What's the side effect from WordPress changing so rapidly?

We're dragging blocks, inserting patterns, and visually building our themes these days. There's been great discussion spurred around themes, where Matt Mullenweg

What's the side effect from WordPress changing so rapidly?

We're dragging blocks, inserting patterns, and visually building our themes these days. There's been great discussion spurred around themes, where Matt Mullenweg wants 5,000 new themes in the directory while WP Minute Producers like Daniel Schutzsmith and Spencer Forman say we only need one.

Even if we split the difference and built 2,500 new themes…who's going to build it?

Not only is the code changing, but so are the people writing it all. This is the shift we're quietly seeing happen in the background. So what is a WordPress business owner to do? Find great WordPress developers or train up a willing engineer?

Mayank Gupta joins us today to talk about his strategy to growing a WordPress team for his day job over at PerforMedia.

He has strong opinions on educating and inspiring an individual -- possibly ignoring the typical WP rock star.

When you hear the phrase high performance WordPress websites, what examples come to mind?

This is a phrase that I see a lot of companies using in their marketing, which includes Malcare, today’s guest and sponsor of this show.

Products and services targeting the type of buyer that might be managing a high traffic site like a Buzzfeed or a large WooCommerce store, like, well I can’t think of one right now. High traffic or highly functional equals high performance?

My vote goes to high value.

I know it’s not as appealing in the marketing world, but there are lots of website owners that value their site’s speed and security that aren’t pushing millions or even 10’s of thousands of page views a month.

And that’s what Akshat Choudhary and team are building at Malcare and Blogvault. The catch? Protecting valuable high performance WordPress websites so easily, you don’t even have to think about about it.

Enjoy the show today, please share it on social media, and if you want to support my efforts here consider buying me a virtual coffee or joining the membership.

Hey listener, before we get started, if you’d like to support WordPress community member Andrey Savchenko or anyone else currently in the Ukraine, please donate here or here. (read his original tweet https://twitter.com/Rarst/status/1497516263597387782)

I can comfortably admit that I didn’t see Artificial Intelligence as the next big thing for WordPress in 2022.

The march to Gutenberg and FSE adoption across the product landscape is sure to reveal new opportunities to be introduced to our favorite low-code software. AI, however, wasn’t even close to what I was expecting to be the next big thing for us.

Bertha.ai is an all-new solution for helping users craft a near infinite amount of text for your WordPress website. From H1’s to entire blog posts, what Vito Peleg and Andrew Palmer are creating with this tool is quite impressive.

Let’s get the elephant (yes, the real one) out of the room first, shall we? Bertha isn’t leading us to copywriter extinction. Hearing from Andrew in today’s interview, Bertha should still be used as your writing assistant — not your writer. You can give the AI assistant the ideas, the direction, and what you want to focus on, but will still require some editing chops to refine it.

It’s still a darn good tool.

You can download Bertha for free from WordPress.org to try it yourself. Consider supporting the Matt Report before the robots take over at https://buymeacoffee.com/mattreport

If you found your way to this episode from my newsletter, thanks for taking part in one of the areas I lack most in: emailing my list.

If you’re like me, stuck in a proverbial hamster wheel of self-doubt & content creation, today’s episode is for you. In fact, if it weren’t for today’s guests, I would have never got back into pressing send in MailerLite. (A recent switch from MailChimp, because I have a bad feeling about the Inuit acquisition.)

If you need a boost of confidence or a programmatic way to warm up your newsletter engines again, Kim Doyal and Jason Resnick are here to help — with a twist.

The duo joins me today to talk about their new co-venture, Deliverit. (use the full link so they know I sent ya, it's not an affiliate! https://getdeliverit.com/mattreport/)

This will be a meta approach to building a newsletter list in public. They will share what works and what doesn’t, when it comes to growing your email list. Learn straight from the email horses mouth — it’s going to be exciting.

Thanks to Malcare & Blogvault for supporting the show.

The house that WordPress built…or will build.

It can be challenging for new WordPress freelancers to get started in this industry. You have to find the right tools, the right customers, get paid and…actually build the websites! Is there a right path to take?

Meet Terry Carter, Manager at Newfold Digital WordPress Live & Blue Sky teams. Terry is also a WordPress freelancer who kick started his side hustle after winning a web design contest at a previous company.

Terry joins us to share his experience with supporting WordPress & WooCommerce users at his day job, and what works for him as a part-time freelancer. We’ll learn how the market jumped pre-COVID, how things are adjusting, and where you can spot new opportunities coming into the market.

Thanks to Malcare & Blogvault for supporting the show.

I’ve known today’s guest before I even ventured into the professional WordPress industry.

In fact, it wasn’t his themes that revolutionized my thinking, it was the checkout process. Brian Gardner launched a theme company using a payment portal and delivery tool called e-junkie.

I just checked, they still exist, they were the Gumroad before Web 3.0 was even a thought in Web 2.0’s mind. I couldn’t believe it. Someone could zip up WordPress code, put it on a website, set a price, and someone could buy it?!

I wanted to do the same thing.

But until then, I had an agency to run so I used Revolution Themes, then Genesis, then to the whole StudioPress suite to make that happen. Fast forward, Gardner not only sold SP to WP Engine, but he left the gig shortly after, only to make a return with his latest product, Frost.

Enjoy today’s conversation with Brian Gardner, Principal Developer Advocate at WP Engine, creator of many things and many blogs. Find his newly redesigned blog at briandgardner.com.

If you fancy supporting the show, buying me a digital coffee or joining my fantastic private Discord server, head on over to buymeacoffe.com/mattreport — I’ll shout your name from the Twitter rooftops.

[00:00:00] Matt: so many folks who sit on the sidelines and Monday quarterback like me I see folks sell their business and , and they joined the team and I know in my heart that as a builder, as an entrepreneur, , they won’t be there that long.
[00:00:14] And they’re there for a year. I think roughly you were at WP engine for a year after selling studio
[00:00:20] Brian: press to them longer than that. But it sort of been to which in and of itself as a piece of conversation. Go ahead.
[00:00:26] Matt: And then I saw you sort of leave P and L I was like, yep. I knew it. And there’s nothing wrong with that because God that we have such a passion to build something, but I don’t know of anyone who’s who sells it to the company, leaves built something else, sells it back to the company and.
[00:00:41] You’re going for a hat trick question, mark.
[00:00:44] Brian: No. No. And in fact, it’s, it’s funny, you are the only person who, with the exception of Bob Paul, Lacey, who had months ago made a kind of comment about that. You’re the only person in this round when I got hired and when Frost was acquired to actually have.
[00:01:01] Pointed that out. And of course I took that bait and this is why we’re on the show today. But I talked to our PR team and I was like, look, this is just something that could be a thing that people might talk about or in this context. And surprisingly, and that’s fine because it’s really, it really was a news event.
[00:01:16] This time around Yeah. I was just like, okay, what are the possible negative reactions? People might have to something like this. And I was like, that’s about the only thing I can come up with. Well, people may point out that this happened and it, whatever, it’s all good. Everyone’s happy. You’ve built a
[00:01:31] Matt: lot of stuff from digital products to courses, to eBooks, to blogs, to knit mail email lists and newsletters, like all things that were in some form or fashion, a business, a micro business.
[00:01:43] When I saw you. Go back to a WP engine and they had acquired frost in my head. I started thinking, you know what, these, and this is my words, not yours. And I hope it doesn’t offend you. But these micro products are almost like a fantastic calling card to get an awesome gig. Right. Ha had it not been you, but somebody else in this position, it could be like, I built an awesome little product.
[00:02:11] And sometimes the weight of that is like, oh God, I got to S I get up market. I gotta sell it. I gotta promote it. I gotta support it. I got to take over the world. But then sometimes it’s like, no, I can actually use this in place of a resume and get an awesome job somewhere. Is that a fair statement?
[00:02:27] Brian: I would think so.
[00:02:28] I don’t think that that necessarily applies to everybody. We know right now, Matt, that the competitive landscape in WordPress is off the charts, especially in light of the behemoths. And, and we’re one of them, right? WP, engine, GoDaddy, liquid web, all those it’s really difficult to, and I’ll conversely, make a counter argument here after this.
[00:02:47] It’s very difficult to like create and launch something new and have it be successful and widely adopted and so on now, conversely. That is also, if you have the idea, something really, really brilliant, that really solves a problem that catches a lot of users and stuff like that. Then it becomes because of aforementioned behemoths, a very interesting acquisition piece, right?
[00:03:07] Go to liquid web. They’ve bought a lot of things lately. None of them have been, well, that’s not true. Some have been larger, right. Eye themes and so on. And then some of them are just like smaller pieces that kind of fill a niche that allow them to use their sort of their. The abilities to reach and build and support from an infrastructure standpoint, a subset of people.
[00:03:28] And so it can work. It can be, I wouldn’t necessarily say that should be someone’s business plan. Just given my tenure in the industry and the success I’ve had, it’s been helpful to have that sort of be true.
[00:03:41] Matt: Web hosts, obviously WP engine being one of the largest, if not the largest managed WordPress hosts in the industry GoDaddy liquid web.
[00:03:49] I think a lot of folks myself included have sort of illustrated this picture, that well, we all kind of hypothesized that they’re all looking to build and curate their own WordPress experience. Without giving away the secret meetings, maybe at WP engine and the secret sauce. Is that, is that something that you see coming down the pipe, maybe if not WP engine others, and maybe why they acquire fros and studio presses to sort of put these pieces in place.
[00:04:19] So when you come to a WP engine, you experienced WordPress. You go to liquid web, you experience it that way. Is, is that something that you see as holding true in the year 20, 20
[00:04:28] Brian: a hundred percent, a hundred percent. I think we see it on several levels. And even outside of the WordPress market, just the, sort of the consolidation, the platform building, go daddy sold domains back in the day.
[00:04:39] Then they went to hosting. And then when they realized that the people who are buying those things would buy other things or are doing other things. Then all of a sudden they’re an email marketing company and then, oh, WordPress explodes. Now we’re going to be a WordPress hosting email, but like, like, and so yes, it makes sense.
[00:04:54] And everyone’s good at what they do. And when you really find what you’re great at, then you sort of, I wouldn’t say exploit, but then you really sort of double down on that by looking around in the space and saying, Hey, are there products that align with what we’re trying to do? And is it, is it better for us to acquire those products?
[00:05:10] Because it takes us less time to build. We can go right to market. We can, there’s an existing audience as studio press was a huge audience that WP engine picked up and things like that. So yeah, I would say that’s a fair state. Do you know,
[00:05:21] Matt: there’s in the news and the courting eh, in the week of this week, it’s January 13th.
[00...

Welcome back to the Matt Report, where we continue our special 2-part series with Josepha Haden Chomposy.

If you haven’t listened to the previous episode, I suggest you go back and learn what the WordPress Executive Director does on a day to to day basis.

Today, we’ll be exploring some meatier topics that come up in the community like contributor compensation and Five for the Future. If you didn’t already know, Josepha leads a podcast of her own. We’ll find out why Matt Mullenweg nudged her into that journey.

Thanks to folks over at Malcare for supporting this episode of the Matt Report. If you want to support me, you can buy me a digital coffee or join the super-not-so-secret Discord group for $79/year at buymeacoffee.com/mattreport

[00:00:00] Matt: my words, not yours. , the bottleneck at mid-level management. Is that because most, if not if, if, because most of them are volunteers. 

[00:00:07] Josepha: I, in my copious research about this. Last I took any, any kind of canvas of it was that in-person events. So 2019 in my research about this, there are a number of things that do this for one, when you are a contributor and, and it’s clear what you’re supposed to be contributing to, you can submit your changes and then something else helps it get done.

[00:00:34] Something else helps it get into core or to get into the handbook or whatever it is. It’s really difficult to know how complicated that that middle area is. And so it’s a little bit that the it’s a bunch of volunteers and, and I hate asking them to do that kind of work because it’s hard and in a lot of cases, The community of users is mean to you.

[00:01:02] So like who does want to ask volunteers to do that? But it’s also a little bit that there is some sticker shock. When you, when you get there, like you have shown up as a contributor, you have just kind of low access, low knowledge. You don’t really know what’s going on, but you’re ready to give back to this thing that made your business possible.

[00:01:19] And like the more that you learn things, or the more that you gain trust in the ecosystem, there is this moment. That’s like a cliff where you’re just like, okay, now we’re going to talk about conflict resolution. And people are like, oh, no, 

[00:01:36] Matt: yeah. Right. 

[00:01:38] Josepha: like there’s the step between between really active and valuable contribution and helping to keep WordPress moving is, is quite steep.

[00:01:50] And so it’s a lot better.

[00:01:51] Matt: Some of the topics that I’ve heard people talk about myself, included on con contributors or, or folks who are not just contributing to core, but writing support docs, answering questions, helping with the learn team. So on and so forth is the the idea of some form of compensation.

[00:02:08] And I’m curious if that ever gets talked about in any, any meetings ways to compensate. It doesn’t always have to be, I guess, money but a trade a coupon, Right.

[00:02:18] To a learning, a learning curve or something for thanks for your time. You get this and I’ll say I’ll preface this with yes. Contributors are taking the heat for things that they’re just given their time.

[00:02:32] Like, why are we yelling at them or the real extreme sides we’ve seen with folks who are on like the.org and plugin, repo and theme repo who actually get threats. And I say look at that level, we should actually have employees who are in the way of that kind of communication who are getting paid to deal with some of this stuff.

[00:02:55] Not that anyone should be dealing with it and any of that stuff, but folks who are, Hey, we’re [00:03:00] getting paid to do this, and we’re going to shut this person off. Have rules, have channels, et cetera, et cetera, on the topic of compensating contributors. Has that ever come up? And is there anything we can 

[00:03:11] Josepha: Oh, constantly. It comes up constantly. It’s a good question. 

[00:03:15] Matt: Get an NFT? 

[00:03:18] Josepha: everyone gets a word press coin now. So there, there are two things I want to address here. And the first thing that I want to address is only semi-related, but it’s short. There is a misconception about what I hope five for the future.

[00:03:33] Company sponsored contributors are offering to the project in that it’s like doing all of the things that just, I don’t know, Google wants our automatic wants. And that’s like, that’s, that’s not the bulk of the work that I want those contributors to be doing the bulk of the work that I want those contributors to be doing.

[00:03:54] Is that kind of really not glamorous fully in service to self sponsored, volunteer kind of actions that we have to take to make sure that everything’s moving forward. And so like, I agree that in the cases where we have people who are actively getting harassed or receiving threats, like that should not be a self sponsored, volunteer every single time.

[00:04:18] That should be somebody who is sponsored in full by a company. And I, and I will believe that forever. And so there’s that blanket statement. I know that there is a lot of, of mistrust of my many years running a call to increase the fight for the future program, but it’s not a nefarious call for me.

[00:04:38] It is to cover situations like that. Absolutely. Every single day. That’s why I want that program to be bigger. So period, 

[00:04:46] Matt: And nefarious in what like that fight for the future is just to give back to go upstream, to. 

[00:04:52] Josepha: yeah, go upstream to automatic or to have an unnecessarily large voice for corporations because if you’ve got. 10,000 contributors who each can give one hour or 10,000 hours, which are in 40 hour chunks.

[00:05:11] Like you can accomplish more in a 40 hour chunk of time for a lot of reasons for one, because like it’s just been 10 years, since one person could see everything that was happening in WordPress all the time. And, and probably longer than that before, since you could just be like, I have an hour, so I’m going to go research the history of this, write a patch and submit it to be committed and get that done in an hour a month.

[00:05:38] Like that’s like, there is an imbalance in that. And so there is a healthy distrust of that, of that reality, which I understand, and there should be. And I never tell people to start. Asking me those questions, because it’s important for everyone to feel like they can help [00:06:00] provide checks and balances for, for their leaders.

[00:06:03] I think that’s true. But anyway, I got really sidetracked on the question of compensation. Yeah, it comes up basically every year and has come up basically every year since I started doing this work. And, and I don’t ever have a good solution and, and the primary solution that people offer to me every year, which is a fine solution at a specific scale is to just like, make a.

[00:06:30] And give money to people and yea...

If you’re like me, you know Josepha Haden Chomposy is the Director for WordPress the open source project in title, but you probably don’t know what she does on a day to day basis.

Or that she’s part of the Open Source Group Division inside of Automattic. Something I always knew, but once framed that way in discussion, was more interesting to hear.

I was lucky enough to chat with Josepha for nearly an hour, so I’m breaking up the conversation in two parts. Today, part 1, we’ll cover the logistics of her role, bringing WordCamps back, and the challenges with Gutenberg.

Thanks to folks over at Malcare for supporting this episode of the Matt Report. If you want to support me, you can buy me a digital coffee or join the super-not-so-secret Discord group for $79/year at buymeacoffee.com/mattreport

[00:00:00] Josepha: You say that’s the easiest question, but like anyone who has spent any time with me knows that I also spend a lot of time, like, considering, like what, what, what are my, what am I doing? What, what purpose do I bring to the world? Who am I when I’m not trying to accomplish things? Like, yeah, it’s easy, but it’s not easy.

[00:00:17] So yeah. I show stuff. I Hayden jumbo, C a WordPress projects, executive director since 2019. So I’m starting my what third year of it is that right? Yeah. Starting my third year of it, time flies. 

[00:00:29] Matt: That’s 30 years in COVID years, by the way. 

[00:00:32] Josepha: ain’t that true? Isn’t that true? And before I did this, I actually was as my Twitter bio suggests very much into.

[00:00:43] Digital literacy and making sure that that communities were safe and sound, because I think that communities are the foundation of everything that we try to do in the world. And so, yeah, that’s me.

[00:00:53] Matt: There’s a lot of folks who think of community as well. It’s a big marketing buzzword for sure. Right. Everyone who has a product company wants a community. But they are looking at community in probably a very lesser form definition in a silo and something to just kind of prop up either their brand or product.

[00:01:12] Maybe get some feedback and get really interested. Customers. Community is a whole different ball game and scale at your level. Give us a sense of just like the daily routine. One has to go through to manage what you have to manage. 

[00:01:29] Josepha: Gosh, from a community aspect or just from like me as a 

[00:01:33] Matt: you wake up and you’re and you look at your wall-to-wall meetings. Cause I, I imagine largely that’s what you’re doing is meeting talking to people, fusing ideas, together, shaking hands, dealing with folks, maybe crying and laughing and arguing. How do you do it? 

[00:01:50] Josepha: I’ll tell you, number one, that only about a quarter of my time, these. Is spent in meetings, which is really different from, from how it used to be. I used to spend about 60% of my time in meetings. And that was really hard just cause when you’re in a meeting, you really have to stay present to, to really support the people that you’re there with.

[00:02:09] And, and also to really get that work done and be as fruitful as you can with it. And so about, about a quarter of my time now is in meetings. And actually like I’ve got, I’ve got a number of hats obviously, cause I’m the executive director of the WordPress project, but I also lead the source practice at automatic.

[00:02:29] And so there’s a lot going on there. And the best way that I have to manage it at the moment is to just kind of set focus intentions for my day. Like I used to have a day where I just worked on automatic things or when I just worked on community things. And like that’s still documented out in the world, like the, the themes that I have for each day, so that like, if people had had to work with a deadline, they knew what.

[00:02:55] Going to probably get to on various days so that they could time their information. To [00:03:00] me, it was super useful when I didn’t have quite as big a job as I have now. But now I kind of have a day where I focus on meetings. I have a day where I focus on the strategy. I try to make sure that if I have any community things that I’m blocking, I try to get those accomplished, like before the big meetings, which generally is like Wednesdays and Thursdays.

[00:03:19] So try to get and get everybody the information that they need to keep moving on time. But I actually start basically every day with about 30 minutes of mindfulness. Just no meetings, no slack open, no anything else. And just making sure that I understand what my goals are for the day, what my tasks tend to beat for the day.

[00:03:41] And then I end every day with about 30 minutes of what I like to call my ta-da list instead of a to-do list, things that I got done and that I need to get done tomorrow.

[00:03:51] Matt: Little positive affirmation to end the and the day you say that the open source practice is sort of a different approach. Maybe something that you wrangle are managed differently. Can you give us give the listener a sense of what that might be 

[00:04:04] Josepha: At automatic or just generally do I approach open-source differently? 

[00:04:07] Matt: You mentioned that you, that you either manage or work on the open source practice of WordPress is that something different than the, than the day-to-day role of the executive director? 

[00:04:17] Josepha: Huh. Yes and no. So on the one hand I do, we technically are referred to as a division inside automatic. It’s the open source group division. And I just, I don’t know, saying division seems very clinical and. Very divisive, like splitting things into when maybe we, we need to do a bit less of that right now.

[00:04:38] And so when I refer to it as open-source practice, it’s a little bit, because I’m trying to make it clear that it’s like an ongoing thing that we work on an ongoing thing that we do, but also to identify that it is that yeah, we do. We kind of approach it differently. So open source as a practice rather than open source as just a general methodology, I think has a wider application than just software or adjust your product.

[00:05:04] I think that open source, many of those 19 lessons of open source that exists out there could be seen as just like core intentions for how to accomplish things. And when you move it away from just like, this is a core directive for how to build software and instead think of it as this open source methodology that you can use to coordinate an.

[00:05:30] I think it makes a big difference to how you accomplish things in open-source projects. And so, yes, that’s, I wouldn’t say it’s different from my work as the executive director, but I do know that people don’t necessarily identify that work. 

[00:05:44] Matt: Right. How big is that division? 

[00:05:46] Josepha: that particular division is just over a hundred people at this point.

[00:05:50] And then we also have we, the WordPress project also have the five for the future contributors who work with me and that’s a little l...

WordPress news is hard. I mean, it’s hard to turn it into a real business.

I get away with covering WordPress here on the Matt Report because our guests share lessons on how they built their business or spend time telling us how they navigated the community, until they found their way.

But news? Well, that’s why The WP Tavern has been the only name in town for a while, loaded with two critical components: A dedicated staff and they are funded.

If you want to make it, you do things differently, you do things like Rae Morey‘s The Repository newsletter. Today we’ll chat about building her WordPress news newsletter, background as a journalist, and explore what it really takes to make all of this work.

Thanks goes out to Malcare today for sponsoring a month of Matt Report and The WP Minute. You can help us by visiting buymeacoffee.com/mattrpeort

[00:00:00] Rae: It’s a completely not in the WordPress world at all. So our processes is, as you said, an experiential design and creative technology company, and we develop experiences for cultural and tourism organizations.

[00:00:14] So, you might go into a gallery or museum and experience an audio tour and we create immersive experiences where you can. Wander around a space and he audio that that’s designed, especially for that space. It moves with you around, around the gallery or exhibition. We do precinct technology, virtual queuing, augmented reality experiences, and we do exhibition design in.

[00:00:40] A lot of different spaces, for example we’re doing a a brand new exhibition smack bang in the middle of Montana at the moment for there for first street project there. We do we do the audio guide for the Getty in Los Angeles. So that’s an example of the kind of thing I do for my, my day job.

[00:00:58] There is communications manager. So I look after Publicity marketing anything to do with words, I guess, on the website? Yeah. That’s, that’s kind of what I do for a day. 

[00:01:09] Matt: Does anybody ever give you like a side eye when maybe a customer comes in and they’re like, we have a WordPress website that they look at you and be like, Hey, we think we know somebody who kind of knows this to implement whatever project we might have.

[00:01:23] Rae: I don’t know. I, I, to be honest, I kind of played down what to do with WordPress, because I don’t want to be that person that people kind of like go to asking for, help me with my website. Yeah.

[00:01:33] Oh, I I hate to say, but our website and our process is actually uses Drupal. So I’ve had to learn that this year not, not my decision, but yeah, it’s been interesting seeing what the competitions. 

[00:01:44] Matt: Yeah, that was the, the second, most serious application I used to build websites was Drupal before or slightly after a front page.

[00:01:51] Well, I guess throw Dreamweaver in there too, but we went front page Dreamweaver and then Drupal and then WordPress triples, fantastic platform. I think I wouldn’t use it today, but I th I still think it’s a very powerful 

[00:02:04] Rae: platform using it compared to WordPress at the moment. Very different platforms.

[00:02:10] Matt: How do you find time to to do the repository and works by birds and you have a family? How do you, how do you structure your day with all of this stuff? 

[00:02:20] Rae: The honest answer is I have no idea.

[00:02:21] I, I think over the past couple of years I don’t know if you’re aware, but Melbourne where I live here in Australia has been the most locked down city in the world. We’ve had the most restrictions lockdowns out of everywhere. It’s just the circumstances I guess, here, but it’s given me a lot of time to look at.

[00:02:36] To spend on side projects, I guess. So when so the, the repository I started that with came guest star from male poet back in November, 2019. And that was just before the pandemic. And so I guess the repository in a way became a bit of a handy pandemic passion project that I was working on while in locked down and has continued through to now.

[00:02:59] And. [00:03:00] Yeah, I was, I was also on maternity leave from my day job throughout 2020. So that gave me a lot of time and focus on building up the newsletter and yeah, since returning to my day job part-time I’ve, I’ve just I guess structure my week so that, Part time work and also have the repository for a Dane half a week.

[00:03:21] So just try to split up the weight to fit everything in. And also I’m very fortunate to have a partner who. Who I cope? Well, shouldn’t say co-parent with where to very much together, but we split our parenting duties 40, 50, 50, which is we’re very modern family in that respect. So yeah, we both prioritize our careers, but also our son.

[00:03:44] So, yeah. So there, there is a way for moms with a lot of things on to, to do all the things that they are passionate. 

[00:03:53] Matt: Do you have a certain structure and I can, I can share mine as well for, for the WP minute, but you have a certain structure that you would, you wouldn’t mind sharing on how you keep track of all of the news.

[00:04:05] And this obviously is happening throughout the week. Are you jotting things down and the to-do lists in a notion document. And then at the end you go to write up the email and you just sit down with all of those notes in front of you. How does this all come curated? 

[00:04:18] Rae: Yeah, look, there’s no pulling back the curtain.

[00:04:21] There’s no special, fancy way that I do it. My background is, is in journalism. I studied journalism at uni and so I naturally just do a lot of note-taking all the time because I’m just every time I see something, I think, oh, that’s really cool. And I use apple notes on my my medical kit or my iPhone, I’m an apple person and everything sinks.

[00:04:44] And so I’m constantly taking notes. And I guess with the repository I use feedly.com to track something like 70 or 80 different websites and blogs. And so I go through that periodically throughout the week just to track what what’s happening and keep on top of everybody’s latest updates. I’m also checking Twitter all the time on my phone.

[00:05:06] And it’s a bit harder to save tweets, so I have to yeah. Finding a way to do that really well, but I’m always checking Twitter, whether I’m No throughout the day or in the evening while I’m watching TV, having having a scroll. And that’s mostly, I guess my research for the pository just between those two, just seeing what’s going on.

[00:05:27] And I guess also just catching up with people throughout the week in the WordPress community, whether it’s just aiming on on Twitter or chats over emails and Coles. Those are the kinds of ways that I keep in touch with what’s going. 

[00:05:42] Matt: Sure the the newsletter there’s. So there’s a, you just said that there, you’re probably tracking 70 to 80 sources of, of news or at least new news that you can throw into an RSS feed and put into.

[00:05:53] Feedly probably 20% of them. I would reckon are [00:06:00] our newsletters or have a newsle...

I typically open up my monologue with setting some tension or to attempt to provoke how a grand idea might come together in the upcoming audio.

I don’t have that today.

What I have is a young entrepreneur that impressed me with his story, branding, and how he’s approaching the business of…college movers. I know you normally tune in for the SaaS powered wins or the WordPress unicorns, but trust me when I tell you, Sam Chason, founder of Storage Scholars, is bringing the heat.

I’ll admit, his story was so good, that I almost didn’t believe him. I fully expected to decline the interview headed into our pre-interview. Luckily that wasn’t the case, and now I’ll be rooting for him from the sidelines hoping he can turn this business into a massive success.

By the way, we do talk WordPress/WooCommerce and the platforms he’s tried in the past — we’re still getting our hands dirty here.

If you enjoy the episode and want to buy me a virtual coffee in support, go to buymeacofee.com/mattreport and show your support for the show.

[00:00:00] Sam: Storage scholars is a door to door, white glove service for college students. So basically the way that the service works it’s generally for out-of-state or international studies.
[00:00:09] I was from New York. I went to a school called wake forest, North Carolina, and I had two international hallmates, one from China, one from Ethiopia, and I would stereotypically see them bring over two large suitcases overseas. They’d bought the rest of the stuff that they needed at target bed bath and beyond, et cetera.
[00:00:24] And there was just no way they were going to ship back their bedding or school supplies back to China. Right. So I thought, had to be a better way type deal. So the way the service works now is students receive boxes and packing supplies that we prefer finalists. They packed up their stuff. They snap a couple photos of the items.
[00:00:39] They’re looking at store add any extra insurance, lock up their room and go home. And then we generally have contracts with these universities. We get key access from the dorms. We use students on those campuses to do a contact us, move out about a 24 to 72 hours after campus closes, store it for the summer, however long they need to store it for and then have it ready and waiting in their new room pre delivered when they arrived back on campus.
[00:01:01] So that’s some storage scholars in a nutshell.
[00:01:03] Matt: Yeah. When I first, before. You and I chatted. I was like, okay, moving. Like I say, moving company. And in my, in my head, I’m like, big industry makes sense. But then when we chatted and you’re like, yeah, but people don’t need to bring all their stuff back.
[00:01:17] They’re gone for whatever a month, 45 days, a half semester or whatever the thing is. Ship, all this stuff back. And I was like, wow, this is really interesting. You mentioned that there were some competitors out there kind of doing this same thing, but just kind of half asking it. Right. It was just a little bit of, one thing, a little bit of the other, not the full, the full compliment.
[00:01:38] What are you doing better than the
[00:01:39] Sam: current. Well, yeah, definitely shout out Nick hubris, sweaty start up. He was one of the first people I met doing this up at Cornell and that’s kinda how I ended up on Twitter and probably my view as well. He, he sold a similar business up in the Northeast, so we were more so in the Southeast, we actually just recently signed a contract with a school in Pennsylvania a couple of days ago.
[00:01:56] So making an expansion there watch out during removers, but a lot of it has to do with not only the university partnerships. So we’re doing everything by the school’s books. There’s some others kind of, Companies out there that will just farm emails blast to a school and just figure they can get 30, 40, 50 customers per school and say that they operate at 80 a hundred institutions across the country.
[00:02:16] We’re more about building deep in Beth’s in-depth relationships with those schools. And not only with the administration, but then also. Really fostering entrepreneurship on these campuses and kind of in two to three students, generally sophomores, they have some long longevity and bring these kids on board.
[00:02:31] Having them shadow us, they can learn really important, like marketing operations, entrepreneurial type skills in school and ideally pay the wafers their way through college, kind of the same way that I
[00:02:40] Matt: did. Yeah. So it’s like, it’s I don’t, these are my words. You tell me paid internship. Is that how it.
[00:02:47] Sam: That’s funny. You say that that’s actually quote unquote what I just put on our handshake profile. Some of these schools, cause it was not getting accepted before as more of like a high paying job. I figured not only is that what’s more appealing to a college student nowadays. They want something for their resume, but also something they can make money on it, but it’s also kind of the way we were able to get it out of these universities and getting on those job boards in the shop postings.
[00:03:07] But, but it’s very valid to,
[00:03:08] Matt: so to my dedicated audience, so. Of what Sam just said is probably clicking to you. Why? Sam is here generally, I’m interviewing somebody who has a digital product, a digital service and agency software as a service. We’re going to get to that in a moment, but I really love the, because again, people who listen to this know that I’m a huge proponent of entrepreneurship, but learning the nuts and bolts of it, rolling up the sleeves and getting to work.
[00:03:33] It’s a fantastic model. So I applaud you for like having this platform for people to. Really figure things out. I don’t want to say the hard way, but like, you’re getting them a job. They’re learning all of this stuff. Have you been able to measure that? I know it’s kind of early days for you, but how have you measured the success of people actually learning the business side of things, even if they’re not sticking with you, for years as their end, is there anything like that, that you have a feedback loop?
[00:03:59] Sam: Yeah. I mean myself. I The reason why I started this business was to pay my way through school. I did it more out of necessity. But my business partner, actually, he was a year younger than me. He’s across the room over here. He’s probably got his headphones in, but he was a biochemistry major coming to school, like 4.0 student, like probably could have gone to Stanford med.
[00:04:16] But really got the itch, got the bug working with. And decided about halfway through his junior year to tell his whole family, Hey, I’m putting my medical career on hold. I really want to actually make, not necessarily to make a difference, be able to actually do things with my, with do things with my time, like immediately, as opposed to going to medical schoo...