: Yeah, that’s really interesting the timing of Estonia’s pivot from the late 80s, early 90s. That’s pretty forward-thinking. I imagined it was tumultuous for everybody, but certainly for leadership and to say, you know, the internet was just kind of starting to enter the public awareness and transition to that at such a pivotal time, and to your point, just put the whole country on a founding have that level where you can open a company in a bank account from your phone in 15 minutes. And okay, even if it was half an hour, still just amazing, right? That’s really fantastic. I could spend probably hours talking about that and learning from you. Tell us a little bit about WebARX. You said it’s a security focused. What does that mean? Is that a monitoring service? Is that a monitoring and fixing service web? In just a couple of minutes, share what you do.

Oliver: WebARX is basically a security solution for websites that are built with the modern technologies that a lot of local development is happening on. So WordPress, different kind of frameworks that are used to build websites. And what I mean by local development is that you don’t need to write a huge amount of code to get your application running. WordPress is a really good example of that. You just spin up WordPress, use plugins to basically extend the functionality instead of just coding all that stuff. But these kind of approaches or these new approaches in web development and especially the use of third party code and plugins and components has created an issue where people who are less technical in using these components, have no understanding of whether this developer who built this plugin, for example, was aware of the security implications that could come with if the plugin becomes popular.

So WebARX’s focus is really, first of all, detect the components within your web application or in your website. Then say if these components like plugins, for example, are vulnerable to any attacks or to any security issues, and third of all provide automatic [unintelligible 00:10:57] patches. So, for example, if there is a very popular plugin on your website that is vulnerable, WebARX automatically sends your website a very custom firewall rule. Let’s say that this basically there’s vulnerability within this component. So basically, for example, with WordPress, I think there’s the statistics that 98% of the vulnerabilities within the whole WordPress ecosystem is all coming from these third party code, basically, plugins, themes and so forth.

Eventually, if you manage to patch these vulnerabilities within these components, you don’t get your site infected with malware, you don’t get your site redirect traffic somewhere else. And even if you use some sort of solutions that you collect customer data and so forth, you won’t get breached and don’t fall under…well, in Europe, you would fall under like GDPR, and so forth. But yeah, in general, it will just keep your website safe. And really basically if you look at it, it’s like a dashboard where you can have hundreds or thousands of websites. For example, if you manage them, you just connect all of them on WebARX and then you would have like a central place where you can manage security across all your websites. There’s a lot of neat small things that you can find from there. But I wouldn’t go like too detailed in there because there’s a lot of stuff to cover.

Liam: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Tell me a little bit about how you grew the business. How did you get to the point, you said, “Hey, I want to do some web security stuff. WordPress is a growing content management system core team is on top of a lot of it, I’m going to focus on to your point the components.” Okay, there’s the idea. 15 minutes later, you’ve got a company in a bank account. We know that now. Then where does it go from there? How did you get to the point where it’s a viable income and a real client base?

Tara: It actually goes back in time, I think because as I mentioned, the first company I built was the digital agency. So it was a web development company basically that was focused on building secure website basically. The main idea when we started it was because we already saw that a lot of these websites that are built with WordPress, Joomla – back then we were more most focused on Joomla because it was more popular then – but we saw the same issue. Even web developers, you just use a lot of these components, plugins and everything and extensions in Joomla and then you put together to websites, you’ll give it away to the customer and then you have no idea if these components receive new updates, if these components are having any security issues. Back then there was no solutions to even have an overview of plugins installed on a lot of your sites. Nowadays you have like ManageWP and MainWP and all these different solutions. But then for Joomla, there was nothing like that even for WordPress.

At this point, we were like, “Okay, let’s build something internally that would just let us as a team to be aware of what kind of components we have been using on our web development projects, what is happening with them and so forth.” And then really, that’s where we came up with, you know, “Okay, that’s a big issue. We shouldn’t just build it for ourselves. Let’s build it for everyone.” This 15 minute period of registering a company, actually, it was interesting because we were invited to a cybersecurity program in London, which was sponsored by GCHQ is basically like the NSA of UK. So they were basically sponsoring a cybersecurity accelerator. It’s like a startup accelerator kind of thing but only for cybersecurity startups.

And when we were there – it was like a three-month program in London – we basically decided to go full in, have more people on board, and then we raised Angel funding for that. So really went to the startup way of raising money basically. So we started building the product much faster than we could with just bootstrapping it. And yeah, from there on, we launched the product in 2018. So we had a period of building the product, making sure it works. And then before going public with it, and just test it and so forth. And yeah, 2018, then we launched the product and now today we have customers in over 84 different countries.

WebARX, in general, it’s really kind of growing by word of mouth, mainly. I mean, we don’t do paid advertising. The product really sells itself because it’s obvious that with all these attacks going on, more and more companies need to be aware of that. And a lot of agencies are selling care plans, and this is like a big part of selling care plan to your customer by saying, “You need security,” for example.

So really, I mean, it’s just been step by step. We never knew what would be the third step in the journey. For example, we started as with Joomla and WordPress, and now we are actually aiming to expand to JavaScript and to other languages as well, to cover all the third party code vulnerabilities within web applications, and even crowdsourcing it with a bug hunting platform that we created and that is currently running in beta. So a lot of stuff happening.

Tara: I’m kind of looking at your website while we’re chatting and seeing a lot of interesting content there too, including some hand-curated lists of threats that are happening at this point in time in the world with people taking advantage of what’s happening with the virus. So it sounds like you’re doing more for the community than just putting firewalls up on websites. You’re sharing information and curating information, which is great.

I wanted to ask you a question that we asked all of our guests, which is about success and how you define success. We’re at a time right now where we’re probably doing a lot of reflection on what’s important to us and those types of things. So this question might go in a different direction than it would otherwise. But if you could just share with us, Oliver, what you think about success, how do you define it and apply strategies for success in your life.

Oliver: Well, I can obviously only say from my own experience. What I would consider success is not kind of taking failure as a failure, if it makes sense. Because I really appreciate failures. I had so many moments in my life where I was like, “Okay, I just quit. Mostly because it’s massive challenges. And then if you fail, and you get criticized, for example, you think that, okay, that’s the end of the world. The next morning, you wake up and you’re like, “Huh, okay, actually, I think, this is a good learning.”

I think success really in the long term is just being able to appreciate the failures and really thriving even for them. That allows you to become much better person that you are compared to yesterday, I think. And at the same time, I think it just makes you learn so much more. I think learning, and not being afraid of failure is really a big part of being successful. I think for me it’s really about learning all the time. I just value it so much and staying curious about everything.

Liam: Let me ask you, what’s the biggest thing you’ve learned from one of your failures in progressing WebARX?

Oliver: I think in the early stages, the biggest failure was believing your own hype. This can happen a lot with startups in general, is the fact that once media starts talking about you, media obviously creates a lot of buzz around everything. And then at one point, you might just end up believing by yourself as well. I mean, all these kind of over the top kind of…I’m not sure even how to very well explain it. Like over the top explanations of what the company does or the hype in general.

Basically, I think believing your own hype is the biggest learning point for me when it comes to WebARX. Because at first, we had big media wrote articles rogueing us like we even made AI and stuff like that, which was really very far from true. I think AI is very high thing that a lot of companies are just using for getting attention basically. But at our point, the hype made us think that we are further away in our journey than we actually were. And that made us to just step back, start thinking about things realistically, and really focus on what matters at this point. And that’s really what we do as well now. So we just try to stay very much on the current moment and not too much like thinking about just too far away. Because eventually, as I said, when I started the company, I had no idea that it could take the course of what it is right now. And I think it’s how it’s going to be even from now. I have my kind of vision of where I want to take the company but I really have no idea what’s going to happen in three years.

Tara: I was thinking just about the goal of what you do is kind of like policing, right? Your business runs because there are bad people out there doing things to harm businesses and websites and that type of thing. How do you approach that I guess? I’m not sure if I’m asking this very clearly. But the fact that your business is running to help people and help fix problems that are caused by other people who have bad intentions.

Oliver: In our case, one of the things that we’re trying to do is keep the focus on awareness or spreading awareness in general. For that reason, we’re trying to make people understand why these things are even happening. Like, what’s the intentions behind the people who are doing these things. For example, right now, there’s a peak of attacks because a lot of university students, for example, are at home and they’re just bored, but at the same time, there’s people who lost their jobs. So there’s a lot of intentions that you can put behind these different attacks. But for people that need to be aware of being able to protect their websites, for example, I think this comes down heavily on awareness to just understand the other side who they are facing. That’s one of the reasons.

For example, you mentioned this COVID-19 database that we have on our website where we basically invite every IT professional to submit information about phishing attacks, like email scams, and all these kind of things. It’s not like our core business. None of these things are really something that we protect people from, but it’s cybersecurity awareness in general. And I think in the long term, we are trying to make the web a better place. So we just need to find the ways how to do it. I think awareness building should be very much focused for most of these cybersecurity companies.

Tara: I really appreciate your answer. That was very thoughtful and interesting. Thank you.

Oliver: Thanks.

Liam: I’ll ask kind of an obvious question given the fact that as of this recording, we’re all in various stages of lockdown in various corners of the world. When you’re not trying to do business, and you’re not trying to write the next blog post or find the next immediate hack concern, what are you doing to entertain yourself or past time or make constructive use of, or just generally stay healthy and safe in an era of self-isolation?

Oliver: Right now I’m just trying to have at least once a day to just go outside and stretch my legs and walk somewhere. Luckily, I’m living in a town where there’s only 30,000 people. So, it’s not that hard to find a place where you don’t see people. It’s fairly easy to stay in isolation here. But in general, trying to be healthy. I mean, in the summertime, I’m a very big fan of skateboarding. For example, I don’t have car licenses, for example, or driving licenses. So the only thing I use for commuting is a skateboard. That’s one of the things that on a daily basis just keeps me kind of moving.

I like slacklining, which is like this rope basically that you put behind trees. So sometimes I take it with me and put it into a park and you just need to balance yourself and just walk on that. I mean, it’s kind of meditating in a way. I also play airsoft, which is like…You know what airsoft is? What else do I do? I’m working a lot. So just full disclosure here, I would say I work a bit more than regular people do. So I have like a really long days. Summertime is a bit better because I’m trying to force myself and the weather is also forcing myself to be more active and go outside. I don’t have very specific regular gym routines or stuff. But yeah, just trying to stay moving.

Tara: Yeah, that’s a good thing to do. Let me ask you about advice. I wonder what’s the best advice that you’ve ever been given or received or maybe read in a book or in a blog post or something like that, and then have successfully implemented in your life? What’s the best advice that you were ever shared?

Oliver: I think one of the things is I remember that my brother told me that I told him this and he said that this changed his life, was that every time you do something that scares you, just ask yourself, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? I think for me, I am thinking the same thing. And it’s started me to reflect on what he told me – how this changed his life. Kind of reflected back to me that, okay, this might be the reason why I’m where I am in what I’m doing because I’m always thinking about that. So I think this comes down to what I also mentioned to you what I feel like successes, which is just appreciating the failures and the learnings that you can get from those. I mean, what do you learn when you always win? You can’t learn anything because you have to already know about this to be able to win, right? So, yeah, I mean, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen, right?

Liam: Yeah. I love that. Because so often it’s so bad in our head or we’re so fearful about it, and then we go through it, and maybe we don’t win, but we came second, third or fourth, whatever that is in a life environment and “Oh, well, that wasn’t so bad.”

Tara: That applies under the current circumstances a little.

Liam: Yes, please. Yes, please.

Oliver: Yeah, it would be nice.

Tara: Yeah. Hopefully when this ends that we will say that the worst has not happened.

Liam: So you mentioned skateboarding and I kind of skateboarded of a little when I was younger. I don’t anymore. And I was never totally into skateboarding. Are you one of those really long skateboards? Or you’re nodding your head, “All right.” Tell us about your skateboard. Tell us about it.

Oliver: Well, actually, I have multiple ones. Basically, when I started or when I got into skateboarding, I was using the one that you do the tricks and stuff. But I think three years ago or something, I went to a program or it was a two weeks surf camp, I would say. So there was like 20 people and we’re just trying different kind of surfing activities. And then the main commuting was with longboards, which is the ones that you use for down hilling and stuff like that. And I got really hooked. So that’s how I got back to skateboarding. After that, I’ve been using what they call longboards, which is a bit like a longer one. But I also have this thing called Penny, which is a smaller longboard, but they have bigger wheels, and it feels much smoother to just cruise around the city, for example. So not doing a lot of tricks anymore, but just cruising around.

Tara: It’s interesting to hear you use that for your transportation. You live in a small town so that works.

Oliver: We have really good roads as well. Everywhere is very clear kind of asphalt. Very, very easy to move here with this one.

Tara: Great.

Liam: I live on a big hill and I could skateboard down but that would definitely be a workout for sure.

Tara: Yeah, same here. Same here.

Oliver: Estonia has no mountain so no problem with that here. Zero mountains.

Tara: Well, Oliver, we are out of time. It’s been so delightful to chat with you and hear about what you’re doing and how you’re helping people with your websites and with cybersecurity and to hear your story. I look forward to seeing where you go.

Oliver: Thank you.

Tara: Where can people find you online?

Oliver: People can really find us from webrxsecurity.com. Even if you just google WebARX, you will just see our stuff popping up. We also have a community in Facebook where we always share about different kinds of security tips, talk about the latest threats that surround with WordPress and so forth which is called WebARX Community, so everyone can join there. And if they just want to talk to me, you can just go to webrxsecurity.com, on the bottom right corner, there’s a chat button, and then you can just right there, “Hey, I want to talk to Oliver,” and I’m going to magically appear there.

Tara: Great.

Liam: That’s awesome. Oliver, thank you so very much for your time today. Wish you all the best, not just with the company but certainly in light of everything that’s going on the world. Stay healthy and safe and we’ll see you online before long I hope.

Oliver: Thanks for calling me.

Tara: Take care.

Liam: Bye-bye.

Oliver: Bye

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

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

Nigel likes helping people with WordPress, whether it’s building new websites, fixing websites, organizing meetups and events, and connecting people.

Website | DiviMade.com

Preferred Pronouns | He/Him

Tara: This is Hallway Chats where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions, and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 128.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today we’re joined by Nigel Rodgers. He likes helping people with WordPress, whether it’s building new websites, fixing websites, organizing meetups and events, and connecting people. Nigel says he’s an introvert and that WordPress world is one of the few things that he’s managed to stick with for a long time. Hi, Nigel, we’re so glad you’re here. Thanks for joining us.

Nigel: Hi, guys. Thanks for having me.

Liam: You’re very welcome. Thanks for joining us. Tell us a little bit more about yourself more than what Tara shared.

Nigel: My name is Nigel and I live in Harare. That’s in Zimbabwe. I’ve been here pretty much my whole life. I started using WordPress in 2016. I think it was sometime in the middle of 2016. Around August, I think I found out that there was a new WordPress meetup and also that we were having our first WordCamp at November. As soon as I found out about the WordCamp, I signed up to be a speaker and joined the meetup also. I have been pretty much doing WordPress since, as a web developer.

Liam: Well, it’s impressive that your first time you signed up to speak. Do you remember what you spoke about?

Tara: Yeah. My talk was on using WordPress with Git. Since then I’ve rolled back a bit on the more developers side of things, and I’ve just mainly built websites now. Like, less technical stuff. So using page builders and a bit of code here and there, but not that much anymore.

Liam: Do you prefer that or do you miss the code?

Nigel: I kind of miss the code. I prefer to get back into code but at the same time life catches up and you have to keep earning the money and doing other things.

Tara: Nigel, what time is it where you are?

Nigel: It’s really late. It’s about 12 am here. That’s actually an interesting story. So most days, especially the beginners and those who can’t afford backup power, this is like our 8 a.m. because normally when it isn’t locked down and the factories and industries aren’t closed – so now factories and industries are closed, so it’s a bit okay – but when factories and industries are all running and all, we get power for about eight hours a day between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. So that’s actually seven hours. That’s where we get power at our homes because we are on an economic depression and the electricity isn’t enough for the whole country.

Tara: Wow. Wow.

Nigel: So normally this is when I’d be just have woken up, two hours ago.

Tara: That’s a challenge. Wow. So you sleep during the day when there’s no electricity?

Nigel: When there’s no electricity. Either way, I do sleep during the day because then we also go to co-working spaces during the day. So that’s kind of okay when we can go to the co-working space. But if I can’t go there, then I have to work from home. And the only time I can work from home if I can’t afford a solar backup or a generator is from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Tara: Wow. Thanks for sharing that. I did not know that.

Nigel: One thing I wanted to say about that, if it came up was, it’s tough, but it’s okay for us. So you don’t have to worry too much about us.

Tara: Thank you.

Liam: No, I don’t think it’s that we would be worried like that. But especially in a COVID-19 where we’re, not in a bad way, but everybody’s a little woe is me, and I don’t mean that in a flippant way, but there’s always somebody who’s got another challenge that we don’t have. And even if we’re really suffering or struggling, there’s always somebody who’s got another challenge. Thank you for sharing that. That was really, really, really valuable to hear.

Nigel: We’ve had pretty much 24 hours a day of electricity since the first day of our lockdown. And we hadn’t had that since August last year, I think, which is pretty nice.

Liam: Wow. So I have a couple of questions for you. One is, talk to me about your preferred page builder of choice. I’ll start with that one and let you answer that.

Nigel: That’s a controversial question sometimes. It’s one of those like pizza, pineapple or what’s your text editor of choice question. But I’ll just go ahead and say it’s Divi. One of the main reasons I think it was because of the lifetime MySQL license and also it’s pretty good. So that’s what I chose and I stuck with it.

Liam: And how long have you been using that for? You said you started in code in 2016. It’s now 2020. When did you transition to Divi?

Nigel: Sometime in 2018. Yeah, the beginning of 2018.

Tara: I know Divi has a really, really active community. Are you involved in that community in Facebook groups or other communities of Divi?

Nigel: I’m on the Facebook groups. I’ve forgotten what they call it. There’s a few groups. I think I’m in two or three of them. Maybe four. But yeah, just in the Facebook groups. Sometimes I help, sometimes I don’t. But I’m not on Facebook a lot anymore these days.

Tara: Yeah, I hear you. I think we’re representing all the page builders here today, if you’re Divi.

Liam: Tara is a Beaver Builder and I’m an Elementor. So there you have it. And we’re having a lovely conversation and we’re not throwing shade on each other at all.

Tara: I think if I could use them all, I would. But you have to kind of pick a path and stick to it or else you’re going to drive yourself crazy.

Nigel: Because when you read the blogs and all, it seems to me as if there is a kind of a hierarchy from all the reviews I see. From my observation of reviews, it always seems to be Beaver Builder, then Elementor, then Divi sometimes or sometimes something else. And maybe some way after those two.

Tara: Well, Divi has been around longer, I think. Just that it has the short code thing going for it or against it, I guess.

Liam: We’re going to move on. Tara is starting to throw more barbs. Nigel, I do want to ask you about your first WordCamp experience, because that’s often a pivotal entryway for a lot of the folks that we get to chat with here on the show. So tell us about that. You first saw the notice of the WordCamp probably in the dashboard, right, of a WordPress site you were working on. Walk us through the process where you said, “One, I want to go, and two, I want to speak.” Again, you’ve shared that you’re an introvert, and volunteering to speak at new WordCamps is not something many, many introverts do or at least they don’t do willingly, or without some trepidation. Can you talk to us about that, please?

Nigel: Yeah. It’s been a while since the first WordCamp so I can’t really remember exactly what was going through my head. But it was about setting a goal that would help me grow my skills in WordPress sense. I didn’t really know what the community was about at the time. For me, it was growing through sharing my knowledge at the meetups and through learning from others at the meetup. But then through going to the meetup, that’s when I learned about the community and also at WordCamp. And then learning about the other WordCamps and then seeing online what other people are doing and connecting with the larger international community. So it grew on me slowly. That was how WordCamp and meetups affected me.

Liam: How many meetups did you attend before your first WordCamp?

Nigel: It was about three or four because we had…

Liam: So you were still pretty new to it all?

Nigel: Mm hmm.

Liam: Have you been to WordCamps since? Oh, I’m sorry. I cut you off. Go ahead.

Nigel: Yeah. We had monthly meetups. So that was around four months before the first WordCamp. And yeah, I’ve attended all of the local WordCamps since. So that should be about four WordCamps. But there are other WordCamps.

Liam: Okay. And by local, they’re all the WordCamp Harare? So there have been four of them there now?

Nigel: Yeah.

Liam: That’s fantastic. It’s on my list of places of WordCamps to hit. I’d love to go. I’d love to go.

Nigel: Actually, I was the organizer for last year’s.

Tara: Wow. You’ve really taken WordPress into your heart, it sounds like right from the get-go. I’d like to ask you because when we introduced you, you told us that you are an introvert. I know WordCamps and WordPress community is very welcoming, and we meet a lot of people who are introverts and who feel comfortable in the WordPress space. So how does that work for you? Do you feel comfortable? Is it something that you had to get used to? Talk a little bit about being an introvert in the WordPress community?

Nigel: I am an introvert but at the same time, I’m not shy. But the nice thing about WordCamps or the WordPress community is for me, it kind of gives a space where you can talk about things that you’re interested in with people and have conversations that I wouldn’t necessarily have with my family or normal friends and grow interest. The other thing about me is I get distracted easily. So, in WordPress, it’s easy to…how can I say? I’m trying to think of a way to express it. Like I’m a nerd. It’s hard to decide on a career for someone who’s curious about everything. But with WordPress, the nice thing is a very curious person can go into WordPress. And it’s so deep and wide, that your curiosity is never really fulfilled, but at the same time, everything you’re doing is so relevant to the job you’re doing. So you might go a bit further and wider than you need, but still it’s not a really big deal than say if you’re doing something else. That’s always trying new experience.

Liam: That’s a really beautiful thought, and it’s a perspective that I don’t think I’ve ever really appreciated before enough. It makes perfect sense once you said that. And it’s so true. And as you were talking, I was thinking about just the way that I’ve kind of jumped around in where I’m focusing in this WordPress technology or that design side of things, or exploring plugins, or themes, or code and core and all the different ways that we can explore just the software, not even starting to get into community sides of things. That’s a brilliant observation.

Nigel: Community side, then going to blogging and writing, and SEO, they’re all totally different things, but they’re all relevant when you learn them. And you can all use them in your work. That’s one of the nice things about WordPress.

Tara: Yeah, I totally agree. I haven’t thought about that way for a long time. I think that’s crossed my mind before but similarly, it’s really nice that you can spend your day doing a few different things or your week doing a few different things and you don’t really get bored because there are so many different things to learn and do and touch upon when you’re building websites. That’s very true. It’s great for you to make the connection between that and your personality. I love that.

Liam: Nigel, you’ve mentioned that you are using Divi to make WordPress websites. Tell us a little bit about what you’re doing professionally with WordPress workwise. What does that look like for you?

Nigel: Basically, I make websites for clients. Once in a while, if there’s a big project that I’m interested in, it goes a bit bigger, maybe a platform kind of website like, say, a new site or something that’s connected with API’s and stuff like that. If it’s interesting and, well, pays a lot, of course, but yeah, basically just brochure websites mostly and support. So maintenance and support, so fixing SSR issues or white screens or stuff like that or my site’s being hacked or something like that.

Liam: And how are you finding clients? How do you meet new ones and bring folks on board?

Nigel: That is a struggle for me.

Liam: It’s a struggle for a lot of us.

Nigel: From referrals mostly. This year I’ve ended up with a bunch of guys. There’s a marketer, a developer, blogger, and some…there’s about five of us. We all have different skills but we work together as a company.

Liam: Oh, that’s excellent. Sorry, Tara.

Nigel: We’re all freelancers but we work…

Liam: And are you all local to each other?

Nigel: Yeah, we’re all local.

Liam: And are you all maybe even go to the meetup together?

Nigel: Yeah, I think all of us have been. Yeah, we are all members of the meetup, and most of us have attended WordCamps, I think.

Liam: That’s really cool. That’s really cool. Nigel, I want to ask you one of our signature questions, and it’s about success. We’ve talked about business, we’ve talked about getting into the WordPress community, we’ve talked about writing code and using a page builder and alike. But I want to ask you about your own definition of success. And it might be a personal definition, it might be a professional definition. How do you define success?

Nigel: I’ve been listening to the podcast for years and I still don’t know how to define success.

Liam: Well, I love your candor. I love your candor.

Nigel: But I think I’d say the ability to dream I think is one of the main paths of success. So kind of having something that you can look forward to that you didn’t have to look forward to before the point you’ve reached now.

Tara: Yeah, having something to look forward to. Can you give an example of a time when you felt that?

Nigel: Let me think.

Tara: We should say that we’re recording this in a time when the world is in a bit of a…it’s a challenge to look forward to things and plan ahead, right? So I’m not sure if that is harder to answer right now, but maybe you can think of something now or something that you’ve had in the past that you look forward to.

Nigel: Last year, planning the WordCamp was kind of kind of a turning point for me because it’s a challenge that I wouldn’t have normally taken. I think that was one on time that I really kind of had something to look forward to in the past. Right now, I’m not really sure because life’s changing. I’m not really sure what tomorrow is, but yeah.

Liam: That’s definitely something to look forward to. I wonder if volunteering to be the lead organizer for the WordCamp was you thinking, “Here’s a way for me to grow my skills, to stretch myself to step out of my comfort zone,” or when they asked for volunteers, were you just the last one to step back and leave somebody else standing in the front row?

Nigel: It was kind of the second one. Since I was on the main organizer of the meetup and at the time, there weren’t any other main meetup organizers and nobody had stepped forward to organize the WordCamp, I thought if no one steps forward, then we might not have a WordCamp. So I delayed until the very last moment to apply to organize. That’s how it happened. But nice thing is through organizing last year’s WordCamp, a few of the team members and meetup members have now stepped up into more permanent meetup organizing roles. So at least I don’t have to worry too much about being put on the spot about organizing a WordCamp anymore.

Tara: Yeah, you have a team and a community now. And now you’ve got one under your belt so that make it easier next time, right?

Nigel: Yeah, definitely.

Tara: I’m sure the first year is always harder. Were you happy with how it went?

Nigel: Oh, yeah, there were some successes and some not so much successes. But it was an okay WordCamp.

Tara: How many people attended?

Nigel: Just about 50. It was less than the previous one. But also, last year or since around the end of 2018, we’ve been on an economic depression. So things have been really tough locally. So the turnout was was definitely going to be lower than we expected. Even though the tickets were way cheaper than the previous year though.

Tara: Well, 50 people’s a great turnout then.

Nigel: Yeah. 2018 was about 100 people I think.

Liam: I went to a WordCamp last year that had about 50 people. And I went pretty far to get there. And it was probably one of my most favorite WordCamp experiences because Tara and I have been to WordCamps with 100 people, 200 people, but we’ve also been to WordCamps with 500, 800, 2000 people. And going to WordCamp with 50, I didn’t feel like I knew everybody at the end of the day, but I felt like I knew a lot of people and folks I had connected with. It was a deeper connection than a bigger one. So those smaller numbers, you know, we don’t have that big WordCamp – and I know that’s not your attitude. I’m not suggesting it – but they can be a lot more valuable in a lot of ways, can’t they?

Nigel: Yeah, definitely. Because most of the 50 people were people we’ve met from the first WordCamp, and the people who you see once a year, but who you kind of like we’re close friends at the same time because we’re interacting online the whole year, and then WordCamp is where you all come together and see each other in person for the first time or the only time in the year. And it’s kind of like you really know each other over the years. And even if they are new people, we instantly connect and we start interacting there and then. It’s kind of more intimate when there’s lower numbers.

Tara: Yeah, I can see that for sure. Nigel, what do you do for fun when you’re not going to WordCamps and meetups and building websites?

Nigel: For fun, I’m mostly on my computer so I’m going to be on my phone, so games and stuff like YouTube. These days I’m staying off Twitter and Facebook.

Liam: Not a terrible idea.

Tara: No. It can definitely be a time suck and also it can be emotionally draining too. So I can vouch for taking those things off your phone. We like to ask our guests another question, which is about advice. And so I’m going to ask you that question which is, have you received any advice that you can remember that meant a lot to you and that you’ve implemented in your life that you can share with us?

Nigel: I also wasn’t ready for this question. But I think the best advice is not to be too hard on yourself when you don’t achieve the things you want to achieve or reach the goals you want to reach. I think that’s one of the biggest pieces of advice that I’ve heard.

Liam: I think that’s a particularly valuable piece of advice in this current climate as we’re facing with not just the challenges of social isolation and physical distancing, social distancing, but inevitably the economic hardship that’s causing lots and lots of folks and will continue to cause lots and lots of folks all over the world for many months to come. So yeah, not beating yourself up is a very good piece of advice. Thank you for sharing that.

I have a question for you about learning something on your own. You talked about one of the things that you like so much about WordPress is that you can take it in a lot of different directions. You can explore a lot of different aspects with it. What has been one of the most challenging things that you’ve learned about WordPress or something WordPress-related and how did you go about learning it or getting your head around it especially since it was so challenging?

Nigel: It’s definitely coding. But I think understanding WordPress, the software, and how the community is related to it. Well, I haven’t experienced other software communities firsthand, but observing them it’s kind of you can tell there’s a difference between how other software communities work than how the WordPress community works. And I think you can even see it in the software end. I guess it’s also because of the fact that it’s a content management system, so it’s going to be very people-oriented. So, understanding the “people-orientedness” of it in quotation marks, it was kind of coming to the realization of…Like, say, if you’re someone who does Python or who does something else, they usually don’t think a lot. Like they have their feasibility study or whatever and they do their projects, but they don’t think too much about the people who the software is going to make…I don’t know how to explain it. But yeah, WordPress is like the people whose the software is being made for are more involved in it.

Tara: For sure. WordPress is about community and democracy and all of those things. But it’s something that we really value about using WordPress. And that’s one of the reasons why we do this podcast is because the WordPress community is so strong. And you’re right, it’s related to how WordPress works. It’s a good connection that you’re making there between the Software and the community and the people that use it. So I appreciate your sharing that. Thank you.

Liam: Nigel, as we wrap up here and we come to the end of our time together, before we say thank you and goodbye, can you share where people can find you online?

Nigel: You can find me on Twitter, that’s @Nigelmrogers or on my website, that’s divimade.com.

Liam: Divi Made?

Nigel: Yeah.

Liam: That’s a fantastic URL. Well done to you. Well done.

Tara: Awesome. Good job. Nigel, it’s been great meeting you. Thank you so much for joining us on Hallway Chats. Best wishes to you.

Nigel: Thanks for having me, and all the best to you guys too.

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

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

Dean has been working with WordPress as a customer success lead at WP Buffs. He works alongside the team there to make sure that their clients and agency partners are successful.

Website | wpbuffs.com

Preferred Pronouns | He/Him

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 127.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today we’re joined by Dean Burton. Dean has been working with WordPress as a customer success lead at WP Buffs. He works alongside the team there to make sure that their clients and agency partners are successful. We’re glad to have you here. Welcome, Dean.

Dean: Hey, thanks for having me. Thank you.

Liam: Hey, Dean, nice to meet you. Thanks for joining us out here. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, please?

Dean: Yeah. Thanks. I’m Dean. I’m from the UK, currently living in Spain. I work for WP Buffs. We’re a WordPress maintenance care and support company. I’m the customer success lead over there. So I get to do all the fun stuff like keeping customers happy alongside the team.

Tara: How did you discover that position? Were you were already working with WordPress before you started doing that?

Dean: Yes. This is a really good question because my journey was kind of all over the place before I came to WordPress. I was freelancing, so I was building websites as a freelancer kind of half successfully but also struggling because I was learning WordPress at the time as well. I think most freelancers start out that way with WordPress. I was exploring free WordPress before I began working with it officially. I followed that usual path of I guess discovering WordPress and then eventually working with it. And then eventually I found WP Buffs and spoke to Joe and Nick and then became part the team eventually. But it took quite a while to get to that point definitely.

Tara: Joe was one of our very first guests on Hallway Chats. I’ve known him for a long time and it’s been great to see his company WP Buffs expanding and to have a team of great people like yourself. Have you worked on a team like that before or is this your first…? As a freelancer, we often work alone a lot. So what’s it been like working on a team?

Dean: Outside of WordPress and tech world, I’ve worked on teams before. For me, working in a team like this is not new. The one thing that was new was working with free WordPress and working 100% remote. So I did have to make a big switch when I came over to WP Buffs. Of course, as a freelancer, I was working remote as well, but you’re so distracted by the hundred different hats you try to wear as a freelancer or an agency, and you kind of almost forget you’re doing it remotely, I guess. I think one of the big switches for me was really settling into the remote work and how the communication worked in a remote team. That whole thing was kind of brand new to me really. I have little maybe work experience, it was just kind of coming into a team that was already set, and I was like, “Wow, this is just like a brand new world to me.” But it was fun.

Tara: That’s interesting. We were talking before we started that you live in Spain but you’re originally from the UK. So you’re remote working from your expat life. Are you feeling like remote times two there or is there a good WordPress community where you are and do you interact with them as well?

Dean: Normally, I work with from a co-working space. I’m really lucky because I live in Seville. I live in the city, so it’s quite a vibrant place to live. There are a lot of co-working spaces around, so you get to meet a lot of different business owners, maybe freelancers or contractors as well. And some of them do work with WordPress, maybe they have a business that run a WordPress website or they’re kind of working with WordPress themselves. So co-working spaces are just a really great place to just accidentally meet somebody and just start talking about WordPress. But there’s also a really good WordPress community here as well.

They have meetups here. And also WordPress Seville is held there as well. I’ve not actually been to that. I’ve actually only lived in Seville for the past year I’ve kind of been around Spain. But yeah, there’s definitely a totally vibrant community WordPress people here in Seville.

Liam: You’ve talked about freelancing and kind of making websites and getting into WordPress that way. Talk about how you decided to or how you stumbled on or drifted into making websites in the first place. Was that a career choice? Was that you just have to learn it as a youngster? Walk us through that.

Dean: Well, what happened originally was I had always lived in England my whole life. From my early 20s, I was just working in either customer success roles or customer success-oriented jobs, and never really found a career that I would say, this is my career and I’m really passionate about. I jumped to a few different companies, a few different positions, and roles, and I think a lot of people do in England – at least I can only speak from myself. And I guess in a sense, I was really lucky that I was able to.

From there, what I did was I actually ended up working with homeless. I ended up in homelessness support. So the Social work sector. And that was what I was set on. I was like, “This is my career. This is what I’m going to aim for. I love this job.” Just working with the most amazing people, colleagues as well as the clients I’ve worked with as well. I was actually completely set that that was going to be my life. I did that for actually three years until I moved to Spain, which I thought would be a temporary move. I taught English in Spain. That was going to be just kind of a temporary sort of relax to get some headspace back. It’s been quite an intense few years working within the socialist sector. I never went back to England. I discovered WordPress while I was here in Spain, and everything spiraled so fast. I just stayed.

Liam: Talk about getting your first clients then. Where those mates from Spain who said, “Oh, you make a website?” and you went from there, or were they contact back home who said, “Hey, Dean, we hear you’re playing around with the internet. Can you help us?” What does it look like?

Dean: It was actually a mixture of those two things. To begin with, as I started to explore WordPress and dig into little bits of code here and there, I didn’t have any experience doing any of this stuff. So it was really me just learning and exploring for my own sort of curiosity and interest to begin with. I think what happens to a lot of us is that when people hear that you work with websites, whether it’s WordPress or not, people go, “Oh, so you can fix this, right? You can fix that, right?” And so people start to just know you as the IT person. So you kind of filter through those things. And occasionally, people will come to you with their WordPress sites and you just start collecting this almost portfolio of troubleshooting things for people. And I really did just kind of go from there.

I remember one of my first projects was a school. It was a school in Spain run by an English lady from London. She was running like a preschool and she needed a new website. And it was built on Genesis, but I remember wasting kind of so much time. I got paid very little for that website. But yeah, it was a mixture of people knowing people who needed help with WordPress, and also just kind of little jobs here and there to maybe fix something that I knew how to fix just to gain experience. From there, I just worked with very few clients as a freelancer, but I learned a ton. I learned a ton.

Tara: We’ve all started out there getting paid not enough. But we’re getting paid to learn in a lot of cases. So after many years, then you kind of feel like you’ve done so many different things that when somebody has a question, you have a reference point for that. Like, “Oh, yeah, I had that happen on a website. I know how to fix that now.” It gets to be more satisfying the more you learn.

Speaking of satisfying, I’m wondering in your current role as a customer support person what the satisfaction level is of that. Because I think for me, I like to live out of my inbox a lot in terms of that being my to-do list because I can go in there and a client asked question, and I can fix it and solve it and it’s very satisfying versus writing a blog post or coming up with a business plan or something that requires a longer period of maybe focus and less satisfaction at the end. Talk a little bit about that, about what it’s like to solve problems for people.

Dean: It is very satisfying because I think actually one of the best things for me is when I see our team and our developers all kind of communicating in Slack together. Maybe a client contacted us and I’m following the thread. I don’t necessarily need to be involved at this point but I can see it’s kind of becoming a bit complicated to them. And I’m thinking because I don’t have developer knowledge as such, so I’m looking at it from a customer success point of road, if you like. And so it’s really good for me when I see the team come in, and that we’re working together in Slack that or communicating together just to whiz through this problem that to me just seems so such a mountain. And then at the end of that, to see this client so happy that this monumental challenge has been solved within 24 hours or however long term. That really isn’t me. That’s our team. I think that’s one of the most substantive things for me to put on job.

Of course, I get involved in just making sure our agency partners are successful. So we white-labeled for agencies and freelancers as well. A lot of the time, I’ll be on the call with a freelancer or an agency and sometimes they’re sort of brand new, and they’ve seen our white label program. And it’s just really exciting to see what stage they’re at to want to hand in the work to us, and kind of free up their time. So I can kind of see it from where I am in customer support, and I can see where they are. It’s just so exciting for me to be able to jump in, and like, “I can help you. I know how you can transition this.” That’s a really fun part. That’s a lot satisfaction with kind of guiding freelancers and agencies down that route to work with us.

Liam: Oh, I just had a thought and it just went right out of my head. Right out of my head. Tara, tag.

Tara: Dean, we ask everyone on the show about success. And I guess you kind of touched on a little bit of that feeling of satisfaction from being successful in helping someone solve a problem. But maybe in a more broader general term, how do you define success and apply that definition to your life?

Dean: I think for me to define success, I would say, again just talking from my experience in kind of the decisions I’ve made of I’m going to say jumping from job to job in the past to really find what I really love to do, which is, of course, now WordPress. I think you have to make really hard decisions sometimes and be a little bit brave and probably a little bit stupid sometimes. I had the privilege to be able to jump between customer success jobs, if you like, and really find my happy spot within my work life.

I think for me to be successful is to really, as cliché as it sounds, is to be happy with what you do. I don’t feel like I come to work. I feel like really kind of like I’m with friends in Slack and on Zoom. And of course, working with our clients as well. For me, I think success is really just not being afraid to continue moving, keep making decisions for yourself and pushing forwards until you do find that happy spot in your work. That takes up a lot of our time, you know, and life is short if you can make action, whether that’s a really tiny piece of action, if you’re not happy in your spot to just do something to push forward a little bit. I think that’s it. To me, success is just to be happy with what you do with your work and…It sounds maybe simple, but…

Liam: Simple is good. In an age of chaos, simple is good. Dean, how does that definition transfer to things that aren’t work, that are life or personal or outside of the virtual office?

Dean: It’s not always easy. I mean, if I take, for example, one big decision that I made in my life was to leave my job in England to move to Spain. And what in my eyes would have been a break, it was a gamble because in my eyes, I was thinking I would go back to the work that I loved. I didn’t have that security. I was on sabbatical. I just took a gamble and thought, “I have to do this.” Had I not done that and made that decision, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I really wouldn’t. So that fear led to that change and ultimately my success now really. I wouldn’t have found WordPress, I wouldn’t have found this whole community that I’m now involved in if I hadn’t made that seemingly simple decision to kind of just go, “Okay, I’m going to have a little break now,” and by giving myself that kind of period of rest, if you like, to come to Spain and experience something new, I wouldn’t have found WordPress. I think the game just for me making those decisions, whether they’re quite tough decisions sometimes that can lead you down really good paths.

Tara: What do you do for fun? It sounds like you enjoy working with your team and that’s fun. What else do you like to do for fun?

Dean: Well, living in Spain, where do I start? Spain has amazing outdoor life, especially in Seville. When I’m not at my computer, I just love to be outside. Whether that’s eating in restaurants because food is really cheap here which is so dangerous because you just end up eating out all the time.

Tara: And good too, I’m sure.

Dean: Yeah, it’s amazing. So just hanging out, meeting people. There are so many meetups outside of the WordPress community as well. Hiking and literally cooking courses on meetup. Like everything here. I mean, learning the language as well as is such a big thing. So just generally being outdoors, I love that.

Liam: How well did you know Spanish before you moved to teach English? I mean, obviously, in the classroom, you’re good, right? Like, “We’re going to speak English in this classroom.” But once the class ends, then what happens? What was that like?

Dean: It still is a really interesting journey for me because when I was accepted for the job to teach English in the academy over here, I had done teacher training which was fairly short. But it meant I had to learn English grammar. Quite honestly, in school in England, we don’t learn English grammar. We just don’t. And so, looking back, that really helped me when learning Spanish. Because if I hadn’t learned my own English grammar, I would have no idea what these tenses meant in Spanish. But yeah, to answer your question, I knew zero Spanish when I came here.

I remember watching the Spanish news in Bristol in England and just thinking, “Wow, I’m never going to be able to speak this language. I was never going to be able to speak Spanish.” But I look back and those moments just really helped me. But definitely learning English grammar before Spanish, that helped.

Liam: I love that just kind of jumping off the cliff of “Let’s see how this goes.” You just don’t know where it’s going to go. It can all go pear-shaped and go south in a hurry. But to some extent, you can just grab your backpack and go back home and call it a lesson. It didn’t work out that way, which is wonderful. I like that you got to be a little brave. You got to be a little stupid. I like that.

Dean: Yeah, like you said, it doesn’t always work. But definitely, be being brave. And if you have the opportunity to make that move, make that decision, take that challenge on, definitely, don’t skip it.

Liam: What’s been the biggest challenge then? And maybe I’ll ask it in kind of a work environment. So you moved to Spain to teach English and you talked about the challenges of learning Spanish and learning English grammar. But as you transitioned from that teaching job and do more of a web focus WordPress, what’s been your biggest challenge in that area?

Dean: That’s been, of course, technical challenges. In my role now, luckily, I don’t need to be too technical in my role. The biggest challenge for me, I began working with WP Buffs as a happiness buff or customer success buff is what we call maybe kind of happiness engineers, I guess, is the most common term. I think the biggest challenge for me was moving into a leadership position – actually leading the customer success side. I’ve never been in a leadership position before and I think some people kind of feel like you’re, you know, some people are born with leadership skills, some people learn them, some people…I think leadership was the biggest challenge for me, and still is. I’m still always learning how to be a good leader. It just feels like quite a big responsibility. You’re kind of trying to move your ship, your boat forwards with all these people. It is a challenge. You learn from other people, you learn from what other people are doing, and you take what you’ve learned along the way and just try to apply that. But leadership is definitely a challenge.

Tara: Would you say there’s something that’s surprised you working in success customer support in terms of challenges that people have using WordPress? Is there something that stands out as a recurring issue that you never had encountered or that’s surprised you?

Dean: Not particularly on technical level. But one of the things that I do find quite common is how people will communicate their challenges, and how we as a team work efficiently to help with that challenge. As customer success, our aim is to make sure the customer or the partner are successful working with us. And a big part of that is communication, especially as a remote team. I think that’s probably the most recurring challenge that we see, especially with businesses that are technically minded. We tend to kind of sometimes fall into a trap of we work with WordPress day in day out. And so for us this lingo, this language is just so second nature. Sometimes I can come across an email to a client and they’re not as technical as us. And so we have to kind of check in and again remembering that how can we help the client help us basically. And to me, that’s helping the client be successful working with this whole team.

Tara: Yeah, that’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about that before. I know when I submit support requests for plugins or products, I have maybe more knowledge, but I can tell sometimes in responses that they’re used to working with people who don’t. I mean, in your case, you’re probably working with a combination as well because you’re working with agencies also. But knowing how to approach your response without knowing how much knowledge the person asking has, right? Because you might annoy them if you talk to them like they don’t know anything and if you assume they know something that they don’t.

Dean: Yeah, it’s hard to get the balance sometimes for sure, especially if you haven’t had that much interaction with a particular client, and you’re not quite sure. So you have to judge kind of level on the same sort of language that they’ve used on that simple ticket. But I did use to be quite intimidated by maybe agencies or developers who were so much more technical than I was because I’m less technical. But I think over time especially in the WordPress community, you understand that everybody brings some big amount of value regardless of what involvement they have, technical or not. There’s always something you can learn from somebody else.

I just think that it’s just one of those challenges that we keep battling through. But I think the main thing is to maybe mirror the languages of a client, especially if they’re the first person to communicate with you. That’s kind of probably your safest bet. Try not to go too technical in trying to undermine if they are a developer.

Tara: Yeah, that’s interesting.

Liam: That’s a good bit of advice, Dean. Speaking of advice, I want to ask you one of our other signature questions about advice. And it’s what’s the best advice that you’ve ever received, read, found, stumbled upon and successfully implemented in your own life, whether it was at work or outside of work, or maybe you do it both at work and outside?

Dean: I don’t know who this came from. This is something I generally tend to remember. I think we probably use it as well within our Slack conversations at work. But it’s just to remember you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel, I think, either to be successful or to solve a challenge. Just don’t waste the time. Somebody’s already done it. Somebody has already solved the problem. Even if I’m coming across kind of the biggest challenge either at work or my personal life, I’ll always try and use even the smallest resource I can probably find, a resource somewhere, to lead you to solve that problem. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel and overthink things.

I think that can get you probably pretty far in the workplace and your personal life if you just remember that, you know, you don’t have to reinvent this and overthink it. It’s a challenge, but somebody somewhere has already solved it. You just need to find these resources. I think that’s probably the best bit of advice that I’ve read or seen.

Tara: It’s very true for WordPress. I always think when you Google the problem you’re trying to solve, somebody else has had that problem and probably solved it. I love that.

Dean: The amount of times it’s saved me as a WordPress freelancer just the support forums, Google, just speaking to WordPress users.

Liam: The trick is finding the correct word or phrase to look up because otherwise, “I don’t know what I’m looking for. I kind of one needs to do this, but that. What’s the word for what that is?” I’m a big fan of using Twitter for search. “Here’s what I’m trying to do. Can you point me in the direction?” I find that’s really, really helpful. “I don’t need all the answers, but if you could just point me in the plugin, point in the blog post, point me in the forum answer, please.”

Dean: Yeah, Twitter is such an underused resource I feel. Definitely. I’m not saying that everybody go and spam Twitter with support. But absolutely.

Liam: I don’t mean support requests necessarily, but of our network and especially in a WordPress environment. It’s not impossible or overly difficult to build a global network of friends, even if we’ve never met in real life. We’re all kind of striving to solve the same technical and design challenges and, “Hey, has anybody dealt with this before?” “Oh, yeah, I found it. It looks really complicated but if you get this plugin, it handles about 93% of it, and all you have to do is that last bit.” “Oh, it actually helpful.”

Dean: Yeah, absolutely.

Liam: Dean, I was just going to kind of make light of the obvious, maybe not make light but mentioned the obvious, that we are recording this conversation, and it’s the first time certainly I’ve met you. I think you and Tara might have bumped elbows at a previous WordCamp. But as of this recording, there are no WordCamps. We’re all in Covid-19 isolation. You’re somewhere in Spain and I’m somewhere in my house and Tara is somewhere in her house and we’re all remote. Tell us a little bit about how you’re getting on with that. How’s that working for you? Maybe another way to ask it is how are you working that? How are you coping?

Dean: I’ve kind of started to hate the word “lockdown,” but I think it’s the most familiar word to use that everybody will recognize. Spain has been in this lockdown isolation for the past…We’re into our third week now. We were into isolation before the UK was. For me, I just love to be outside. So this is quite tricky for me. Also, I’d love to be around people like when I’m working, so to be focused on and co-working and I’m around the hustle and bustle of stuff. So being trapped in, it’s not great. But you do make the most of a bad situation. I guess you kind of have to.

Especially for Spanish, Spanish people, they live outside. That’s the lifestyle. So people are finding it very hard. But the good thing to come out of this I’m seeing in a lot of countries and a lot of towns is that it really is bringing people together probably more than we ever have before. The amount of people I’ve spoken to on like apps or Zoom that I just probably wouldn’t check in with that often, I’ve spoken to so many people. And it’s great to see the neighbors come out and clap for the health service as well. We would do that every night.

Tara: I’ve watched those videos and they just make me really emotional. It’s neat to see. We tried to do that. I live in a sort of suburban area and we had a clapping at 8 o’clock the other night and there were maybe three people that got the word. It was a quieter clapping. I think that’s amazing. And I think that trying to find the silver lining in a really awful, unprecedented situation is helpful for us emotionally to try to see those things. Somehow it feels like we have more time now because we’re not scheduling things, but yet I also feel like that’s almost deceptive because we are spending a lot of time now on Zooms and doing things. But there just seems like an opportunity to sort of reset in a way. But it’s been interesting to see the WordPress community responding to this with all of the WordCamps that have been canceled including WordCamp Europe and transitioning to online which is not at all the same.

Our podcast is called Hallway Chats because it’s based on that sort of casual conversation you have for a little while with people in the hallway have a WordCamp and doesn’t really exist in the same way when you’re on a virtual platform. But we’re glad that we got to chat with you in this hallway, this virtual hallway today and to get to know you a little bit. We really appreciate you reaching out to us to connect and tell us your story a bit. I love hearing about what life is like in Spain and the story of you kind of picking up and going there to reset and then never leaving is a magical novel in the making. It sounds pretty cool. Some things we all have but many do not act upon. So good for you for acting upon it. Where can people find you online, Dean?

Dean: The WP Buffs is wpbuffs.com. That’s the same across our Instagram, Twitter. And also me personally, Burton Dean across Twitter, Instagram, everything. It’s all the same. Burton Dean.

Tara: Great.

Liam: Dean, what a pleasure to meet you and spend time with you very much in our virtual hallway. Thanks for stopping by. Great to meet you.

Dean: Thank you for having me.

Tara: Thank you so much. Say hi to Joe for us.

Dean: I will do.

Liam: Bye for now.

Dean: Bye.

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

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

Danny is a digital content producer based in Utah who loves WordPress and makes some mean tacos.

Website | Rubio.tv

Preferred Pronouns | He/Him

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 126.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today we’re joined by Danny Rubio. Danny is a digital content producer based in Utah who loves WordPress and makes some mean tacos. Welcome, Danny. Thanks for joining us.

Danny: Thanks, guys for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Liam: Hey, Danny, nice to meet you. Thanks for joining us out here in the hallway. Tell us a little bit more about yourself if you would, please. And don’t skip on the details around the tacos.

Tara: Oh, absolutely not. So like you guys said, I’m a digital content producer. A lot of people don’t know what that means. I’ve heard the term from some other creators called full-stack creators. Basically, people who know how to do video and websites and audio, some marketing, photography and that sort of thing. I’ve been working as a video producer for now for about seven years. I for two years after college lived in Memphis as a video digital content producer at a news station. And then I started going to WordPress meetups there, getting involved in that community, which was a really awesome tech community down in Memphis. I don’t know what it was, it just was really lively in all departments. Then I started helping out with a couple of freelance sites, doing some video for them and then ended up helping them out with WordPress sites.

Then moved back to Utah where I’m originally from, and have been working at a university in their department – a department that deals with online in hybrid course creation for the university as a whole. And I’m their video producer. I help consult with faculty members and create videos that are a little more than just like screen recording and PowerPoint stuff for them. Then I’ve been doing freelance work here in Utah. I’ve been trying to get a WordPress meetup in my area up again, but with everything that’s going on right now as of time of this recording with coronavirus, I think I’m going to try to do a remote meetup. I don’t know if that’s going to work., but we’ll find out to see if we get enough people. I think I can make it happen but we’ll see how that goes.

Overall, I’m a fan of making content. I mean, that’s where it comes down too for me. I love WordPress because it’s so versatile. For a little bit, I was a little worried about where it was going. And then as they announced Gutenberg, the new block editor, I got really excited for the platform and where it was going. So I doubled down on WordPress and decided okay, I’m going to put most of my eggs there at least for when it comes to creating websites and whatnot.

I have two little girls, and I do make mini fantastic tacos. This is a tip for anyone. If you have an insert pot, and you throw in some frozen chicken, some salsa, some cilantro and a little bit of lime, cook that for like 15 minutes. And then all you have to do is put in a hand mixer into the instant pot, you got shredded delicious chicken. That’s super easy. Obviously, I had a little bit more when it comes to wanting to make it fancy, but those are some pretty bummed tacos on a quick dime – especially with everybody at home. I’m just saying.

Tara: Flour or corn tortillas?

Danny: I used to be a really big corn tortillas fan and I still love cooking tortilla, but I like them pretty fresh. I got spoiled when I was living in Boston for a short time from a family who would make homemade tortillas. I’m kind of a flour fan now. But that’s probably just because they stay better when you heat them at home for whatever reason. I just feel like…

Tara: Yeah, corn tortillas can be a little…

Danny: They’re tricky.

Tara: …fall apart a bit. Like fish tacos aren’t the same unless they are on corn. Like you have to have some corn.

Danny: My mom’s from Acapulco, Mexico. And so I grew up eating a whole bunch of different types of fish tacos. I remember I had friends coming over and like never even having fish in their entire life. My wife actually, when she moved down from where she was going to school, right before we got married, she had more fish in that two-month timespan living down there and visiting my family than she had the rest of her life. But I love all sorts of tacos. I’ll have tacos any time of the day.

Liam: Yeah, I had no idea that fish tacos were a thing even until, you know, certainly within the last several years. I’ve had my fair share since I’ve learned of them. But growing up, no idea of a fish taco. Didn’t even know it was a thing. So that’s pretty amazing that you grew up on them.

Danny: If you have never had a fish taco, you’re really missing out. Having steak carne asada, or chicken or carnitas or any other tacos like that, they’re good. I mean, tacos, in general, they’re just satisfying. But fish tacos particularly, you get a whole nother realm of flavor from the specific fish that you’re doing. Because my mom’s from Acapulco, when I was growing up, I grew up in Utah, and we’ve gone to Mexico and I tried some of the fish tacos in Mexico. But my mom particularly sometimes she would go out, she would do maybe salmon sort of tacos, tilapia, stuff that you can buy in the store pretty easily.

A really easy way to do is just find tilapia that’s breaded in the store, and then what you do is just make some homemade quark. Sometimes you can do homemade salsa just like pace salsa also that is milder hot and then you do some sort of coleslaw on top with some cilantro. And you just throw that into your tortilla and it’s going to be…it’s not as amazing, but it’s still good enough that you’re going to be like, okay. You know what I mean?

Tara: We’re recording this at lunch hour so my stomach is going to start growling.

Liam: This is proving to be one of my favorite episodes so far.

Danny: This is now going to become, “Rubio talks about tacos hour.”

Tara: Yeah, that’s okay. I like tacos. I like guacamole. So good. It’s all good. You talked about being involved in the WordPress community and working on a meet up there. How did you discover WordPress and what’s been your path to the WordPress community?

Danny: That’s a great question. Honestly, I think that like anybody who started or found WordPress, it was like, “I need to have a blog” because blogging is the thing you should have. Or like, “Oh, I need a resume site.” I remember I think it was in maybe junior high or high school when I first heard about WordPress and dipped my toe in A site. It didn’t last long. I mean, obviously, in high school you don’t try one thing and then two weeks later you’re like, “Okay, I want to be the next, I don’t know, Gordon Ramsay.”

Besides the point, I’ve always been a fan of both video creation and like that sort of realm of creation creator and then I’ve also loved tech. For a while, I wanted to be a front end software developer but in my university they had all the parts for a regular good front-end or even a full-stack, but there were three different departments that you could basically choose from. One of them was more business network export-oriented, and they would talk about the regular stuff you do you’d be full stack developer. And the other ones like computer science stuff. It just felt kind of disjointed to me, and so I decided that, you know what, I’m learning HTML and CSS pretty decently. I think that I can learn JavaScript slowly but surely. So I decided to go the digital media route and get the skills and training to know how to make good videos and content, which is really what websites are. I mean, really, usually, websites are just a place to post your own personal content.

I think when I really doubled down in WordPress was when I was tapped…When you’re in college, you always have like that one class that says, “You got to make a resume site.” And I knew enough about everything that I was like, “Okay, well I’m going to just buy my domain now” and decided that this is where I’m going to have my place to be. Because everyone now every time they would show an example it was always a website that was either [email protected] or [email protected]. I felt like no one had ever bought a domain and actually decided to make that an actual thing other than just doing an assignment. So I took some time. Elementor was kind of new at the time so I end up using Elementor to design my first website there. Made my resume site with what I’ve been doing and kind of like kept it there.

Then as I started working with more clients on a freelance basis towards the end of my college career into my professional career, I guess, just had more people who requested some video work and then ended up needing website help in some matter. And most of them had needed WordPress. There was a couple that I decided to go with Squarespace. Most of it was because they were a little bit older and they weren’t going to pay for maintenance or they weren’t very quick and adept in some of that stuff. I was like, “You know what, do something that you won’t have to worry about that stuff.”

That’s when I kind of got involved with the WordPress meetup in Memphis, because I’d heard about WordCamps and meetups and I was like, “You know what, let me see what is there.” It was at the time when WordPress actually added the meetup thing in the dashboard. You what I’m talking about? Like the widget on the dashboard. That was like a big thing for a lot of people because like, “Oh, hey, there’s a meetup close to me. I guess I could go. Why not?”

Liam: Yeah, great.

Danny: So I went to one in Memphis. Memphis was really interesting because they had a lot of…a lot of cities I think they have overall like tech Meetup group, or at least that’s…maybe I’m speculating here. But they had a unified…it was called the Memphis Tech Group or something like that. They had a website, people would go in and had one Slack channel with all the different channels for languages, which was really awesome. And the WordPress meetup was pretty good.

When people started realizing that they could see that there were meetups, we would get a lot of newcomers to the meetup and that were really beginners. We had one guy who was running it on a regular basis before I started coming and he was pretty advanced. He knew a lot about the coding stuff. But we were getting a lot of these basic questions. So I hopped in to kind of help. Once you have pretty good knowledge about the coding stuff, you start forgetting some of the simplicity of like what you can explain. So I kind of filled in that gap for a little bit. And so we were alternating a little bit. And then I moved to Utah.

And when I was trying to find the WordCamp here, there was like three or four of them, at least word meetups but all of them weren’t very updated. There hadn’t been a lot of stuff. I know the people who had been going to the meetings prior were pretty tight-knit because I could tell that they communicated online and offline a little bit. But overall, I was like, “I want that community. I just want to be able to help contribute at least some of the knowledge that I’ve learned or that I’m learning and share it with people and learn some coding stuff from other people.” And so I just decided to do one last month and one person showed up. And it was awesome.

Liam: I love that. I love that.

Tara: Great. I like the small meetings.

Danny: Yeah. Because he worked on a WordPress site for BYU University, which is I think the largest private university here in Utah. I’m at the largest public university in Utah. We’re neighbors, UVU and BYU. And he was working in a department that they ran their own setup, and they hadn’t used Gutenberg before. I was like, “Oh, dude. It’s great, super easy.” And just some cool stuff. He was creating his own blog, and he’s going to share his experience about creating his own blog for this next one. So I’m going to see if I get it remotely.

I mean, overall, really, WordPress has always been kind of like a fun hobby for me to practice and stretch my coding skills, and just mess around with new stuff. But really my bread and butter has always been creating content. And really again, I tell a lot of my clients at least they’re like, “Hey, WordPress, making a website isn’t hard. What is hard is getting you the content or creating the content to fill that website to make it really be what you want it to be is the hardest part.” And some people really like, “Okay, I get it,” and make it happen and others are like, “Okay, when can you get me that one paragraph that we need to finish up the homepage?” Liam knows what I’m talking about.

Liam: Yeah, I’m laughing here. I’m laughing here. Danny, I want to change gears on you a little bit. Tara and I’ve really enjoyed learning about how you got to where you’re at today. And you’ve shared a fair amount about yourself and it’s been enjoyable to hear about your education and the development of your career and you were kind enough to share that you’ve got a couple of little girls running around the house and that you’re married. And I wonder where this all lands you then when it comes to your definition of success. How would you define success? You might have a personal definition, you might have a professional different definition, you might have one for each, or might come together in one. Can you share your definition of success with us?

Danny: I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I’m a first-generation Latino who works in this country but my parents are Mexican. And both of them often told me, “We’re here so that you could have a better life than we did when we grew up.” When I was younger it was like, “Just graduate high school” And then it was like, “Just graduate college.” And when I was in college, I was like, “Well, I want to make videos. I would love to be in movies, but I don’t know if I’m going to move to LA.” I was trying to be realistic, which is not very common for me. I’m a really hopeful person or optimistic I guess. I remember saying, “You know what, all I want to do is be able to have a job that provides mostly for my family, and I can make videos or make content.”

So I went out of college, I got a job as a journalist at a news station in Memphis. I didn’t get a journalism degree. There was a lot of learning on my part in that aspect. I took one media writing class, and there was one week of doing news writing. But they needed someone who could create content, and I was the guy. Now I’m at a university and I’m making content. Sometimes people are like, “Danny, don’t you wish you were doing something more.” Like, “I’m making videos. I’ve hit my success. I’ve made that success or what I classify as success.”

And I’ve been thinking about it a lot because I’m like, “Well, I don’t know, I feel like I need to figure out what my new success means because if I don’t, I will begin to resent my job or not be passionate about what I’m doing.” And I think that I’ve internally perhaps kind of realized that ultimately if you’re doing what you love, and it may not be like the most ideal job that you would love to have, that success should come by helping at least one person see a different perspective. So, for both of you guys, being able to work with clients who are doing marketing and design, helping them realize they don’t need all the flashy pops and things in their logo or they don’t need the most pixel perfect layout designer, whatever it might be. Be for me, it’s like, “Hey, if you can use an audio source when you’re recording a webcam for your class,” that’s a win for me and that’s success.

Ultimately, I think I’ve recently decided that I would like to be someone like you guys, being able to help run a small agency or my own consultancy for people around me because I really like, as you guys can probably tell, I also like people. And as much I like to be able to help build all those little pieces of the puzzle for the end product of website, which might be a lot of different things – photos and video and websites stuff and helping troubleshoot whatever they need or whatever. Or on the other side, just like strictly providing them a slew of different video content for the social or for the website. Whatever it might be, for me, it’s really being able to like connect with that.

Because I’ve thought about, like, I mean, I love video editing. The reason why I like video creation is because video editing is my favorite part.

Liam: That’s the worst part of it.

Danny: No, just the best part. If you guys ever need a – I’m serious right here – if you guys ever need a video, just shoot me an email. I’ll do something quick for your Instagram or whatever. Video editing is the best part for me because for whatever reason, it’s like the last little rewrite. It’s the last little edit. It’s like the last little update that you need to do before you’re like, “Okay, we’re good. We’re ready to publish.” I’m a semi-decent cinematographer. I like shooting video, I like to be able to do stuff, but every single time I shoot something, I’m always like, “I don’t know if that was very good.” And then I get to edit it and I’m like, “Okay, it was pretty good.”

Liam: I want to go back to your success answer a little bit. I’m going to cut you off here if that’s all right. And I just wanted to respond to a few points that I thought were particularly poignant. I was really moved by your first-generation immigrant statement how your parents did what they needed to do to build a better life for you. And I don’t know if you have siblings, but I imagine they did it for those as well. And then your measure of success as you grew up was high school, college job kind of, these very practical approaches, but paying back the faith and the trust and the hard work that your parents inevitably put in to give you and the sacrifices that they made. I can’t imagine it was easy.

And now you’re at this point your definition of success from a professional standpoint is evolving. And could you be in Hollywood? Maybe. I don’t know. But I really liked the idea that you’re creating educational content. I mean, you’re still doing the production work. You’re still doing the filmography or the videography and the editing and you like the editing. And the idea that what you’re creating in combination with the educators is driving the world forward, it’s driving somebody else’s dream, it’s driving the next person behind you in the educational ladder, if you will, forward so that she can get an A or get the grades that she needs to keep moving ahead in her life.

And then the way that you tied that back around to helping others and pushing yourself to a new level, whatever that level may be, as you grow and your needs change, and your family needs changes, that’s a well thought out and very comprehensive definition. So I wanted to thank you for that.

Danny: Thanks, Liam.

Tara: Yeah, thank you. I’d like to ask you a little bit about diversity in WordPress and where you live and how you’re finding your way there in terms of people that are also of Hispanic heritage. Or just that we talk about diversity a little bit here, and wandering in Utah, which I don’t often think of as being the most diverse place, and I could be totally wrong about that. So, can you talk a little bit about that?

Danny: Yeah, absolutely. I guess like I said, I’m a pretty optimistic person. And so although I knew there was racism in the world, I think that sometimes I would not misjudge but I would forget that diversity is still a big challenge in 2019, even 2020, next year, right? We’re trying to get a little bit better. For me, Utah, some parts are diverse, some others are not very diverse. We’re getting a little bit better. I’m a religious person. When my wife and I were first married, we both speak Spanish. My wife is American but she learned Spanish. We went to a Spanish church for a little bit like in our congregation. And a lot of the youth there didn’t even think that they were going to go to college. I was always kind of shocked about that. I don’t know if it’s because they thought that they couldn’t do it or whatever. And so, I would always try to encourage them to like, “Hey, guys, you can do things. There are things out there that can be done by you.”

As I started to go into journalism and thinking about the content-wise, we had a panel that was talking about diversity and how ultimately for individuals who are diverse, women, people of color, people who have disabilities, whatever portion of the diversity spectrum would call it is that just like I had to make, I felt like I had a responsibility to do something so that I could make my parents proud, right? Because they came here for a reason. It’s the same thing for diversity. They’re like, people should feel more empowered now more than ever because the ability to contribute to something, whether that be WordPress because we’re an open-source project, or wordpress.org or in like this job sphere, that it is much easier to get in and be able to make something about it.

And for me, that’s why I think mainly when you’re talking about success, I think ultimately why I try to remember that like I don’t need to be in Hollywood to find success. Like I don’t need to have a super big video production company or agency to find success. Because really I’m finding in helping diversify a thought as not only a younger person, but as a Latino, and realizing that, hey, like, if you create online content, those Latino employees that are trying to get a degree can get their degree because they’re working full time because maybe they made some mistakes…not mistakes, but maybe traces in life situations cause them not be able to go full time or be able to take all the classes they can. But if there’s online offerings, they can do that. And that goes for anyone who might be in that situation.

So I think that for me, diversity, if you can help one person learn one thing to help make them to be able to do something that they weren’t able to do before is huge. And that is where we can help bring more diversity, and giving those people who maybe we don’t naturally think about they can do this a shot. Because they can learn. It’s not that hard. And we’ll all be better for it.

Tara: Thank you for sharing that. I think that we are recording this right in the early-ish days of this coronavirus where we learn about the impact one person can have in many negative ways. But maybe thinking about the impact like you said that you can have just spreading it to one person and having the concept of working in WordPress and working in tech, spreading throughout that community is something to think about. So thanks for sharing that.

I would like to ask you about advice. A lot of things that you shared really can touch upon that but we like to ask our guests if you’ve received any advice that sticks in your mind that you’ve implemented in your life that you’d share with us and with our audience.

Danny: Oh, great question. There was…this was a…I don’t what’s the word. It wasn’t directly advice, but it was an implicit advice. Anyways. One of my professors he was really big on, you know, just finish. And so I’ve kind of adapted that and I always say, “Done is better than perfect.” So if there’s one thing, that’s done is better than perfect. The other advice that I’ve received that has really helped me is that there’s always going to be hiccups, and sooner you know how to take a step back and figure out either a solution or an alternative the better things will go.

Then finally I would say – and this is why I really enjoy WordPress is that the technology now and with what is being done and what people are trying to do – you can do it. Ultimately everyone can learn to, you know, WordPress is to democratize publishing. I think that now more than ever it’s not only democratizing publishing. But it’s also democratizing some web design or the ability to make easy to create some sort of service or product or store now more than ever. I would say, done is better than perfect, there’s going to be hiccups, and you can figure it out, and then ultimately, you can do it.

Liam: Yeah, I like those. My wife’s family, one of her grandmothers who’s passed away long before I met my wife had a phrase along those lines. I know I’ve repeated on this show, but I just love it. So I’m going to say it again. If it’s worth getting done, it’s worth getting done badly. Just finish it. Just finish it.

Tara: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

Liam: I love that. Danny, tell us a little bit about what your thoughts are on organizing a virtual meetup. We hear a lot about that. Not certainly in the WordPress community, with so many WordCamps and meetups being shut down. We’ve got just about a minute or so left. But tell us a little bit about what you’re trying to do, where people might look for you online. So that as you get things going and opening up, we can help build a community or grow your audience, grow your community with you.

Danny: Thanks, man. My website is rubio.tv. Pretty simple. Most of my handles on the interwebs is rubio.tv or rubio_tv because someone took.tv and I was bummed. I know that there’s been a couple of places that are trying to help or make it easier to do work. I mean, Zoom is there, I mean, creating a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of other tools that are out there that are making easy to do virtual meetups. I think technically, it would be all audio. Discord has a feature people can just get on and meet, like with just audio and be able to talk to each other or just doing just a live Facebook – getting in that group and doing a Facebook Live and sharing your screen and people commenting section.

Ultimately, I think that when it comes to trying to create an online meetup, figure out what you can do, and what maybe people are willing to hop on and do and try doing that. Because at the end of the day, we have to be physically distancing from each other. But that does not mean, like we’re doing today, we don’t have to be socially isolating each other. So I appreciate you guys being able to have me on today and be able to share at least some of my journey and experience. Because we all need a little bit more connection.

Tara: For sure. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate being able to continue doing this in our own physically isolated environments. Thanks so much. It’s great meeting you, Danny.

Danny: Thanks for having me. And I look forward to hearing the rest of your episodes. Thanks.

Liam: And we’ll see you online soon.

Danny: Oh, absolutely.

Liam: And drop in on your online meetup when you get that organized. We’ll see you soon, Danny. Thanks so much for stopping by.

Tara: Thank you.

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

Matt Medeiros is the host of the Mattreport.com, and you can find him in his day job over at Pagely.com.

Website/Podcast | Matt Report

Preferred Pronouns | He/Him

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 125.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Matt Medeiros. Matt Medeiros is the host of the Mattreport.com, and you can find him in his day job over at Pagely.com. Before I say hello to Matt, I’m just going to share that we’re going to step away from our format a little bit and do something very, very different in terms of our normal conversation. And this is really and obviously in light of the Coronavirus and all the change and chaos and headache and stress, and I suppose even positive moments that are coming out of it. So with this change in context, I’m going to go ahead and say, welcome, Matt, thanks for joining us.

Matt: Thanks for having me. I guess we have the pre-show and then we have the show. And you two go into a podcasting mode like I’ve never seen before. Your voices come down. It is just this epic experience and I’m glad to be here.

Tara: We’re really glad to have you here, Matt. You have a very long podcast history and you are well-known in the WordPress community. But I will ask you for those who don’t know you, if you can tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Matt: Yeah. I do a podcast all about WordPress entrepreneurs and business folks over at Mattreport.com. I’m doing it now for about seven years. I started an agency about a decade ago. A couple of years back, I got out of that game aand now I’m over at Pagely.com, just a managed WordPress host, and I am holding the illustrious title of account executive where I help usher people into products over at Pagely. I also host a local podcast, which I’m pretty sure we’ll talk about today, in my local market – Southcoast.fm is the URL for that – where I do literally do the same thing except for local entrepreneurs and highlight their stories and help them be heard in our local market.

Tara: That’s really interesting. I had not listened to that podcast, but I’ve read about it. And I know that you do it. And especially recently I read how you’re helping your local community in the current crisis that we’re facing. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got started with that concept, and also what your community is like? How difficult was it to launch this and have it become something? What’s the business community like there? Are they very connected? All those things. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Matt: The south coast of Massachusetts is conveniently wedged between an hour-ish south of Boston and about 25 minutes-ish east of Providence, Rhode Island, which is the capital of Rhode Island for folks that don’t know. And then on the sides of us are Cape Cod, which is a very prominent sort of vacation touristy spot. And then Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard are literally in visual distance on a clear day from the shorelines of our beaches. So we sit in this place where there’s just a lot of traffic moving through us and away from us. New Bedford, which is the larger of the two coastal cities here was once the whaling capital of the world, and it’s actually still one of the…if not the largest fishing port in I want to say the US, and even ahead of Alaska, I think. You have to check the facts on that. But pretty large. Either one or two.

My family has been doing business in this region for forever. My background is my grandfather started one of the very first Mazda dealerships ever to be in the country back in the late 70s or early 70s. And then my family ran a car dealership ever since then all the way up until cresting over the 2000s. I think we got out of the game in 2007. My family had always had roots in the local community because of the business. And we ran the agency, my father and I, for about 10 years. And of course, tons of community interaction there. There’s no way around it.

Then once I started doing all of this internet stuff with the Matt Report, Pagely, and even the WordPress stuff in general, I needed to circle back and create something that was local-centric again. Just part of me to sort of give back to the community. And also the business community in the last few years, there was a proper business accelerator that came to town. A company named EforAll.org. And it is a nonprofit business accelerator. And there’s two cohorts every year, in spring and in winter. And then they bring in about a dozen or so people who are interested in building businesses. You could either have an idea or you could have a well thought out business plan, and you get into this cohort once you apply. They go with a 90-day sprint through this accelerator program. They learn everything soup to nuts from accounting, legal, retail, space, web, and marketing. And I’m a mentor in that program. And I connect with other business builders in that and I help them launch their business through that program.

Once I started to see the buzz start to accumulate, like we see in the WordPress world or the traditional tech world, I was like, “You know what, now’s the time to strike with a podcast,” – doing exactly what I do with the Matt Report except to my local community. Two, maybe muster up some opportunity later on in the years for any kind of opportunity, but maybe even specifically for my children. I mean, my father and my family and his family before that built a car dealership. I mean, it was always a great opportunity for me to go and work there, number one, but to meet people, give back, and make an income. And I was like, well, WordPress isn’t getting me any great seats at the local restaurants, but maybe, if I started something with a local podcast, I can give back, I can help, and maybe even build something as crazy as it sounds for my children in the future. And that was the genesis of it all.

Liam: I’ve heard you say that before on one of your many podcasts about the Southcoast.fm, giving something back for your children or building something for your children. Tell us a little bit about how the show has rolled out into the community and then, has it been embraced? Not so much what benefits have you gotten, but what benefits have the listeners or your guests gotten from being on your show? What does that local focus meant to the local community?

Matt: I think I’ve told this story before, but I remember Episode 1 went out and I was at my local coffee shop when that was still legal to go to a coffee shop. This is a couple of years back when I first started it. I walked in, and I was in line, and someone was like, “Hey, you’re the guy from that podcast?” I was like, “Wow, somebody around here is listening to the Matt Report. I can’t believe it.” So I was like, “Yeah, it was The Matt Report?” And they were like, “What is The Matt Report? They’re like, “No, don’t you do something like Southcoast?” And I was like, “This is Episode 1. How is this even happening already? This doesn’t even make sense to me.”

So it was great to sort of be in that mode where people are already starting to recognize me as a podcaster. But the big impact is a lot of people were just asking me how to do it, how to get into podcasting. Well, you know, teaching them about the return on investment and sometimes the slog that is podcasting to get to climb up that mountain. So it’s been great to be able to help and educate people and show people that podcasting isn’t out of reach. Some people think of it really tech-heavy and they have to spend a lot of money. Quite the opposite.

Again, more recently, now, especially with all this stuff, just being able to give somebody a platform to get their word out. Hard, even still in the small little pocket of South Coast Massachusetts for people to get recognized by the traditional media outlets, the newspapers, the radio stations, even they are still looking for the big buzz-worthy things and to have some kind of alternate media that somebody can reach to is hopefully fingers crossed the benefit to get some of these messages out. And now more so than ever with the stuff that’s been happening these last couple weeks.

Tara: We have a local radio station here and some friends of mine have done similar kind of format on the radio station. And then they’ve turned that into a podcast. I think radio, the station is really struggling and so podcasts have a lot more of a future than radio. But I wonder about listenership. How have you seen that grow and how have you grown it?

Matt: It’s difficult, but you just have to be grounded in some realizations. I live in a city called Fall River, and about 10 minutes down the highway is New Bedford. And that one combined, we might be 200,000. And then there’s seven, eight smaller towns around us. So this isn’t a huge space. When I look at my numbers compared to let’s say, like the Matt Report, it’s pretty much a fraction of that space. But what I’ve started to do is just measure engagement versus numbers.

So I created a local Facebook group. And this is like traditional things and we’ll talk about I guess some of the stuff today. These are like things that you hear every marketer say, start a Facebook group and start all this other stuff. The Facebook group is actually really valuable in this particular case because people still aren’t aware of podcasts and listening to podcasts and my God, how could they even find me of all people when most people are just like, “I heard Joe Rogan” has a podcast and that’s all they know. So measuring the engagements through the Facebook group, and an email list has been the real gauge that I look at success.

A lot of people are just bringing me in to speak. Earlier this morning, I did a Zoom call with that EforAll program for all of their local chapters. It’s just opening up opportunities in different ways for me. I don’t really look at the number account in this case.

Liam: That sounds like it’s pretty akin to the way that Tara and I think about Hallway Chats. That if you look at our podcast downloads it very much pale in comparison to what the Matt Report is doing. And the way we look at it is…what do we get Tara? About 100 to 150 listens per episode. And sometimes it takes a few months to get to 150. But the way we look at it is, if anyone of us showed up at a WordCamp unannounced and said, “Hey, I’m going to be in this room at one o’clock this afternoon answering some questions about my life and how I live and what I think about my experiences, and 150 people showed up, that’d be pretty impressive. We’re just talking to you if you’re afraid for talking to the digital blue-collar workers, and that we could fill a room of people who just want to hear their stories is something I think Tara and I consider real success. Even if it’s not podcasting, success in that sense.

Tara: It’s a service to them so that they can share it with their friends and family and clients and whoever they want to share it with as well. I think I want to ask you because I’ve been thinking about this since we knew we were going to be talking to you is the idea of our WordPress community being I think, rightfully prideful about our no borders global connection. We are very focused on the fact that we don’t live near each other and that we are friends with each other across the world and how much that drives our relationships in WordPress. And here we are at a time where that is still really important, but as you’re finding and as we’re finding when we have clients who are local, you know, your local connections are so important at a time of crisis. And knowing your neighbors, knowing your local businesses and helping them survive is something I don’t think as WordPress entrepreneurs we necessarily think about.

Matt: I mean, a lot of people, we sort of get…I don’t want to say we get taught this, but we absorb it, where it’s like if you’re going to build a business, don’t be doing it at your local chamber. There’s plenty of opportunities online to optimize and Google SEO and products, and digital learning. And we sort of get fed this idea of opportunity. Which isn’t wrong, it’s just a different opportunity of doing everything online. Every agency owner…I shouldn’t say every, but I know like when I was five years into building the agency, it was just like, “Man, I got to do this thing called digital products because I am so sick of talking to people. I’m so sick and tired of hand-to-hand combat. So you immediately go to, how do I remove myself from this human interaction, only to find out that building products probably takes 10 x more human interaction than you actually realize. And then it sort of just comes full circle in times like this.

My impetus for the Southcoast.fm podcast is…I mean, WordPress like I said, isn’t doing me anything in my local community. And that’s fine. Maybe some people it doesn’t matter to them. It’s just instilled in me to do something local, give back local, and how can I use my particular skill set to give back at that capacity. That’s either a challenge for some people or just second nature.

Liam: I want to ask you to go into that a bit more. You shared a video on YouTube earlier, a few days ago anyway about practical ways that folks with our skill sets, the ability to get websites online to do some kind of digital marketing. And even if we’ve never done it before, we’ve done enough of this type of stuff that we can figure out how to get a Facebook live up and running kind of thing or whatever the example might be. Can you share some of those ideas. Not to take traffic away from your own YouTube video? And certainly, we’ll share that in our show notes and in the transcript, but maybe you can just tell us a little bit about what you shared there because I thought it was particularly direct and helpful and practical.

Matt: One of the early lessons in my life was back in…I think it was high school. It might have been middle school. I think it was high school. It might even been called some kind of like entrepreneurial program. It was like a pilot program. They were trying to get students to become entrepreneurs. And it might not have been that particular label, but the point of it was you get to have the skillset and sort of document it and write about it and present it. Probably like many people listening to this, I was that IT person in the school when the teacher couldn’t figure it out. It was, like, I would help out.

This is back in the day when we used to have printers, and printer cables and installing a printer was really complex. And I remember sitting with the woman that was ahead of this program, and she was coming up with the curriculum. I was one of the test students, and she said, “Okay, well write up how to connect a printer to a computer.” And I was like, “Who doesn’t know how to do this? This is the easiest thing. You plug it in Windows, you put in some drivers.” And she was like, “Listen, these are skills that people don’t know. And you know it, it’s second nature to you, and other people don’t and you have value there.” And as crazy as it sounds, when I was in it, I couldn’t understand what she was talking about at the time.

Fast forward many, many years later, what I recently did in the local market when all of this stuff was going down, and knowing that I couldn’t just quickly get, you know, whatever 20 or even a dozen businesses lined up to do a podcast with me to get their message out, I simply took to Google Docs and I created a Google Docs form that spit out to publicly accessible Google spreadsheet. I just put it out on all my local social channels and I said, “If you’re a small business being affected by this thing, fill out this form. Drop in your business name, location, website.” And I had a couple of questions like, how is it impacting your business? Do you think it’s going to impact you financially? Do you have to send people home and work from home? Just a quick little five or six questions survey. And I just had the local business community pass it around.

And I said, “If you just want to share your feedback, this will help us all collectively to figure out what’s going on and how are we being impacted. And if we can share this data at the end, or throughout this, maybe somebody can reach out to help you.” It’s just a way to create an opportunity for everybody. As crazy as it sounds like to say, “find opportunity here,” but maybe somebody sees this list, they say, “I know how to help this person. I see what their pain point is. I know how to, whatever, send a bunch of orders their way somehow, some way.”

I passed it around, shot it to a couple of businesses and it got picked up by both local papers. One of them tweeted it out. Another one wrote up an article about it in the local newspaper. So we got more eyeballs on it. And it’s about 30 or 35 businesses have filled out the survey so far. But there’s been a lot of eyeballs on it. And that was the main impetus behind it. So it’s just like Google Docs. You didn’t have to build a website. It wasn’t even WordPress. Don’t tell anybody. But it was just taking two pieces of technology that are fairly commonplace and saying, “Here’s how it can help these small businesses.”

Tara: That’s great. Have you seen common threads? Have you seen connections made that way? What’s been the results so far? It’s early. I know.

Matt: Unfortunately, that’s the common thread that there’s a lot of people that I know that when you post it on social media, Instagram, Facebook, stuff like that, they’re like, “We’re going to take it. We’ll take it and submit our results and all of this stuff.” I wish there were more based on how many people have looked at it, you know, people filling out the form. But a lot of people it’s just that uncertainty. That’s the common thread. They don’t know how they’ll get through it. They don’t really know the financial impact yet because they just simply haven’t gone through it.

But I’ve been taking a few of those in the short time I had last week available and I did a little roundtable of business owners. And then I interviewed this one gentleman who owns a hair salon, talking about how he had to lay everybody off that works for him and the impact that’s had, and he was targeting April to open up but now Massachusetts said that all nonessential businesses are closed I think until April 7 or something like that. So everyone’s kind of learning this stuff along the way here. But my sort of self-charged task at hand is to hopefully just use the podcast platform to just keep telling these stories when traditional media isn’t. And it’s not that they don’t want to it’s just that they can’t get to so many people.

Liam: That’s a great use of a local platform if ever. Matt, I want to ask you a question. I watched your video last week, I think it was last week, and I reached out to a couple of my local contacts with an offer of “Hey, do you want to help with some digital marketing and some web stuff? Jump on a call on how about what we can do and I’ll set it all up for you for free.” And I got some I guess I’ll say like mental and emotional pushback. And not the sense of like, “Oh, I’m grateful.” It was more “Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.” Or “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to go there yet.” Kind of that folks not really seeing the opportunity, perhaps because if they don’t have a website yet, that’s not where their brains at, that’s not how they think, that’s not where they’re focused.

I wonder if you’ve bumped into that. I know you do a lot with entrepreneurs, but they’re going to be thinking all about web-based marketing. Do you have experience with folks who maybe aren’t website inclined? How do you help them see the light to try to help them and you know, not ram it down their throats, you know, “You have to do this.” But here’s an opportunity. Here are some simple ways that we could do this in an afternoon or over a full Saturday kind of thing?

Matt: I think a lot of people, especially right now are afraid to admit defeat. Not that people are defeated, but it’s very difficult for them to maybe even look at this as some kind of handout or some kind of trickery. Like I get something up my sleeve, like “Here’s a free website, and then next month it’s 300 bucks.” “Where did this come from?” I think there’s a little bit of that. There’s a little bit of uncertainty around just asking for that. I can say that I’ve put this out in that video, I’ve put this out on my logo baguettes, put it on my Facebook group, that call I had earlier today. There was about 25 or 30 ish people on that call as well. And I’ve gotten two emails from this offering. I suspect there’s many people that want to do it, they’re maybe just a little timid to reach out and ask for that help.

I’ll tell you, the big thing was showing people gift cards on my other YouTube Plugin touch channel. I show people how to use this service called Gift Up!. I think it’s called giftupapp.com it’s almost like the Mailchimp of selling gift cards. It’s super easy. It’s a hosted service. They take a percentage of the gift cards, but in times like these, there’s a lot of restaurants that doors are shut; you can’t go in. You can get gift cards. But a lot of these people don’t have the technology in place. So I know those were the two people that reached out. As soon as I posted about this video on how to set up gift cards, people are like, “Oh my God, that’s what I need.” They don’t know that a website can do all these things, how should they?

Once you can show them some kind of tangible result like that, that’s when I got the initial two people to reach out to me. It’s just like everything else. I think that once you can show them something like that, that’s when the light bulb goes off. And for the consultants that are out there, we always talk – I’m using the collective we hear of like other consultants and people that pass on helpful tips – is we always say, be helpful, and you will get customers. Give, give, give, and you’ll get customers. And a lot of times just because things are normal, the world is normal when you’re giving that advice out, people look at that and translate that into I need to put up a blog to teach somebody something. They hear free and give and they just like, “Well, that’s a marketing opportunity.

I think in times like these, you literally has to say, “I will not charge you anything. This is not about making money. This is about knowing that if I can, quote-unquote, save five restaurants and get them some revenue in, that their workers will be feeding people who are coming in, who will eventually buy from me.” There’s a huge ripple effect in all of this. So you have to detach yourself from, how am I going to make money from this engagement kind of thing? And this is where the rubber meets the road of being truly helpful with your skill set. Not just like, “Here’s a PDF you can download and I’ll tell you the top 10 ways to optimize your WordPress site.” Those are helpful, sure when things are normal. But now it’s not normal. And whatever you can do to give that will be super appreciated I hope by the local businesses or nonprofits, you know, whatever. It doesn’t have to be just organizations, whatever. I’ve seen a lot of people do some clever things these last couple of weeks.

Tara: Yeah, I have a side group that’s people who are on…it’s called the Business of WordPress. And we’ve been chatting a lot about how we work with clients, existing clients, the people who need help, and I think most of us are working for free to some extent to help with these updates up. I was saying to Liam earlier, you know, you’re not going to say, I’m going to charge you to put a message on your website saying that you’re closing for six months, or three months or six weeks, and you have to let your stuff go. You can’t do that. And yet we also are business people ourselves. And so I’ve also seen a lot of concern on how our digital businesses, people will say, “Oh, you’re lucky you work from home already” or “you work online,” but our digital businesses rely on other businesses. When you talk about a ripple effect, it is important to support local businesses and also it’s a very hard decision to know what you’re giving away for free and what you’re charging for?

Matt: Yeah, I mean, this is a time, if any, to…if you put your normal business cap on and things are normal, it’s like whenever you have that client-consultant engagement and the client is like, “Yeah, yeah, just give me the price. Yeah, yeah, let’s just get this thing going.” Now we have to do discovery, we’re talking about pricing strategy, we talked about long term support on it. Now the tables are turned a little bit. Now you can say, “Look, here’s how I’m going to help you. There’s no going outside of this box. As long as you agree to this, this will work for you. You can put it on some very affordable hosting or whatever. If you’re a consultant that has their own server, maybe you host them for the next 60, 90 days. But there’ll be an endpoint to all of this stuff. And then at that point, maybe we can talk about transitioning. Maybe you don’t even want to make money. “Just here, take it. Take the website. I’ll put it on your own hosting. Here you go. That’s part of the arrangement.”

But now more than ever, through helping all of these folks, if you’re a digital consultant also worried about what’s going to happen to your job, hey, maybe the more you can help when these things do turn around, that big nonprofit will turn to you and say, “Hey, you did a solid or you did the community a solid, and we’ll turn to you for advice or for the next project.” And then certainly, it sort of helps educate those would-be customers, in the long run, to say, “See, you listened to me, we got it done. We didn’t fixate on which color blue your neighbor’s daughter’s cousin wanted us to use. We just went with what the theme had and we got you a contact form and you sold $300 worth of gift cards.” Whatever it is. So it’s definitely a good time to sort of slow everyone down from design by committee and let’s just get this thing to a solid platform.

Tara: Yeah, good point.

Liam: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s important to also just to realize that generosity can hurt. And that’s okay. And there are times for us to be generous. We have an abundance now, but in six months, will we have abundance? Who knows. In three months, will we have abundance? Who knows? But that doesn’t prevent us from giving. And I think the gift with no expectations in return, not even if I help 10 people, maybe somebody helped me back, I think the returns on that are difficult to quantify. Certainly, in a business way, they’re probably nearly impossible. But I don’t have any examples in my entire life of having really the few times I’ve given truly generously of ever having been stung or left dry, buy that and maybe that person never paid me back. But somebody down the road did in some kind of unexpected karma-ish way. In this time and age, I think we do have to be careful about counting the ways in which we’re generous. We need to take care of our loved ones and our families, but we can do so in ways that might amaze wholesale for creative and generous.

Matt: Yeah. Something that I’ve been sort of talking about is keeping the marketing going. I know a lot of people might feel weird, especially a lot of down and out small businesses right now. And that is, keep talking to people, keep posting on Instagram or whatever you’re doing because you do want to, you want to stay as much as you can top of mind for when we turn around from all this stuff.

Liam: Now we are coming up to just about the very end of our 30 minutes together. That’s our typical recording time. This is a unique recording time so we don’t need to stick to that 30 minutes. But be before I wrap it all up, I just want to ask if there’s anything that we haven’t covered, that we haven’t asked you about, that you haven’t had a chance to share that you think would be particularly relevant really particularly with an eye towards either digital blue-collar worker or the local community. Now may be a great time to do so.

Matt: I mean, I feel like you know that that point about just like giving and not looking at it from just a monetary transaction is very important for folks. But control it. Like you said, you know, from our side if you were just give giving away, give, give, give WordPress sites, eventually, it’s not going to be sustainable for you mentally. Nevermind just monetarily. I’d say that If you’re in your local market, definitely turn to local and focus in on what you can do.

I’m naturally a salesperson. I’m naturally okay knocking on somebody’s email box and saying, “Hey, check this thing out.” It is exactly what I did with the survey. I know a bunch of people that are local reporters at both newspapers and I said, “Hey, this is simple.” It’s just like, “Hey, this might be of interest to you, this kind of unique thing that’s going on here.” And sharing that with them. I’ve reached out to all the chambers and local committees or business groups that, “Hey, I’m available for a Zoom call. If you just want me to show people, want me to show your group how to do a particular thing online via podcasting or web, I’m available. Obviously no fee, and I’ll talk to you for 45 minutes” or whatever it is that they might need particular help with. And that will be hopefully for the digital blue-collar, some of the currency that you’ll be able to trade in when this is all done.

Tara: Thank you for sharing that. I think a mantra that I like to think about often is, this is what I can offer. Thinking about what is in your wheelhouse to offer, what you are able to offer at this moment in time and assess that and offer it. And you genuinely offer, “this is what I can offer.” That’s the most that you can do. So we appreciate your offering to joining us.

Matt: One last real quick. Yoga studios. I know so many like small…not even yoga studios, but like small boutique fitness instructors and small little places. And I’ve seen a lot of them turn to just doing live streams and stuff like that. Maybe use a plugin like LifterLMS and build like a little membership lesson thing for folks. That one might be a little difficult but there’s opportunity there to use and leverage WordPress, leverage your skillset. Have a little template thing, and really light up somebody’s opportunity for their business.

Tara: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Matt, thanks so much. It’s been a comfort I’ll say to have you here joining us and talking about how we can be better citizens in our local communities. Really do appreciate that.

Matt: Thanks for having me. It was great to talk.

Tara: We wish you well. Take care.

Liam: Thanks, Matt. We’ll see you online at the Mattreport.com and on Southcoast.fm. Thanks for taking the time to be with us, Matt.

Matt: Thanks.

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

Akshat is the founder of BlogVault and MalCare. He’s been in the WordPress community for eight years. Mostly a developer, Akshat is also growing his team and dealing with the challenges that come along with that.

Website | BlogVault

Preferred Pronouns | He/Him

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 124.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today we’re joined by Akshat Choudhary. Akshat is the founder of BlogVault and MalCare. He’s been in the WordPress community for eight years. Mostly a developer, Akshat is also growing his team and dealing with the challenges that come along with that. Welcome, Akshat. We’re so glad you’re here.

Akshat: Hi, I am glad to be here.

Liam: Well, we’re excited to meet you today, Akshat. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Akshat: All right. As Tara has introduced, I’m the founder of BlogVault and MalCare. We are a WordPress backup and security service. That’s essentially what we do. As the founder, I lead the team to make sure everything is happening on time. Actually, on a personal front, as you guys had mentioned earlier, BlogVault and MalCare have been my life for almost eight years now. That’s what I’ve been eating, breathing, and everything. All my life has revolved around it. And it’s almost sad in a way, but it becomes your identity to such a great extent because you’re so involved in your business. As of today, that’s how I would describe myself.

Tara: Well, BlogVault is a familiar term for many of us in the WordPress space. How did you get started with that?

Akshat: This is an interesting story. I’m an engineer by education and I was working as an engineer writing code day in day out. I can still consider myself a WordPress outsider to a great extent. But when we got started, I barely knew anything about WordPress.

Now, one of the bloggers I was following who was a really famous internet personality, he lost his website. That’s when I thought, “Okay, maybe if this guy who’s so famous and actually very technical, if he can lose his blog, then maybe there is something to it.” That’s how I got the idea. I thought it’s like a two-week project. Now, it’s been eight years and even now we are improving and building our product. I don’t think I am that terrible programmer. Just two things have happened. One, I think everyone estimates incorrectly but secondly, the space itself is so interesting, and so many things open up and to go deeper into it, that, it takes a long time to build a great product.

Tara: Were you already using WordPress at the time? Were you already familiar with WordPress?

Akshat: No. I’m sure I never heard of WordPress then. It’s been a long time. But I never really used WordPress. One of the reasons why we are called blogVault, had I used WordPress, maybe I would have called it WPwallet or something like that. I was like okay, “We need to protect blogs and what our blog’s made of. There’s a thing called WordPress, and how do we go about doing it?” That’s how I got into WordPress. I was a complete outsider.

Liam: I’m really interested in how you’re witnessing this famous bloggers website implode with no backups and you’re thinking to yourself, “Well, I could go ahead and write something that would be a service, a value to their…” Presumably, you were working somewhere as an engineer at the time or maybe finishing up studies depending on where you’re at, in which season of your life. But how did it evolve from an idea when you’re lamenting some blogger losing all their content to the point now where you’re the founder and leader of a very well-known and well-respected company in the WordPress community? Walk us through that in a nutshell if you would.

Akshat: Again, when we got started, we didn’t really know what we’re getting into. We didn’t think that it’s going to become… Frankly and the reality is I thought maybe it’s going to make me like $2,000 in a year. And we’ve come a long, a long way since then.

Liam: Nice, little side project.

Akshat: Yeah, I wasn’t expecting much. As I built it, I launched it. And launching it frankly meant nothing because as much as you could use internet, I didn’t really expect people paying you on the internet. Six months down the line, I get this mail from a customer. I wouldn’t even call them a customer. From a user. He emailed me saying that, hey, I’m trying to pay you the payment is not going through. I still remember that moment very clearly. I was sitting with my friends, and I get this mail and I’m like, “Okay, someone is actually trying to pay me.” And then I realized that my PayPal integration was incorrect, and the code I had put in was wrong. So I fixed it, and I think a few hours later, I got $29. I was like, “Wow, people pay on the internet.” I still remember very clearly when I got that mail and that feeling and it’s insane because frankly, I was not expecting any of it. I just built something for the heck of it almost.

Obviously, I invested into the project. So whenever you build something, you invested into it, but at the same time, you don’t have expectations from it, especially when you have never been paid. Like here is a completely random stranger sitting in some other part of the world paying you. I had created my PayPal account for this specific purpose and then all of that. It’s quite fascinating. It still gives me goosebumps.

Tara: That’s great. That’s great…

Liam: And I can hear that in your voice.

Tara: …that you started from that point, and to see where you are now. What would you credit to the growth of BlogVault? How did you get the word out after that first $29 sale? How did it grow?

Akshat: In all honesty, I’ve been tremendously lucky because I’m a marker. I’m far from it. It just happened. Frankly, I’m not even sure how we got through. We wrote a couple of articles here and there, then I think a couple of bloggers picked us up. This is a great story actually. We launched and a couple of weeks later Jet – not jetpack. Earlier it was called WordPress. That’s automatic our competitor – launched. At that point, I thought, “Okay, this is done. Forget it. Now the main guy is there and they have launched and they have a good product so they are going to win the market.” This is one of my big learnings.

What actually happened was when people started looking for WordPress and started talking, they’re like, “Who are the alternatives to WordPress.” And we would start getting included in those articles. I think that is the single biggest reason why we exist. Because I was not going out. I had my day job which I was doing, actually for quite some time since then. People started writing about WordPress and they would somehow find me. They wrote as a byline or as a second article or something like that, and people started coming and checking us out at the same time.

Liam: That’s a very humble answer.

Akshat: It is not. It is the reality. There’s a great takeaway for people who build products. Don’t be scared of competitors. Competitors can actually help you because they help validate and define a space. That I think is very, very important when you’re building products. Going into an open market where people don’t even understand your space becomes a big challenge because the vast majority of us do not have the capability of educating people as to creating the need.

Liam: I wonder if you can share a little bit about what blogVault and MalCare does, what your business offers, what service it is. And I’ll preface it shot with the understanding that we are not a technical show. So if you can kind of talk about it in terms maybe that first blogger who lost all of his or her content would understand.

Akshat: blogVault blog actually have come a long way since this blog and we have recovered all sorts of WordPress sites. Today we see that while WordPress is very popular with bloggers, it’s also very popular with CMS with businesses building their websites. And no blogger or no business can really afford to have their websites go down or have something wrong with it. And things do happen. Frankly, over the few years, we have seen lots of things go wrong. One of the days when BlogVault was used the most was when there was a hurricane which hit New York and it took down data centers for days. So even the most improbable event like a Hurricane affecting your site, it does happen.

In all those situations, what you require is a good backup. That’s what BlogVault does. Actually, the thing is, we are the exact opposite of what a technical product really is. What we have done is we have taken away the whole technical difficulty associated with any anything as complicated as backups and just made it really, really easy for anybody. Sometimes in the WordPress space, we almost assume that our customers, that our users are willing to configure a million settings and like doing it, and are capable of dealing with it. I don’t come from that thought at all. We like to keep it really simple and almost assume that customers do not want to do any settings, they are not positioned to make the best choices. If you have the expertise, then you should provide it. That’s something which we do and make it really simple.

We did BlogVault and we built this great backup product, which makes it really easy to back up your WordPress site. Over a period of time, we realized that customers were restoring backups for different reasons. Obviously, when their servers crashed and data centers, something went wrong and human errors and everything. But one of the big reasons was when the sites got hacked.

Now they would use their backups to recover from the hack. The first thing I would tell you is, never recover from a hack from a backup…Only the worst-case situation. Because when you want to remove malware, you need to get rid of it completely. You can’t just restore from a backup and assume that it’s gone you. It’s almost like you need to get rid of the bedbugs. I don’t even know what I’m…

Tara: That’s a good analogy.

Akshat: But do you need to do that complete thorough cleaning. And backups do not always do that. Coming back to the story, people were restoring their sites from backups when the sites have been hacked. As we were helping these customers out, we realized that their sites would be hacked for six months or longer before they even realized that the sites have been hacked. That got us into our next journey, which became MalCare. Well, we said that our customers will be able to find the malware. And they have all these products. There have been quite a few security products out there. Over time, we realized that those security products were just not able to find all the malware and we tried to solve the problem.

Unfortunately, the problem was much, much, much harder than we actually anticipated and it took us like almost three years to make a scanner which we were happy with. And that became our second product. That’s MalCare. So yeah, today we have two main products: BlogVault and MalCare, but we have a bunch of other ideas that we’re working with.

Tara: Am I correct in remembering that is BlogVault also used for migrations by some web hosting companies?

Akshat: Oh, yes. At BlogVault, we do great backups and we do great restores. This is again, actually a fantastic story. We all know WP Engine, which is a great web host. WP Engines founder Jason Cohen has been like…I’ve really looked up to him for a long time and followed him on the internet and would listen to him talk and read all his blog posts and see all the videos or conferences he would appear on the internet. And then also listen to a lot of the podcast he would appear in.

In one of the podcasts, he mentions that migrations are the single biggest reason they would lose customers. This is quite a few years ago. That’s when it got into me that hey, this is something we do well and we need to partner with WP Engine. It took a couple of years. I’m not a great sales guy. I should have given the… But we were finally able to meet Jason and then…

Actually, I can’t even take credit for selling that. That sale happened because one of our customers who is a big agency in UK, they had Heather Brunner who was the CEO of WP Engine visiting them. This customer convinced Heather to talk to us. That’s the real story. I had a value proposition where the migrations was there but had those customers not convinced Heather who was the CEO of WP Engine, this partnership would not have happened. But yeah, the long and short of it is today we power migrations for all the major WordPress hosting companies from WP Engine, Pantheon, Flywheel, Liquid Web, Cloudwaves, TreeHost. I’m definitely missing quite a few of those.

Tara: I thought I had seen it and used it, and it is really amazing. Having used a number of different migration profiles, platforms, I would say that I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem using the migration on WP Engine or others that use BlogVault. It’s very seamless. And I’m sure it must help them as well in their sales process and to retain so you’ve added a great value to their service as well. That’s a really neat story.

Akshat: Thank you.

Tara: I was wondering how that relationship worked. That’s really interesting.

Liam: I want to chime in on that. Because as Tara asked the question about migration and you started to explain, it occurred to me that, of course, I recognize BlogVault. To Tara’s point, it works so seamlessly that I didn’t even really recognize it. Because when it doesn’t cause you any headaches, and it just does it – and I’m, a WP Engine client, so I log into WP Engine and I move a site and I just walk away and it happens. That’s great. Thank you for making a great product. It’s so interesting that one of your clients basically did all your sales work because you have such a great product. I think that sounds like there’s a whole nother podcast right in that and at that point alone.

Akshat: They’re lovely people and definitely one of my very, very close friends in the WordPress community. Shout out to Heather and Tom from WP Engine. If you ever see them, definitely say hi to them. They’re great people.

Liam: I’ll have to check them out. I’m heading over to the UK over the summer. I want to ask you about success, Akshat. I want to ask about more specifically, what is your definition of success? And that might be a personal definition, professional definition, given what you shared about the amount of time that you’ve poured into BlogVault over the last eight years and maybe a combination of both. Can you share that with us, please?

Akshat: All right. I have been very, very lucky on that. Luck and some desire to make things happen. Those things when they come together I think it leads to success, at least in the professional sense. Or I think at any level where you have a desire and you work towards something and then the timing and luck and other factors come together to help you achieve that. That’s what I would define as success.

What is success to me? Frankly, I’m a very happy or lucky person also. I’m not this crazy aggressive entrepreneur kind of person. Sometimes you feel bad about it because you have been presented with such a fantastic opportunity. Success also defines being content with what you have been able to do and also recognizing the opportunity that you have to make a bigger impact. I would definitely say that I’m successful at that.

Tara: Your story strikes me because it sounds like you fit this definition of the idea of an accidental entrepreneur. If you hadn’t solved this problem for your blogger friend, do you think that you would own your own business? Or do you think you always were destined to do this kind of thing? Even if there wasn’t BlogVault, maybe something else?

Akshat: The BlogVault was not my first venture. I’ve tried things in the past. I think I’ve worked equally hard at those other ventures too and they did not succeed. I will not say that I was destined for success because I have worked equally hard on other projects and things that do not necessarily work out. I’m not saying that had BlogVault not worked I would have definitely done something else which would have been equally successful. I don’t believe that. But yeah, entrepreneurship is something which has always…I’ve always tinkered with ideas and have wanted to make products which customers or people love. That’s what gives me joy.

Liam: I like that.

Akshat: When you make things which people use, it gives you satisfaction, which frankly, at least for a person like me, nothing else I think can give. It is what makes me wake up in the morning every day.

Liam: I certainly respect that. And you shared that you’re a happy go lucky kind of guy. And from the time that we’re spending with you and the time before we clicked the “record” button, that strikes me as a pretty accurate description of you. I want to go back something that you said earlier in the show, Akshat around…you kind of compared a little bit and contrast with what you’re sharing about success and how helping people, making the world a better place, you can succeed in that. That’s great. But you kind of little bit lightheartedly, I admit, you said it’s almost sad in a way how much time and energy you’ve poured into BlogVault over the years. I don’t share that with you back in a critical way but to kind of ask about how do you consider the balance? How do you work about the balance between now you’ve built a very successful company with a global audience, and that’s its own challenges, right? You’re getting emails and support calls and business opportunities 24 hours a day because your clients are all over the world. How do you balance all of that in a way that still enables you to be the kind of happy go lucky guy that you certainly come across us?

Akshat: I don’t think I do a good job of balancing. I don’t think any of my family members will say that I’m balanced in any possible metric. At the same time, I think I pretend to work a lot harder than I really do. I take my vacations. I have been very fortunate. Because of WordPress, I’ve seen the whole world now attending WordCamps and going and meeting people and doing things. So basically, every WordCamp I attend in a different part of the world. I get to basically a vacation for free. The company pays for me to go and actually hang out with people. I don’t even remember what the question was, sorry. I was distracted.

Liam: That’s all right. But you’ve led us into another area I’d like to chat with you about. And it’s about the WordPress community and your involvement in it. You’ve been to a lot of WordCamps, you’ve got this very well-known plugin. Tell us a little bit about your involvement with the WordPress community and maybe walk us through your first ideas of “Hey, I’ll make a backup tool to discovering the community that came around or that grew around the software.”

Akshat: I still remember the first WordCamp I attended a few years ago. Have you been to the WordCamp San Francisco that used to be…what was considered like the WordCamp US at that time before they had an official WordCamp US? I remember going to the first one from India. That’s a big hike. I think a good deal of money was spent. And you go there the very first WordCamp, you don’t even know what the hell is going on. You don’t know about the WordPress community. You are this entrepreneur who has to make money and make sure that at least you make back the money you have spent on the flight and everything else. Fortunately, you don’t have to make that much money on the WordCamp ticket which the community is making shows is very, very reasonably priced.

So you go in there and you are trying to have these conversations and trying to sell your product and then I failed miserably because WordCamp is not about selling. Then you feel miserable. Actually, you just feel terrible at the end of it because you’ve gone there you’ve not met anybody really, and you’ve failed at your original mission of which is like, “Okay, I’m going to go there and get a bunch of customers.” Which I will not advise anyone to do now. That is not people like me to do.

I realized that there’s something I’m doing wrong. Then what I did was in the next WordCamp, which was in WordCamp Sofia, actually WordCamp Europe in Sofia, I volunteered. That’s when the light went out. That’s when I realized that this community is not about…You know, those words are wrong. It’s not that I realized. It’s like I have to deal with this problem in this way. It’s just that my perspective…I won’t even say I my perspective changed. I basically made friends. That’s the right way of putting it. Like you go there, you volunteer, and then you have all these people who are so involved in WordPress and it’s a celebration. And you’re part of that celebration. Then you’re making friends and over a period of time people get to recognize you and everyone is out there trying to help you or know more about you. And looking back, the dots will connect. If you try and force the dots to connect, they don’t happen.

Tara: What about your local community there. You’re in India. Where in India are you?

Akshat: I’m in Bangalore. Again, I’m not very, very involved in the WordPress community. Frankly, I’m not involved in any community. I get to the office, finish my work. That’s all takes up most of my time. They do have a fairly small community, but we’re going to have a very first WordCamp I think in the next few months in Bangalore’s. That’s going to be very exciting. I can’t take any credit for it. I’ve hosted a couple of WordPress meetups here, but I’m not a very active member of the community. That’s not me.

Akshat: But it sounds like you are in terms of the worldwide community though because your product is all over and so people know you and you’ve met a lot of people and friends I think through WordCamps, even if it’s not your local community.

Akshat: Yeah. That’s the reality of it.

Tara: And that’s okay. I want to ask you about advice. We ask our guests to share with us some advice that they may have received in their life that’s made an impression on them and maybe that you’ve implemented into your life somehow. Can you think of any advice that you’ve been given that’s been helpful to you?

Akshat: Yes. This is something which I’ve been thinking for the past half an hour so far about what’s an advice which has been given to me which I’ve implemented. You get so much advice, and invariably what you end up doing is they’re not implementing it, and then you feel pretty terrible about it. I’m just thinking what is the one advisor taken which I can… This is a question which has stumped me completely. I’m sorry, give me a moment. Let me just think once more.

Tara: Take your time.

Liam: It doesn’t have to be the best advice or anything. A business colleague or a grandparent or maybe something your sibling said when you were younger that stuck with you.

Akshat: Nothing is coming to me and so sorry about this. I’ve actually spent the past half an hour thinking about it and I nothing struck me as to what an advice I received.

Liam: Now that’s all right. Don’t feel bad. That’s the very nature of a Hallway Chat is we catch people off guard and we chat. Let me ask you this. You’ve been in business for eight years. You started with an idea and now you’re got a very well established, highly respected company. If you had to try to narrow it down, what would you say has been your biggest challenge in the past eight years in growing your business? One of the biggest. Not to put you on the spot again. One of the biggest.

Akshat: No, no, no. I think communication is a big challenge. I’m not a communicator. I tend to stick by myself and do my own thing. And when you’re building a company, you can’t do that. When you’re building a product, you can’t do that because marketing is communication. Everything is communication. That’s one of the big learnings, the importance of communication over time and the effect it has. Because you need to communicate with your team, and you need your team to communicate with everyone. And then you need your company to communicate externally. Because unless you do that communication, it’s going to hamper you.

Tara: We mentioned in the intro that you’re growing your team and that that’s posed some challenges for you. So is your team remote or do you all work together?

Akshat: No. We all work together. I told you communication is a big challenge. I can’t imagine working remotely because then…I think that is how we see each other and talk to each other, at least a bit. I’m not the kind of person who can deal with remote. I need to see it. At least there is some level of just face to face, which leads to better communication and better interactions.

Tara: Have you had any lessons, anything to share that has worked for you in terms of communicating? Any breakthroughs that you’ve had or are you continuing to struggle with it? Any tools or techniques that you can recommend?

Akshat: I think, hire great team members who could do the job better than you so they will ensure that the company communicates much better than you do yourself. I think that’s what has kept us afloat and that’s what is ensuring that we are able to hire more people because I have team members who go ahead and put in that effort and enjoy doing that process. I have team members who love marketing and who want to reach out to others and try and get the word out about our product. And we have team members who actually communicate with each other and make sure that we are celebrating and doing things like that. That’s the heck. Fill in your gaps. My team does make sure that we fill in that one big hole in a big way.

Tara: Well, that’s great advice that you’ve shared with us. So I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Unfortunately, we are out of time already. It’s been so great chatting with you today, Akshat. Thank you so much for joining us. I know we’re in a very different time zone so we appreciate your scheduling to work with our schedule as well. Can you tell us where people can find you online?

Akshat: Thank you again, Tara and Liam, for having me. I totally enjoyed this conversation. Some of the questions, like the last question, was fairly tough, the one about advice where I stumbled quite badly. Finally, where you can find me, I’m on Twitter. Again, I don’t tweet very much. I’m also on Facebook. That’s where you can find me. Twitter, it’s @akshatc. On Facebook, you should search for me. If you are anywhere related to WordPress, I’m sure I’ll pop up simply because now 50% of my friends on Facebook or more than 50% are from the WordPress community.

Tara: That’s great. Thanks. We may already be friends on Facebook. I’m not even sure. That’s quite possible. Thanks again for joining us. I hope to meet you at a WordCamp again because we didn’t meet at WordCamp US. But I hope to spend more time with you at the next one.

Akshat: Same.

Liam: Thanks, Akshat. Real pleasure getting to know you. Thanks for your time this evening. Bye-bye.

Akshat: Thank you again. Bye-bye.

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

Beth is a former WordPress designer, developer, turned online educator. She helps WordPress folks learn to get projects completed on time, within budget, with features that meet the client’s business requirements.

Website | WPRoadMaps

Preferred Pronouns | She/Her

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 123.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we’re joined by Beth Livingston. Beth is a former WordPress designer, developer, turned online educator. She helps WordPress folks learn to get projects completed on time, within budget, with features that meet the client’s business requirements. Hello, Beth.

Beth: Hi. Thanks for having me today.

Tara: We’re glad you’re here. Thanks for being here, Beth. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Beth: Sure. I started life as actually a kindergarten teacher. Well, first grade. And then I went into corporate and started working as a business analyst and training specialist in corporate. I built my first WordPress website around 2009 for a side project. Isn’t this the way that most WordPress agencies are born? Right? You start building a website for yourself, then you start building them for friends and family, and then you think, “Wait, I could do this as a job.” That’s exactly what I did.

I left corporate in 2016, started developing websites for folks. My whole shtick was, “Not only am I going to build this website for you, but I’m going to teach you how to manage it and maintain it going forward” because I just didn’t want to do the aftercare. I’d been a help desk helper before and I didn’t like all of that. It didn’t take me very long to find out that most business owners don’t want to manage their own website. And so what would happen is “Oh, can you just do this for me? Can you just do this for me?”

At the same time, I started going to WordCamps and going to WordPress meetups and realized that so much of the stuff that agencies and individual providers are struggling with are things I have the answer to, I know how to stop scope creep, I know how to get content from the client on time. All that stuff you have to do very early on to make sure that the project runs smoothly. I did my first talk at WordCamp Asheville. I mean, a couple of people actually chased me to the parking lot after it was over to tell me how much I had had an impact on what they do. Then when I saw that same person the next year, she said, “You completely changed my business.” She said, “Now I’m getting paid for everything.” And all I did was tell him how to restructure their payment schedule.

To me, it’s like, “Seriously, that wasn’t really a big thing.” But for her, it really was. That’s when I said, “You know what, I should probably combine my skills. I’m a WordPress person, I have all this project management background, and I’m an instructional designer, so I should probably put all of that together.” My master’s degree is in instructional design, even though I worked in corporate and ended up being a business analyst. And so I thought, “Well, maybe I should just combine all those skills.” I’m now loving what I do so much because I’m creating online training. As I said, what is the definition of project success? On-time, within budget, with features that meet the client’s business requirements. And that’s what I’m helping people do now.

Tara: That’s awesome. I love the passion that you have. And to hear you say that you love what you do with such enthusiasm and commitment is great. I feel that way a lot too. And I think a lot of people in WordPress do, but you stand out to me as somebody who’s really happy. What do you love the most about what you do?

Beth: Oh, just watching businesses transform just by what I tell them or give them a process improvement, and to them it’s golden. That’s so rewarding. See, I’d forgotten what that was like. Because when you teach in corporate, most of the people that you’re teaching were forced to be there. They want you to cut off the top of their head and pour the knowledge in. Whereas you go to a WordCamp and talk and people are just like hungry, and they’re so thankful for what you teach them. So helping people is just really rewarding.

Tara: You’ve been to WordCamps and spoken at WordCamps. How did you discover the WordPress community and WordCamps?

Beth: I’m not really sure. How did I? I think I stumbled across WordCamp Raleigh, which is right in my neighborhood. I live in Greensboro, North Carolina. Then I had missed it. So I said, “Well, I’m kind of interested in what this is all about.” So I went to Atlanta. And then when I went to Atlanta, I said, “Hey, I want to speak at one of these.” That’s when I applied to speak in Asheville.

Last year, I spoke at nine WordCamps all over the country, because I was also gathering information of what are the things that most people are struggling with in this area. Actually, I attended 10 and I spoke at nine of those. I went to WordCamp US as a GoDaddy Pro ambassador. That was a lovely experience. I recommend anybody that can. This year it’s being held during the week. So for some people, that’s a lot easier. I always recommend WordCamps and meetups for connecting with your community.

Tara: Yeah, yeah, they’re amazing. WordCamp US is on a different level for sure. I did hear that they’re having it during the week, which I think is a really great thing because when you work for yourself, you are…I think that there are going to be people who can’t come on the weekends because they need to be working. But for people who work for themselves, which a lot of WordPress people do, there is that flexibility to be able to do that during the week. So it’ll be interesting to see how the turnout changes for having it during the week. And maybe not on Halloween like it was this year too.

Beth: That was kind of fun.

Liam: Tell us a little bit about the talks that you’ve given at the different WordCamps. What topics have you covered?

Beth: Let’s see. How to stop scope creep once and for all. Also how to prevent scope creep by embracing change. We talked about scope creep a lot. I had these six productivity principles for WordPress project success. So I talked about those a lot. Those actually came out of my time as a consultant in the IT industry in the early 90s. Yes, I know. I’m dating myself here. But I worked for a company called Keen at Boston. They were always in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for project delivery and doing things on time. And it was because of these six principles.

They gave us a book when you became an employee on these six principles that John Keen had developed, and you had to read that book and you had to go to a two days seminar. There was even a senior manager who refused to go to the seminar and they fired him because it was such a culture. And why? Because they were. They’re very simple. I talk on those a lot too. Define the job in detail. These are all common sense things that we know but we skipped over a lot of them sometimes. Break the job down, estimate the time and cost, establish a change procedure, agree on acceptance criteria and get the right resources involved. All of those are just common sense, but when you break them down and you apply them across what you’re doing, your project management methodology, so to speak, they work.

Liam: They become manageable, don’t they, when you lose some so explicitly? How do you go about finding clients?

Beth: Clients for my training or clients for development and design?

Liam: Well, I guess the latter for your training now because you’re focused on professional. Is that correct?

Beth: Right, right. When I wanted to create this digital course, I created the complete project management roadmap for WordPress. And to learn to do that, I enrolled in Amy Porterfield Digital Course Academy. I learned how to do that using a lead magnet. I have a lead magnet on my website that talks about how to stop scope creep in your proposal, what things to put in your proposal to help stop scope creep. Sometimes I’ll run Facebook ads to those too.

But I would like to tell you about an interesting way that I used to get clients when I was doing website development because a lot of people don’t know this. When you are a member of a WordPress meetup that is funded and sponsored by the foundation, one of the rules is any member of the meetup can organize an event. Usually, the organizers will have a monthly event or bi-monthly event, but anybody can schedule any kind of event they want to.

So what I would do is I would schedule these helpdesk events at the coffee shop right down the street so I could just walk and go down there and work. Of course, that comes up on people’s dashboards, right? And so people would just show up. And these are people that were way too intimidated to come to a meetup because they think it’s all developers and techie people, and they’re going to be laughed at or whatever, because they’re just a business owner trying to develop their own website or trying to improve their own website.

I did not go there with the intention of necessarily finding clients, but that would happen a lot because they would eventually just throw their hands up and go, “Can you just do this for me? I do not have time to do it.” That was one way that I got clients before.

Liam: To turn genius. I like that. I like that.

Tara: Beth, can you talk to us a little bit about success. Because you love what you do, I’m going to guess that probably has something to do with your definition of success. I’ve never guessed on somebody before and I haven’t known you for more than a few minutes. But we’d like to ask our guests how they define success and what success means to them. So can you talk to us a little bit about that word and what success means to you?

Beth: Well, in the online education world, it seeing people get results from what you’re teaching. If you see people get results, then you know that you’re going down the right path. Now, when I first launched the complete project management roadmap for WordPress, which is currently being revamped as part of my WP Project Managers Academy…and the reason I’m revamping it is that I tried to follow Amy Porterfield method way too closely. I didn’t follow my own principles. I didn’t consider my audience. I created this thing, it’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful course. But it’s like drinking water from a firehose. It’s just way too much stuff. And I presented it sort of like a software development lifecycle manual. So it’s not the way we as WordPress people are accustomed to or like to consume information.

My success just recently was talking to a lot of influencers at the recurring revenue retreat, which is related to WordPress, but not a WordPress sponsored event. I got to meet some of the people that I had admired and thought, you know, they were these superstars and now we’re like chemi and everything. Some of the stuff that they were able to help me with at that conference really helped me to realize that, first of all, WordPress people need to try it before you buy it as an option. Always. Because we’re just used to it that way. You have to have a free one and then you can sell me the premium one if it’s something I want.

The other thing was just breaking it down into smaller chunks. See, break the job down. Break this down into smaller chunks, that each chunk solves a particular problem or addresses a particular phase of the project management lifecycle instead of this ginormous thing that people have to sort through to try to find what it is they’re looking for. Did I answer the question?

Tara: Yeah, yeah.

Liam: Yeah, I think so. Let me ask you about revamping your course. In particular, you just said something that caught my attention about chunking things down. I get that. I totally understand where you’re coming from that. And it can be pretty difficult, right? Because if you know something well enough to create a course around it, it’s not quite second nature. I don’t mean like that you don’t have to think but you know its flow, you know its challenges, you know the rules and you know which rules you can skip at what point in time. And it can be a challenge if you know it that well to try to guess where people are going to say, “Well, that’s way too big a chunk.” Because for you it might not be anymore. I wonder what kind of experience that was like, Because presumably you had broken it down into some chunks, and they turned out to just be bigger than I’ll say the general public had. What was that like and how amazed or surprised were you by that?

Beth: Well, it actually was not that difficult because, again, going out and actually talking to people, which is the first rule of entrepreneurship – talk to your customers and find out what it is they need and want – it really wasn’t that hard. We have a content collection roadmap. I’ve done survey after survey, asked a ton of people, that is the biggest problem that people struggle with is getting content from the client on time. The second being scope creep. So there’s a whole scope creep roadmap.

If your only problem is scope creep, you just want to know, “Okay, what do I need to put in my proposal? What kind of expectations do I need to set with the client? What are the tasks and activities I need to do during the project? And then what do I need to do on the project close, and how do I make sure that I get paid for everything I do?” So I laid that out just all about scope creep. The same thing with content collection. And then also risk and issues which people don’t usually manage. Then I broke it down into each phase of the development lifecycle, you know, the proposal and planning and then design and then development and so forth.

Tara: Sounds really interesting. It is definitely a challenge when you’re trying to get content from your client and keep everything organized. What are your favorite tools to use? You just develop your own…it sounds like you’ve a lot of systems. Talk to us a little bit about tools.

Beth: For online training, MemberPress and Learndash together are golden. Those things work seamlessly together. MemberPress has been around so long that they’ve worked out all the bugs of a membership system and the payments and all of that sort of stuff. In terms of what I teach my students, and what tools they should use, the absolute best thing since sliced bread is Content Snare. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the tool, but James Rose out of Australia has created this tool.

The reason I like it is because I also teach a content-first approach. No development happens till we have all the content. But managing that content collection process, if you’re trying to do it with emails and a cloud storage solution, that’s crazy, complicated and difficult. Customers are always providing the wrong content and the wrong format. And Content Snare solves all those problems. That is my favorite tool of the day. It’s not a WordPress tool, but it’s designed for WordPress people. The lovely thing about it is it can be used for anything. It can be used to collect information from event attendees. Or anytime you need to collect content or information, it’s a great way to do it. James has done a really good job. See, I come from the software development world, so I also admire anybody that identifies a problem and solves it well with a piece of software.

Tara: And clients are generally amenable to using this new thing.

Beth: Well, you have to adjust. This is another thing I teach my students. Yes, I’m teaching you a process with all these tools, but if your client…See, I live in Greensboro, North Carolina now and there’s a lot of clients that have hugely successful businesses that are not the slightest bit technical. I mean, some of them don’t even have smartphones yet. I mean, it’s really bad. So you have to adjust for them. We fall back to paper sometimes. You just have to. You have to do what’s most comfortable for your client or you’re not going to get them to comply with what you do.

But the other thing I do is I include in my proposal a lot about my processes. So they’re not only agreeing to the time and the cost and all that, they’re also agreeing to follow my processes. And if I get push-back on that, I generally will pass on the client because if they’re not going to follow the processes, I know it’s going to be a failure. Why would I take that on?

Tara: That makes a lot of sense. How would you say your business is split between the education of other website professionals and actually building websites for people?

Beth: Well, I’ve stopped taking on new clients until I’ve got everything done with this online training. And this has taken way longer than I thought because I had it done and now I’m repackaging it in a different way. I’m having some of those experts that I’ve met over the last year are going to contribute a lesson or two with inside the program. For all those things that come before project management and all that stuff that comes after project management, I can’t teach project management in a vacuum. You can’t manage projects if you don’t have any. You got to know how to get them.

Well, there’s a variety of ways to do that. Maybe you’re going to focus on web bots or maybe you’re going to focus on high ticket sales funnels, whatever that is. But I’ve got those experts in line to teach. Now, I want to say this quickly before we move on. That’s the advanced programming and it’s not ready yet. But the beginner program is. Remember, we talked about the trial before you buy it and the free option.

So the WP Project Managers Academy is free, and then they get immediate access to WordPress Project Management 101. It’s a roadmap and it gives you a really good start. It gives you all the basics and a really good start on getting those processes in place to solve the problems that you’re struggling with. And that might be all some people need. But then for those that need the more in-depth training, than I do have the paid program that I have no clue how much I’m going to charge for it.

But here’s another thing about the WordPress people, I’m going to make sure it’s affordable. It’s not going to be one of these thousands and thousands of dollars to take this course because that’s not what I’m about. I do need to make a living because I didn’t put enough in my retirement account when I was working in corporate. I’m getting on up there. So I do need to make a living but I don’t need to make…Oh, this is what I had a gutter contractor say this to me the other day. I had a bunch of work done on my house, and I said, “Gosh, you’re so much less expensive than the next guy.” He said, “Look, I’m just out here to make a living, not a killing.” I liked that. Kind of taken that approach as well.

Liam: I’m starting to read a book called “Your Money or Your Life.” I think that’s what it’s called, and it talks a lot about this enough curve. There’s a bell curve. Like you reach the point of enough money and then your enjoyment of your job goes down. It’s an interesting philosophy but the whole idea of what’s enough. When you own your own business you’re always trying to do more and grow and make more and make more. I talked about this before with other guests about just the temptation to work yourself to death just because you can. Because there’s always more to be had. I like that. I’m just trying to make a living, I’m not trying to kill myself.

Beth: I do still maintain some customers but I’m not taking on any new development work right at the moment. And when I do start taking clients back on because I’ve learned so much from the Mike Killens and the James Roses and the Clifford Almeida and those folks and Matt Rodela, I’m really thinking about website as a service and using turnkey websites and WordPress multisite. Look, Greensburg is not rural, but it might as well be when compared to something like Atlanta.

You’ve got these small guys who don’t have a lot of money, they need a website or they had a website built years ago and it’s got to be updated, and they just don’t have a lot of money. If you can create something like a Wix like experience or a Squarespace like experience, but using WordPress so they get all the advantages of using that sort of solution, then I think it’s a really good way to establish some recurring revenue. Because of course, that’s like a monthly charge kind of thing. That’s what I’m looking at going forward. Maybe in the crafter niche because I have craft ADD, you know, like start a project and I…

Liam: I’m not sure I know what that is.

Beth: Wait, I think I’ll try that.

Liam: What kind of craft do you get into?

Beth: Well, I mostly love pottery because I just love that you can take a piece of dirt and turn it into something practical. And I also like that the stuff that you create is practical and usable it’s not just…I mean, not that I have a problem with art, but it serves a purpose. As you get to a certain age – and I’ve also been reading the Marie Kondo book – you just want to get rid of stuff. You just don’t want a lot of clutter around.

I like things that are functional. I really like pottery, but that’s really expensive and time-consuming. I live in a very old house. The electrical hasn’t been upgraded, so that’s a long story. But one of them, when I bought these kilns at this auction, the lady had been slumping bottles. Have you seen this where they flatten the bottle on the kiln and then it’s like a spoon rest or you hanging on the wall because it’s a full bottle or whatever?

Tara: Yeah.

Beth: She had been doing that. So when I bought the kiln, I had to take these boxes and boxes of wine bottles. And I thought, “Well, I’m never doing this bottle slumping thing.” Of course, I went online and watch some videos. I started doing this where you break up all the wine bottles and then you tumble them so they’re smooth and then you use epoxy to put them on a window so it looks kind of like stained glass. Well, here’s the thing. That epoxy after a while if it’s sitting in the sun gets kind of brittle and yellow and then all this stuff falls off. So I’m still waiting for those customers that I sold windows to come back and go, “Okay, this is crap.” I did that for a while.

Years ago I used to do cross-stitch where you do the little X’s in the fabric. I still have every single color of embroidery thread. That’s some of the clutter I need to get rid of in my house. I’m never doing that again. I can’t see well enough to do that anymore.

Tara: Beth you have a consultancy built around guiding businesses and giving them professional advice on how to be more efficient and more productive. I want to direct your attention towards advice for a moment. What’s the best advice that you’ve ever been given and worked into your life in a successful and meaningful way?

Beth: Well, those six principles really changed my life. But something Mike Killen and said to me at the recurring revenue retreat, and he was partially right, I was telling him, “Okay, I’m going to be reworking this course. I sold this many and blah, blah,” he goes, “You sold some of them?” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “Then don’t rework it. Just sell it.” He said it to me just like that. And he was actually right. I was so busy creating this perfect thing that everyone was going to love that I didn’t spend enough time learning how to sell and learning how to market. And again followed Amy’s prescription too closely because Amy’s market is anybody that has an idea that thinks they want to create a course about it. That’s a bunch of people. My market is different. Our people are jaded. They’re tired of sitting through an hour-long webinar when they know there’s going to be a 30-minute pitch at the end, right?

The first two webinars I did were terrible. The second two I started saying things like, “Okay, this is where the Guru’s say I’m supposed to tell you this,” but I’m not going to tell you that because I have too much respect for you. I’m going to tell you this instead.” And that’s when I got sales. “Just sell it” was probably the best.

Another piece of advice that he’s given since then is “it’s too expensive” is not a “No.” It’s not. It’s just that you have to explain to them, “Okay, well, yes, you’re right, it’s expensive. Here’s how we can start today if you’ll sign right here.” It’s not a no. They’re just looking for you to guide them into the purchase. I can’t articulate it the way he does, but…

Liam: Sounds like you have to articulate the value for money, right? I mean, most of us don’t mind paying good money if we’re going to get quality, right? Because we’ve all bought things at a discount and three weeks later, it’s broken or it didn’t work or it didn’t quite live up to the expectation. Like, “You know what, I should have spent 30% more and gotten the better model.” And it’s just having somebody that is giving information without selling. “Here’s why I’m charging this. Here’s are the benefits. Here’s some examples of some companies that have taken the course and some individuals, and here’s what they’ve gotten out of it in six months, nine months, a year or something.” So it’s demystifying. It’s not this feat because I need to sell a ton of them so I can go on vacation. It’s here’s the value and here’s where you’re getting. So I get that. Demystifying the value can be very, very powerful sales tool. Absolutely. Good advice.

Tara: Yeah, I like that.

Liam: What are what’s been the biggest challenge for you, Beth as you’ve been building this online course. You’ve kind of talked about content and chucking it down and trying to sell and a number of different things. What’s been the biggest one that you either struggled with or maybe you’re still working on it?

Beth: Well, it’s something that I continually struggle with. And I don’t mean to minimize people who have these actual conditions, but I feel like I might have a slight case of Asperger’s because sometimes I just don’t get what seems obvious to everyone else. I really have to stop and think sometimes, and thank goodness, I have some mentors that I can call up and go, “Okay, I’m thinking about saying this to this person. I’m thinking about doing this thing. Is that offensive?” Because sometimes I just can’t tell. I’ll say something that I think is completely innocuous and then someone is offended by it. That’s a real struggle for me.

Liam: Well, that’s certainly a realistic concern in an era where language is changing and levels of accountability are changing. But that can really be a difficult topic and certainly, we’ve talked about it with some of our guests before. Tara and I have. What are you doing to address that challenge? How do you go about dealing with that? I’d agree it’s a real challenge and there are different ways to address it. What’s worked for you so far? Or conversely, what way should we not try because it didn’t work out so well for you?

Beth: I guess slowing down and trying to see things from the other person’s perspective, and also realizing that you cannot be all things to all people. For example, and I’m probably going to make some people mad, but I saw a tweet the other day where someone was taking the issue with using the term “guys” when referring to a group of people – that that was too gender-specific. And then I’m like, “Well, what else am I supposed to use?” And so I went and asked on my UK and Aussie friends, “Is the term mate” gender-specific, because I don’t know.” Then that same group that tends to have issues with words like that, “dude” is okay. So it’s just sorting through that and asking people I trust that, “Okay, here’s what I heard. Do you think that this is the way everyone feels?” That’s how I’ve been dealing with it is asking others.

I’ve trusted mentors that have been in the community for a really long time and then some of the younger people, asking them, “To your group, does this come across as cheesy or inauthentic. I don’t mean it that way but it could be construed that way.” Those kinds of questions.

Tara: I think that the curiosity and the comfort level and being inquisitive is a key to that process. We’ve talked about that with some other guests as well. And I think it is generation to generation terminology changes, and none of us intend to be offensive or say something wrong. You don’t want to step on a landmine for sure. And you might and not intend to, but what I’m hearing from you and I feel this way also is a genuine desire to understand what the best path forward is with language and trying to implement that into your conversation is really important.

So I appreciate that you have mentors that you can ask and are comfortable asking the question because part of it even is, if you ask the question, do you look like silly? I ask my kids things all the time because they already think I’m silly, so I’ll learn there.

Liam: But I think it’s important to do the work though, right? I mean, if we’re uncomfortable or one short of what we’re saying, we have to do the work and do the research and put ourselves out there, or we really do risk offending people. That’s nothing we want to get into.

Tara: Not at all.

Beth: Exactly. Especially if you’re going to be speaking at these events and stuff, you have to be careful about what you say and the way you say it. I never intend for it to be at what way, right? I feel that I’m very misunderstood.

Tara: Well, and I think owning up to that and owning up to if you say something wrong that you didn’t intend to and correcting the mistake and moving forward is important too. Thanks for sharing that. Beth, I can’t believe that we are actually out of time. How did that go by so fast? Oh, my goodness. Thanks so much for sharing your story. Thanks for being so enthusiastic about what you do. It’s great to meet somebody who loves to help others using WordPress. It’s just a great thing about WordPress that it allows you to do that. Thanks for sharing with us. Where can people find you online?

Beth: My website is WProadmaps.com. If you’re interested in the WP Project Managers Academy, just go to that same website and there’s a link on the homepage or WProadmaps.com/joinus. You can go either place there. I have a Facebook group called WordPress Project Management. It’s open to join. You just have to answer three questions. That’s just to keep the scammers out. It’s not to judge you in any way. That’s how they can get in touch with me.

I would like to say this one thing about the WordPress community before we close. And that is that I am 62 years old and not only did I just learned how to fold clothes by reading the Marie Kondo book…Do you know who she is?

Tara: Yeah. I fold them like that too actually. I love her.

Beth: I’ve just learned to fold clothes, but I’ve also just found my community. Because WordPress people are my people. And when you go to a WordCamp or meetup, it’s like going to summer camp with all your geeky friends. And no matter how geeky you are, there’s somebody geekier. It’s one of the most inclusive and accepting communities that I’ve ever been a part of. I feel like the rest of my life is fine now.

Tara: That’s wonderful. What a great way to end. Thanks for sharing that, Beth. Great to meet you. Hope to meet you in person.

Beth: Yeah, me too.

Liam: Thanks, Beth. Really, really enjoyed our conversation today. Hope to see you soon.

Beth: Okay. Thank you.

Tara: Bye.

Liam: Bye-bye.

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