In today's episode, we bring back Joe's chat with the Founder and Director of Design TLC, Tara Claeys. As a seasoned website designer and developer with a marketing background going back over 25 years, she provides custom website and graphic design services, with a focus on creating effective, customized, user-friendly communication platforms for small schools, camps, and nonprofits.

Tara talks about the steady growth of her company, how she isn't aiming for a 7-figure business anytime soon, keeping a happy outlook while working in several different projects, and choosing how to present yourself in social media.

Episode Resources:

• Design TLC
• Tara is on Twitter, LinkedIn
• Tara Claeys' Website
• Hallway Chats
• Leave an Apple podcast review or binge-watch past episodes
• Visit the WPMRR Community
• The 2021 WPMRR Virtual Summit

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:19 Welcome to the pod, Tara!
• 06:17 Joining PressNomics and other events
• 11:37 Rebuffing the Design TLC website
• 17:00 Bringing happiness in what you do
• 22:19 You don't have to have a 7 figure business to be successful
• 27:19 Be physically responsible with managing your business funds
• 33:51 You only see people's best moments on social media
• 37:05 People in the WordPress community are generally open
• 37:39 Find Tara online

In today's episode, Joe talks to Gary Gaspar, the co-founder and CEO of Marker.io - a platform that encourages a simple way to report bugs on live websites and collect client feedback along the way. This 6-member team with over 2M feedback reported and 1,500 plus customers, continue to make it easier for people to report live website issues in real time.

Gary shares how he met his two co-founders at a totally unexpected place, shutting down the agency to focus on growing the business, the integrations they planned as they expand, and focusing more on conversion than website traffic.

Episode Resources:

• Gary is on LinkedIn, Twitter
• Marker.io
• New MRR Merch, discount code: AUGUST31
• Leave an Apple podcast review or binge-watch past episodes
• Visit the WPMRR Community
• The 2021 WPMRR Virtual Summit

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 06:35 Welcome to the pod, Gary!
• 07:25 Instead of a live chat, Marker.io utilizes capture screenshot with annotations
• 12:34 Why there are 3 co-founders
• 20:25 Shutting down the agency and going full-time
• 23:33 The value of owning your company despite having a low paycheck
• 26:57 It took a while to find the right product-market fit, future plans
• 30:18 Marker.io was built with integrations in mind
• 34:35 Original business structure attracted non-targeted customers
• 37:37 Build relationships with folks to reach more people in the community
• 41:58 It's useless to do all the marketing channels
• 47:01 SEO and integration marketing works
• 49:24 Finding the right person to join the team
• 53:16 Giving the team a lot of creative freedom

In today's episode, Joe talks to Iain Poulson and Alex Denning of FlipWP, a private marketplace for buying and selling WordPress businesses. Buyers get vetted listings emailed directly to them, while sellers get access to quality buyers who understand their product and the opportunity they're offering.

Iain and Alex explain how FlipWP offers a unique experience for both buyers and sellers, providing reasonable valuation for any business while ensuring that all deals remain exclusive to both parties, no middlemen. They aim to connect anyone to the right people to land a successful deal at 1% success fee.

Episode Resources:

• Delicious Brains
• WP Trends
• Pressing Matters
• Ellipsis
• FlipWP
• Alex is on Twitter
• Iain is on Twitter
• Leave an Apple podcast review or binge-watch past episodes
• Visit the WPMRR Community
• The 2021 WPMRR Virtual Summit
• The 80/20 of Profits: Pricing and Margins in Subscriptions (Ben McAdam)

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 03:53 Welcome to the pod, Iain and Alex!
• 07:02 How did it start for FlipWP
• 10:29 What is FlipWP?
• 15:30 From a seller perspective, it's a combination of the maturity of the WordPress ecosystem
• 23:09 Finding a place where you can sell your business
• 26:42 Most FlipWP members are WordPress people
• 29:33 Utilizing leverage in the email lists and the newsletters after launch
• 35:59 Helping people with their business valuation
• 40:06 FlipWP tries to guide people to make sure what they are putting is reasonable
• 46:54 Some people are taking out competitors by buying similar business
• 48:42 FlipWP connects people, but buyers should their own research
• 51:41 The 1% success fee remains the same for now
• 54:17 Helping buyers get better access and sellers better prices

In today's episode, Joe talks to Lesley Sim of Newsletter Glue, a WordPress plugin designed to help businesses or anyone connect their email service to WordPress so they can publish newsletters the way they publish blog posts. The first step is to connect the email service, write the newsletter in the block editor, and then send it.

Lesley discusses how it becomes so much easier to send newsletters using the plugin, the current growth of the company, planning your schedule while taking care of your mental health, and how to not get sucked in any social media platform.

Episode Resources:

• Newsletter Glue's Website and Twitter
• Lesley is on Twitter
• Leave an Apple podcast review or binge-watch past episodes
• Visit the WPMRR Community
• The 2021 WPMRR Virtual Summit

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 04:33 Welcome to the pod, Lesley!
• 06:14 Aiming to make WordPress the CMS for newsletters
• 10:34 The plug-in is completely reliant on what happens with Gutenberg
• 14:00 The difference between patterns and templates when dealing with Gutenberg
• 16:25 Early adapters to the Gutenberg ecosystem
• 18:20 Current ARR range for Newsletter Glue
• 23:13 Future plans and current improvements in the works
• 30:04 Stay sane and prioritize mental health
• 35:51 Managing your daily schedule and allocating your time effectively
• 42:08 Getting active on social media and getting sucked into it
• 47:14 Enjoy your time on the social platform you enjoy using
• 52:43 Find Lesley online

In today's episode, Joe talks to Copyflight's Todd Jones, a digital storyteller helping purpose-driven B2B entrepreneurs leverage storytelling to captivate their target market. His team helps businesses identify and develop their story, so that they can communicate more efficiently to their ideal client.

Todd talks about how his college football Top 10 blog evolved into learning WordPress, building sites using themes and widgets, the different web developing sites he came to know, learn, and practice, and what setting end goals mean for conversion copywriting.

Episode Resources:

• Todd Jones' Twitter, and Facebook
• Copyflight is on YouTube
• Leave an Apple podcast review or binge-watch past episodes
• Visit the WPMRR Community
• The 2021 WPMRR Virtual Summit

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 03:56 Welcome to the pod, Todd!
• 06:38 The story of the Redneck Coffee Snob
• 09:43 It all started with a college football Top 10 blog
• 13:35 Selling ad spots from doing exclusive content writing
• 17:35 Moving to Wordpress from Blogspot
• 22:17 Learning different web developer sites while working in an agency
• 26:45 Venturing into conversion copywriting
• 29:11 How to start learning conversion copywriting?
• 32:36 Voice of customer research
• 39:37 Find someone smarter than you and learn from them
• 43:11 Have you heard of Barcamp?
• 44:40 A good About page equals credibility
• 48:45 Everybody does like storytelling, even tech people
• 50:16 Find Todd online

In today's episode, Joe talks to Rene Morozowich, a freelancer in the WordPress space who works with small and medium sized business and individual projects in building and managing service-based websites. She's a Business Intelligence (BI) and SQL developer, a programmer, and an instructor at a community college who teaches credit and non-credit classes.

Rene shares her freelancing journey, from building a website from scratch, overhauling and managing existing websites, to offering client marketing services and how not to overwhelm your leads with your marketing campaign.

Episode Resources:

• Rene Morozowich's website
• Leave an Apple podcast review or binge-watch past episodes
• Visit the WPMRR Community
• The 2021 WPMRR Virtual Summit

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 03:21 Welcome to the pod, Rene!
• 04:26 The 24-hour WordFest 2021
• 06:19 Regrouping care plan for clients
• 09:08 No immediate plans to develop an agency
• 11:29 Freelancing started with one client
• 15:17 Having good clients but not a good fit long-term
• 21:14 An expensive learning curve
• 24:24 Creating proposals with varying packages depending on client needs
• 30:07 Stop paying to market cold leads
• 35:53 Don't overwhelm potential clients with your email campaign
• 40:15 Why people get hesitant in doing campaign automations
• 44:22 Creating campaign headlines needs practice and some testing
• 47:13 Best practices to trim down cold leads
• 51:54 When people sign up for something, they expect something
• 53:45 Find Rene online

In today's episode, we are going to hear Christie once again, back when she was still based in Hawaii. Joe and Christie discuss the perks and some of the downsides of working on a different time zone from the rest of your team, body clock adjustments to be able to function, and the importance of robust communication and the maximization of tools.

Episode Resources:

• Christie is on Twitter and LinkedIn
• Leave an Apple podcast review or binge-watch past episodes
• Visit the WPMRR Community
• The 2021 WPMRR Virtual Summit

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 03:32 What's up with Joe?
• 07:02 What's up this week, Christie?
• 13:01 Working away from home
• 15:41 Working in a timezone unlike any other across the globe
• 21:12 What's a sleep nerd?
• 24:13 Working with your body when moving to a new place
• 27:41 Communicate, communicate, communicate!
• 34:09 Synchronous versus Asynchronous team work
• 38:09 Creating a work pattern based on your body clock
• 47:31 Talking to clients, taking online calls, meetings in pajamas

In today's episode, Joe talks to Maciek Palmowski, one of the co-creators of WP Owls, a weekly newsletter focused on the latest and top WordPress news. He also works as a WordPress ambassador for Buddy Works - a top-notch performance into one solution for teams that want to painlessly introduce CI/CD and accelerate the development lifecycle of their software.

Maciek explains how the Polish audience has a completely different social media preference compared to the global community, the surprising challenges of raising his son while working at home, and the customization of the $7 per month web hosting they are using for WP Owls.

Episode Resources:

• Buddy
• WP Owls
• Maciek Palmowski is on Twitter and WPMRR Community
• WordFest Live, register Here
• Leave an Apple podcast review or binge-watch past episodes
• Visit the WPMRR Community
• The 2021 WPMRR Virtual Summit

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 03:21 Welcome to the pod, Maciek
• 04:23 What is CI/CD?
• 07:16 How WP Owls came to be
• 11:36 WP Owls doesn't take an aggressive marketing approach
• 18:50 Outreach efforts and invite list
• 22:02 Analytics, growth, and iterations on the articles
• 26:32 Twitter is a very straightforward social media platform
• 36:20 WP Owls run an on a $7 per month custom web hosting
• 41:44 Raising a baby while in the WordPress space
• 47:04 Balancing work and raising a family
• 51:22 Find Maciek online

In today's episode, Joe talks to Dan Maby of Big Orange Heart - a nonprofit organization that supports and promotes positive well-being and mental health within remote working communities. The Big Orange Heart Health Hubs are designed to provide holistic support for the individual.

Dan shares how Big Orange Heart came from the challenges he and his team faced while handling a digital marketing agency, and the organization's mission to help support the mental health of workers in a remote setting. They also discussed the upcoming WordFest Live, a virtual event to be streamed in six continents in a 24-hour period.

Episode Resources:

• Big Orange Heart
• Big Orange Heart Support
• Dan Maby Website
• WordFest Live, register Here
• Leave an Apple podcast review or binge-watch past episodes
• Visit the WPMRR Community
• The 2021 WPMRR Virtual Summit

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 03:01 Welcome to the pod, Dan!
• 03:20 The funny story at the WordCamp US 2019
• 05:30 What's keeping Dan busy
• 06:55 Big Orange Heart born from the challenges of handling an agency
• 08:36 Things take different priorities at different times of your life
• 10:34 Mental health is a challenging topic to talk about
• 14:26 Supporting as many network as possible
• 16:55 Varying levels of support for different groups of people
• 22:31 Getting a core group for individuals to get support together
• 25:35 Encourage the community in Slack to help
• 28:37 WordFest Live 2021: The festival of WordPress
• 36:12 WordFest 2021 to deliver within six continents in a 24-hour period
• 39:33 A diverse organizing team in the background across seven time zones
• 43:32 WordFest was supposed to be an annual event
• 48:11 The virtual setting has opened many more interesting environment
• 53:40 Live Streaming in-person previous events were leading to the hybrid event style
• 54:38 Find Dan online

In today's episode, Joe talks to Artur Grabowski of Extendify - a team of passionate professionals with the goal of building a modern WordPress experience that just works. It has a templates library and other great WordPress products such as Editor Plus, Redux, Gutenberg Forms, ACF Blocks, MetaSlider, Block Slider, and GutenbergHub.com.

Artur shares the technical and business aspects of Extendify, how the beta stage is aimed at introducing customers to block-based editing, the mission to help SMB's on a limited budget, and extending Gutenberg exposure to potential users.

Episode Resources:

• Extendify
• Extendify on Twitter
• For questions, email Artur or Chris
• Leave an Apple podcast review or binge-watch past episodes
• Visit the WPMRR Community
• The 2021 WPMRR Virtual Summit

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:27 Welcome to the pod, Artur!
• 04:28 More on business operations but technical-leaning from day to day
• 09:29 Extendify is for SMBs with mission critical website's on a limited budget
• 14:53 Similar business solutions can lead to different outcomes based on execution
• 20:01 Gutenberg as a tool
• 24:49 The funding structure for Extendify
• 31:36 The mentality of growth at any cost
• 37:04 There's always a core WordPress experience in betas before paid version is launched
• 44:02 Figure out how users can see the value in your product
• 46:28 Find Artur online!