Mastermind.fm

Expressly laid out in absolute detail, this Episode is presented in QA format, as Jean inquires how James and his team took their existing product of Ninja Forms and released a complete rewrite successfully.

As such, James gets quite candid about launching WP Ninjas’ tremendously challenging work on Ninja Forms, with the release of their very own Ninja Forms 3.0.

Covered are things like: the successes, stepping stones, marketing, feedback, the competition, and fear itself.

Additionally, the technical side of the Ninja Forms rewrite can found here in Episode 14.

Andy is the president of Parallelus, UpThemes, and creator of the Runway framework for WordPress.

So, join Mastermind.fm as we walk through all that which has led to Andy’s acquisition of UpThemes, and any trials, lessons, or ordeals along the way.

Welcome to Episode 32 of Mastermind.fm! Today masterminds Jean Galea and James Laws will be talking digital nomadism with David Hehenberger. David is the mind behind Fatcat Apps, a WordPress company helping bloggers, marketers, and business owners gain traffic and conversions with Fatcat plugins.

David and Jean both consider themselves to be digital nomads, while James prefers to keep his feet in one place for the most part. Listen up and we’ll dive into what digital nomadism means , how David and Jean got started with the nomad lifestyle, resources for others that want to travel themselves, and more! Shownotes are below but as always, tune in to hear the full story and all the exotic places these guys have been, and meet the shark that bit the internet (no really, you need to listen to this one)!

David defines a digital nomad as any digital worker who doesn’t have a home base or headquarters. The digital nomad travels from place to place, often living out of a suitcase, going wherever their business takes them and working remotely the whole way. James compares it to the spirit of entrepreneurism itself, moving from place to place as an entrepreneur moves from idea to idea.

Welcome to Episode 31 of Mastermind.fm! This week our resident masterminds Jean Galea and James Laws will tackle onboarding. We usually think about onboarding as bringing a new team member into the fold or something similar. Jean and James expand on the term and take a dive into onboarding as the gateway to getting folks engaged for the first time with your product, service, content, or whatever it is you’re up to. It’s a really interesting take, so don’t miss out! As always, shownotes are below but don’t miss the full conversation!

James was inspired by observations at WordCamp Nashville. Seeing users meet a product for the first time, use it, feel it, experience it for themselves, he realized they’re much more motivated to give something new a try. That’s the essence of onboarding- not just getting a new team member oriented or as pertains to a product, but a broader sense of the term that involves phases of a user’s experience.

How do you make sure people get to know about your product and get that initial experience? James and Jean cover:

Welcome to Episode 30 of Mastermind.fm! Jean is with us as always, and we welcome James back this week after a 2 episode break. Today Jean and James will tackle some updates on what is happening in the WordPress community, a bit of business related talk, and what James has been up to for the last couple weeks. Join us now for this week’s Mastermind.fm!

If you’ve been with us for the last couple weeks, you’ve noticed that James hasn’t been. He’s been off monitoring the launch of the newest iteration of Ninja Forms, Ninja Forms THREE. It was a massive overhaul, a complete rewriting of the codebase, and required his hands-on attention during the launch period. Welcome back, James!

On Jean’s end of things, he’s just released a major update to the EDD Bookings extension, adding compatibility to Easy Digital Downloads’ own Front End Submissions extension.

Both Jean and James give their take on the Apple Conference. Listen in to hear what they think!

The buzz around the WordPress community right now is the GoDaddy purchase of Manage WP. The news has been met with a lot of mixed reviews both from people very excited about the acquisition and, on the polar opposite side, quite a bit of venom. GoDaddy of course is a major webhost that has recently broken into managed WordPress hosting. ManageWP is a smaller, focused managed WordPress hosting company.

Both Jean and James see some real upside to the acquisition with modest internal reservation. Listen in to hear their thoughts and rationale, and what they feel the acquisition means for WordPress!

News has been buzzing out of Headway Themes in the last couple of weeks about rumors of staff not getting paid and an uncertain future. While no one is absolutely certain about the circumstances, James’ take here is a lesson in clear communication. The silence out of the company is breathing life to rumors.

Hear the rest of the story, and more, in the podcast!

Today’s guests are Marcel and Eugeniu from TeslaThemes. The latter might be their first successful WordPress project and the most famous one so far, but they have also launched two other projects in the WordPress space: Greedeals and WPMatic.

The whole team behind these projects works in one office. They are based in Chisinau, Moldova, and strive to have a family atmosphere based on an open communication policy where everybody’s contribution is welcome.

In our discussion we discuss various topics such as:

As an addendum to the podcast itself, here’s the answer to a question I didn’t have time to ask. I was curious about how they came up with the names of their businesses, so here’s Eugeniu’s answer:

TeslaThemes – in honor of Nikola Tesla. He made a great impact on the world, his ideas resonate with us even nowadays.

Greedeals – Comes from Greedy, deals for greedy people.

WPMatic – comes from 4matic, a Mercedes invention. It keeps you stable on the road. We make sure you have a wonderful and stable experience with WordPress.

Here are some photos from the office of Tesla Themes in Moldova:

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode and am positively impressed with what they’ve managed to achieve and the way they’ve done.

Marcel and Eugeniu also have a special offer for us. They are offering 50% on any TeslaThemes product and 50% off the first month on WPmatic. Customisations will cost $30 instead of $57.

Thanks for this special offer for Mastermind.fm’s audience! To get the discounts all you need to do is leave a comment at the end of this post. You can ask Marcel and Eugeniu questions or just let us know how you enjoyed this episode, and we’ll send you a special coupon code that will enable you to unlock these discounts.

To your success,

Jean

In this episode, I interview my good friend Mitchell Callahan who is involved in WordPress through his agency Saucal. Mitchell introduced me the practical side of Bitcoin last year.

“You never change something by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller

“In a mad world, only the mad are sane.”  ― Akira Kurosawa

Until I met Mitchell I only knew about Bitcoin in general terms. He persuaded me to set up a Bitcoin wallet and use it for an international funds transfer. I was very impressed and wrote about the experience on my blog. From there onwards I have kept close tabs on Bitcoin and have been reading up on things gradually to widen my knowledge on this very interesting subject and all the fields it affects (banking, governance, money, cryptography, states etc.).

I highly encourage you to check out our recommended resources below as well as listening to the episode till the very end of course (we also have a great giveaway from CyberChimps in this episode).

In today’s episode, Cyberchimps are giving away one year of free access to the CyberChimps Club (worth $97). There will be 3 giveaway winners so make sure you enter to have a good chance of winning. All you need to do is leave a comment at the end of this post. Let us know if you enjoyed the discussion and fire away any questions about Bitcoin. You will have the chance to win the Cyberchimps club membership that includes:

Here are some popular CyberChimps themes:

More advanced:

I hope you enjoy learning about Bitcoin as much as I did. As usual, if you have any feedback, please get in touch with us, we love to hear from our audience!

To your success,

Jean

Welcome to Episode 27 of Mastermind.fm! Today masterminds Jean Galea and James Laws interview Zack Katz, author of the WordPress plugin GravityView! Hang out with us for a bit and have a listen!

This was a super fun and interesting interview and Zack has lots of great advice. He’s experimented with several marketing and advertising strategies and we can all learn from his experiences to take some smart shortcuts in choosing the best promotional methods for our plugins.

Zack also talks about his favourite WordPress conferences. We both met Zack at Pressnomics earlier this year and this interview is a follow-up based on the great discussions we had there.

Welcome to Episode 26 of Mastermind.fm! This week our masterminds Jean Galea and James Laws tackle hosting! Hosting can be a nightmare of trial and error to find what works for you in the often weird world of WordPress hosting. Jean and James have been through the wringer on this one, and have come out on the other side ok. Come listen in to the decades of hosting experiences that they’ve racked up between the two of them and make your own hosting decisions better! As always, show notes are below.

What’s the difference? Typically, basic hosting simply gives you a place to run your website from, and leaves everything else to you. Managed hosting takes the responsibility of maintenance, security, updates, etc on their shoulders.  Managed WordPress does all of that too, but they specialize in WordPress hosting management.

It can be, but it isn’t always. It’s often done in tiers just like regular hosting. You can get managed WordPress hosting within almost any budget, you just have to shop around.

There isn’t an answer to this question that isn’t unique to your needs. Jean uses Digital Ocean because they fit his unique needs. James uses Pagely because they meet his unique needs. What host you want should also be based on your needs.

On a shared host, you share hardware resources with other websites on the same hardware. It is a great way to start and is really cheap. You should consider it a starting point only for any business though, something that you’re going to grow out of. As your traffic grows, you’re going to quickly outgrow the shared hardware resources. There’s also a security risk, as other websites that share the hardware with you can potentially compromise your own security.

Email often is either not covered in a hosting plan or not reliable through the host, but is an essential consideration for your website. Jean prefers Gmail, Zoho Mail, and Sendgrid as alternatives. James mentions Mandrill and Mailgun. Essentially, if you’re looking for a service that will allow you to send bulk email, you need to find a transactional email service. If you’re not sending in bulk, WordPress SMTP plugins are a good alternative.

Yes. Do them. Jean strongly recommends you take responsibility of website backups for yourself. Even with a very reliable host, disasters can happen. Make regular high quality backups on your own and in addition to your host. Do be mindful that some hosts ban backup plugins that make whole site backups and store them on their servers.

Welcome to Episode 25 of Mastermind.fm! Join our hosts Jean Galea and James Laws today as they jam about podcasting- a topic they’re pretty familiar with! Check out their unique take! Whether you’re thinking about getting into it yourself or already have and are just looking for some unique ideas, you’ll find them right here. Pull up a chair (or put on your running shoes, whatever works for you!) and give Episode 25 a listen!

Jean: an Audio Technica ATR 2100 mic on stand + Bose QC 20 noise cancelling headphones

James: RODE Podcaster mic w/ built in popfilter on desk arm attachment + Apple earbuds