Episode 105: Vito Peleg

Introducing Vito Peleg

Starting from the back of a van while touring the world with his band, Vito made the transition from a freelancer to an agency, growing to six figures by the end of year one, and to a team of 12 by the end of year three.

Show Notes

Website | WP Feedback

Facebook Group | WP Feedback Group

Pronouns | He/Him

Episode Transcript

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 105.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Vito Peleg. Starting from the back of a van while touring the world with his band, Vito later made the transition from a freelancer to an agency, growing to six figures by the end of year one, and to a team of 12 by the end of year three. He is now focused on WP Feedback. Welcome Vito.

Vito: Hi. How are you doing? It’s great to be here, guys.

Tara: We’re so glad to have you here. Thanks for joining us. Can you tell us a bit more about yourself? What an interesting introduction! I want to hear more.

Vito: Yeah, sure. Like Liam said, I started by building websites for clients from the back of a van. Actually my first experience with website was when I was 14. I was experimenting with like HTML and CSS, building something for skateboarding crew that I had when I was in school. That was back in GeoCities, even way before WordPress was even born.

The first time that I actually started doing this professionally, was while I was touring. And that was a kind of cool story because the band that I started with also kind of got known through digital and through the stuff that I’m doing right now with the agency and with a new product that I’m working on. And really quickly within a span of literally 30 days after we launched a digital campaign from my hometown – I’m from Israel, originally – we got signed here in the UK. That allowed us all to move on to here and start touring the world.

We went through the standard band process. We started with like 10 people in the crowd, then a few dozens, a few hundreds, a few thousands. And then the band broke up one day. Even though it looked like we were making it, and we were selling albums, and we’re touring and doing exactly what we wanted, we were all still very much broke. There was no money in that thing. That’s what drove me into starting building websites for clients after people saw what I did with the band and the activity that I’ve done online.

Once the band broke up, I said, “Okay. I was a bit lost for a little while trying to figure out what’s the next step. I’ve been into music for 15 years up until then, and I figured out I already have a little pool of clients here in London. So let’s see how far I can take this thing.”

I went for it. Within the first year, like Liam said, I already broke the six-figure mark that I put as a goal for myself before I started. Then I just kept scaling up, get scaling up, bringing on more projects and more and more people. And that’s when things started becoming a little dicey when it comes to managing multiple projects at the same time, and getting the clients to do what we need from them in order for us to progress the project. I’m sure you guys know what I’m talking about.

While I was doing the investigation of where does all the profit go when we have a team of 12 and everything should be running smoothly by that point, I noticed that it always came down to client communications.