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Psychotherapist and coach Annie Wright join Troy to explain how negative self-talk and beliefs can affect every aspect of our lives, including our businesses. She breaks down the concept of neuroplasticity and how it can be used to condition ourselves to have a more positive mindset and overcome impostor syndrome in the process.

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This is a republish of a post from 2017 but it's still highly relevant. Enjoy!

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Nev Harris is one of our Mavericks who is the man when it comes to helping agency owners and freelancers manage their money. What is great about his advice is that he keeps it simple, so you won't be overwhelmed... trust me.

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In the last 7 years, they’ve expanded to the UK, USA, Singapore and Australia, published over 800 books for our clients, and built an epic full time team of 50 across 12 time zones. 

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Follow along as Paul demonstrates various strategies for assessing the health of your list and using email to build better relationships with the people on it:

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Listen now to find out what she says about entrepreneurial anxiety and impostor syndrome.

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Paul Lacey is the co-founder of The Dickiebirds Studio, which is an award-winning WordPress and UX/UI design and development agency in the UK.

In this episode, Paul talks about his path to finding success and how getting involved with the WordPress community helped him get there. We hear about his latest project - building the Beaver Builder version of Katka by Elementor. And we also discuss the importance of taking care of your mental health whilst running your own business.

Leveraging the WordPress Community

Paul’s first experience with WordPress was way back in 2005. He recalls that he tried a few different programs before he landed on WordPress because of its usability and potential. However, he didn't properly utilise the community until around 2010.

In the last two years, Paul has become even more active within the WordPress community. One of his posts was about how he created a website using GeneratePress. One man commented with what could be called constructive criticism. But that comment led to a creative friendship that blossomed after a WordCamp conference. The man behind the comment? Barna Buxbaum, creator of Katka by Elementor - the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

The Beaver Builder Project

Barna and Paul began talking, and Barna came up with the idea to build the Beaver Builder twin of Katka. They both loved the idea of the against-the-odds story of a Beaver Builder guy and an Elementor guy working together. Paul compares their relationship to the relationship between Rocky Balboa and the Russian, Ivan Drago in the movie Rocky IV. In the movie, Rocky and Ivan come from very different backgrounds and training styles, but the two end up being incredibly well matched. Rocky even gains the respect of the Russians. Rocky’s famous quote at the end speaks to the ability people have to come together.

“If I can change, and you can change, then everybody can change!”

There was always drama about which platform was the best builder. This collaboration allowed Paul and Barna to create something that would combine the two communities and improve the possibilities for both Beaver Builder and Elementor fans.

Collaborating With Beaver Builder

When Paul began seriously devoting time to the Beaver Builder project, he hired a developer named Adrian to work on the complex, responsive design.  One of Adrian's ideas was to use CSS variables to change the global colours. Paul thought this was a great idea and showed it to some friends in a private Mastermind group.

These friends had contacts at Beaver Builder and told them about Paul's project. So to his surprise, when Paul reached out to the founders of Beaver Builder at WordCamp London, they already knew about his idea and wanted to hear more!

The idea took off from there. It was from this experience that he realised something that he now gives as advice to people thinking about getting involved in the WordPress community.

“Everyone’s always got something to offer… Whatever you put in you get back 10 times.”

Beaver Builder eventually wanted to hire him to work for them. Paul turned down the offer and instead opted to work with them on a collaborative basis. Paul developed a Beaver Builder agency called Beaver Kit with it's own branding. Beaver Kit’s products are now going to be included as part of the core in the next release of Beaver Builder.  He tells us that hearing this news was an unbelievable moment for him.

Initial Impressions of WP Elevation

Paul recently started our Blueprint course and tells Troy that he did a great job with WP Elevation's free webinar that he joined. Paul says that after watching the webinar he was ready to sign up straight away. He had heard a lot of good feedback about WP Elevation within the WordPress community and had wanted to do it for some time, but he was going through a family crises and it wasn't the right time until now.

Now that he has reformed Dickiebirds Studio and doubled the team to four people, he feels he has more responsibility for the business to succeed and ensure consistent work for everyone under his employ. Paul explains that he is excellent at completing tasks, but not great at coming up with the blueprint to accomplish those tasks. So the blueprint provided by WP Elevation really made it possible for him to push himself and focus on improving.

Dickiebirds now has a unique value proposition—something Paul learned from WP Elevation.

You get what you pay for

Make Mental Health Your Priority

Paul's family crises that he mentioned earlier were in regard to his eight-year-old daughter's serious anxiety. His wife had to shut down her successful events company because it became too much to deal with. His daughter is doing much better now, but coming out of it was difficult.

In the midst of it, you deal with it, but when you come out the other end, you realise you’re still in the battle mindset, but there isn’t a battle anymore.

On his 39th birthday in 2017, he was still struggling with his mental health. Paul was watching a WP Elevation video by Mike Killen on the topic of mental health. Right then and there he decided he’d had enough and went to the doctor to get some advice. Paul recognises he only feels comfortable talking about this now because it’s behind him.

“When you’re suffering from it, it’s difficult to talk about it. It’s much easier to talk about it when it’s historical.”

In his case, the doctor gave him some good advice and some medication that was able to help him through it. A year later, he is doing much better and because of this, so is his business. The message he wants to get out there is to just look after yourself.

“Take care of yourself, don’t be ashamed to admit things, and just get yourself back on that right track.”

Paul suggests doing outreach projects in the community to accomplish that. He also recommends WP&UP, a charity that works to provide mental health support within the WordPress community.

If you're interested in watching the webinar which lead Paul to join us here at WP Elevation, click here. 

Links

The Dickiebirds Studio

Paul's Twitter

Paul's Youtube Channel

GeneratePress Community

WP Elevation: Flight Cadets

Beaver Builder Group

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Introducing Mickey Mellen

Mickey Mellen is the co-founder and technical director of GreenMellen Media, an Atlanta-based WordPress and digital marketing agency that has 6 employees and over 150 clients. GreenMellen began by offering web design services and has since grown into a one-stop-shop for all things digital marketing. In addition to website development with WordPress, Mickey’s company handles other strategy components for clients like branding, email marketing and SEM. Mickey is also an organizer of the Atlanta WordCamp conference and a local WordPress Meetup group.

Mickey Mellen has been developing with WordPress for over 14 years. He has worked with several platforms like Cafelog and Moveable Type before committing himself fully to WordPress. As a freelance web designer, he began by offering clients the option of custom-built sites or WordPress designs. Over time, he found WordPress to be a more reliable platform, whether he was using a custom design or ready-made template.

Building A Team

Mickey met his business partner Ali Green while they were both working on the Communications team for a large church in Atlanta. Ali was working as a graphic design intern, and eventually left to start her own company. Mickey and Ali contracted each other for their freelance projects until it made more sense to join together and create GreenMellen Media.

Mickey and Ali found their first clients through personal connections and referrals. As their clientele expanded, they began to slowly hire staff. Their hiring strategy is to first work with someone as a contractor until the workload builds to that of an employee. In Mickey’s experience, some contractors prefer to continue working as freelancers to maintain their independence. However, others want to become employees in order to focus solely on their technical craft while someone else manages business operations.

Before hiring new staff, Mickey takes a step back to “look from above” and decide what role needs to be filled. This is much more effective than hiring with the mindset that “we are super busy and need another body.” He takes a “hire character and coach skill” approach to find people that are aligned with the company culture.

Learning at Meetups

Mickey found that his area needed more WordPress Meetups, so he started his own. For Mickey, Meetups have several benefits. They get people out of the office and away from their computers to network with people who can become valuable partners. Meetups are also a great opportunity for ongoing education. Mickey says he always learns something new, even when the topic is one he knows well or he is the one leading the Meetup.

Finding the Right Clients and Providing Value

Mickey finds clients that are a good fit by seeking out specific qualities in a company rather than focusing on a niche industry. He looks for companies who have heart, are connected to the community, and are doing the right thing. He also makes sure that potential clients have a designated marketing person they can work with. A two-person company won’t have time to collaborate with Mickey and his team. The clients they match with tend to have 10-50 employees. Working in several industries keeps things interesting and ensures GreenMellen Media is only working with clients they can truly provide value for.

Mickey has found it helpful to hire someone to manage and maintain clients. The company also uses Help Scout to respond quickly to customer support inquiries. They have an average response time of 46 minutes and are proud to share that metric when pitching clients. Help Scout also allows them to track how often tickets are submitted. Then the company can invoice clients if they have exceeded their customer support quota.

When working with clients, Mickey is upfront in early discovery meetings about retainer fees. Clients are given several options for ongoing maintenance and support after their platform has been created. Mickey finds that many clients think they will be able to create their own content. However, once they get going they need help. Mickey has a copywriter on staff to create content for clients and the agency.

Mickey’s Opinion on Gutenberg

Mickey acknowledges that there are accessibility concerns with the new Gutenberg. His Meetup had an accessibility presenter join them recently to grow their knowledge in this area. However, Mickey thinks many of the concerns about Gutenberg have been overblown. His agency will teach clients how to edit with the new tool. He thinks that any issues will come from lack of user knowledge rather than sites “blowing up.”

From Technician to Business Owner

Mickey’s motivation to begin documenting company procedures came from a WordCamp conference. Mickey’s team uses Google Docs and TeamWork to create templates, document processes, and assign tasks to team members.

If Mickey could go back and tell his younger self anything, he would advise him to study more business in school. When Mickey became a business owner, he just started doing what needed to be done and learning as he went.

One area of business strategy that Mickey and his company are still challenged by is the ever-present question of where their next client will come from. GreenMellen Media has been getting more recurring revenue. However, for years the agency lived from one website to the next, and they are still doing that to some degree.

Gold Nugget Takeaway - Make Sales Easy

Don’t miss Mickey’s straightforward strategy for making sales easy at 27:30!

• Have potential clients compare you to yourself rather than to other companies.
• Give options by packaging together services for low, medium, and high price tags.
• Develop a one-pager for each option.
• Work with clients to create a custom package that meets their needs based on the options presented.
• This is far more effective than presenting one cookie-cutter package with no room for customization.
• Manage and forecast sales with a tool like Pipedrive.

Wrap-Up

What’s Next for GreenMellen Media? Mickey and his co-founder Ali are still working on project management with the goal of getting “out of the weeds” to truly be business owners. This will take one or two more hires in the next year. Mickey and Ali hope this will free them up for business development and spending more time with family.

Reach Out

You can reach out and thank Mickey Mellen on Twitter (@MickMel).

Links

• Visit the GreenMellen Media website to learn more about Mickey’s work.
• Connect with @GreenMellen on Twitter and Instagram.
• Read What the Heck is EOS? and Traction by Gino Wickman.
• Find a WordCamp conference near you.
• Track customer support to clients with Help Scout.
• Document business processes and create templates with TeamWork.
• Manage and project sales with Pipedrive.

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In this episode, I talk with Philip Morgan about his Coder to Consultant program and the importance of business development in finding clients that allow you to do more than fill WordPress development requests. Making the move from developer to consultant may seem daunting, but Philip lays out how you can do it, and why it’s important for the longevity of your career.

The ‘Oh Crap’ Moment

Philip began to notice a pattern over the course of his career. Every 5-7 years, the demand for certain development skills would decline as new skill sets entered the market and became in-demand from clients.

He saw developers have what he describes as an “oh crap” moment when they realized that their skills were becoming obsolete and they would need to learn something new to remain competitive.

But what if you don’t want to learn new technical skills every few years? That was the dilemma Philip saw developers face. They typically did this a few times before they began to grow tired of the pattern and couldn’t face the prospect of doing it again.

With those experiences in mind, Philip decided to use what he knew to help create a path for developers away from technical work and into strategic consulting roles. No matter whether you are developing an ERP system or a website, your end product should help your clients meet the needs they stated and the ones they didn’t know they had.

Making this next-level transformation requires more than just taking an order and plugging in the resulting code, but the change is easier than many developers might assume.

Building a Track Record

Philip says many people he works with are already doing consulting work for free when they give a client advice about their website based on past experience.

This comes as second nature, both from years of working in the field and from the natural human instinct to help others. “Do it often enough”, Philip says, “and you’ll begin to develop a track record that you can turn into a point of view to help clients work through big-picture issues, rather than just doing what they tell you.”

Becoming a consultant also requires a sense of empathy toward the person you are trying to help — and knowing when to walk away from clients who are not willing to be flexible or see things your way. It’s a tough decision to make, especially when you need the work, but learning how to say “No” is essential to developing the confidence needed to take on higher-level projects.

Philip also acknowledges that the journey from developer to consultant is scary because we all have an inherent fear of criticism. However, this sense of fear can also be a great motivator because it pushes us to be our best and brings clarity to our thoughts and actions.

This sense of expertise forms the foundation for transitioning from developer to consultant. But, the skills are no good unless you have someone who is willing to pay you for them. Philip says that this is where networking and client development come in.

3 Steps for Developing Expertise

Around minute 21, Philip lays out a three-step plan for developing a point of view that can take you from developer to consultant:

1. Start talking about yourself as someone who creates value for clients, drawing on past experiences as examples.
2. Look for things that are upsetting to you because those are places where you can develop an opinion. If that opinion is meaningful to the outcome of the project, it can become a point of view.
3. Get the point of view in front of people. It’s what he’s doing by coming on WP Elevation! In today’s media landscape, there is no shortage of outlets where you can make your voice heard as a thought leader.

Focus on Business Development

Once you are confident in your point of view, it’s time to find clients who will let you take on a strategic role in their projects. This means putting more time and energy into business development than you probably ever have at any other point in your career.

“But wait,” you might be thinking to yourself, “didn’t I get into development work because I don’t like talking to people?” Many developers are more comfortable behind a computer screen than out in the public eye.

Philip says that even the most introverted developers need to invest in finding and cultivating their own clients, rather than relying on referrals from agencies or other professionals, which he describes as “the crumbs of client work”. Simply put, if you are not finding your own clients, you are outsourcing your business development.

However, this does not mean you need to jump up and attend every networking event you can find or start making the rounds on podcasts. Pick the business development activity that you are most comfortable with to start and see where it leads.

It could be as simple as spending a few hours on LinkedIn or setting up a few one-on-one meetings. Like a lot of things in life, the more you do it, the easier and more comfortable it will become.

Another important part of business development is asking clients for honest feedback about the work you did for them. What impact did you have? How can you improve for next time? You probably have one set of answers to these questions, but understanding your client’s perspective will help you become even better as you move forward on your consulting journey.

Wrap-Up

Philip runs his own consulting business and created an email course to help developers get paid for more than just their WordPress expertise. He emails updates and new insights to his list every week and takes pride in creating value for his clients.

Follow his plan and you’ll be on the way toward a whole new career path, rather than waiting around for the next “oh crap” moment in the technical world to render your skills obsolete.

Tune in to hear more about Philip’s approach and how you can make it work for you.

Links

The Coder to Consultant Email Course

Philip Morgan Consulting

The Consulting Pipeline Podcast

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Miles Beckler is a digital marketer, world traveller, and content genius. He runs Ask-Angels, a meditation website which has over 150,000 subscribers and attracts 8 million visits per year.

In this episode, you’ll learn how to get through hard times, grow a loyal audience and build a business that you can be proud of.

Background

In 2009, Miles and his wife co-founded Ask-Angels, a spirituality website selling guided meditations and other meditation products. After some success, friends and colleagues started asking Miles how he was able to travel the world while working on his digital marketing projects. This prompted Miles to start offering insights and coaching via online video on how he was able to succeed as a digital marketer.

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, his father came from the IT world, so he was always around computers. Like many of his friends, after high school, he went straight into the workforce, working in customer support. But after the economy slipped, he quit, borrowed $50,000 and took 7 years to go to college. After college, he worked in the real estate industry. Soon after, the global financial crisis hit and real estate was no longer a viable industry. Miles was left broke and without a promising career. But he didn't let that stop him. Miles felt a great surge of motivation to jump into digital marketing which offered much higher margins and much more promise. Miles and his wife, who is also his business partner, ventured out together into the world of digital marketing and realized that success was most likely to come if they serviced an audience. That's when they thought of Ask-Angels. To deliver their content, his wife used keyword research and search engine optimization on Wordpress. While she hustled their content, Miles ran an agency specializing in marketing and wordpress services to support their endeavour.

Perseverance and Resilience

There's no question that Miles is incredibly resilient. He was knocked down a few times throughout his career, but managed to fight through it. He uses a “hat over the fence” analogy to describe how he's able to keep his cool, it means to commit fully to something no matter what gets in your way. Any challenge he came up against, he was able to figure it out. He even says that, on the other side of the challenge is the breakthrough you're looking for. Motivation can come from a desperate situation, whether it's a dead end job, losing your job or just being fed up with your line of work. When Miles first got into Facebook advertising, what kept him going was visualizing getting through to the other side and what that would look like. He discovered how scaleable authority businesses can really be and he now lives an incredibly rewarding lifestyle.

Building an Audience

As mobile devices become more and more prominent, face to face communication is now a very rare thing. A lot of authority businesses have tapped into the human need for a “tribe” and Miles stresses that this is an important aspect to building an audience for your business. This tribe is a place where people can interact with their own kind, use the same language and relate around the same topic of conversation (spirituality in Miles' case). Another thing he points out is building trust at a large scale. How are people going to trust and continue to trust your online business? This can be a tricky part of digital marketing and is something worth looking into if you're just beginning your business.

How To Sell Your Product

After some career difficulties, Miles started meditating. He then met his wife who was also a regular meditator and they bonded over their practices and metaphysical interests. His wife trained with a mentor in “guided meditation creation” and brought this skill to their project. What proceeded was a lot of trial and error. As his wife created the content, Miles optimized it with keywords and kept putting it out consistently. They published their best content over and over and they eventually were picked up by Google. A key Miles says to getting noticed is being consistent. He followed a 90 day challenge where he posted 90 blog posts in 90 days and 120 videos in 120 days. If you post every day and commit to it, you will get noticed.

The main products Miles and his wife sell on their website are mp3 recordings of meditations. When they first started, they’d keep track of the people visiting their site and would send them emails creating their first conversion. They then started sending out emails, offering free conference calls and other products. Through lots of testing and consistent content creation, they now receive 30,000 visits a day to their website. Currently, the website sells 180 different products like training courses, lessons and speciality meditations.

Competitors

Miles' brand and channel is unique enough that he can post videos only three times a week as opposed to every day. But he knows that if someone comes along with similar information and posts every day, he could be nudged out. There are several points Miles makes about competitors:

• Stay aware of your competitors’ behaviour.
• There’s room at the top for everyone.
• If you stay focussed on giving value to your audience, you will eventually become their trusted advisor.
• Do not underestimate the power of consistency. The hard work you put in, in the early years of your business will build trust with your audience and will no doubt pay off.

Using Facebook Ads To Your Advantage

Facebook ads can be powerful. Miles has become an expert on this type of marketing and he says the key to it is to tell a “story.” A long-form, 700-800 word hero's journey story will get a potential audience member more committed and interested in your product than a basic ad. People interested in improving their lives will either be able to envision themselves going on the same journey as the hero in the story or they won't. You want the right people to be invested in your product emotionally and a story is a great way to do that. Another way Miles optimizes Facebook ads is through a purchase conversion campaign; those who click on the purchase icon are added to a specific opt-in list to receive more content specific to them (free offers and shop-related content). But at the end of the day, Miles says long copy ads and video ads are the main type of ad that he and his team are focussing on.

What Advice Would You Give A Young Miles Beckler?

Commit fully. When he started Ask-Angels, there was a lot of doubt surrounding content and whether their website was even going to work. As soon as they both decided that this was their purpose, they fully committed to their website and things just seemed to take off. His wife started posting every day and Miles focussed more on his video content as he found he was more effective writing than creating videos. It’s important to focus on your sweet spot, do what’s in your DNA.

Tune in for that and more on this week's WP Elevation Podcast!

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The Personal Brand of Neil Patel

If you ask Neil how he feels about personal brands, he’ll tell you that corporate brands are far more successful. He just fell into his own personal brand by accident. When he was first starting out, he couldn't afford Google AdWords, so he started blogging. That Quick Sprout personal blog ultimately built his name as the personal brand we all recognize today.

It was through blogging that he shared his experiences and frustrations with online marketing. He even taught himself SEO strategies and blogged about those too, which is something I found to be personally valuable at the time. But if he was given the chance, he wouldn’t have created such a personal blog or a personal brand. It’s so much easier to scale a personal brand when you’re first starting out, as Neil shares today, but as you try to grow, it becomes much harder to scale.

Neil’s Foray Into Online Marketing

When it came time to scale his personal brand, Neil focused on what he really liked to do. He enjoys consulting and figuring out how to help people build traffic to their sites. As an SEO master, he’s really into finding out what strategies work and why. And it’s that “why” that made it easier for him to scale and build the personal brand empire most of us recognize today.

In the online marketing space, Neil talks about our responsibility as marketers. It’s our job to solve a problem people don’t realize they need solved right away! That sounds kind of ridiculous, but it’s all about thinking ahead of your customer so you can bring them exactly what they need exactly when they need it. But you can’t figure out what they need until you actually talk to them. At the 10-minute market, Neil breaks down how you can start a sincere conversation with your customers.

“If you don’t dig deep into your customers and find out what they really want...you won’t be able to optimise for their user experience.”

Only after you understand your user or your customer can you truly build a successful marketing strategy. Too often we assume what our users want without asking them. And asking them is easy. Simple emails or surveys can bring in the answers to the questions you need to know in order to optimise your marketing strategy and ultimately boost your bottom line.

Offering Both a Product and a Service

Many of us listening right now are entrepreneurs. We either off a service, such as consulting, or a product, like a site building tool. For Neil Patel, he does both. Product-based businesses are much easier to scale, but Neil loves consulting. He’s more active in the agency than in the product business because it puts him in direct contact with his customers. With this kind of personal interaction, Neil is privy to data from all sorts of different industries and clients. It’s as if he’s receiving a well-rounded education from all the different people he works with. He’s better able to help his clients and it gives him a chance to see where he can grow his own brand and his own business. Ultimately, it’s all about becoming a better marketer, and you can only do that when you actually get to know your customers.

Whether you are already offering or plan to offer a new product or a service, it’s important to find out which your users would prefer. You don’t want to create a site building tool nobody wants or offer a service nobody needs. Cover all of your bases first and find out what your users truly expect from you so you can deliver on exactly what they need. Even if you don’t have the time to invest in building a personal brand like Neil did, you can still see success by paying attention to the user experience.

But, just like us, not all customers are perfect. Setting boundaries is necessary so that you can deliver success to your ideal clients. At around the 14:40 mark, Neil talks about the customers he won’t work with and how he establishes those boundaries so that they are clear to any and all potential clients. It’s one of the hardest lessons to learn in this business, but it’s also one of the most important.

The New Year and the New Neil Patel v. 2.0

2019 is going to be a big year for the marketing industry. The new WordPress will be launching, and Neil Patel is offering some new features in his suite of tools in the coming weeks. What’s great about these new features is that he plans on giving away many of them for free! So if you’re listening, keep a tab open on Neil’s website so you don’t miss any of the amazing offers that’ll be coming down the pipeline at the end of this month.

Neil will also be launching a new brand - NPXL - in February of next year, so keep your ear to the ground!

Links

Check out Neil’s suite of tools at Crazy Egg

Get to know your users by making a survey with Survey Monkey

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today we speak with Matthew Pollard, the “Rapid Growth Guy” and self-professed introverted entrepreneur. In this episode, Matthew talks about growing 5 multi-million dollar businesses from the ground up before turning thirty.

Background

Matthew is originally from a small town in Au​stralia, ​Craigieburn but is now mainly based in the U.S. He​ m​ade the switch to the States after travelling the world to the U.S., Europe and South America. After meeting the love of his life in Texas, he decided to stay in America. He was still drawn to the travelling entrepreneur lifestyle, so he launched his first online business. Preferring to stay behind the computer, Matthew was convinced that selling to people by phone or in person was a waste of time.

Had he known back then what he knows now about sales, he says he would have grown faster and made much more money. But despite that, 7 months after launching online, he was listed by Evan Carmichael as one of the most retweeted business coaches on Twitter, won blogging awards and was earning the income he always wanted. He credits finding his passion early on to his success in his first business.

Most recently, Matthew has written a best-selling book, ​Introvert’s Edge​ where he gives introverts a powerful, practical and unique approach to selling without the need to be aggressive or overly “sales-y”.

The Importance Of Finding Your Niche

Matthew won the Young Achiever Award in Melbourne. Afterwards, he remembers going home to his luxury apartment, looking out the window and feeling utterly miserable. He spent his entire life convincing people he was worthy through his business endeavours but he somehow felt empty. Growing up as an introvert in high school, it was all too easy for Matthew to feel isolated and incompetent in his abilities. Introverts and extroverts alike tend to inherit their goals from their mother, father and even friends. Once a goal is found, it’s easy to barrel ahead without thinking, only to later realize that it wasn’t what you wanted. This is why Matthew says it’s important to know your passion, which can then translate into your niche.

Niching Down The Right Way

In order to find your niche, you must first find your passion. Matthew suggests this exercise: Write down 3 business goals and 3 career goals. Don’t be afraid to be selfish about your personal goals. Now summarize each of those goals in about 250 words including why it’s important to you. Some people will find out they’ve been pursuing a goal they never meant to pursue or they’ve been pursuing one that’s unimportant to them. Others might remain confused in their summaries, writing additional goals and escape clauses without clear and concise results. Matthew says the key to this exercise is to listen to yourself without the distraction of technology, even if you have to take a week-long camping trip. Eventually you will start writing your summaries from a place of passion and that’s where you will find a worthwhile business niche. If any fears, barriers or conflicts come up while writing, try discussing them with a friend.

In truth, following your passion isn’t easy but as the great Jim Carrey said: “You can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”

Imposter Syndrome

How do we fight imposter syndrome in the sales world? The answer, Matthew says, is Niching. If you go for a broad audience and market yourself within a niche like say “Sales for Introverts,” you may not be taken seriously. You may also be compared to other more successful coaches already in that popular niche. Matthew was able to find a very specific niche by combining his talents in:

• Inbound/Outbound Marketing;
• Sales; and
• Branding

This formed his niche, “The Rapid Growth Guy”. Matthew describes his term, “Rapid Growth” as a unified message, it intrigues people and is a clear selling point. After establishing a niche, Matthew launched his program ​The Better Business Coach,​ where he teaches business coaches how to get their first clients and what to do during their first five sessions. After the rapid success of this program, Matthew started expanding his niche into different arenas such as “Rapid Growth for Service Providers,” “Rapid Growth for International Service Providers,” and of course, “Rapid Growth for Introverts”.

Working out your unique value and owning your skillset is imperative for rapid growth, building your unique business from the ground up, and feeling authentic about what you’re offering.

Better Branding

What’s the best way to brand practically? When you look at what you offer, you can often miss your unique skills that actually enhance yours and others’ business. To be honest,in crowded marketplaces, the people who win are those who undercut the competition not those with the best skills to offer.

For example, a client of Matthew expanded into China and offered services helping others to function in the Chinese business world. Her services included long term contracts, the difference between ecommerce in the west to the east, and the importance of respect.

Matthew urged his client to zone in on her most unique skills and sell her services as a “China Success Coach,” and sell it to a very specific client, immigration attorneys. By finding her niche and being in partnership with various law offices, she was able to make $27,000 per sale.

She could have hustled around selling her services, but she might have ended up feeling inauthentic and as an introvert, drained from overselling. Specifying your niche and focussing your brand gets you heard in a crowded marketplace.

From Zero to Hero

Matthew is a busy guy, but a key to his success is prioritizing and focussing on exactly what he needs to focus on, which is mainly marketing. But what were the key things that helped him make it from his humble beginnings?

• He started all of his 5 businesses with only 5,000 as a seeding fund. Every dollar he’s spent has come from the money he makes out of his businesses.
• When he first started, Matthew wrote 3 really good blog posts which acted as a “front page” to his brand.
• He would speak at events and would offer his product to anyone who gave him their business card. This is how he gained a lot of his preliminary clients.
• Matthew hired a full time Executive Assistant who also has copywriting experience. This allowed him to post more content and gain more exposure online.
• Matthew hired a writer’s assistant to help write his book, “Introvert’s Edge,” as well as a video editing team to help with his video content. Leaving time and energy for Matthew to focus on his priorities.
• He categorized his expenditures, for example everything he earned from speaking went towards capital expenditures (ie. book, online academy). Anything paid through coaching he used to build his academy and for living expenses.

 Tune in for this and much more on this week's WP Elevation Podcast!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Well then, brace yourself, because it IS possible to build a WordPress site in a weekend! In this episode, we get a little help from Matthew Averkamp who knows all about building a website in a matter of days.

I spoke with Matthew about Launch Party, his new course and toolkit for beginner WordPress site builders. He’s created a program that can teach anyone how to build a website from scratch. Here at WPE we call it “a website in bag” because it literally comes with everything, all the way down to customizable color schemes. Tune in now to hear Matt and I talk about where he came up with the idea and why he’s offering his courses and templates absolutely 100% free forever.

Like Father, Like Son

Matt has been building his own businesses for the past 15 years, but his first foray into the world of online courses was actually with his father. Matt and his dad created Accounting Coach, a website for online accounting courses and toolkits that’s still seeing traffic to this day. The problem was that Matt didn’t want to keep creating new content for accounting when he’s much more interested in user testing and helping people build their own businesses online.

He started Launch Party this year with a focus on being able to build an entire website (from scratch, mind you) in a weekend. He teaches from the templates he’s created in order to help consultants and other entrepreneurs build beautiful websites quickly. Because the faster you get online and running, the faster you can grow your business.

Matt’s Nomadic Entrepreneurial Journey

Matt is addicted to traveling. In fact, right now he’s in Thailand. But no matter how long he’s traveling or where he goes, he’s always thinking about his business. That’s the luxury of working remotely and helping others build and host websites. It gives him the freedom to focus on what really matters, and this year it was split-testing. Split-testing is just a fancy way of making sure your website works the way you and your users want it to. For Matt, his year-long split test saw revenues increase by 30%, which is more than enough to keep this man comfortable as a nomadic entrepreneur.

“Structure your business in such a way so that you can step away from it.”

Matt’s business structure relies a lot on remote teams. He may be in Thailand, but his design team is in Canada, and his friend in the United States takes care of the customer service side of things. But Matt swears you don’t need to maintain daily communication to keep your business running smoothly. His strategy involves keeping everything project-based so that it’s much easier to manage across long distances.

While his team is working on their own projects, Matt spends his time doing what he loves most about this business: user testing. At the 27-minute mark, Matt breaks down why user testing is so important to his business model and how he uses it to create the unique structure of his Launch Party course and toolkits.

Some important takeaways from Matt’s user testing toolkit are:

• Start out small with something like a course outline or an “about” statement to see what kinds of users are interested;
• Advance with an easy tutorial to see how skilled your users actually are;
• Pay close attention to user patterns and where users are having the most difficulty; and
• Include plenty of visual tools, like timelines, so both you and your users can see where and how the growth will happen.

Now Let’s Talk About Building a WordPress Site with Launch Party

Through extensive user testing, Matt was able to figure out exactly what new users needed from a WordPress tutorial. Because it’s quite overwhelming out there. For example, if you go searching for elementor templates, you’ll have hundreds upon hundreds of options at your disposal. But with Launch Party, Matt created one killer feature that makes him stand out. I’m talking about the customizable color option!

“It was impossible to come up with premade color schemes that everybody liked.”

User testing showed that people were very sensitive to the colors used on their website, but Matt couldn’t come up with a universal color scheme that pleased everyone. So he simply made it possible for users to modify colors to fit their own unique tastes. You just find a color pack you like, customize the colors until they’re perfect for you, then download it and use it in any of your Launch Party templates. No other templates give you this much creative freedom!

Just don’t go overboard with it. I’m guilty of that. Tune in at the 19-minute mark to hear about my favorite Launch Party color scheme and what possessed me to try and change it all for no reason. It’s a weird element in human nature that Matt tapped into with his user testing. We all, for some odd reason, want to change things even if they’re perfect, just to see what happens when we do. Launch Party makes that possible to do with your website, and it makes it easy to change it back if your suddenly change your mind like I did!

What does the future hold for Launch Party?

While Matt, myself, and the rest of the world are waiting on the new WordPress to launch, Launch Party has its own new features waiting in the wings. New colors will be coming - Matt promises a pastel pack, but the toolkits and courses he’s designed are specifically catered to building a WordPress website from scratch.

The future of Launch Party will include a weekend-long course where new and seasoned WordPress aficionados can come together for a weekend and build their WordPress sites together. The course will end with a launch party for everyone’s sites, which is what inspired the name of the company to begin with. Users can look out for this course and others like it in 2019.

Wrap Up

The most important takeaway from this episode is not how quickly you can build a WordPress site, although that is pretty amazing. The nugget I’m focused on most is the custom content and user testing Matt put into Launch Party. He custom built his own LMS based on user testing so he could deliver exactly what his customers wanted. He listened to their feedback and logged their experiences on his site and tutorials in order to create a program that is not only user-friendly but also completely free. He noticed that there was no one else out there offering quite what he envisioned, and he empowers entrepreneurs like us by offering this invaluable content free of charge.

Reach Out

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn or on Twitter @avermatt

Links

Try Wordpress Elementor Page Builder if you haven't already

Check out a few Katka Templates

Matt uses Userlytics to do his user testing

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joe is a Wordpress developer, podcaster and online course creator. Joe also teaches computer science and literacy at the the University of Scranton. Today, Joe joins us and dives into the art of podcasting. Learn how to start your own show, make money and crucial mistakes to avoid.

Content Is The King

One of the main challenges faced by new podcasters is making sure they’re consistently putting out enough quality content to keep their audience's attention.

It can be hard to build a loyal following when starting out, but delivering regular high-quality content is key.

Joe releases two seasons a year, each containing between 22 and 24 episodes. For Joe’s podcast, this is enough content to keep his viewers engaged. The amount you need to produce, though, will vary based on on your podcast topic and how long it has been running.

How Do You Find Guests?

The best way to do find guests is through networking. Going out to meet people, making connections with them, and sharing contact details.

Joe spent a few years attending work camps, which enabled him to build up a network of people he could reach out to. After asking over 100 people, only 4 or 5 have declined to be guests on his podcast, showing it really is just about putting it out there and asking!

What Are the Technical Sides of Hosting a Podcast?

There tends to be a very steep learning curve when podcasters first start producing their shows. Joe was already a developer, which helped him out a lot.

A lot of first-time podcasters upload their audio file directly to Wordpress. This isn’t the best move, instead they should be using a specific audio hosting provider like Libsyn. Libsyn and other similar hosts use a plugin to build your feed for you. This is really handy later on when a bunch of episodes are uploaded to multiple websites.

Which leads to another common early-podcasting mistake; thinking that just putting a podcast on iTunes is enough.

Having a website for a new podcast is essential, as it expands your range of audience exponentially. In Joe’s case, for example, only 60% of his listeners downloaded his podcast through iTunes while the rest found him through other means.

Some other good avenues for placing your podcast are  Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Podcasts and Spotify. This is all vital knowledge. Every podcaster must know how to pick the right platforms, understand web hosting and work out the best domain to buy.

And this is just the beginning. There are still those guests to schedule (that you networked so hard for), then there’s all the technical stuff involved, and research for the content you want to cover.

Motivation

It can be hard to keep motivated at the beginning of your podcasting journey, when there are so many technical difficulties that will arise and almost no way to tell if anyone’s actually listening to your show.

You need to really believe in what you’re making, and be confident that you're producing something that others will find value in. A good idea is to do 10 episodes first, see if you like the end product, and go from there.

As Joe puts it, “Podcasting is a grind, it takes a long time to build up an audience.”

What Should You Outsource?

Editing can be the most laborious part of making a podcast, but it’s easily outsourceable to a reliable party.

Joe went from spending hours chopping up audio, removing the countless number of ‘ums’ his guest had uttered, to finding somebody on Fiverr who agreed to edit and mix the entire podcast for just 10 bucks.

What Are the Best Strategies for Monetizing a Podcast?

There are costs involved with starting a podcast and you need to be ready to invest at least a couple hundred bucks. You need to pay for your hosting, the technology you use and your equipment too. Unfortunately, all of these together means it isn’t a cheap endeavour, so monetizing as early as possible is essential.

There are three main strategies you can follow to monetize your podcast:

• The most obvious path is through sponsorships. This means finding companies who will pay you in order to advertise their product on your podcast.
• Podcasts are also a great way to build your authority up around a certain area. Once you’ve done this, you can become an expert for hire.
• Affiliate links are another great stream of revenue. This is where you get paid for everybody who goes through a unique link that you provide on behalf of a third party and buys a product.

What Should You Know Before Building an Online Course?

It is very important to have an audience in place that knows and trusts you before you begin on course building. The biggest problem people run into when producing online courses is that, even if a course is amazing, it requires an audience that has been warmed up and nurtured.

People love shortcuts. Instead of offering an intense amount of learning, course creators should explain how their course is helping them find one. This will make it much more attractive to potential students. Instead of the prospect of hard work, they will think of the course as making their lives easier.

In other words, your students (and potential future students) have a problem they need you to solve. They trust you and believe in what you’re saying. You need to prove to them that you’re good at what you do and that your content is worth buying. Do this by sending them a bit of free content, this will build trust and show you know what you're talking about.

Closed Enrollment Courses or Letting People Enroll Forever; Which Is Better?

Having closed enrollment courses is a really useful way to create scarcity; closed enrollment means only allowing people to enroll in your course during a certain period. Unfortunately, running a system like this can be exhausting, stressful work. It also leaves a window in which people can’t enroll, and therefore you can’t learn or test anything new.

Having an evergreen open enrollment model allows for a more rapid learning cycle, but you lose all sense of scarcity. A good way to combat this is by having bonuses or price hikes that reward people for taking action immediately.

“The number one thing that motivates people to take action is scarcity or urgency. That’s the biggest motivator of human behavior.”

What Is Joe's Course About and What Can People Learn from It?

Joe provides a three-day course for people who have already recorded their podcasts, but need help knowing where to go from there. He knows how to make websites for podcasts and talks about all the different technical aspects that podcasters need to wrap their heads around. He explains how to set up web hosting, register a domain and install Wordpress.

He then covers how to configure Wordpress, find an audio host, and a compatible plugin and how to upload your first episode to Wordpress. Finally, Joe explains how to submit your podcast feed to different websites in order to achieve maximum exposure.

Listen in to hear how Joe created a massive audience for himself, so that he was able to make running online courses his main business.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With a decade of experience, todays’s guest, John Bellamy is here to show how to profit from LinkedIn and turn it into a money making machine.

Background

A fellow Aussie, John Bellamy is from the Gold Coast, and while recording this episode he confirmed he was actively wearing board shorts. Apart from that, his career trajectory started around 1999, when he was working for direct mail communications company SellMap, in the “junk mail” (i.e. unaddressed advertising mailers) division.

While there, he learned marketing techniques from a variety of different angles, but as he moved up through the ranks, it became clearer and clearer to him that this wasn’t his permanent career. “I always knew that I wanted to go and work for myself,” he tells Troy. “I always knew that the corporate world and doing the whole 9-5 thing wasn't going to be a fit. I wanted to work on a laptop, mobile phone, I'm done.”

The Rolodex of the Future

When John first started getting LinkedIn invites in his inbox, it took him awhile to pay any attention. But after receiving several dozen requests, they started to pile up, and he realized this could actually be something useful. Working in a corporate environment, he and his colleagues were surrounded by thousands and thousands of business cards, filed neatly away in rolodexes. When John finally signed onto LinkedIn, somewhere around 2008, he just started digitizing them.

Before long, he realized he had something really cool on his hands, a bona fide digital networking tool he could leverage. He used it to keep up with colleagues after they changed jobs or he did, and he was able to smoothly use those relationships to build into sales conversations over time.

He was able to use the technology to leverage existing connections and conversations and improve on them. “And then it was just natural progression that I sort of got known in that space,” he says. Word got around that he knew what he was doing with LinkedIn, and people began reaching out to ask him to have a coffee and show them how to do what he was doing.

That’s where the lightbulb went on, and John started building his own business.

The Business Model

John runs a dispersed team of remote workers in the Philippines who, like himself, work from home on their laptops. He and his team offer coaching and consulting in two ways: a more DIY model where clients can follow an online course that includes a review call with his team, or a more service-centric model where clients can meet the team face-to-face or via regular video calls for more high-touch coaching.

John is a big fan of providing his service as a packaged product as much as possible, and using templated personalization to bring the right level of service to his clients.

Spamming versus Selling

What’s the best way to leverage LinkedIn for sales without being a spammer? John says that, first of all, spam is in the eye of the beholder. “I can't decide what they believe is spam or not until I put it in front of them,” he says. He also stresses that as long as you genuinely believe in what you’re offering, you have something of real value to provide to others on the platform. You have a solution to a particular problem or challenge, and the network is a tool to find people who need that solution. That means lead qualification is key. You shouldn’t get pushy with people who clearly aren’t the clients you’re looking for; you should use the tools available to you to find people who are, and concentrate your energy on them.

Pipeline Priorities

John says a sales pipeline needs to be filled with the right kind of leads—qualified, interested leads—rather than just being full. You need to leverage the tools available to you to make sure you’re sourcing good leads, and then invest the time in qualifying them properly. He recommends using pipeline tools like InfusionSoft, Proposify and Sales Navigator to help with this, but the key is developing an organized sales process and sticking with it consistently. You need to decide how often to touch each lead after qualification, and how much time you should wait between touches.

Scaling through Systemization

A lot of common sales tips rely on direct, personal relationships with leads. So if you’re leveraging LinkedIn to speed up and systematize those relationships, how can you keep that personal touch when you’re operating at scale?

Working in a team, with separate qualifiers and closers, John says this can be tough—but the key is to ask more psychographical questions at the qualifying stage, and to really listen and record the client’s answers so they can be passed on. Crafting good questions is essential to the process, and if you know your client niche well enough you’ll be able to develop a consistent set of questions that works for them.

John and his team rely on a system of 85-90% packaged, “product-ised” service, with 10-15% customization for each client, and John says that’s the perfect ratio to maintain the right level of personalisation at scale.

Overcoming Fear

John has some tips for the reluctant, introverted or otherwise scared seller:

• Consider the positives of your “negative” outcomes!
• As long as you’ve followed your system, you know you did everything you could
• That means the ultimate decision to buy or not was out of your hands, and that’s okay!
• You can’t expect to make every sale, nor should you!
• Be authentic online—it’s the easiest way to keep your branding consistent, and seeming more genuine will help you connect and make sales.
• If you believe in the service you’re selling, you can feel responsible for reaching the right people and letting them know you’re available to help.

John’s Tips for a Better LinkedIn

• Make sure your eyes and shoulders are facing forward in your picture.
• Use a headline that describes what you actually do, not just your job title.
• In your background description, tell a story about what problems you solve.
• Include who you are, solutions you provide, and some social proof or testimonials.
• Don’t just copy the “About” section from your website! Add value!
• Make sure you have a page for your business as well as for yourself.

Resources:

John’s LinkedIn

DirectMSGing on LinkedIn

John’s website

Ballistix

InfusionSoft

Sales Navigator

"The Machine: A radical approach to the design of the sales function" by Justin Roff-Marsh

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rob Rawson is something of an expert when it comes to remote work; he runs TimeDoctor and Staff, two services for managing remote teams. Oh, and right now, he oversees a team of over 80 employees in 28 countries, every single one of them working remotely.

The Problem

Working remotely solves a lot of problems for employees: it cuts out unwanted commutes, gives you freedom to travel, and lets you work in your own space and under your own dress code. But working with and for a group of people you’ve met a handful of times, if ever, can be isolating. Done badly, remote working can seriously hinder communication, which leads to unaccountable workers, unclear instructions, lacklustre deliverables, and all manner of other issues.

That said, Rob really believes in the power of remote teams, and swears by the ability to recruit top talent regardless of country of origin. He knew he wanted to break free from his office and his commute, and he knew others did too—so he developed software to do just that.

TimeDoctor is a SaaS (Software as a Service) tool that helps employers monitor, schedule and bill for their remote workers’ time, and it also helps employees stay focused and track their own time. Rob designed it specifically to fill the gap in accountability that workers often lose when they move to working from home.

While TimeDoctor is largely aimed at small remote teams and agencies, Rob’s other project, Staff, is a similar tool for enterprise-level clients managing large-scale remote workforces, especially offshore, and it comes with plenty of metrics for tracking productivity.

Recruiting Remotely

Rob says finding the right talent is crucial for building a remote team, and while it can pose some unique challenges, being open to remote workers means you’re accessing a much broader pool of talent. Limiting yourself to just local candidates can mean you’re not really finding the best person for the job, just the nearest one.

He stresses that you need to pull in as broad a pool of candidates as possible, and then start filtering it down. Finding the right person for the job can be like finding a needle in a haystack, he says, but with the entire world of talent at your fingertips it can be more than worthwhile.

Testing for the right skills is a key part of Rob’s recruitment process, and he recommends filtering out early rounds of candidates with short, unpaid test work before evaluating successful applicants with paid test projects or contract work. For developer candidates, Rob’s a fan of HackerRank.

Sites for Sourcing Talent:

• StackOverflow.com (for developers—pricey, but great!)
• OnlineJobs.ph (for Filipino remote workers!)
• Remote.com (AI-enhanced remote job board!)
• UpWork.com (for freelancers—but you need to pay through their platform or pay a fee!)
• Angel.co (an online haven for startup jobs!)

Offshore Opportunities

Rob is a big believer in building remote teams offshore, and he says they can be a great way to scale up your operations—and not just because the wages are often cheaper, either. A lot of Rob’s team members are in the Philippines, where the ability to work remotely is more and more sought after by workers sick of commutes into major cities that are often more than two hours each way.

While finding talent with the necessary language skills and cultural fit overseas can be tough, Rob says it’s not only doable, but also hugely rewarding. “This is a huge competitive advantage when you've got it right,” he says, so it’s worth taking the time to recruit the right people no matter where they hail from.

Overcommunication is Key

One of the downsides to not working out of an office is that, well, you don’t see your coworkers at the office. Rob says a lot of employers are so used to managing their teams by casual hallway run-ins or cubicle drive-bys that when their staff aren’t physically present, they practically stop communicating altogether.

Recreating that same in-person feel to remote-team communication can make all the difference, Rob says, even if it can seem like overkill at times. He emphasizes the importance of regular, structured communication amongst the team, as well as using video on calls as often as possible. This helps keep people on-track, focused and in touch with each other, so that they know who they’re accountable to: other people, not just names they know from email signatures.

Maintaining Accountability

Rob’s remote management software, like Upwork and some other time-tracking tools, comes with the option to take screenshots of employees’ work (or non-work, as the case may be) while they’re on the clock, as well as other surveillance measures like chat usage and breaktime monitoring. These can be especially useful, he says, in managing large remote teams where it isn’t always easy to tell where gaps in productivity are coming from—although he says the company is looking into producing more “employee-friendly” versions of the software that foster accountability without coming across as invasive or micromanaging.

He also notes, though, that remote workers can also use screenshots and stats as positive proof that they are, in fact, doing the work they say they are; this can be a powerful tool especially for workers who run into issues and rack up more time than expected, so they can always prove that they were in fact working and not slacking.

Making the Leap

While remote work comes with its share of challenges, it’s clear that for Rob, the pros far outweigh the cons—and he’s working on engineering out most of the cons, anyway. He really encourages anyone considering building a remote team to go for it, and he has some resources available on his blog to help them get started.

Resources:

TimeDoctor

Staff

RunningRemote

HackerRank

“The E Myth Revisited” by Michael Gerber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After breaking into the world of freelance development at just 19 years old, Alex has rapidly expanded his one-man WordPress business into a thriving agency in the heart of London, where a team of developers and designers create websites for such high-profile clients as Amnesty International and the University of London. Having built his business from the ground up, you could say he knows a thing or two about scaling.

Importance of Starting Slow

While it’s safe to say that he didn’t specifically dream of being a WordPress developer as a child, ever since childhood Alex has valued his independence pretty highly. He was eager to gain financial independence even as a teenager, and that’s how he found his way into web development—something he was good at, he enjoyed, and most importantly, something he could do on his own to earn money.

He started out doing small, simple jobs for seven pounds an hour on elance (now Upwork) and other freelancing platforms to gain experience, climbing what he calls “a very slow ladder” from basic jobs to the kinds of five- and six-figure projects his agency tackles now.

Getting Specialised

In the beginning, Alex tried all kinds of different content management systems, but he found that he kept coming back to WordPress, even at a time when professional WordPress specialization didn’t really exist yet. He found he liked it, his clients liked it, and it was on the rise as a platform, and so he decided to make it his specialty.

Trying to be all things to everyone is something Alex says can stand in the way of growth for a lot of agencies. He credits his decision to specialize in WordPress early on in his career with a huge portion of 93Digital’s growth and success as an agency.

Getting The Right Support

Alex considers himself a marketer almost as much as a developer, and his success in marketing his own work has been key from the very beginning. 93Digital’s tagline is “The London Wordpress Agency,” which has actually been with the business since it was just Alex on his own. He didn’t begin to genuinely grow his team until after he won a £21,000 contract about four years ago, using the profits to hire two full-time employees only when he knew he couldn’t handle the workload alone.

Since then, the agency has grown organically with its workload, with a staff of 15 that includes developers, designers and project managers. He’s since taken the time to put together clear job descriptions and expectations for the whole team, as well as to develop an easily accessible knowledge base to keep everyone on the same page. He’s also learned not to hire on skillset alone, and says that cultural fit and values matter just as much as expertise in finding a good team member.

In his early twenties, with no real roadmap to follow, Alex drew a lot of support from communities like the Agency Collective, a group featuring a lot of other WordPress developers and other people in similar boats, which helped him stay on top of things as he forged ahead.

Attracting The Right Clients

Incredibly, most of 93Digital’s biggest clients, even early on, we're just cold leads who filled out the contact form on Alex’s website. They came to him, a success Alex attributes to the website itself, his strong SEO and use of content marketing. Even now, the agency relies heavily on word of mouth and reputation to bring clients to them.

When the clients arrive, Alex and his team use a range of flexible approaches to decide which customers and projects are a good fit. The estimated budget isn’t a major factor, but the type of project and the sense of chemistry with the clients definitely are.

93Digital doesn’t take on just any project. They’re well-positioned enough that Alex and his team have the ability to turn down work that doesn’t interest them, and they do.

“We had the opportunity to probably grow faster than we have, but in my opinion, off the wrong kind of work,” Alex says. “I never wanted to build kind of a sweatshop of designers and developers churning stuff out for the sake of it. The types of projects that engage me are the ones where I feel like we're making an impact and we're solving a challenge.”

Maintenance And Support

One of the biggest challenges of scaling up his agency has been managing ongoing maintenance and site support after projects are complete. Alex says this is where having project managers involved has made a difference, and he’s recently had to expand his operations to include a dedicated developer to handle ongoing maintenance and support for existing clients.

He stresses that development and maintenance are almost two entirely separate processes, but you need to run them parallel to each other if you want to run an agency. It makes up no more than 15-20% of 93Digital’s revenue, but it’s an essential service to provide for clients.

Here are a few of his tips for making the support aspect of WordPress dev a little smoother:

• Explain it early. Don’t leave your clients (especially clients with smaller businesses) with the impression that a website is something they can build once and forget about. Maintenance is a given!
• Build it into your contracts. Make it clear in writing what kind of tech support and long-term maintenance is included and what will cost extra down the road.
• Manage expectations. Let your clients know that the internet moves fast, things change, and they will need something fixed or changed in the future.
• Empathize.

Advice For Young Alex

When asked what advice he’d give to his younger self, Alex says he’d want to back himself up more, and have confidence that he’d figure out what he was doing. He also wishes he’d had the foresight to keep some kind of diary as he went, so that he’d have an easier time now looking back at the rationale behind all the decisions he made along the way.

All in all, he’s glad he took the business risks he did at such a young age. “When people are young and there's so little to lose,” he says, “the amount that you can do and learn, and the amount that you can thrive when you actually have no choice but to do so, is amazing.”

Tune in to this episode to hear how Alex uses common values to keep his team focused, how he goes about hiring, and thoughts on Gutenberg, where Automattic is taking WordPress in the years to come, and what that means for developers like us.

Resources:

93Digital

The Agency Collective

Alex Price’s Twitter

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Appearing on this episode with a wall of lanyards from past WordCamps behind him, Nathan is a familiar face at WordPress community events all over the US these days. Even though he fell into WordPress somewhat by accident, and his rise to becoming one of the most respected trainers and coaches in the business is a story of adaptation, overcoming impostor syndrome, and learning to play to his own strengths and let other people play to theirs.

How It All Started

As a child, Nathan wanted to be a scientist, although he was never exactly sure what kind. While he ended up going a different way when he grew up, he never lost his sense of curiosity, and he still considers himself a full-fledged geek and a “magnet for useless information”, all things that have served him well in the world of web development.

Having spent a number of years in ministry as a pastor, Nathan already loved teaching and public speaking, and he also did a lot of web design work for small nonprofits. Becoming a WordPress trainer wasn’t the plan, but as it turned out, his curiosity, geekiness and love of sharing knowledge made him the perfect candidate for the job.

The Advent Of WordPress

Nathan started out building websites in 1995, and did a lot of work prior to the CMS revolution. He used tools like Dreamweaver and Fireworks for a long time, and saw himself as more of a visual designer than a developer. When WordPress first came along, he was heavily resistant to it, for a couple of reasons.

First off, he found that every WordPress website tended to look more or less the same, and it was hard to use it to develop the unique designs he could make with other tools. Second, he thought it would kill his business model. Working primarily with small clients who kept him on retainer to make periodic changes to their sites after he’d built them, he wasn’t sure how something like WordPress’s simplified content management would impact his livelihood.

Obviously, though, he changed his tune, and it happened around version 2.9, when Nathan first became aware of the huge array of plugins out there and how useful they really were. By the time 3.0 rolled out, he was sold.

Teaching

After a chance encounter with Cory and Lindsey Miller at a WordPress event in Oklahoma City, Nathan was offered the chance to do a training webinar (his very-first one) in 2012. It seemed easy in theory; he loved public speaking, and his background as a pastor, he thought, would be all the preparation he needed.

But it turned out webinars are a completely different beast from conventional public speaking, and Nathan felt more than a little lost without being able to gauge real-time responses or body language while just talking into a webcam. When it was over, he says he was sure at the time that it was the worst thing he’d ever done.

The viewers—and his hosts—disagreed, and they gave him lots of encouragement to keep at it. iThemes asked him to do more and more webinars, eventually making him a regular instructor on their site, and at the beginning of 2017 he became iThemes’ official host, where he does regular webinars, courses and live events.

The Key To Confidence

Moving into the training and coaching space was a bit of a learning curve, and Nathan dealt with his fair share of self-doubt. “It's impostor syndrome, right? We all have it,” he says, “and the more you do something, particularly something niche, you think it'll go away, but it just gets worse.”

So if practice doesn’t fix self-doubt, what does? “The antidote to that whole syndrome is community,” Nathan says, “and that's why I love WordPress. The WordPress community is fantastic.”

Positive community feedback was what got him to stick with the webinars in the beginning, something he’s now more than comfortable with, and that makes up a major part of his business. He also stresses that while positive feedback is great, you need to be able to get authentic feedback from people you trust. Getting knee-jerk compliments from people who aren’t really evaluating you isn’t helpful, and ultimately waters down the power of that feedback in convincing you that you’re on the right track.

You need a trustworthy support network to give you confidence boosts and reality checks, and you also need to check in with yourself to make sure you’re actually doing the work and honing the skills to create output you can stand behind.

Advice For Younger Self

What would Nathan tell a younger version of himself? A variation on that same theme: learn how to rely on the people around you instead of expecting to have to do everything yourself. He stresses that the benefit of a community is that you can play to and develop your own strengths, while enlisting others around you for help to support you in the things that you’re weaker at. He says he’d have been much better at avoiding burnout if he’d learned to trust others to handle the things he couldn’t instead of beating himself up about having weaknesses at all, which is a lesson a lot of freelancers and entrepreneurs might benefit from.

Coaching

These principles are strongly reflected in Nathan’s coaching approach. One of the coaching options he offers is a program called “Advance”, where clients have their needs addressed partially one-on-one, and then partially in a small group of six or less. In this group environment, they each bring one issue to the table, and together they look at potential solutions. Also key to this approach, Nathan says, is opening every group meeting with celebrating successes. He thinks this is something that WordPress folks especially need in their lives, since so often the specific victories that come with web design are hard to explain to the uninitiated, something that can be isolating, especially for freelancers.

He also says that sharing issues with a group can help overcome impostor syndrome, since not only does it let coaching clients know they’re not alone in struggling, but it also gives them the opportunity to realize that while they have problems and weaknesses that others don’t, they also have solutions and strengths that others don’t, and by sharing those they can gain confidence through community.

Common Ground

“There are probably some people in this room, probably people listening to this podcast perhaps, who are one more bad client or one more bad month away from throwing in the towel. And I was there! I've been there! The thing is, all those problems are fixable."

Feeling frustrated, isolated, or like you’re the only one having a tough time with your business? You’re not alone—far from it, in fact! Here are the most common problems Nathan sees with coaching clients:

• Stabilizing your financial world with recurring revenue and other income fixes.
• Detecting and fencing in bad clients so they don't wreck the rest of your business.
• Improving your personal productivity so that you’re actually getting stuff done when you need to.

Be sure to tune in to hear the details of Nathan’s work with iThemes, some stories from his days as a pastor, some of the strangest industries he’s learned about through his clients, and more, all in this episode!

Links:

Nathan’s training webinars at iThemes

Nathan’s website

@nathaningram on Twitter

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After graduating from university with a degree in Computer Science, and after a year of freelancing, Colin decided to launch a digital agency. It was here that he gained first-hand experience in the issue he would eventually solve.

In order to get a sense for his business’s cash flow, Colin first managed his finances in a notebook. Then, he began using a spreadsheet. The problem was, it took hours to enter, calculate and manipulate the data. Needless to say, the process was time-consuming, error-ridden and stressful.

A Cash Flow Forecasting Solution Was Born
Colin believed there had to be a better way to answer the question:

“Do we have enough cash in the bank?”
And this is what Float is for.

Float is a cash flow projection tool that integrates with accounting software Xero and QuickBooks. It takes all the data that you’ve configured and provides you with a clearer picture of your cash flow.

My favourite feature of the app and one I swear has been a game-changer for WP Elevation, is the one that enables you to spin up different scenarios.

Want to hire someone? Want to onboard a new client? Want to expand into selling WordPress Care Plans?

Simply plug-and-play. Float tells you how these changes will affect cash flow.

But Do We Really Need Another Finance App?
Float was built to fill a need that accounting software and three-way cash flow forecasting tools had been unable to.

With accounting software, you can centralise your business’s finances. However, these tools don’t focus on cash flow necessarily. It’s more about automating the collection of data. You still have to put in work to calculate what it means for profit-and-loss as well as cash flow.

Three-way forecasting tools take care of one of these gaps, obviously. But they utilise an indirect forecasting model, which relies on the data you’ve entered into the system. In other words: “We have this Software ABC expense to pay and this recurring payment from Client X we’ll receive in January.”

You can make accurate predictions for the long-term based on what you know, but it won’t tell you what’s in your wallet. If you want to know if you have the money to pay your bills right now, <em>in this very moment</em>, you need a direct forecasting tool like Float.

The Future of Float
As Colin looks towards the future, it’s clear that he’s trying to build something very special, not just for Float users, but for his growing team.

He asks questions like:
“How do we make it a system that anyone can adopt?”
He also doesn’t want to leave behind users who have already have established businesses and want something with more advanced controls. Cash flow forecasting is an issue for everyone, not just a startup or small business owner, after all.

As Float improves for the user, Colin also has his sights set on making Float a positive experience for his team.

“Are people happy? Are we creating a good space?”

These are important questions to ask now as he is currently attempting to hire someone to delegate operational management tasks to.

This is something we touch on again and again. If you’re serious about building and sustaining a successful business, you have to be willing to delegate tasks that aren’t in your wheelhouse.

Having the right environment to welcome them into is just one of the key factors that will enable Colin to land that perfect new hire.

A Special Offer for Our Podcast Listeners
I can’t rave enough about Float, which is why I’m happy to share this special offer with you:

Visit https://www.wpelevation.com/float and get 25% off your first 3 months of Float.

Success is important to us all and cash flow management plays a big part in that. Float has done wonders for WP Elevation’s cash flow forecasting, which is why I’m confident it will help in yours too.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest Nick Cownie, armed with a clinical background, has made a name for himself by distilling a lot of overwrought NLP techniques down to just their most essential components, and he’s here to tell us about how to put them to good use—and tell us a harrowing tale of being kidnapped and left in the desert!

Background

Nick Cownie is a sales psychology consultant, NLP consultant and practitioner based out of Wagga Wagga. Originally trained in traditional Chinese medicine after his health sciences degree, he worked in a clinical setting for fifteen years before moving into NLP. He and his wife were early adopters of the training and coaching methods that are standard today, moving their mindset training services online back when that was unheard of in the field.

A method that matters

In a landscape pretty crowded with models and tools vying for our attention, what’s the big deal about NLP and mindset training? Nick says it matters because it’s so well-equipped to tackle the major problems he sees over and over again for people going into business for themselves:

• Low confidence. Nervousness, anxiety, and impostor syndrome, which all lead to self-sabotage for otherwise talented and capable people.
• Procrastination and lack of discipline. Feeling stuck putting off tasks you know will help you—or only getting stuff done when you really feel like it—majorly holds people back.
• Lack of influence. Being comfortable influencing others—without slipping into inauthenticity, sleaziness and manipulation—is a crucial skill to develop.

Sleaze versus science

Nick says NLP absolutely has a bad reputation with some—and in a lot of cases, it’s totally deserved. A lot of techniques and materials practitioners sell are heavily padded with unnecessary fluff, and there are entire niches of NLP dedicated to using it for manipulative sales, or even manipulation in your personal life.

That said, while his methods pull from a lot of classic NLP frameworks, he shies away from using a lot of their terminology, preferring to stick with the established psychological terms for the same things. While some of the wording around mindset training and mindfulness can get very hokey very quickly, Nick emphasizes that NLP terms like “anchoring” are really just psychologically-standard tools like state elicitation and associative conditioning. They’re about training your brain to stop getting stuck responding to negative stimuli, and start being able to access positive states in a predictable way.

"I'm a pragmatist,” Nick says. “All I'm interested in is results."

Influencing yourself

The trick to fixing your mindset, Nick says, is essentially to get out of your own way.

That means identifying the person you are right now, with all your pros and cons—that’s You, Version One. You have a lot of obstacles in your way—maybe fear of failure, impostor syndrome, lack of discipline—that are stopping you from succeeding.

You, Version Two, is the person who is able to succeed, because they aren’t held back. You need to identify what the differences are between Versions One and Two of yourself, and take action to clear the obstacles and gain the skills you need to bridge that gap.

Obviously, it’s easier said than done—but Nick shares one of his tools with us for getting past your fears. Tune in to learn how to use emotional states and conditioning to instantly access the most confident version of yourself!

Influencing others

Communicating effectively with others is a big part of NLP—and while the basic techniques can be used in a manipulative way, Nick stresses that won’t do you any good, in sales or in life.

Effective, influential communication using NLP tactics can get your genuine message across to clients in a way that’s most likely to reach them.

“You can do that and still be authentic without manipulating anyone,” Nick says, “and do it in a way that's more likely to have them convert if they are the right client.”

He also says that manipulation tactics are really a way of influencing the wrong people—which always comes back to bite you in the end. “You get a bunch of refunds, a bunch of bad reviews—it doesn't really work anyway.”

Nick shares one of his tools with us for learning to influence others in a genuine way—it’s easy to apply in sales settings, and it’s easy to remember, too. He uses this simple four-step acronym:

• F - Focus their attention.
• A - Access emotions.
• S -  Seed potential.
• T - Trigger the response.

An integrated method

Nick pulled a lot of useful knowledge from his time working in Chinese medicine, including a foundational concept called bian-zheng, the process of recognizing patterns in diagnosis. He uses it as a guidepost for recognizing patterns in his own work, and has found it helps him find approaches that work across different contexts and industries.

How to get started

NLT and mindset training are skills, Nick says, just like anything else. There’s no overnight solution, and every tool in the system takes time to be fully effective. He stresses to Troy that every time you show up to work on your skills, even a little, you're improving. But take the pressure off yourself to be a master overnight. Let your incremental progress add up like compound interest, and it will!

Nick is also leaving WPElevation listeners with some freebies—click here to access The Self-Sabotage Solution, which includes an infographic, a voice-guided walk-through of the mindset technique mentioned earlier, and a two-hour training video running through mindset training tools.

You can also reach him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Matt Johnson, of Pursuing Results, is a former WordPress developer who pivoted his business into a podcast production company, and he offers his production services as a full-package, standardized product. He sat down to talk with us about what that means, why it works, how other professionals can implement and scale the product model in their own businesses, and where the future of podcasting is headed.

The Beginning

Matt got his start in WordPress development building a website for a piano studio, and then later built another for his first consulting client, which led him into the world of real estate. From there, he learned the benefits of optimizing teams and processes well enough to able to step back from the day-to-day.

It was also where he first learned about turning something well-known as a service offering, like real estate sales, into a packaged product. The company made real estate transactions into a neat little product that anybody could sell.

He got into podcasting from there, starting out doing webinars for the real estate company—then a coworker pitched him on doing an actual podcast. It was B2B, and they built a lot of strong industry relationships that way—but not much of a business model.

“Initially we had no idea how to monetize it, which we would not recommend, by the way, but that's what we did and it all worked out in the end. But it did take us a longer path to figure out how to monetize. I jumped in without a plan.”

They knew they wanted to be successful influencers, and that his partner wanted to work his way into coaching, so things snowballed from there—and Matt got very good at running podcasts.

Monetizing

Matt and his partner started monetizing by selling online courses and live events, which worked for awhile but burnt them out pretty quickly. His partner moved into a virtual real estate firm, where agents could actually switch their real estate licences over to him and, in exchange for a commission percentage, gain access to all his coaching and training materials for free. This was a highly successful model for him, but it didn’t translate well into industries other than real estate.

Pursuing Results

When Matt ventured into podcasting on his own, he was doing Facebook Live shows fairly regularly, and found that in order to keep up and keep the quality high, he needed help. He assembled a team that would let him focus on the content and the conversation, while handling day-to-day stuff like bookings, backend work and social media. And, well, the team got very good.

When word spread through his podcasting audience about how he was managing to churn out such a high volume of high-quality work, people started asking to effectively rent out his production team. This worked for awhile, but customizing the approach for every single client generated a lot of mixed results, and so Matt and his team got down to standardizing their offering into a clear, defined product that would meet client needs and deliver, well, results.

Podcasts As a product

For Matt and PursuingResults, specializing their service down into a packaged-up product offering—that is, a clearly-defined service designed to meet a particular need, with minimal customization—has been hugely successful. Matt stresses that, while less customization might seem limiting at first, the reality is anything but.

“We're not saying hey, go ahead and fit your round peg into my square hole, because it's easier for me to deliver, because I want to take more time off on Friday afternoons. It's not about that. It's about starting with the ideal client and what gets them the best results. It's starting with a methodology and finding an ideal result, and then going out and finding as many of those ideal clients as possible, and giving them that exact methodology. To me, that's actually serving them at a higher level.”

Matt’s tips for moving from product to service:

1. Let go of the ego. Your clients think their problems are completely unique; you think your services are completely unique, but it most cases, neither of those things are really true.
2. Find your ideal client. Who are you best equipped to serve? What kind of client are you very good at delivering to—and, for that matter, very excited to deliver to?
3. Find the process for that client. Once you know what kind of client you want to work for, nail down the exact, specific processes that will meet these clients’ particular needs best and deliver the very best results.
4. Find and market to those specific clients. Find your niche, and own your niche. When your work is highly specialized, you gain access to tight-knit networks of similar clients, and their testimonials about your product will connect well with others in the niche.

Process

As he gets more and more hands-off with his production company, turning more day-to-day responsibilities over to his team, Matt has a defined approach for making sure everyone is still turning out great results. He calls it “I do it, we do it, you do it.” It’s pretty simple: Initially, he goes through all the processes himself, documenting as he goes. Then, he goes through them together with his team, tweaking where necessary and making things as clear as possible so that everyone can understand the system. Only when the processes are optimized and clear to everyone does he move to the handoff, a.k.a. the “you do it” stage, where team members can follow the process themselves with no trouble.

The other part of assuring quality, for him, is continuously applying and revisiting processes. He and his team make heavy use of checklists in Trello, and if any deviation from the standard procedure needs to happen, they update the list to account for it. When mistakes happen, his first step is always to refer back to the process. If it was followed correctly and a mistake still happened, the process needs fixing. If it wasn’t followed correctly, then it was human error—and the process still needs fixing. Matt really believes in using systems and processes to account for natural human behaviour, rather than leaning on the unreasonable assumption that everyone on his team will be giving it 100%, forty hours a week, every single week.

What’s Next For Podcasts?

Matt says he’s seen podcasting go through a few different phases. First, the agency phase, where lots and lots of podcast production agencies popped up to do customized, end-to-end, hands-off production delivery, or as he calls it, the Done-For-You model. Next came the DIY wave, where podcast producers went the route of selling courses and tutorials to teach clients how they could make their own podcasts from scratch, with their own people and their own equipment—the Do It Yourself model.

So what comes after DIY? Matt thinks it’s a bit of a blend: the Done-With-You model, as he calls it, where companies seeking to leverage podcasts for their businesses will want to train one person on their teams to manage podcasts as part of their overall branding and social media. He thinks the podcast production company’s role will be to bring in training, tools and systems to these businesses so that they can bring their podcasting in-house, with a promise of producer support along the way.

You can check out what Matt does at Pursuing Results, or find him on Twitter @PursingResults.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week's guest, Dave Foy is nothing short of an icon in WordPress design circles, and he’s pretty popular with us here at WP Elevation. Despite his humble beginnings as an HTML hobbyist in the late 90s, he’s made a serious name for himself as an instructor with his Design Build Web online courses and YouTube tutorials. Tune in to hear exactly how Dave found his success.

Background

Dave started out as a teacher in his early twenties, mostly teaching primary school kids. He enjoyed the actual teaching part, but he struggled a lot with the bureaucracy in schools, as well as the impermanence. Programs were frequently abandoned and replaced, kids were constantly moving on to new classes, and he hated not being able to see things through until they were finished.

Leap of Faith #1

Dave felt a need to actually make things. He wanted to make real finished products that would exist  (well, real online). Products that he could show to people. And he’d had more bureaucracy than he could take. So in 2003 he took a serious leap of faith—a bit of a recurring theme for him—and plunged into the world of web design. With a coding background left over from his days making websites for his band back in the late nineties—a familiar story for a lot of entrepreneurs—Dave was able to upgrade his skills, and he worked successfully as a web designer for around fifteen years.

Things weren’t perfect though, and he found himself returning periodically to teaching. He missed the work, but he still hated the bureaucracy and did several stints as a volunteer and a supply teacher, but ultimately found the problems that had driven him away were just getting worse over time.

Teamwork

Things weren’t so great on the dev side of things either as time went on. Dave found that it was getting hard to find jobs that he was really interested in, and even harder to find jobs he could actually charge enough for. On top of that, he hated marketing, which seemed to be the only way to solve his problems.

So around 2010 he began working with his friend, Gareth, and the two learnt a lot from each other. Gareth was the kind of guy who would learn about new tools and ideas and jump right into implementing them straight away, while Dave tended to weigh his options for a lot longer first.

Their skills complemented each other—and more than that, Dave learned about how taking risks could lead to serious success. He learnt that marketing wasn’t all sleaziness and tricks when it was done right. This partnership set him on the path to his next big move.

Leap of Faith #2

Things were going really well, but Dave had an idea around 2015 that he couldn’t ignore: how could he combine his love of teaching and his love of web design in a way that made sense? As you can probably guess, he decided to build WordPress courses. However, starting from zero, all on his own was a real risk. A serious, throw-the-cards-in-the-air, burn-the-ships risk.

Luckily, Dave’s partner Vicki trusted him and his vision. And that’s really what it was - Dave didn’t have a formal business plan with specific targets and numbers; he just had a vision of an audience whose needs he could meet. Armed with that, he dove in.

Building Real Relationships

The heart of Dave’s business model was his email list, and he built it up from there. Inspired in part by Pat Flynn’s book, “Will It Fly?”, he focused on really engaging with his specific audience and finding out how to deliver them what they wanted.

Dave had already identified his specific niche: non-coders who were creative and wanted to learn. He knew that thanks to the advent of new tools like Elementor, making websites was more accessible than it’s ever been and he wanted to empower people to get started.

Where Was the Money Coming From?

Starting a new venture is a big risk for any entrepreneur, but it was especially big for Dave. He hadn’t saved much in advance to prepare for the leap; on the contrary, he and his partner had to seriously skimp on their expenses to make ends meet while things were getting going.

The one ace Dave had up his sleeve was an old, loyal client from his solo dev days, the only one he still worked with, who was effectively willing to pay him a retainer of between 500 and 1000 pounds a month. Even with that, though, Dave and Vicki had to cash out a life insurance policy to get by while Dave made his vision a reality.

Inaction…and Then Lots of Action

The good news was that people were really interested in the Elementor course! Dave got to work on developing it, knowing there was an audience waiting. However, the struggles with his own perfectionism dragged it behind schedule. Then he realised that a lot of people in his target audience actually needed help with WordPress itself, which led him to develop a prerequisite course to deliver some WordPress fundamentals.

Dave planned to knock the course out in two weeks, but it managed to expand into an eight-month process. He did very little marketing for it, and was dragging his heels a lot on the release, as perfectionists often do…but then he kicked himself into gear, pulling three all-nighters in a row, and managed to hammer out a Black Friday release.

You’ll want to tune in to hear Troy’s jaw drop at the actual sales numbers Dave made on the course after that—but suffice to say they were pretty worth it.

Validation

Dave saw his vision—and the investment he’d made into his audience relationships—pay off in a major way, and he’d done it without resorting to the sleazy, grabby marketing tactics he was so averse to. He sees this as serious support for the methods he used and the risks he took—and engaging continuously with his user base is a major part of his formula for success.

What’s Next

Dave plans to streamline and automate his course launch processes with an Evergreen system—and he’s working on a new course on sales funnels that’s coming out later in October. He has high hopes for reaching his audience with a skill he knows they need; just as his No-Stress WordPress course was aimed at web development for non-web-developers, the new course will essentially be marketing for non-marketers.

• Identify your skills.
• Find an audience who needs those skills.
• Build relationships with that audience.
• Deliver content that adds genuine value for them.
• Keep listening, engaging and delivering![/wpecallout]

Beyond that, Dave says the real trouble for him these days is keeping his ideas under control, because he has more right now than he knows what to do with. He’s also making his solo operation a little less solo, having finally brought a few more people on board to support him.

Links

Design Build Web, Dave Foy’s online WordPress resource.

Follow him on Twitter @designbuildweb

Will It Fly? By Pat Flynn

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Profit First: A Lesson Learned
The recording above is a lengthy one, but I’ll try to do it justice by summarizing the essential bits for you here. Be sure to watch it in full as Mike not only digs into his history as an entrepreneur but also tells the story of what motivated him to begin writing books about profit. I suspect many of you will have experienced similar lessons of your own at some point.

Mike’s Story
Money matters a great deal in the grand scheme of success… so why do many business owners handle it so poorly?

Take Mike, for example. Over the course of his career as an entrepreneur, he owned and sold over a dozen businesses. His first two sales netted him a good profit, but he let his arrogance and ignorance dictate his next moves… which ultimately led to his downfall.

“I thought I was god’s gift to entrepreneurship and became a dick.”

As a result, he lost everything after 10 new businesses he hastily launched as an Angel investor all collapsed.

How Insomnia Inspired a New Start
After informing his family that he’d lost everything, he sank into a dark period where depression, drinking and insomnia became a part of his daily routine.

But it was a late-night fitness program on a local public broadcasting station that inspired a major turnaround.

As he listened to the fitness guru talk about how to develop a strategy that works, he realized how similar physical fitness and fiscal fitness are. Unlike what we’re often taught about having to make major shifts in order to see any gains, this fitness guru spouted a whole new mindset and approach entirely:

A monumental shift will only hamper progress. It’s small consecutive steps that ultimately lead to better outcomes.

During our chat, Mike referenced Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, a book written by Chip and Dan Heath. In it, they explain how one experiment proved that lowering the bar can actually help people reach their goals as opposed to keeping the bar unrealistically and unattainably high.

With 83% of businesses failing to achieve profitability, Mike similarly works on helping entrepreneurs to readjust their mindset in order to turn that around.

A Profit First Formula
Mike tells us that the main reason why businesses fail is that entrepreneurs don’t prioritize profitability.

This is the formula many business owners use to assess their fiscal health:

Sales - Expenses = Profit

But this leaves them focused on how much money they’re spending. How much sales outreach to do. How much time to commit to marketing. How many shiny new software subscriptions to buy. Without a laser-trained focus on profit--which some will leave until the end of the year to review--it’s easy to lose sight of the health of one’s business.

This is why the formula needs to be:

Sales - Profit = Expenses

If you’re willing to put your profits first, you’ll also be more willing to commit to actions that make them change for the better.

The 5 Foundational Accounts a Profit First Business Needs
Mike suggests that entrepreneurs break their company’s finances into five foundational accounts:

Income: This is the revenue your business generates. You are never to “eat” directly from this account. Always dole out the correct percentages to the accounts below--and in the order in which they appear. You’ll then draw from them for those express purposes.

Profit: This is the percentage of the money you set aside as a “reward” for taking the risk to launch and successfully manage your business. Never use this to pay for your personal expenses.

Owner’s comp: This is the percentage of the money you pay yourself as a salary. It is what will fund your lifestyle, so calculate this correctly.

Tax: Everyone owes money to the government at some point in the year. Create a dedicated account where you set aside the correct percentage. And keep it safe!

OpEx: You may not have many operating expenses as a WordPress consultant, but they still must factor into the equation. Allocate a percentage of your income that should go to this.

Wrap-Up
Why does any of this matter? If you have enough in your bank account to cover your living expenses and take the occasional vacation, doesn’t that make your business profitable?

Here’s the truth: you might be able to get by with that mentality, but it won’t be enough. As Mike said:

“We feel that we need to be struggling.”

But that’s erroneous thinking on our part. Customers want to work with stable businesses that will be around for the long haul. If you’re not taking care of your fiscal health and sustaining high levels of profitability (and not just eking by), how can you expect to take care of anyone else?

For those of you who aren’t sure you have what it takes to run a profit first business, take a look at Profit First Professionals. Mike and his team of accountants, bookkeepers and coaches guide business owners like yourselves towards healthier profitability.

And even if you decide you don’t need a trainer, I would implore you to pick up a copy of his book. I’ve used it in my own mission to improve WP Elevation (as well as myself) and believe the lessons contained within it are invaluable.

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However is getting your life together really a matter of finding the right app to do it for you? Entrepreneur Adam Jelic doesn’t think so. In an increasingly app-focused market, Adam has found success with his line of artfully-designed goal-setting stationery. Good old-fashioned paper stationery.

Unconventional goals

Originally from Melbourne, Adam Jelic founded goal-centric stationery company MiGoals in 2010 out of his garage - in true entrepreneurial fashion.

It's a bit ironic that becoming a professional planner wasn’t what he originally set out to do. First, Adam took some graphic design classes, had his try at professional soccer, enrolled in and promptly dropped out of university and worked a series of odd jobs.

It wasn't until after he got married, started building a house from scratch, and found out he and his wife were expecting their first child that he landed on his golden idea.

You could say he’s a man who thrives under pressure. Not content with the “safe” life plan his parents had set out for him—school, more school, and lifelong job security—Adam got comfortable with being uncomfortable from an early age, and decided that taking a few creative risks was well worth it.

The Art of Ambition

Growing up, Adam was surrounded by people who shied away from big, bold ambitions. He was raised with a strong awareness of barriers—namely, that you needed to start with money and connections, and if you didn’t have those, you’d be better off playing it safe.

Adam wasn’t buying it. He set out to prove to his family and friends that it was possible for him to do bigger and better things—all he needed was a plan.

“People would say, ‘Stop dreaming! You're a dreamer—get back to reality.’ I was always battling the people around me, to say it was possible to do something.”

This determination was what got him fixated on goal-setting as a process, and he drew further inspiration from sources like Steve Jobs and Jim Stynes to help cement his ambition.

Do You Need More RAM?

So what makes Adam’s MiGoals stationery such a big deal? Mostly, the philosophy behind it. MiGoals planners aren’t just a place to write down your to-do list—it’s a personal coach on paper. Built into each diary is a space for setting your goals, and then taking time to revisit them every single month. By building regular check-ins into the system, Adam has designed the planners to be a far cry from the classic set-it-and-forget-it New Year’s resolutions we’re all too familiar with.

He uses the acronym RAM—reflect, acknowledge, move. A lack of reflection, he says, is a big part of why so many people let their ambitions get away from them. If you aren’t revisiting your goals, checking in on your progress and planning your next moves, it can be easy to get off-track. MiGoals builds the RAM check-in right into its day planner, to help users get into the habit of goal assessment.

“Life takes over, there's too much noise, we get distracted. And I think what it is is that we're overstimulated. Something new pops up all the time. We're looking for a quick fix, and we don't realize that it takes a lot of work and a lot of willpower.”

How To Troubleshoot Your Goals

Adam also gives Troy some advice on getting better at sticking with planning tools. It can be tough for anyone to stay focused and motivated enough to keep up with a daily planner, but Adam stresses that it’s all about building momentum.

He says not to worry too much about not getting everything done on your to-do list—instead, really take the time to prioritize. Figure out what would be nice to get done, sure, but pare it down to which tasks each week are crucial to advancing toward your goals, and go from there. He also says it’s key to block out some dedicated time every week to do your planning, instead of trying to cram it in at random times when you’re busy and distracted.

What’s Next

So, what kind of goals does a professional goal-setter have? MiGoals’ products are currently available in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the US, and Adam hopes to expand into Asian markets soon as well. Long-term, he’s still uncertain about venturing into more high-tech solutions, but he is interested in expanding into tools for children, health and fitness goals—and on an even grander scale, he shares his ideas for a MiGoals concept store, a one-stop life organisation shop.

Resources

Steve Jobs’ “Connecting the Dots” commencement speech

“Heroes” by Jim Stynes, Jon Carnegie and Paul Currie

MiGoals official website

The Eisenhower Matrix

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A Brief Background for Monique Dubbelman
Monique Dubbelman has played a role in design for a few decades now. Back in the late ‘80s, she trained to be a graphical engineer. That role eventually led to management positions in the print industry, which eventually gave way to the digital world we all know and work in now.

After print died down, Monique made a decision to move away, both literally and figuratively, from her work. She moved to the countryside in the Netherlands about 15 years ago and built her own webshop for organic gardening. And this was just the start.

Life Before the Blueprint
Monique officially began building websites with BOE!media in 2011. While she was happy working as a designer and a builder, she found that her business model was not scalable. She was working on demand and compromising on price for the small business clients she worked for.

So, she began looking for the next phase of her career.

It was at that time when Beaver Builder pointed her in the direction of WP Elevation and the Blueprint program. She was skeptical at first though, saying:

“You get lots of opportunities and big promises [from programs like these], so I was a bit sceptical in the beginning.”

Skeptical of the Blueprint
It’s not uncommon that we encounter people who are skeptical of the Blueprint.

For WordPress professionals and consultants that are in a tough spot - feeling burned out, overloaded, and bleeding money - the investment in WP Elevation might seem like an unwise choice. However, once they start looking at what they get in return, it’s when that skepticism will begin to fade away.

That’s exactly what happened for Monique. After examining the Blueprint further, she asked herself, “Will this help me get the right mindset and actually do the work?”

The answer was, “Yes”.

Making Positive Changes with the Blueprint
As Monique so deftly pointed out, the Blueprint program works because it motivates Elevators to actually use the tools and strategies provided to them. Although Monique only began the Blueprint about six months ago, she’s already been able to make positive changes to her business.

Here are some ways in which the Blueprint has helped her:

• She did away with clients that didn’t fit well with the new way of working.
• Other clients who didn’t understand the value of her services left on their own accord, leaving her free to connect with better clients.
• The free giveaway guide inspired her to bring some of her ebooks out of retirement and put them back into circulation.
• She has used a number of tools and materials provided by the Blueprint, translated them for her audience, and really made them work for her specific business.

While she has gone through the Blueprint and made big strides with what she’s done so far, she continues to return to it to find new ways to improve her workflow and make it work for her clients.

Her Take on the Community
The WP Elevation community has proven to be a welcoming environment for Monique to trust in as she hones her business model.

As she explained in the podcast, everyone in the community is open and stands on equal footing, no matter how long they’ve been at this. And because it’s okay to be vulnerable and talk about the bad as much as the good, it has encouraged her to do more with the Blueprint.

Monique's accountability partner has also been helpful in motivating her to work through it. Hers happens to live near her in the Netherlands and they meet (by video chat now) every two to three weeks. They talk about what they’ve been doing as well as plans for the future, supporting each other along the way.

Favourite Tools
There are two tools Monique gives a special shout-out to.

The first is ManageWP. As she explained, she’s now hired someone to handle the maintenance side of her business. However, she still really enjoys how easy ManageWP has made it to care for multiple client websites at once.

She also is a big fan of Beaver Builder, the company that referred her to WP Elevation in the first place. While she’s spent a lot of time exploring page builders, in general, she appreciates Beaver Builder’s continued embrace of web developers as users. As other builders move further away from web development in the hopes of making more universally user-friendly tools (ahem… Gutenberg), Beaver Builder is one that continues to support the way she prefers to work.

A Personal Approach to the Blueprint
That’s one of the key things Monique has gotten from the Blueprint: the fact that you don’t have to grow your business in the same direction as everyone else. You can use it to improve your workflow, but do it in a way that makes sense for the way that you want to work.

Although she was tempted to get carried away with the Blueprint at first, she quickly realised that she needed to consider what was the most important to her. Then, she could take those elements from the Blueprint and put them to work.

As such, she still works on her own and doesn’t have any major plans for expansion. While she outsources maintenance to someone else (because it’s something she dislikes), she’s reluctant to hand over the design piece as it’s something she’s always had a passion for.

Wrap-Up
In the near future, Monique plans to do more strategic one-on-one work, which means that she may have to outsource that piece eventually.

For now, she’s designing her business the way she wants to with the Blueprint. We hope other Elevators are encouraged by this who may feel intimidated by others whose aspirations appear larger or more impressive in scope than their own. The future looks different for everyone and you can shape it however you see fit with the Blueprint.

P.S. We've created a 10% discount code for the listeners of the WPE podcast. Simply add the code GOELEVATE upon payment of the Blueprint course. The deal is valid until the 21st September 2018.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• the best way to overcome fear of failure is by taking action
• guest blogging and speaking at events is hard work - but worth it
• being helpful is the only way to grow and succeed

Elevation Round Answers

Here are Alex's answers to the questions in our Elevation round. Watch the interview to get the full scoop.

1. Learn to say “no”
2. Live event on the roof!
3. I don’t think about “competing”
4. Bespoke, unique and sell trust
5. Google docs - Wrike - Boomerang for Gmail - Trello
6. Stay on top and stay ahead of the client
7. Events, events, events
8. Find your niche

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A Brief Intro to Jamie Hill
Jamie Hill considers himself a dad (to three kids, two dogs, and two cats) first and a business owner second. He and his wife partnered together six years ago to purchase and operate iNovate Marketing, a web design and marketing agency. While it’s seen lots of success in that time, it wasn’t allowing Jamie to focus on his top priority very well.

Before the Blueprint
Like the influencers he follows (Gary Vaynerchuk and Grant Cardone), Jamie was all about the grind before signing up for the Blueprint course. As you can imagine, 16 hours of work a day, 3 hours of sleep every night, and making time for the family in between can only lead to one thing:

Burnout.

When Jamie first encountered WP Elevation, he worried that his business wasn’t the target audience as many of the webinars seemed to be geared towards freelancers and small agencies. His company, on the other hand, was well-established, had 20 or so employees, and was quite profitable at the time. But something had to change.

After consulting with his wife, she wholeheartedly encouraged him to sign up for WP Elevation. Four years later, Jamie is now in a position where he’s able to slow down, step back from running the business, and take time to focus on his family… all while the company continues to be profitable.

100% Completion of the Blueprint
Upon joining the Blueprint course, Jamie realized how complex all of the processes in his company were.

Throughout the six-week program and with the help of the coaches, he was able to quickly implement about half of the material and bring major changes to the way his company was run. He then took time to complete the course and work with his team of designers to implement the changes that would drastically improve their workflows.

As he explains in the podcast, the self-pacing of Blueprint is one of the best parts of the program. It allows you to take what you need from it at the right time. And, once you realise how beneficial the processes, organisational tips, and tools are, you’ll save a ton of time and money while making your life exponentially easier.

A Valuable Lesson Learned
One of the most common WordPress consultant fears is:

“What will happen if I get sick or injured and I can’t work for some time?”

Jamie says that a Mastermind workshop led by Troy helped him through this particular situation a year-and-a-half ago when he became too ill to work. He stepped away from the business for three months and left it in the hands of his team who effectively managed it on their own.

Years ago, however, Jamie never would have been able to do this as he exerted tight control over his company and was too afraid to give his team the freedom to work on their own. As Troy explained, it’s important to let go and allow them to fail. If you can’t trust that they’ll pick themselves back up and fix their errors, how will they ever learn?

The Community
Jamie is one of our members who really thrives in the WP Elevation community. Not only is it a resource he trusts greatly and continues to learn from on a regular basis, but he actively seeks out opportunities to mentor freelancers trying to make big moves with their own businesses.

Jamie’s Favorite Tools
There are a number of tools from the program that have made a big impact on Jamie’s business.

• The bonus content dripped out during the course was immensely helpful (and a welcome addition since he found himself impatiently waiting for the next modules to arrive).
• He’s a big fan of the web auditing system for his marketing work.
• His wife and design team have adopted Beaver Builder as their go-to WordPress tool (having previously relied on Genesis and Divi).

Wrap-Up
As Troy often explains, it’s best to hire people who are smarter than you, rather than waste your time trying to learn something you’re not very good at. As such, Jamie has recently hired someone to manage the day-to-day of iNovate MarketingMarketing for him. It’s saved him money, time, and unnecessary headaches while enabling the company to provide better quality work to clients.

With this free time, he aims to launch a white label process for small agency partners who need help delivering on marketing and SEO services to clients.

We always love seeing what sort of passion projects the Blueprint has enabled our members to get involved in. This one, in particular, is very exciting as it will help many others in the WordPress community do better work and make more money in the process!

P.S. We've created a 10% discount code for the listeners of the WPE podcast. Simply add the code GOELEVATE upon payment of the Blueprint course. The deal is valid until the 21st September 2018.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Brief Introduction to Shane Syddall
Shane Syddall unofficially entered the digital marketing space nine years ago when he began designing websites for clients. The number of clients who asked for help outside of web design was increasing, so he pivoted his business three years ago to focus on digital marketing services such as SEO.

He currently owns and operates Sparta Digital which brings digital marketing and web design services to small businesses looking to compete with enterprises.

Before the Blueprint Course
As Shane explains in the podcast, he began his career in coding. That’s what he excelled at and so the business management piece was something he struggled with before the Blueprint. It was so hard for him, in fact, that he had to take money from his family in order to put food on the table.

There were a number of reasons why Shane struggled in the beginning:

1. He didn’t charge enough for his services.
2. He wasn’t putting together good proposals.
3. He was attracting low-paying and low-quality clients and accepting any and everyone.

As he felt himself on the brink of giving up until someone suggested he look into WP Elevation and the Blueprint course. He had seen ads for it, but hadn’t given it any serious consideration previously. He assumed it would be too expensive and only make things worse, but he was desperate. So, he decided to give it a shot and, if it didn’t work, he’d throw in the towel completely.

“How wrong was I?!” he said.

How the Blueprint Has Changed Everything
Although Shane has yet to fully complete the Blueprint course, his business has exploded (in a good way) over a very short period of time.

In just two months with the Blueprint, Shane quadrupled his business and he’s been able to maintain those levels of success for the last three months.

How has he done this so quickly? Well, he attributes it to a number of things.

To start, there’s the website worksheet (which you can download here). This enabled him to weed out the cheap clients he used to attract.

Then, he learned how to create professional proposals (you can download a proposal template here). This gave his business a refined edge and more readily convinced high-quality clients that he was a legit marketer and web designer.

He’s also since learned that it’s okay to say “no” to clients that don’t fit.

All of this success and influx of cash, has now enabled him to delegate much of the work he was doing on his own before to three new hires: a web developer, a marketing student, and a writer. And the WP Elevation course has encouraged him to push himself even harder, so he now works with a business coach.

And Speaking of Coaches…
Since Shane has been too busy running a very busy and successful company since implementing the Blueprint, he hasn’t had time yet to try any of the tools available through the course. That said, he finds that the quality of coaching and community support have been more than valuable in that respect.

In addition to attending webinars led by our highly knowledgeable coaches, he also finds the feedback and support he gets from the community to be a huge help in his business’s growth.

Lessons Learned
When asked what words of wisdom he’d give someone mulling the decision to join WP Elevation, Shane said, “Just do it.”

Wrap-Up
Shane’s advice may seem simple enough, but the story he has shared with us is not. Look at where he was just a few years ago to what he’s been able to accomplish in just a few month’s time. As he quickly discovered, finding the right mentor to help guide you in smarter directions can make a world of difference for your business.

We look forward to staying in touch with Shane and to see where his next implementations of the Blueprint take him.

P.S. We've created a 10% discount code for the listeners of the WPE podcast. Simply add the code GOELEVATE upon payment of the Blueprint course. The deal is valid until the 21st September 2018.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Bit About Bret Phillips
Bret Phillips began (like so many of us do in this space) believing he could launch a full-service agency and handle it all on his own. As we all know, however, that can be a very difficult feat to pull off.

Eventually, he decided to scale his Web Devils agency back to something smaller and more focused; specifically, it became a custom WordPress development business.

It wasn’t until he entered the Blueprint program and got his company, pricing, and processes under control that he was able to merge it with Sideways8, an Atlanta-based digital marketing agency that does it all. He now uses Blueprint to refine processes for his business as well as for Sideways8.

Life Before Blueprint
As Bret summed it up:

“Life was hard.”

Prior to implementing the Blueprint into his business, Bret and his small team of contractors were getting by with only just enough revenue. Their agency only handled WordPress development projects, which meant no recurring revenue and constantly having to hunt down new work.

A Plan for Escape
A few years ago, Bret encountered an ad for WP Elevation. The offer was tempting: pay $1 for the first month of access, then switch to a monthly payment plan.

Having a deep appreciation for self-guided resources, Bret intended on signing up, downloading everything he could from the Blueprint, and then cancelling his membership. He soon realized, however, that there was a lot of value not only in the materials provided by Blueprint but in being involved in the program and community itself. In fact, the community is what kept him around after he completed his first run through the Blueprint.

Life with the Blueprint
The first major “aha!” moment Bret had was early on in the course.

Interested to see how these step-by-step guides would help, he used the Blueprint to prepare a bid for a prospective client. He sent the bid with a quote three times higher than normal. Using the anti-follow-up, he landed the job. He continued to find value in the Blueprint as he used it to build the client’s website and, in turn, made a good profit from it.

As he said:

“This stuff actually works.”

These days, Bret utilises the Blueprint the way he does one of his favourite books, the 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Each year, he revisits them in the hopes of finding something that he missed in previous go-throughs. Doing this allows him to pick up on new things as the context of his life and business change.

The Blueprint helped him continue to refine business processes and set higher prices. He now has a recurring revenue model that works and a dedicated team handling parts of the business that isn’t in his wheelhouse.

Welcome to the Community
Having been a member of the WP Elevation community for a few years, Bret has done much more than engage with other Elevators through the forum and Facebook group. He has attended Mavericks Masterminds and WordCamps, too, where he has made both personal and professional connections.

In addition, he’s found talent from within the WP Elevation group. As he explained, the great thing about working with other Elevators is that they already understand the processes you use as well and how to talk to people the right way.

In general, he’s really happy to be a part of the WordPress and WP Elevation communities. With everyone so positive, welcoming, and supportive, he believes this to be a group of people who are truly committed to seeing everyone walk away as winners.

Favourite Tools
Sideways8’s founder launched 48-in-48, an initiative that brings together marketing and web development talent with the goal of building 48 websites for 48 non-profits in just 48 hours.

As such, Bret and his team have had to identify ways in which they can work faster and smarter. One of the tools he’s gained a greater insight into since starting the Blueprint was the Beaver Builder page builder. With this tool (not just the plugins, but the themes too) Bret has been able to change his company’s entire process flow for the better.

Wrap-Up
It’s always interesting to see our Elevators enter the Blueprint course at different stages of their careers. As we’ve seen in the case of Bret, the takeaways are still the same - work smarter, focus on delivering more value, get the support you need, even if implementation happens a little differently.

P.S. We've created a 10% discount code for the listeners of the WPE podcast. Simply add the code GOELEVATE upon payment of the Blueprint course. The deal is valid until the 21st September 2018.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Introducing Peter Freeman… Again
Peter Freeman is no stranger to the WP Elevation podcast. He first made an appearance back in episode 36. He joined Troy in this latest episode - the first one ever filmed live in the Silence Is Golden studio - to talk about his experience as the Director of Digital at an Australia-based tourism marketing agency. (How is that for a niche?)

Why Tourism Marketing?
Woof Media didn’t initially begin life as a tourism marketing agency. The fact of the matter is, being located in a big tourist area like Port Lincoln is what really set them on that path towards niching down as they attracted more and more tourism clients.

Peter (his business partner) and Naomi (the founder of Woof Media) had to make a decision when Peter decided to move to Canada. They met with a business advisor, took a look at their client list at the time (which was about 70% tourism clients), and talked about who it was they really wanted to work for.

It ended up being resoundingly in favour of tourism.

In addition to knowing the industry very well - having done so much work for it over the years - they found it was actually quite easy to find clients in the space. Tourism conferences alone proved to be a great opportunity to network.

The highly specific niche they’ve carved out for themselves has made them the clear choice over other marketing agencies that work as generalists or really haven’t taken the time to understand the unique needs of tourism marketing. As Peter explained:

“We know and live the same challenges as our clients. We make it our job to understand what the industry looks like from their perspective.”

Tools to Manage a Distributed Team and Clients
Peter now works from Canada while his business partner is in Adelaide and their support personnel are located in Port Lincoln. Needless to say, communication tools play a big part in their operational success. Here are some of the ones they can’t live without:

• Google Apps
• Adobe Creative Suite
• Zoom
• Slack
• WORK[etc]

Not only have these tools proven to be effective in bridging the physical gaps between team members, but they’ve proven useful in terms of client communication too. In fact, these tools have become yet another way in which Woof Media adds value to clients’ lives, introducing yet more solutions that work for the tourism industry.

Accept That You’re Not Excellent at Everything
The #1 piece of advice Peter would give himself five years ago?

“Don’t try to do it all yourself.”

When your business is brand new, of course, you’re reluctant to delegate work to others. This is your baby and you want to coddle it for as long as you can. But there comes a point where delegation is no longer optional.

For Peter, he knew it was time when things started to break, projects were taking longer, and he was having more “I’m sorry” conversations with clients.

Sure, delegating tasks to others costs money… and it can be frustrating and even a little nerve-wracking leaving parts of your business in others’ hands. But the time you spend trying to learn a new skill can be costly and frustrating, too. If your attention is best directed at higher value tasks (as Peter learned once he began to delegate), why wait to do it?

Wrap-Up
It’s always a pleasure talking to our Elevators about their unique experiences in business. Peter’s perspective from the Australian tourism marketing space is certainly an interesting one to learn about - especially in person.

P.S. We've created a 10% discount code for the listeners of the WPE podcast. Simply add the code GOELEVATE upon payment of the Blueprint course. The deal is valid until the 21st September 2018.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Introducing Jasmine Andrews
Jasmine launched her business (now dubbed Brain Candy Consulting) back in 2011, around the time her first child was born. She didn’t have much experience inside of WordPress aside from personal projects she used it for, but she was able to leverage it in one of her first major projects.

Her Big Break
Jasmine’s first client (a referral from her technical writing days) wanted help updating a book and converting it to Kindle format. She then turned her attention to boosting sales of it on their website. At the time, customers were only able to purchase one book per session, which, as you can imagine, can be detrimental to the user experience and to the company’s conversion rates.

Jasmine knew there had to be a better solution, so she taught herself how to use WooCommerce and PHP. Although she was nervous that she didn’t know what she was doing, the results of her work proved otherwise.

At launch, the website (which now had a shopping cart capable of handling multiple purchases) generated $10,000 more in sales than usual.

From Burnout to Blueprint
As happens to many of us, Jasmine began to make and repeat mistakes in her work and eventually experienced burnout as a result of working too much and not charging enough for her efforts.

After a couple years of her revenue being in the red, she entered the Blueprint course, ready to turn things around.

In particular, it was the Go Wide Go Deep method that changed her approach to business. It made her realise that it was the consulting piece - getting to know clients, understanding their needs, helping them build the perfect site - that she really loved. And so she added paid discovery and audit services to her offering (which had only been traditional web design services prior).

Whether clients came in just for the smaller ticket items, or transitioned to larger projects, Jasmine was making much more money and with a lot less work. Her success ultimately boiled down to the following points:

• She was providing a service that she really loved.
• She was targeting a niche that she was passionate about (content-driven non-profits).
• She was no longer charging based on the time or resources used, but on the value, she was delivering to clients.
• Consulting proved to be her perfect sweet spot.

The Power of the WP Elevation Community
Jasmine has put the WP Elevation community to good use and on a variety of platforms. She’s made use of:

• The accountability partner
• The public and private chat groups
• The Facebook group

These are places for her to not only share her own struggles and wins but to help others get to where they want or need to be. And, as she mentioned in the podcast, people generally aren’t this transparent or honest in the real world, which makes it much easier to connect with others’ journeys. Because of this, Jasmine views it as an environment that helps everyone grow and win with WordPress.

A Case Study
There’s a story that Jasmine tells towards the end of the podcast that makes for a great lesson about what can happen when you go above and beyond for your clients. You’ll have to listen to the podcast in full to get this entire case study, but the gist of it is as follows:

Jasmine delivered HUGE results on a project that was originally supposed to be a month of training and support in WordPress. However, she was only able to produce these results because of the approach she took with the Go Wide Go Deep method.

With four weeks to complete the project, she spent two of them asking questions about what they wanted from the site and how they were going to provide services to customers. Once the user research and empathy mapping was done, she was able to hop into Divi and help them get their new site up by the four-week deadline.

What the client got, as a result, brought massive changes not just to how they viewed their website, but also to how their internal processes worked. She saw the site as something beyond just aesthetic marketing. Because of this, she helped them transform it into the important business tool that it should be and gave the client much more than they had bargained for.

Wrap-Up
There’s so much we can learn from one another in this space if we only just take the time to be open about our experiences. I’m really grateful to Jasmine for joining me in this podcast as her story is one that I think a lot of Elevators (and even those on the fence about joining) can learn from.

P.S. We've created a 10% discount code for the listeners of the WPE podcast. Simply add the code GOELEVATE upon payment of the Blueprint course. The deal is valid until the 21st September 2018.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Brief Introduction to Kirk Deis
Kirk Deis is the founder and CEO of Treehouse 51, a digital marketing agency based out of Newport Beach, California. Although the company is relatively young, Kirk and his team have already experienced many of the issues that most of us in the web development and marketing space face with clients.

This is how The Bug Squasher came to be.

The Bug Squasher Origin Story
Kirk was building a website for a client who happened to be an older woman that had very little knowledge of computers. So, when she encountered a problem with the website that Kirk had built, she wrote a tremendously lengthy email to spell out the problem.

There were a number of problems with this:

• The 10,000+ single-spaced words that Kirk says was way too long to read.
• The client didn’t actually mention what the problem was until about halfway through the email.
• When she did, she didn’t indicate where it existed on the website as she assumed the developer would automatically know what she was talking about (despite it being a rather sizable site).

Email, in general, isn’t the ideal platform to have a discussion of this nature. First, there’s the chance that it could get lost in someone’s inbox or spam folder. Second, there’s the possibility of miscommunication without context or being able to hear someone’s tone of voice. And, thirdly, it can lead to unnecessary and cumbersome back-and-forth. Which is what happened here.

The client was very upset that Kirk and his team had to ask a lot of questions in order to figure out where the problem was and, then, determine the circumstances under which she was seeing it.

After the ordeal was over, Kirk said:

“I wish there were a way to talk to clients without them having to give us all this information.”

What Is the Bug Squasher?
The Bug Squasher is a simple solution for easing the communication gap that often exists between clients and the WordPress professionals they’ve hired. (Actually, The Bug Squasher now works on all platforms, so it’s not solely relegated to WordPress anymore.)

Installation is simple. You just insert a single line of JavaScript into the header of your website. Once it’s implemented, clients will see The Bug Squasher on the frontend of their website. When they take notice of something that needs changing, they can easily grab a screenshot of it, annotate or highlight it, explain the problem, and then submit.

And it isn’t just a handy tool for “squashing” bugs. It can be used for general communications related to design, copy, functionality, and so on.

Kirk says that browser recording is coming down the pipeline as well, which will make this even more user-friendly than it already is.

A Unique Marketing Approach
This very podcast came about as a result of Kirk Deis’ marketing efforts. Like most of what he’s doing to bring attention to The Bug Squasher, his goal is to reach a variety of audiences. Podcasts have been one way to do this organically. PPC advertising and Spotify spots are another form of marketing he’s pursued.

What WordPress Consultants Need to Know About The Bug Squasher
Unlike many project management and issue tracking tools on the market, The Bug Squasher doesn’t limit how many users or development URLs you can use within your account. Each plan covers an entire domain, which is especially nice if you use staging subdomains.

In addition, you can connect The Bug Squasher to your project management software (e.g. Asana, Podio, Basecamp), so logged bugs or updates automatically get pushed to your project management email address.

If you’re interested in giving this issue tracker/client communication tool a shot, be sure to visit The Bug Squasher website. Kirk is offering WP Elevation listeners a 20% discount with the coupon code Wp20.

P.S. We've created a 10% discount code for the listeners of the WPE podcast. Simply add the code GOELEVATE upon payment of the Blueprint course. The deal is valid until the 21st September 2018.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Bit About Jennifer Dopazo
Jennifer Dopazo is the Founder and Creative Director of Candelita, a branding and design studio that serves female business owners and influencers who want to take their companies to the next level.

Before Blueprint
Before implementing the Blueprint course, Jennifer worked mostly in isolation and was highly protective of her agency’s processes and services. Since joining, all that has changed.

These days, she works fewer hours (while getting more accomplished), has a healthier work-life balance, and has learned that it’s okay to say “I don’t know”.

Jennifer’s Take on the Community
As someone who previously (and mostly) worked in isolation, Jennifer has really come to appreciate the community she finds herself within now.

According to Jennifer, there is a lot of value that comes from the community - even if everyone who’s a part of it comes from a different background or works in a different niche. There’s so much overlap between the questions and experiences everyone has, that the conversations that take place among members have proven to be quite relevant and helpful for Jennifer.

As she explained, this sounding board allows the members of the WP Elevation community to be open and vulnerable with one another and to really get the most out of their respective business-building journeys. The more people are willing to say “I don’t know”, the more everyone has a chance to learn from one another; be it entering different niches, trying new processes, or getting past annoying obstacles.

After Blueprint
A lot has changed for Jennifer since her first run through Blueprint (you heard me right: she’s done this more than once). As she picks up new lessons and acquires new skills, she incrementally tweaks her business as well as her daily habits in order to make Candelita the best it can be.

Work-Life Balance
It’s taken a few years of experimenting with a daily routine, but Jennifer seems to have sorted out what the optimal structure is for her:

She goes to a co-work space every morning for three to four hours where she does “laptop work”; i.e. talking to clients, communicating with remote employees, etc.

She goes home midday for lunch and then hits the gym. This gives her brain a chance to reset before she moves into the next part of her day.

She returns home to tackle what she calls “desktop time”. This is when she does design work and other strategic tasks that require the use of a private work environment and desktop computer.

In so developing this routine, Jennifer has effectively divided her day up into the most productive times. This allows her to maximize her output while working less.

Adopting Processes
Previously, Jennifer struggled to get processes in place for her business. With the help of Blueprint, she’s been able to streamline the creation of these processes. By using the tools and templates available, she spends less time recreating the wheel and more time adapting them to fit her unique business approach.

Client Management
Another way in which Blueprint has had a big impact on her life is in client management.

Before Blueprint, Jennifer had a hard time saying “no” to prospective clients, even if she knew they weren’t a good fit.

But by learning how to qualify leads better, by using the processes and checklists provided in the Blueprint course, and by using the anti-follow-up approach, she more effectively signs new and high-quality clients to her agency.

Her Favourite Part of Blueprint
The tools and templates Jennifer has had access to through Blueprint have obviously made a huge impact on the way she runs her agency. However, it’s her ability to actually implement processes now that is her favourite part of Blueprint.

Part of this comes from the fact that Blueprint is a highly actionable course and the community surrounding it is one that encourages all members to make strides in their businesses.

Another part of this comes from Troy’s emphasis to stop looking for perfection.

It’s that “just hit Publish” mentality and Troy’s willingness to try new things on the fly that’s really inspired her to get stuff done in her own business. Rather than waste time waiting for the perfect moment, she’s now able to achieve much more as her business constantly remains in motion.

Wrap-Up
There’s nothing better than to see an Elevator leveraging the Blueprint course as well as the WP Elevation community to further her business. If you have any questions or comments on this episode of our podcast, let us know in the comments below.

P.S. We've created a 10% discount code for the listeners of the WPE podcast. Simply add the code GOELEVATE upon payment of the Blueprint course. The deal is valid until the 21st September 2018.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An Introduction to Align Today
Eugene starts by telling us a bit about Align Today which is a cloud-based solution developed by a New Orleans-based entrepreneur and his business coach.

The founders attempted to implement Rockefeller Habits for the purposes of scaling business, however, they struggled with the limitations posed by tools like Microsoft Word and Excel. As a result, they took the Rockefeller Habits and developed a SaaS solution that would put them into the hands of business owners, coaches, and CEOs all around the world.

Align Today’s main purpose is to get business teams aligned towards the same company vision and goals.

Changing Your Mindset
Eugene explains that scaling business often causes entrepreneurs to arrive at a point where they need to calm the chaos. Troy tells us that he too arrived at this point and that’s where Scaling Up, the Rock Habits, and Align Today entered the picture and that Scaling Up is something that fundamentally changed his approach to running WP Elevation

In short, the Rock Habits are a way of teaching business owners to shift their mindset.

Why would they want or even need to do this? Because the way you run a new company with three or four employees is much different than running one with dozens of employees across the world.

Ultimately, what the Rock Habits and Align Today will teach you to do is build a lasting company and to stop worrying about what the next product looks like. Put your focus on your business instead of the various elements that go into the business. Eugene says “If you build a great company that fosters and nurtures that, the clients will come.”

Unclear Leader = Unfair Leader
One of the common problems that Align Today aims to solve is the matter of transparency and accountability within scaling businesses.

In an anecdote that Eugene shares in the podcast,  he talks of how a business owner was confused when asked if his entry-level employees knew what the revenue goal for the quarter was. After all, why would an entry-level employee have any need for that information?

Well, if you’re paying employees to support your business’s core vision, how do you expect them to help you achieve company goals if they’re blind to where you’re heading? This is valuable information that everyone should have and Align Today enables businesses to provide this level of transparency while also giving employees the chance to actively participate.

Scaling Business with Align Today
The last thing your team might want to hear is that you’ve added a new software to their workflow. But Align Today isn’t like other project management software applications.

All it takes is 15 to 20 minutes in the morning, and a few more minutes at the end of the day, to get in and out of the platform. As such, you can improve transparency in your company, increase accountability within your team, and decrease the time spent in meetings.

With Align Today, you can:

Build strategic plans that can be shared, viewed, and edited company-wide.
Set goals with customisable key performance indicators (KPIs) and track progress.
Establish strategic priorities.

Enforce a daily practice of a team “huddle” to keep everyone on the same page.
When business is growing and management of your team becomes more chaotic, Align Today can put everyone on track, create accountability within your growing organisation, and push you closer and closer towards your goals.

Wrap Up
Are you having any struggles as your team grows? Let us know in the comments and we will get back to you!

P.S. We've created a 10% discount code for the listeners of the WPE podcast. Simply add the code GOELEVATE upon payment of the Blueprint course. The deal is valid until the 21st September 2018.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Bit of Background
Tara's business, AlchemyThree, is a small business that she runs out of an office in Massachusetts. Tara and her small team concentrate on small to medium sized businesses particularly female-owned businesses as she loves helping women to step into their power and succeed. Her business focuses on digital marketing, web design and maintenance.

Tara started as a photographer and hated computers for a long time. She only wanted to make art and it wasn’t until things started to go digital that she realised that she needed to get into that space and embrace her inner control freak! She got onto Photoshop and started messing around with that. She is largely self-taught with an Associates in graphic design from a community college.

She has been working in the WordPress/ design space for around 16 years now with some stints of work in corporate.

Discovering the Blueprint
A year ago she saw Kristina Romero (one of WPE’s coaches) give a talk at WordCamp Boston. A light bulb went off when Kristina was talking about care plans and the concept of recurring revenue. Tara at the time had been hustling to get the next project and just wasn’t thinking long-term. So she started following Kristina online which led her to WP Elevation and here she is! Now Tara is part of the Mavericks Mastermind group.

The Game Changer
The biggest game-changer for Tara since completing the Blueprint is that she has realised her worth as a web developer, marketer and brand specialist. It wasn’t until she found WPE and it’s community that this happened. She talks about the isolation that you feel when you're running your own business. So the support and guidance helped her make this mindset shift.

Before the course, she was charging around $2,500 for a website and was getting in over her head because she had no processes in place and was making everything up as she went along. After the course, she felt she had the tools, the skills and the structure to take on more work with full confidence in her abilities.

Everyone keeps going on about the community- am I right! Well, Tara says that she loves the diversity of the community with varying skill sets and backgrounds. She loves hearing stories of how people got where they are and loves how the people in the group are so supportive when you need help.

Being a part of Troy’s small Mastermind group has given her the chance to get even closer with some of the other members. So last week she had a "little tantrum" when Google decided to shut down her account. It was one of those moments when the straw breaks the camels back and she felt ready to give up on her business. She took to her Maverick's Slack group and everyone rallied around her, reached out to check on her and offer help. She says that "instead of undercutting each other we lift each other up."

The care plans and having a recurring revenue changed her life as well as the proposal process. She was wasting so much time writing proposals so to have a structure and a baseline was amazing. The proposal allows the reader to see that you actually understand their business and sell them the benefits of your work rather than the features.

Growing a Team
Tara is nervous and excited because she just offered someone offshore a full-time role. Hurrah! Her first full-time employee! She currently also has a writer and a developer working for her which she was only able to do since WPE.

She learned that making yourself feel uncomfortable is important. Hiring this person makes her feel nervous and in the past, she never would have done this without the support of the WPE community.

Tara's Favourite Tool
Tara says that she has an unhealthy relationship with Mixmax. It's a tool that allows you to track your emails, send canned email responses and send invites to your calendar. The tracking helps you to understand what level of interest people have in your business and whether emails have been lost.

Wrap Up
Tara wraps up the chat with Ray by saying “The course is a no-brainer. The amount of value you get is bonkers! Don’t even hesitate”. Awww thanks for sharing the love Tara!

How awesome is she! If you have any questions for her or want to let us know what you think of this podcast, please leave a comment below.

P.S. We've created a 10% discount code for the listeners of the WPE podcast. Simply add the code GOELEVATE  upon payment of the Blueprint course. The deal is valid until the 21st September 2018.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

About WP Buffs
Joe has a team of nine people doing everything from the tech work to content marketing across five time zones! He says it's fun and challenging.

Troy and Joe start the conversation off by talking about remote teams and why it’s a game changer to meet up with your virtual staff.

They then move onto why Joe chose to join the Blueprint course six months ago.

The WP Elevation Community
Joe thinks that as he has grown WP Buffs that one of the hardest things has been finding the support of a community or network of people in the WordPress space. He wanted to find a tribe of like-minded people with drive and people who want to grow their business but this was really hard to find even though he goes to WordCamps and has a lot of contacts. When he found WP Elevation, the community was one of the best things that helped him to grow his business.

This is the first time that Troy has heard someone say that the community was the reason they joined the program. Troy finds it interesting that most people think that they’re joining for the training, the blueprints, processes or to tap into their experience. However, after a short period of time, they realise how valuable the community or network is. A community is a hard thing to market to people before they get the first-hand experience of it.

Skeptical of ROI

Joe was skeptical before he joined that the course would valuable and that he would see a return on investment. However, most of the time he finds that the less hard he is sold on something the better it ends up being. With WP Elevation, he felt he wasn’t given a hard sell and that’s why he was happy to join.

On this point, Troy says that a mentor once said to him <strong>“all you need to do is give them the information that they need to buy from you”.</strong> So Troy lays as much information to everyone as possible so that people can make an informed decision.

Troy points out that Joe isn’t a typical WPE customer because he owns a WP maintenance and support company and doesn’t actually build websites. Joe says that he joined because whether you’re a consultant, designer or marketer in the WordPress space, the skills sets are slightly different but the drive is all similar.

He had read that WP Elevation was the number one online community in the WordPress space and he knew there was a tonne he could learn. The course changed his mindset and helped him with running a small business and marketing techniques.

Joe says that the engagement with the community is unreal. When he logs into Facebook it's pretty much just WPE stuff. He goes to the page and gets updates. He loves commenting and having great discussions about what’s new.

But Would Joe Recommend the Course?
Of course! He thinks that the return on investment that anyone gets is "pretty outrageous." So just based on that, anyone that is serious about developing a WordPress career should join.

Joe says that he has multiple times made his money over in the 6 months that he has been a member. You get so many ideas on how to systemize your business. Templates, information, learning structure.

No matter what you’re looking for in terms of moving your business forward, then it’s going to require some investment.

Joe's Current Challenges
Things are going well for WP Buffs in terms of growth and direction. But they also have their fair share of challenges. The number one challenge is working across five time zones and managing the team and building the culture. They are hiring a marketer at the moment to take some of the slack off Joe, but he is finding it hard to find the right person.

We had him on the podcast a few months ago and Troy mentions that he loves his outlook on business. Check it out here.

Joe is certainly an inspiration!

If you have any questions or comments on this show, please feel free to let us know in the section below.

P.S. We've created a 10% discount code for the listeners of the WPE podcast (GOELEVATE). Add the code upon payment of the Blueprint course.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Bit About Kronda
Kronda is a WordPress Consultant turned digital marketer. In 2017 she decided to change her company to focus on marketing and automation. She helps mainly service based, non-technical businesses with their online marketing and helps them put systems into place that will really help them grow their business in a way that is sustainable for them.

Life Before the Blueprint
Kronda just reached the 5-year mark with her business. She tells us about when she started out and how she would make websites for anyone because she needed the income. Even then she knew that she was going to fire the difficult clients as soon as she could afford to.

Kronda would check in with the clients that she had made websites for and very often they had been hacked or they hadn’t done much with the site so it wasn’t actually helping their company at all.

Kronda started following WP Elevation about two years into her business. She couldn’t afford to join WP Elevation at the time so she made the most of the free content. Then six months later when she joined the Blueprint course she leveled up and has been levelling up ever since.

The WP Elevation Community
Once Kronda joined WPE she was eager to get the all of the information and put it into practice. It took a while to get through the course whilst running her own business but she really enjoyed the content and would look forward to her Friday nights in with the course.

Kronda found the community support to be amazing. She says that it is a group of so-called “competitors” who really just help each other to succeed with an abundance mindset. Questions, rants, whatever! There is always someone there for you.

Kronda tells us that she has made a lot of mistakes in building her business. So when she gets to a point when she feels in over her head, she asks the group for help. There have always been people who have helped her out in those time and people with similar stories.

At the 9.35 minute mark Kronda shares her experience of taking the Blueprint course and gives some good advice to people who are thinking of taking the course or about to start it.

Life After the Course
She fired most of her clients in December last year and told them that her business was moving in a different direction and offered her new services to them. One of the main things she took away from the course, was the importance of recurring revenue so she set up cares plans and changed the business focus to marketing automation.

The course allowed Kronda to shift her mindset from having to chase after new clients to making herself the prize. She started to filter clients out by having requirements that they needed to meet. When you’re new in business, you just have to get people to pay you money. So she started asking herself “What am I good at?” “What do I enjoy working on?”. She now makes people fit her criteria before letting them into her business. She says that when you’re in the service industry you are really partnering with the client which means the relationship matters a lot. So now not everyone makes it in and she is very selective about that.

One of the things that used to frustrate her when she was starting out in the first 2 years of her business was non-technical clients. They would come to her and ask for her help and they wouldn’t even know who their host was. So that was the catalyst for her to create a course based on the WP Elevation structure of recorded lessons and coaching calls.

Kronda couldn’t afford to work for her clients anymore based on their budgets so she wanted a way she could still make money but give people a path to level up to where they need to be. By creating the courses she could scale and reach more people.

As her business took off, she had many people come to her for business advice. And because she loves automation, she automated her answer with this blog post about WP Elevation. We love it!

Favourite Tool
Kronda says her favourite tool is Astra which is a lite weight theme framework. The Astra sties plugin gives you access to starter websites too which makes building websites a piece of cake!

Her advice? The course is amazing but you need to implement it!

We are super proud of what Kronda has achieved. If you have any questions or comments on this show, please feel free to let us know in the seciton below.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Bit About Adam
Adam discovered his interest in the web after he graduated from college, originally as a carpenter. But went back to school to learn web design and creation. He currently owns and operates the popular web design company Bottomless Design which also focuses on theme development.

Adam lives a natural lifestyle, so he likes to extend that to his business and work with clients that are doing a similar thing. More on this to come!

Working from Home
Adam says that the key to working from home is to have a quitting time and then honouring it. If you work too late into the evening then it’s harder to switch off when it’s time to go to bed. He is realistic about the amount of work that he can get done in the day so that he can get a good night’s sleep.

He tries to draw that line because it can be easy to take one more email or something on your to-do list at the end of a day until it is nearly time for bed!

Have clear boundaries and know what your dedicated work times are.

Bootstrapping the Company
Adam was working for a company full-time running their website but started his own company on the side working in the evenings and on weekends. He did that for a while and didn’t have a lot of free time but it gave him the freedom to be in control of his business. He could be selective about his clients and by doing this, he built up a clientele that he was proud to work with and found his niche.

Troy mentions here that working with the wrong clients can actually set you back. But it is hard to do this when you need the income, so this is a great way to start your company off with the right foundation. You just need to be willing to put the hours in at the beginning.

The Name - Bottomless Design
The name of his company, Bottomless Design, came from the idea of the bottomless well of information, but it also has an ulterior meaning. The second meaning is that working from home allows Adam to literally be bottomless, or without pants, for as long as he likes!

Client Services vs Product
He was inspired at a WordCamp by a speaker who said that you can do the same work over and over or you can build something once and sell that over and over.

It was then that he decided to start creating themes.  Once he finished creating his first theme, he put in his notice at his full-time job as theme creation could now be his recurring revenue.

Differentiating
Theme design is a saturated marketplace but Adam's take on it is that there are a lot of themes out there, but you never take them out of the box and use it exactly how it is. You always end up changing it.

Adam started out by making a list of what he looks for in a theme and then decided to make themes that could work for many different people.

For some reason though, Adam said that most of his clients are women. He didn’t target that audience, but he finds that with his designs and the way he runs his business means that they gravitated towards his company. He then started looking at each of the scenarios, goals and audience for his clients and then built themes based on that.

Adam's niche is female clientele in the health, wellness and the natural world. He lives a natural life, eats natural food and uses natural cleaning products so he wants his business to be an extension of that. He wanted to work on projects which are fulfilling for him.

Adam turns down work if it isn’t aligned with industries with a natural bend. Recently he had someone who was adamant that Adam build him a website, but it was about guns. This is totally against his brand so he passed on it. He is more interested in building relationships with the clients where there is trust and respect.

How to Say No
Adam has never had a problem with saying no. When he was starting out, he had that mentality that he didn’t need to take on anything that he didn't want to and that mentality kept going even once he left his full-time job. He says that he has busy periods and slow periods. If someone isn’t a good fit in a slow period, he still doesn’t worry about it because he takes that quieter time to improve his business and sees that as a gift.

When you have a recurring revenue, it gives you the freedom to say no. 

Tune in around the 40-minute mark where Adam talks about Mojo why he chose Mojo MarketPlace over ThemeForest to sell his themes.

[vum-bigtweet tweet="Have the confidence to say no. It’s freeing and opens up other opportunities for you - @BottomlessDsign"]

Adam's Top Tips

• Have boundaries to keep your work-life balance. Know what they are and stick to them.
• Recurring income which will support you in the quiet times and gives you the freedom to say no to work that you don’t want.
• Know your value and educate the client how cheaper means cutting corners and inexperience.
• Make proposals easy for the client to say yes by detailing the value that’s in it for them.
• Make certain that the client is satisfied with the experience and have a referral policy with an incentive.
• Let your personality shine through. Allow the client to feel the connection. It will create a better work environment, more trust and more respect and a better product in the end.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

About Chris
Chris Lema spends his days helping businesses create operation plans for profit, growth and excellence in customer service. This involves dedicating the majority of his time to working on company analysis and communicating with clients or team members.

Chris is also a well-known member of the WordPress community who is often found speaking at WordCamps and other WordPress events all over the globe.

He says that his role is to "fix companies so they work better". At Crowd Favorite he manages the service side of things. That includes managing the software engineers, project managers as well as doing strategic work to help the company grow.

A Bit of Background
Chris studied social welfare after high school where he learned how to build organisations, mobilise people and enact policies. After college, he changed gears and began working at a government research lab. At the lab, he learned how to build the first computer-based online learning management system.

This was back in the early days of the Internet when programming was so new that there was nowhere to learn it. Chris and his team learned by trial and error, spending many nights working on networks and coding.

Chris claims that he was a terrible student, but as soon as he immersed himself in the real world, he was completely engaged in technology and business-related problem solving and eventually became a WordPress consultant.

Staying on Task
Chris talks about the importance of goals and discipline to work as effectively as you can. Here's how:

• First, define what roles you play in the company.
• In each role, you need to have one or two goals. You can look at the long-term goals for a bigger picture, but more importantly, make sure you have some on a monthly, quarterly and annual level.
• Every task you do should be working towards those goals.  When you’re in the realm of doing that you are on task. When you’re pulled by others into other tasks, you are likely off task.
• High performers can only focus on the top one or two things on that list. And if someone comes to you with a problem which isn’t at crises level, it is not worth your time to solve it. There will be problems all the time but if it's not in your top three priorities then delegate it.

Helping Companies Grow
Chris talks about the importance of retaining staff. In order to do this, you need to keep growing the company and creating new roles for people to move into.

He talks about how outdated the factory model is. The aim of that is to get people to do the same task over and over and refine it until you have high performance. However, in the real world, if you are asking a high performer to do the same task over and over, you will lose them pretty quickly.

The moment they understand that you are interested in their career path then they will perform highly.

What WordPress Needs in Order to Grow
Chris says that it needs to meet the needs of two different audiences at the same time- low end and high end. The market at the low end need cheap websites and this demand is growing. However, WordPress is also very popular with clients in the enterprise space. The difficulty here is that both of their needs are not in alignment and there is no product manager for WordPress to create a strategy to manage this.

In order to be sustainable in what you’re doing and to develop a following and a brand, you need to focus on these three things:

• Generosity: Share everything you know
• Genuine affection: You have to learn to like everyone
  Focus on the grind: You just have to do it and keep doing it.[/wpecallout]
  Chris' Top Tips
  The number one thing that any freelancer needs to know is to raise your rates
• Write like a human and your proposal will stand out
  Constant, consistent, regular communication with your clients will keep a project and a client on track

Ask for referrals right after they’ve seen the benefits. That might be three months after the project. Most people ask right after they finish a project, but you want them to see clearly the return on investment

Wrap Up
There’s so much more in this podcast, so make sure you listen in. Chris has an awesome take on why the WordPress community works as well as it does. They also talk about getting starstruck at WordCamps and how to approach these people. And just what is the future for the premium plugin ecosystem?

Let us know what you think of this podcast in the comments below!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You’ve most likely heard of Seth Godin; he’s a New York Times best-selling author who is known for his marketing genius. As you might imagine he’s done the interview circuit countless times, so his advice in this episode is gold.

Kristina's Challenges
Kristina Romero has a successful consulting business she has built from the ground up. She started out as a WordPress specialist helping people design and code their sites.

From there she got involved with WP Elevation and expanded into the consulting side of things and even added maintenance plans to receive a recurring revenue.

Kristina identifies the following as the main challenges in her business:

• Lack of time. She does a full-time job within part time hours as well as being a mother of three.
• She wants strategies to increase profit without having to work more hours
• She is trying to branch out to an online training environment for all businesses
• She has a lot of ideas and doesn’t know how to apply them

Charge More and Work Less
Seth's first piece of advice is to go beyond being a job and be someone who is unique and doesn’t have a problem charging a premium because you’re the only one who does it. A lot of freelancers feel that in order to be better, you have to do more work. But then you are overextending yourself and your work suffers.

The best thing to do is to work yourself up the ladder so you can charge more and work less.  If you’re getting paid by the hour, you're probably not doing it right.

Seth gives some golden advice here and says: sell stuff to people who want to buy and can afford to buy it.

The key element is specialisation. Be specific about what you offer, you’ll position yourself ahead of everyone else by doing so.

Getting Through the Lean Period
Troy asks Seth how to get through that lean period when you are becoming a specialist? Seth gives the following advice:

• Cut your costs, don’t go on holiday or eat out and get through the dip. You need to sit there and wait until you break through to the other side and not keep running after the next shiny object
• Earn the right to speak with authority about what you are wanting to be specific at
• Build something that people already want to buy

Kristina says that she never had to pick a speciality because work just seemed to keep coming in but Seth says – "don’t overthink it." You already have these people that trust you, billing relationship. Your speciality could be “these are my clients”. So instead of finding new stuff to sell to people, work with who you already have.

Productisation
They tackle the subject of moving from the freelancing world to creating products. Seth says it is pretty hard to do, so when you are starting something new ask yourself why you’re doing it. Is it to make more money or is it for the craft of creating something? Focus on doing things for the craft, not to have a bigger impact or more money in your bank accounts.

Ask yourself - what would you have to do in the insight that you deliver, the quality that you deliver, what assets do you need to have to be able to charge triple what you are charging now? Leverage your network to build an asset or a circle of people who are desperate to be in the circle.

Personal Connection
Kristina says she’s great at connecting with clients and explaining to them why they need to buy from her. But lately she’s been trying to reach the masses through email or social media without that personal connection, and she receives no interaction.

Seth's advice? Don’t do it! He says if you're not good at reaching the masses, then focus more on the personal connections. Find clients who are worth every bit of care and charisma you can bring them because digital stuff is hard to sell.

Scaling Impact
Stop looking for more people to impact, have a greater impact on the people you already have. Deeper rather than wider is compelling. They then get you the next people because you have changed them so much.

Otherwise, come up with a funnel system that people are eager to participate in to be able to scale your impact.

Wrap Up
How awesome is Seth? There are some great stories and analogies in here so make sure you listen in. Let us know what you think about this podcast in the comments below.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Bit of Background
Guy rose to fame as Chief Evangelist at Apple, where he worked to show people all over the world how Apple products and software could make their lives better.

He was raised in a lower middle-class family in Honolulu and really had no idea what he wanted to be when he grew up. He was studying Psych at Stanford when his friend, Mike Boich, introduced him to the Apple I. So Guy went out and bought himself an Apple IIe which absolutely blew his mind.

Guy started his career in the jewelry business where he learned some valuable lessons about the importance of sales. Sometime later his friend Mike, who was an employee of Apple, hired Guy as Chief Evangelist.

Guy worked at Apple from 1983 – 1987 which was in the time where Steve Jobs left and came back. He has since been involved in many other ventures, including another stint at Apple from 1995 to 1997 where he helped to revive the Macintosh. However, his main endeavours over the years have been speaking, writing and consulting.

What is a Chief Evangelist?
Guy explains that an evangelist simply shares the good news about something with people.

He actually believes in the products he sells (Mac and Canva) so there is a purity to the marketing and sales. He truly believes in his heart that he is bringing good news and he gets paid to do that. Even from being on this podcast which gets listened to by around 3,000 people, those people try it, love it and spread the word.

He does a lot of social media and speaks 50-70 times a year, does around 25 webinars and a lot of podcasting particularly when a book is launching. He has Pinterest, Google+, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, email, Skype - everything! He makes sure that he spreads the good news everywhere!

Canva
In 2014, he resurrected his chief evangelist role for Canva, which provides an easy online graphic design service. Canva’s goal is to democratize design and Guy is passionate about helping the little guy to have the chance to compete with the big wigs!

Guy said that he truly believes in Canva because he works a lot with social media. He wasn’t going to learn photoshop with its thousands of tools so he found Canva very empowering. Canva reached out to him and now it's his job to get the message out there about how good it is.

Guys tells us about his version of the "golden touch" which is "whatever is gold, Guy touches".  He says that the key to marketing and sales is to find or create something great. It’s so easy to evangelize for a great product.

When you’re starting out, you need to pay your dues. Don’t have the attitude that you're not going to do anything for free or on spec. When Guy started speaking, he spoke for free and that’s how you get known.

Your goal should be to have a valuable service that is unique. If it’s valuable but not unique, it’s always about price. If it’s unique but not valuable, nobody will be interested.

At the end of the day, the key is to do a good job. This is how you get referrals and differentiate yourself.

Well, there you have it! Make sure you listen in because Guy is really funny and an engaging speaker! You can see why his Ted talks are so popular. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Bit About Hugh

Hugh is a cartoonist, creative director and co-founder of Gapingvoid, a company that transforms business through art. He is intensely interested in what makes people tick and combines that with what they do for a living. Our work is such a huge part of our lives and so this is why his artistic focus is on the work environment, instead of making art for people’s homes or other places. And he’s been hugely successful in doing so.

Hugh is also the author of the book Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity.

Career
In 1995, Hugh was a struggling artist in London. It was the early days of the Internet and the very pioneer days of blogging. As a struggling artist, he realised that blogging was a tool that could help him earn a living by reaching people directly with his work.

Blogging gave him a powerful medium to reach his audience and has been a huge part of his journey.

Hugh now makes motivational art. He believes passionately that the right location, the right office, the right layout, and the right décor can be incredibly powerful. And art is really the key. Art disrupts and drives behaviour because it bundles together our primary drivers as human beings: love, hate, fear, beauty and sadness.

Getting Clients
Hugh explains that his business grew organically because he had fans inside businesses and they would buy a piece of his art that inspired them and then others would ask where they got it. He realised that art could really motivate people in the workplace.

Hugh also says that it is important to find the customers that your competition doesn’t want. They weren’t interested in the customers with the biggest budget, they wanted the companies with the biggest problems.

His advice is to go after a niche nobody else has thought of. "Too many people are trying to sell the same stuff to the same people."

Gapingvoid had unique offerings so they didn’t have to compete on price. Hugh says that if you’re competing on price then you’re not differentiating your offers enough.

Hugh's Hot Tips

• Know when to say no
• Be clear about what you want when writing proposals then the easier it is to write
• In order to keep your projects on track, you have to be vigilant and realistic when setting deadlines. Build in time for unforeseen events and constantly communicate with clients

There's so much more in this episode, so be sure to listen in and let us know what you think in the comments below!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Bit of Background
At 17 Ben pooled together all the money he made as a summer camp counsellor and bought his first computer. He joined some online forums where he learned how to import clothing from India and sell it at a profit. Eventually, that small business venture ended after the Canadian Government closed the loophole and he couldn’t import anymore.

That wasn't the end of his entrepreneurial journey though. Some years later after being let go from a job, Ben overheard some business owners talking about getting their website built in India but Ben chimed in and said that he could do it. He was given a $300 budget and nothing else! With no website creation training, he found WordPress and created the site.

And so, his WordPress career began!

Fostering Relationships
Ben says that he is the marketing and business development person in his company. The number one thing he does is foster and grow relationships between his company and potential clients and he relies on his team to do what they do.

Goal Setting
Every day Ben and his team make a list of three things that they want to accomplish. He empowers his team to remind him to do that too!

One goal should align with the company's annual goals. Two of the other things are a little more tactical to get the sprint done.

They use the Agile Development Method and the tool they use is Pivotal Tracker which is an Agile project management system where every task belongs to a story you want to tell.

Every two weeks they have an acceptance meeting where Ben acts as the customer and he evaluates whether he would accept the piece of the product or not.

Ben's advice is to explore the Agile development method if you’re not making much progress in your business. Once they implemented this strategy it was transformative for Sidekick Pro and their productivity.

Is Sidekick Pro a Competitor for Video User Manuals?
They are in the same space but hear about the differences at the 23-minute mark.

Business Development
There are people who are awesome at what they do but perhaps don't put enough emphasis on the importance of forming relationships. That is the core of business development.

Ben's advice is that if you want to be successful, show up on time, dress to play and talk to people. He started talking to people at WordCamps and that is where he has been able to get a lot of his business. He says that you will see some of the big names within the WordPress space there, and you will be surprised that most of them are in fact very approachable.

Ben's Business Development Tips

• Don't forget that overnight success takes years
• Talk to people and be sincere and apologise for mistakes
• Have an awesome product
• Know when to shut up and just give a demo
• Hustle in a genuine way

Business Incubators
Ben and his business partner Bart co-founded Sidekick Pro and located it within a business incubation environment. With the support of small business owners, Sidekick Pro blossomed and graduated from this environment to stand on its own two feet.

As a team of eight, Sidekick Pro has expanded to accommodate the likes of NYU, providing tutorials for students and staff on some of the steps to set up a blog on the NYU blog site.

Ben's Secrets to Success

• Getting customers. The best thing Ben has done to get new business is to go to WordCamps.
• Know your value. Have an awesome product, and know why your product will benefit the people who will use it.
• Proposals. Have an editor and don’t click “Send” until someone else has read what you’ve written.
• Get Referred. Referrals are all about relationships. If you want referrals, give referrals. (Awesome advice!)
• Differentiate yourself. Simply by being yourself.

Well, well... weren't they some awesome tips from Ben! Let us know what you think in the comments below.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sarah runs a successful business with Cindy Kendrick called Codebrain Media, a company which helps build custom websites, custom plugins, manages migrations and marketing. She also spends a lot of her time working with the team at ServerPress.com with product development and social media. And then there is their latest project - the OptimaList WordPress Plugin.

From Full-Time Mum to Entrepreneur
Sarah started spending time on the internet when her children were babies. She began blogging as a means to occupy herself during their naptime. Sarah also created a group for mothers in her area to support each other, socialise and network.

Eventually, Sarah learned HTML and CSS by playing around with features on her blog. Her proficiency in writing online grew, and soon a friend asked Sarah to help with content writing using WordPress. That helped Sarah realise the potential of making money online and opened her eyes to new possibilities.

Today, Sarah dedicates the majority of her time to working on business development and communicating with clients. She also keeps busy collaborating with the team at ServerPress with product development and social media. In addition to being a successful product developer, she also teaches ballet and when she’s not working, Sarah loves spending her time outdoors with her children.

Small vs Big Clients
Sarah tells us that they have a wonderful client who is a small business with a lot of legacy content that they are moving over to WordPress. This company listens and is really appreciative of their experience. So this type of client is Sarah's ideal as they are easy and enjoyable to work with.

Her and her business partner, Cindy, have both worked on huge enterprise level builds but they enjoy working with the smaller business by helping them come up with affordable solutions for their company. This is very rewarding work for Sarah.

Big Teams vs Small Teams
Sarah prefers to work in smaller teams because she is very invested in her projects as well as her employees which makes it hard to manage large enterprise clients as well as the number of developers and designers that you need to hire to look after those clients.

Sarah wants to bring her best to the table and working with a larger team meant she was thinly spread. She needs a lot of autonomy in her schedule and she wants to have the freedom to work when she wants to so it can fit in with being a mum.

Larger teams take up more time and you have to be dedicated to a 10-15 hour day for those larger builds. Sarah did this for six months and then went back to working with a small team who she found to be more efficient and effective.

Takeaways from Working with Bigger Teams
Sarah says that working on those bigger projects with a larger team teaches you a lot. She says that you develop your professional ability because you have to manage your time, your workflow and be professional at all times. There is more breathing room in a small team. However, she realises that after achieving what she did with the bigger projects, just how valuable she is. "You can appreciate how much you do know and walk away with more self-worth."

She tells us that it may be the right fit for some, but just not for her.

OptimaList WordPress Plugin
Sarah co-developed the OptimaList plugin which is a to-do list for WordPress. Her business partner had been developing a to-do list plugin for 5-years called "Cleverness To-Do List" which was quite successful, but it became time for a complete overhaul. So they leveraged Cindy's customer base and have been blown away at the market need for this product and have seen how people use it for all kinds of things.

Sarah and Cindy needed $800 to pay for the business expenses, so they threw it out there and people donated! They are humbled by the people that supported them and their generosity.

Tune in at the 35-minute mark to hear Troy and Sarah discuss the WordPress community and why WordCamps are so valuable.

ServerPress
Sarah explains to us what the ServerPress product "DesktopServer" is. Basically, you download DesktopServer and in a few minutes, you have your own local development environment which is WordPress optimised. It is super simple to use and you can change things with immediate results all on your local system. You don’t even need to use cowboy coding!

Side note from Troy - Do not use Cowboy Coding on your websites people! 

Find out more about the benefits and how to use this plugin around the 40-minute mark.

Sarah's Golden Nugget Tips

• Manage your time. Sarah uses a handwritten to-do list every day and is a big advocate of Franklin Planner’s method (see the link below). She remembers things better when she writes it down.
• Use Twitter campaigns to get new customers. Sarah does sponsored Tweets because they are easy to do and you can segment your market very quickly. She has never spent more than $100 on a campaign and the ROI is amazing.
• Take your time to write proposals. Be thorough, and actually spend time with your clients in scoping discovery. Build the relationship and use your discernment in regard to charging people for the discovery process as you might not want to charge the smaller businesses that just don't have the money.

Well, there you have it... we told you Sarah is a superwoman! Let us know what you think about the podcast in the comments below!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Remkus has made a substantial name for himself in the world of website creation and is a force to be reckoned with!

Tune in at the 6.20 minute to listen to Remkus’ story and how he turned a side project of building websites into a very successful business and how he discovered WordPress.

Investing Knowledge
One of Remkus' favourite quotes is by Benjamin Franklin:

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

From day one he has always wanted to invest. He always looks at the bigger picture and when he starts something new, he asks how this relates to stuff he already knows. So he is continually learning. He learns how to extend one idea to the next idea and keep going.

WordCamp
Remkus is well known in the WordCamp space being a co-founder of WordCamp Europe. He says it hasn’t necessarily attracted clients, however, other people in the business who couldn’t take on projects within a particular scope would refer the work on to him.

It is hard to measure the success of being visible at WordCamps. It has had some benefits but it hasn’t been a conscious decision for him.

Remkus doesn’t get nervous speaking to crowds. He has had a lot of experience in public speaking: even before he got into WordPress he had been a trainer and taught 20-50 people at a time.  He also knows what he is talking about, which is the main thing! He says that if you are less secure about yourself, that will be magnified on the stage. The more you do it though, the easier it gets.

Stress Less
By nature, Remkus says that he overanalyses. He doesn’t talk shop after 8 pm and he does this to protect himself. If he does have to do something work related after 8 pm then he will sleep in a little later. When he catches himself worrying, he either meditates or uses self-hypnosis to get to sleep.

Worrying about something that might not happen is a waste of energy.

Remkus owes his success to many things but credits his ability to “turn off” worrying as a substantial advantage. He also sustains an interest in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). It breaks down communication into your neuro senses and your linguistic patterns. It’s a great discovery to learn about yourself.

Remkus has a family with three children and enjoys anything automobile related, particularly Mercedes and Porches. He is also an avid strength trainer and he enjoys getting out of his mind and focusing on something physical. He pushes his boundaries every time he does that.

Tune in around the 34-minute mark where Remkus talks to us about API and his predictions for WordPress.

Mind Mapping
Your conscious mind can only do a few things at the one time. The other stuff you do is on automatic pilot. You can bring stuff from your conscious mind to your unconscious mind so that it becomes an automatic thing.

If you keep a lot of stuff in your head and you're mulling it over, without getting it out of your head then you’re going to rely on your mental capabilities all the time. You need to clear your head to focus. So if you are mulling over an idea, then jot it down as a mind map.

The way it's structured makes it more pleasant to see the larger picture. You can draw them on paper or there is a software tool XMind that you can use.

Remkus' Secrets to Success

• Know how to sell yourself and produce quality work.
• Don’t compete on price. Compete on quality. Compete on skill set. Compete on knowledge.
• Don’t overdo it when it comes to writing proposals. That’s assuming that you know how to write an elaborate proposal. Don’t be the person who writes those 25-30 page proposals. Be certain that what you put in there is necessary. It’s basically you selling you instead of you listing what needs to be done.
• ActiveCollab is his favourite project management tool.
• Understand what scope creep is. Have an agreement on when it is creeping. Be active with the client. You already have the client. He’s not going to run away.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Bit About Joe
Joe Pulizzi is a content marketing evangelist, speaker, author and founder of Content Marketing Institute which is the leading content marketing educational resource for enterprise level brands. He writes one of the most influential content marketing blogs in the world, and also writes for Entrepreneur.com and LinkedIn.

Tune in at the 5-minute mark to find out more about Joe’s background.

Stepping Away from Working with "the Man"
Joe spent time cutting his teeth in the marketing industry at Penton Media, the largest independent business publisher in North America. While there, he ran the content marketing group and spent a lot of time working with customers who didn’t want to go the traditional advertising route for their businesses and so he decided to go out on his own.

Joe put together a 40-page strategic business plan by researching and approaching mentors who were business owners.  However, once he started his company, he never looked at it again!

What he learned from this:

• Write down your goals and review them almost every day
• What are your business goals, family goals and spiritual goals?
• Check that you are on target
• Ask yourself "is what I am going to do today going to help accomplish these goals on time?"

The act of writing it down and making it real is important. As far as a business plan goes, perhaps that isn’t as important!

Own Your Category and Be the Leading Expert
Dan Kennedy once said, “If you want to own a category, the best thing you can do is to invent that category”, and that is exactly what Joe did.

The term "Content Marketing" used to be called "Custom Publishing" or "Custom Media" when Joe started out in 2000, but nobody was interested or liked those titles. He knew he had to use another term especially to sell the idea to marketers who needed to know that the term was actually relevant to them.

Joe isn’t sure if he coined the term “Content Marketing” but he definitely was the one who got the term out there.

His advice is that if there is some ambiguity around the thing that you’re doing, it's completely ok to say “this is what we are calling it now”. Hubspot did the same thing with the term “inbound marketing”.

Differentiate
Another important piece of advice he has is to make sure you are differentiating yourself by telling a different story than everyone else.

If you are in an industry with a lot of other competitors (hello WordPress consultants!), how are you different from the next guy? What’s your story? A lot of people find their story by niching down to a smaller audience. It’s counterintuitive, but you’ll build authority much faster that way.

The goal is to build an audience, they will then trust you which will increase sales but it won’t happen immediately, it takes time.

The Business Model and Sponsorship
50% of the Content Marketing Institute's focus is actually the event that they run "Content Marketing World" which they hold all over the world. The webinars, consulting and training are the things that lead to the events.

With their events, 70% of their revenue comes from registration and 30% from sponsorship. In order for events to work you need the ecosystem of the leaners and the tech providers to be there. You are helping the sponsors too, as you have built the audience and you have the ability to put that company in front of that audience.

Creating Valuable Content

• Every bit of content you put out needs to be valuable. If you’re selling something in the blog, it isn’t going to be successful.
• You need to own your own audience by having an email list. If you build your audience on social media, you don’t own that, and it can be taken away from you at any stage if they make changes. Email subscription is at the top of the hierarchy here.

Wise Words on Finding Your Niche

• Find the sweet spot between some skill area that you have and your passion point.
• Content Tilt. You have to move that area in such a way that it positions you to be telling a different story. This way you won’t get lost within the millions of others who are blogging about it.
• Go smaller. Market to the little audience and then you can still take on other work if it comes your way.
• Build the base audience and then monetise the base.
• Position yourself as the leading expert in some informational niche and build an audience.
• Be the leading expert in something.
• Go small. Market to a small audience, build your base, then you can charge whatever you want. It takes about 18 months if you do it right.
• Set proper expectations with a client and put those into the agreement.
• Get referrals by giving your customers something to talk about.
• To differentiate yourself, tell a different story than anyone else, especially if you have a lot of competitors.

There is so much more to this episode with Joe so don’t miss it! Be sure to tune in to hear all the incredible insights and wisdom Joe shares.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Bit About Garth
Garth Koyle has over a decade of experience in business management and internet marketing.

Tune in at the 6-minute mark to find out a bit more about his background and what led him to Event Espresso. 

Garth joined Seth Shoultes to become the co-founder of Event Espresso in 2012 and has helped the company to grow significantly since they launched. He also co-developed a Saas version of the Event Espresso plugin called Event Smart, which he intends on growing to a $100 million dollar revenue company.

Finding Balance
We all know the stresses of being an entrepreneur and finding that balance can be so hard especially when you have little ones like Garth does! So he has found that having a healthy and distracting hobby is really important. He lets his hobbies take him away for a few hours a week to recharge his battery and give his mind a break from work stresses. Garth loves bike riding around the mountains where he lives. Riding a bike means that you can't text or use your phone, it increases endorphins and helps energy levels.

Customer Focus
One of Garth's favourite quotes is:  "Management works within a system, leadership works on a system.” So he says that he is constantly evaluating the system and making changes. The company's core value is to give customers value and control through the systems that they provide.

He manages at a higher level rather than focusing on putting out fires. He says he’s learned to think about what the customer really wants. Customers generally don't care about what the technology is, so you need to focus on the solution that will better their lives and their business rather than advertise the features of the product to the client.

Building a Team
Garth says his strategy for building his team is to have an awareness of the pain being experienced in the company. “You’ll figure out what you need when it becomes painful enough” he explains. If you have support backlog or UI complaints it can become damaging to the company you, therefore, need to:

1. Listen to the pains from the customers and your employees
2. Ask yourself, can we afford to alleviate that pain?
3. Will it increase customer satisfaction?

They rarely use job postings to find staff. The staff that they hire has either approached them or they’ve found them by doing business together. Some of their staff were initially customers!

The company employs workers from the Ukraine to the West Coast of the United States.

Development of the Plugin
His company decides future development based on three factors:

1. Feedback from customers
2. Strategic Goals
3. Speed of Development

To determine the validity of a new feature, Garth says his team will:

• List the features
• Give them scores from 1-5
• Rank the importance
• Rank the ease of development
• Rank the speed of development

The team will then choose the top candidates for development and then they just table the other ones.

Measuring Success
Garth explains that it is difficult to determine the success of features in a distributed product because if you put a plugin in the WordPress repository, you’re not allowed to communicate with the users and it is, therefore, more difficult to collect data.

To combat the problem, Event Espresso uses limited surveys, watches sales, support loads, and attributes those support calls for certain features. They also build queries into the plugin to attempt to build data that will determine the usefulness of particular features in the plugin.

Marketing Freemium vs Premium Product
Event Espresso offers a free version, called Decaf which plays very little in the marketing mix for the company.  They focus most of their marketing on the fully-featured product. Garth explains that he’s gained more customers from other channels than through the free plugin and that people who are serious about marketing their events will end up using the fully featured product.

Competing on Price
Everybody has to compete on price eventually. However, in order to compete less often, you have to understand your value proposition:

• What you deliver to the customer and how you deliver it
• Understand what your product does and where it fits in the market
• Leverage those differentiating factors and communicate them well

Then the customers will understand how they need you more than they need your competitors and price will be less of an influence.

Garth's Secrets to Success

• Build a good team. Do as much for yourself as possible then when you can’t do it yourself, take the time to find the right people to help you.
• Content Marketing is a must. Garth says that in the early days the company was growing at 15% per month because of the content they offered through their website and then nurturing those customers over time.
• Get to know your customers. The more you talk to your customers, the more you understand what’s important to them. Talk to your customers and you will get better at it with practice
• Stay on track. To keep a project on track, make sure you plan ahead. Planning is expensive, but it can also help you be more profitable and meet expectations down the road. Then you need to follow the project outline as closely as possible. The due diligence up front is really invaluable.
• Get referred! Make customers happy and ensure that they’re having a good experience. You can then ask them for referrals. They use tools to gauge customer satisfaction and if it is good, they will send the customer a message asking them for referrals. They use Help Scout, surveys and simply by watching support conversations.
• Differentiate your company. Differentiating yourself is an ongoing task. Garth says that they want to be the lead provider for ticketing and registration, and that can only come as they focus on a complete product for their niche. They focus on what they do and not necessarily what their customers think they should do. 

Well, there you have it. Some hot tips from a guy who knows how to do plugins like a boss! Let us know what you think in the comments below. What tips do you have when it comes to growing your business or developing a plugin? We'd love to hear from you.

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A Bit About Jason
Jason and his partner Dylan Kuhn co-founded a creative agency called Vernal based in Vermont. At the time of this podcast in 2015, they had just transitioned from agency to product with the release of the plugin Postmatic.

Tune in around the 5 Minute mark to find out how Jason got started with WordPress as an early adopter and grew his business. 

Working With Not-For-Profit Organisations
Jason's agency, Vernal, makes content managed open source websites for medium to large not for profit organisations. There’s a myth that there’s no money in the not-for-profit sector, but it isn’t true - they are like any business, but they are funded just happen to have a different tax status.

Jason chose this as his niche because he wanted to find work that he believed in and was passionate about. He also found not-for-profits easier to work with because the people are generally kind, understanding, patient and sometimes used to not working in a 'not so efficient' environment.

Find a Niche
How do you battle the fear of missing out when you pass on projects that aren't in your niche? Jason says that they were pretty lucky and didn't often get dry spells without work. He adds that if you pass on something, it usually works out in the end anyway.

Jason says one of the key factors in this was that they always made sure their customers were really happy. This then leads to a lot of referral work. It also helps to work in a niche such as not-for-profit because people tend to bounce around to different jobs within the not-for-profit arena.  So once you have those solid relationships, that person will recommend you to the next organisation.

Transitioning from Client Services to the Product Space
Postmatic is a plugin that enables 100% email base commenting, post notifications, and you can reply to a comment by email and it replies back to the web. It also sends emails for posts, digests, newsletters, and comments without changing your workflow.

The transition happened at a time where they were taking on large projects that would last around 12-months and it felt like shaky ground. However, they didn’t want to go back to a lot of small projects either so they decided to give Postmatic a try so they could have a regular cash flow and not have to secure job after job.

Tune in at the 28-minute mark to find out why they chose to develop Postmatic and how it works. 

The Importance of Building Relationships
When it comes to getting new client work, Jason says that they didn't do big proposals. Instead, they do phone calls and estimates. He would try to find some kind of personal connection to the potential client, which is easy when you work in a niche because people usually know each other - find out who they might know, get on the phone and sell the job that way. He has even been able to win big jobs with just a phone call!

When Jason makes a phone call, most of the call is about how they’re doing, how is the family etc. Then 40% of the call will be about business. Be sincere and just talk to people like they’re humans.

Bring an element of your offline life into your business and persona. Don’t try to be too professional. Be yourself.

And to wrap up this informative podcast, here some of the key takeaways...

• Spend time offline and in nature to find your balance
• Know who your customers are, what makes them tick and what they’re thinking
• To find customers, have a good niche and do quality work in that niche and the clients will come
• Don't worry about competing on price. Ignore the competition, do your best work and charge a fair price that takes care of you and your employees
• When Jason was doing agency work they used Pipeline Deals as their CRM and really liked it
• Reach out to old customers when you need more work and let them know you are happy to do some work at a 20% discount[/wpecallout]

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The Guys Behind Beaver Builder
Justin and Billy co-founded FastLine Media together which is a web development company. Robby came on board by applying for a job with them on Craigslist when, at the time, he was working in customer service.

All three have strengths in development, and typically serve clients from start to finish. Each partner has their specialisations- Billy serves as operations manager, Justin will work on development and Robby focuses on design.

The Beaver Builder Story
Robby explains that a lot of their clients wanted websites that would be easy to edit by themselves which really was their inspiration to create a page builder tool. They explained that on the agency side of their work, a lot of time is wasted emailing back and forth with clients about small changes and edits.

Justin started developing their own tool to solve these problems they were having. He says that it started off as a backend page builder, then they decided they wanted it on the front end. So it was basically one of those ‘scratch your own itch’ cases.

The three then decided they would try to sell the product, so they launched it as the FastLine Media Page Builder.

Launching the Product
It was brave putting the product on the market because there was a stigma amongst developers that was attached to Page builders. But they decided that they were confident that they were solving a lot of problems that other page builders hadn’t.

Once the results were being seen, they were able to overcome this stigma.

Differentiating
Some of the distinctions that lead to their success were:

It didn’t dump a lot of shortcodes into the content editor, so if you switch themes, your content is preserved. This was different to the other page builders available at the time that were using shortcodes which forces the user to basically re-write the content from scratch.

The User Interface was simple.
They also excluded features such as columns in columns to create a better user interface experience.

They chose a name that POPS! Upon advice from one of their clients, who was also a marketing genius, and mentioned that their original name - FastLine Media Page Builder, wasn’t very memorable. The team spent weeks trying to find a good name and someone suggested "Beaver Builder" as a joke. But they said that it got stuck in their heads so they gave it a go! It’s one you don’t easily forget!

Marketing
The guys talk about how they were all pretty clueless when it came to marketing at the beginning, but some of their key marketing strategies were:

Leveraging Influencers
The team reached out to the WordPress community and provided evaluation copies for writers to review.

One of the influencers that they reached out to was Chris Lema and they got lucky because Chris wrote an article about the best page builders out there and Beaver Builder was one of his clear favourites. They then contacted him to receive a testimonial.

Other testimonials on the site were obtained organically through twitter, email and support forums. They kept it simple and just added these testimonials to a Google doc to keep track of them.

Metrics
One of the things the guys from BeaverBuilder want to improve on is their ability to keep up with analytics and metric tracking. Currently, the team has only been tracking traffic numbers and orders.

Robby says he’s learning from KISSMetrics about how to follow the metrics to see how they’re converting traffic to purchase. Growing in their ability to track conversions, the team is using Google Analytics to track sources of traffic to conversions.

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A Bit About Sherry
Sherry has a PhD in Clinical Psychology and specialises in helping entrepreneurs and executives who are trying make their way in the world of business. It’s a tough path to travel and there are many rewards but it is important that we tell the truth about how hard it is to carve out our own livelihood.

She started out as a professor and did a lot of research into traumatic stress and became curious about how we can prevent long-term mental health problems when people are under stress. She started asking these questions about various populations such as military officers and physicians before she started asking them about founders.

Sherry is married to Rob Walling who is a well-known entrepreneur and author.  Sherry tells Troy that one day in 2012, she found Rob crying in his office as he had just learned that Aaron Schwartz (founder of Reddit) had taken his own life. This had affected him because he could relate to the tough journey of an entrepreneur. The two of them then started asking the question of how they can help founders and entrepreneurs.

When they launched Zen Founder they started with conference presentations then added a podcast which built a strong following. All of these pieces just built on each other until, in the last 18 months, Zen Founder and Zen Tribe have been able to become her full-time vocation.

What Is Zen Founder and How Does It Help Entrepreneurs?
Zen Founder helps entrepreneurs with mental health. Sherry explains that she spends 45% of her time talking about how important it is for us to firstly just notice our mental health. So a big part of her role is education and making mental health a normative conversation.

Sherry encourages people to pay attention to themselves and provides a safe space to allow people to talk. Sherry also helps founders remove the mental blocks which may be holding them back. Loneliness is a big block and is very common for freelancers, but even people with teams still feel lonely sometimes. There are other blocks such as fear of failure or even success. Often people self-sabotage and get scared when they're on the brink of success.

What Can You Do If  You Feel Isolated or Stressed?
Sherry says that one of the most powerful practices that you can do is journaling. It may sound fluffy but there is actually a science behind it.

Her advice is to put your thoughts on paper and look at it objectively. Get it out of your inner world and look at it in a neutral way. Track your metrics: How are you sleeping? What’s your mood like? What are the highs and lows of your day? You can learn a lot about yourself by being the observer. Keep a dream journal or a thought record. This is all a part of collecting data, measuring and understanding yourself.

Our thoughts are important, but they are only one part of us. They feel so loud when they live in the echo chamber of our mind but they sound and feel different when they are outside of us. Troy mentions the book "The Artist's Way" where the author recommends getting into the habit of just writing whatever is on your mind every morning. A great book! Check out the link at the end of the show notes.

Sherry has a morning routine where she gets up at 5.30 am and goes to the gym or for a  run. She likes the quiet and needs that space for her brain to wake up and be internal. She then feels like she has accomplished something and it is still only 7 am!

The Zen Founder Team
Zen Founder is a blanket name for the things that they do. They have the podcast series as well as her consulting work where Sherry helps entrepreneurs who are in transitions, crises and need an objective helper. She also plans retreats for organisations so that they can run a meaningful retreat.

Zen Tribes is like mental health boot camp where she partners with other founders to help small groups of entrepreneurs. They meet for 8 weeks and talk about taking care of your body and have conversations which are targeted towards the unique challenges that founders face.

The Book
Sherry and Rob released their book "The Entrepreneurs Guide to Keeping Your S**t Together" on February 21st, 2018. This awesome title was actually their 11-year old's idea. It’s a book based on the best of what they have learned from their podcasts over the last few years. It's action-packed with some shared personal stories and practical and implementable strategies that people can use.

Sherry wrote most of the book and Rob did most of the editing and revisions. She wishes that she could say it was an easy process but it took about a year and ended up being a difficult year for her personally. It required a lot of her but she was glad of the routine of writing as it provided structure and accomplishment amidst a lot of things that she couldn’t control.

How Sherry Looks After Her Mental Health
Sherry has her own therapist and she also has great friends. She also says that her yoga teacher is her mental health guru and it has been a really important practice for her to integrate body, mind and soul and be able to breathe and let go. Because this practice has helped her so much she also combines yoga and therapy to help people work through stress and anxiety.

We love these simple and important tips from Sherry. Is there anything that has helped you to get through stressful times? Let us know in the comments below. It's important to make sure we all don't feel alone on this journey so please reach out. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this podcast too!

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A Bit of Background
Most notably John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing. It’s the name of a podcast, a blog and a book but essentially it is a marketing system.

John started his own marketing consultancy about 20 years ago and loved working with small business owners. However, the difficulty was that small businesses usually have no budget and a short attention span. So he decided to create a system to overcome this problem.

It's actually really hard to buy marketing services these days. Everyone is selling a piece of the puzzle, including Google. The fact that this was a full strategy at a fixed cost was pretty remarkable.

Before John wrote the book, he was a practising consultant. He was selling the Duct Tape Marketing methodology as an online course and it was doing so well that he had people approach him to ask when he was going to write the book. It had been on his mind to do this but it took someone to say, "here is the money and a deadline" to give him that extra push.

Writing the book amplified the business and took it to a larger stage. It didn’t change what John was doing day to day, as he was already doing a lot of speaking, but the book opened it up to an international audience and for him to speak at larger conferences. He was also able to quadruple his prices.

John then had marketing consultants approach him and ask if they could learn the Duct Tape Marketing system so that they could then help small businesses. So John formed a network of independent marketing consultants that licence the Duct Tape Marketing methodology. They collaborate to help each other grow their businesses.

Explaining the Importance of Marketing to a Small Business
The idea of Duct Tape Marketing is that marketing is a system. That appeals to a lot of small business owners because usually, they feel they have no control over marketing. How he sells the idea is to first offer all services and give them what they want so that then you can have the conversation about what they actually need and educate them on how a system will help the business. Then this is just the gateway to show them how marketing is a system.

Marketing is hard to sell because a lot of the time people don’t even know what it is or how to measure it. So he tries his hardest to sell it as a product at a set price.  This made the sales cycle so much shorter because he didn’t have to do "the proposal dance." It instantly repels the wrong people and attracts the right people.

Managing Quality Control
John stays involved in the strategy and he often says that his role is "spotting the landmines." He has built a repeatable process so that he can train his marketing assistants to give them the tools and processes to effectively do a great deal of the client work that needs to be done. They are then assigned to the clients as account managers and John oversees them and adds insight to what is being done.

Another model of Duct Tape Marketing is that they will train someone within a company to become the expert. So Duct Tape Marketing do the strategic work but this person will be doing the day to day marketing such as the social posts. This model works for businesses that have a marketing person but perhaps they aren’t being directed properly if the owner of the business doesn’t have the expertise.

Operations
At one point John got out of doing client work and was doing a lot of speaking, writing and travelling. Now he is doing more creation around processes and tools.

John has five full-time staff members who are doing the work with the network, clients and their own marketing. They have created systems and thoroughly documented all of the processes so that if someone goes on maternity leave or holiday then anyone can jump into the role very easily.

They have tried a few different tools for documenting but they keep coming back to Google drive and docs. Their project management tools are Asana which they use internally and Base Camp which they use with their clients. They do this because they had trouble getting clients to use Asana as it as it is a little more complex than Base Camp.

The Consulting Network
He created the system in 2001, and gave it a name because he wanted it to be a brand, not a "John Jantz fan club". Although some people still identify Duct Tape Marketing with him, he has an onboarding team and account managers who will look after the clients. They soon realise that John is spread so thinly that it is best to work with the team and just have John's brain involved.

Advice on Licencing Out
Firstly, you need to ask - where am I going to go with this? To transfer all of your years of expertise and knowledge to someone who doesn’t have any experience is a lot more work than you think.

When he first started licencing out there was no quality control. But over the last couple of years, they have it so thoroughly documented that it is easier for someone to follow the system than wing it on their own.

Passion for Small Businesses
John loves helping people that love what they do and are great at it, but the marketing side is sucking the life out of them. He says that if he can give people their life back then that’s the thing that keeps him going.

At the end of the podcast, Troy asks how the name "Duct Tape Marketing" came about. There’s a funny reason why. Tune in around the 28 minute of the podcast to find out!

And that's a wrap! Have you read the book? Was it a game changer for you? We would love to hear your thoughts on this podcast and the Duct Tape Marketing methodology in the comments below.

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A Bit About Christina
Christina started off working in the Defence Department as a management analyst, so her job entailed a lot of technology. She then got married to a marine, so that trajectory changed for her as they needed to move around for his work.

Christina got a job in tech support at a bank and whilst she was working there she got to know some of the programmers who told her about Homestead. This caught her interest and so, in 1997 she built her first website.

She then decided to make websites and although she didn’t have any experience, not many people did at the time. She loved it and knew she could do it from anywhere and so she founded GlobalSpex in 1999. She now has four virtual contractors based in Argentina, India and the two in the US.

The GlobalSpex Niche
Christina's customers are typically in engineering, energy and healthcare. Her "thing" is problem-solving, so she attracts those types of customers who have that analytical brain and appreciates analysis and research. She would never call herself a web-designer - she is a problem solver and a consultant.

Christina wrote a great blog post for WP Elevation because she got so fed up with people telling her that her services are too expensive when they could create something cheaper and more easily with Squarespace or Wix. The blog explains that it's not about the website, it is about the right colours, the right codes, the right things to say in the right place. Check out the link to this post in the link section below - it's a great one.

So how does Christina have that 'client fee' conversation with potential clients? She doesn’t tell them why her services are more expensive, she takes them down the path by asking them questions. Such as, “What kind of shipping are you going to have?” “How are you going to measure that?” “What’s your merchant?” Most of these questions are things that they have never thought about and have no idea. They realise that this isn't their thing, there is a lot involved and usually, they won’t want to deal with it.

What Are the Challenges of Having Your Own Business?
For a long time, Christina didn’t value her own skills and wasn’t compensated for it. When she became a WP Elevation member, it helped her to stand up for herself and to stop undervaluing her services. She changed the prices of her care plans which increased her recurring revenue.

When you’re starting out it’s hard to charge more but each person has to find what makes them special. It will take a little while to figure out what you’re really good at, but once you do you can then get compensated for that.

When the customer comes back and gives you good feedback it helps your confidence. You're always going to have doubts and everyone has imposter syndrome no matter how skilled they are, but you need to keep learning the tools, researching, and tweaking along the way.

As you grow and expand you can start outsourcing the things that you don't like doing. You're going to have trial and errors to find the right person and it is never going to be perfect. Christina says that she has been through many contractors and has refined the trial process more and more each time and you work out the type of people that you work best with too.

Her advice is, to be honest with the contractor and tell them how you work, what your processes are and ask if they can work this way. Try not to feel bad if it isn't working out and remember that it is business, gently tell them it isn’t working and move on.

The Worries
Christina is a mum with a husband who works long hours, so she is juggling a lot and sometimes things get missed. However, she has gotten better because she has built so many systems and processes to minimise those panic moments. She has templates and checklists to help with the overwhelm.

Christina uses TeamWork which she says has been invaluable to help keep a track of what everyone in the team is doing. She also uses Process Street, email templates in Google drive, and is currently building an intranet so that all of the tools are in the one place. They track the milestones of a project so that they can get back to the client and tell them that they won't make the deadline if they don’t get the content to them by a particular date.

Scope Creep and Communicating with Customers
GlobalSpex has an onboarding process for customers with emails that go out, an initial meeting and then weekly phone calls.

Christina documents everything so if they come to her with a change that is beyond the scope, she puts that in an email. It needs to be in writing because they forget or they don’t realise that they're breaking the scope.

Balance
Christina has a 16 and a 10-year-old and a husband that works a lot, so how does she balance it all? She says that she doesn’t balance it! There are days when she needs to be with the kids and days when she needs to work. They are quite independent and wash their clothes and do the dishes which helps. They take vacations together and she can go with them anytime and work anywhere. She doesn’t believe in balance, there is no such thing!

What Next for GlobalSpex?
There is so much change going on in the area of digital marketing so Christina is trying to pull away from custom design websites. She is trying to look at the bigger picture of generating revenue for the customer. She doesn't want to separate PPC, email marketing and SEO; they are part of the whole package to get more customers.

Christina says that you need to find the right contractors and the right customers who also understand that. They come in with their own viewpoint of what they need, so you need to educate them.

Advice for the Newbies
At a local meetup recently a young guy who had just got into WordPress attended. His first question was “How do I make money?”

Christina's advice was this:

Always have a contract.
Set your boundaries and let the customer know from the very beginning about the process and how they should best be communicating with you.
Figure out what piece of it you really love and focus on that. Hone in on it, become really good at it and get known for it. “Find the thing” that will be your point of difference. Once you have the knowledge in this area your confidence comes across to the client.

Christina's Favourite Tools
Christina's tools that she can't live without are:

Beaver Builder
Premium Yoast - she is taking some of their courses at the moment to dive into it deeply.
Zapier

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Jurgen's Story
Jurgen's journey is quite an interesting one. He started off with 27 years of experience in corporate marketing and enjoyed both the challenges and being able to work his way up. However, in the last few years, things changed - he is driven by serving his clients and the company that he was working for wasn’t putting an emphasis on relationships and he didn't want to be a part of something that wasn't in line with his values.

Jurgen went off on his own and started a business which he initially thought would be a marketing and business consultancy (because that was his background). However, he soon came to realise that his marketing was based on corporate experience which didn’t work well with small business. The Global Financial Crises also got in the way at the time and people were cutting back on marketing expenses. Jurgen realised that in those meetings people would often tell him that they needed websites. Aha! Lightbulb moment!

Jurgen decided to figure out how to make websites and discovered WordPress. He built a website for a client who was impressed that they were able to get leads pretty quickly. It was then that he decided to change his company focus to building websites as a marketing tool.

Building Self Taught Websites
Jurgen taught himself how to use WordPress with some courses along the way. He isn’t great at coding so he has people to help him. He decided that it wasn’t a good use of his time to learn something that he wasn’t interested in. He was better off focussing on his strengths.

What is Jurgen's Niche?
He has niched his business down in the last 12-18 months to focus more on targeting business coaches. He had a range of different clients but his marketing is focussed towards business coaches now as they are the people who respond well to his message. There is no point in trying to get your message across to the wrong audience!

The Process
The key thing for Jurgen was setting up good systems. He developed a transformational marketing map with the stages that he uses in his own business and the businesses that he works with:

First, the potential client has to find out about you and build trust
Then get them interested in what you have to offer by understanding their problem and matching their needs.

You then go through the relationship building stage - generating, nurturing and converting leads.

By the time you get to the sales part it should be easy (or you haven’t done enough work!)

The sale isn’t over yet though, you need to deliver an exceptional product. Jurgen helps his client's develop systems for onboarding and building referrals and then makes sure it can be scaled.

The revelation for him was to get clear with his target audience - getting really clear about who they are to the point where you can give them a name, an image and a story that you can attach a whole lot of information to (a tip he learned from the WP Elevation Blueprint!).

Ask yourself - what are their needs, behaviours, hobbies, beliefs, values, frustrations and aspirations. That way you can communicate with them. Find out where they hang out. Such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or in real life are they in a Chamber of Commerce. You can even attend those meetings, or find where their meetups are.

Building Trust
You can build trust quite quickly by giving away free information or services and creating clear processes such as Jurgen's transformational marketing map (download the detailed map on his website).

Jurgen also blogs and has a podcast series which helps position himself as an expert. The content is on social media, with a lot of it automated to get his blogs and articles posted and shared easily. However, he also spends time engaging with people and sharing other people's content.

Innovabiz also has a weekly newsletter. Typically they include a variety of relevant articles in there, two of which will be their own, the rest are written by other people. This shows the client that they care about their success, even if it is to share another person's knowledge with them.

Podcasting
Jurgen's advice is that if you are thinking of doing a podcast- just do it! If you want help, there is a lot of support within the WP Community.

Jurgen had some personal coaching with Troy and one of the things Troy suggested was to start a podcast. He isn’t afraid to get on camera and talk to people so he found the idea of simply having a conversation with someone not daunting at all.

When Jurgen was in corporate, he had made many international contacts which weren't helpful for him when he was trying to get local business. However, he realised with a podcast he could leverage these relationships and speak to some really successful people doing innovative things. Hence the theme - innovation.

What If You Are an Introvert?
Jurgen's advice - forget about yourself and think about the audience. You have a gift and something to contribute to the audience. So get over yourself, get out there and make it about the audience and how you can help them.

Has the Podcast Helped Jurgen's Business?
It is hard to quantify but the reason they did it was for positioning. They an opportunity to land a large corporate client due to the fact that the CEO of that business was a guest on the podcast. So the podcast was the critical factor in that.

A number of small business clients also told him that they had a number of options, but the fact that they had listened to his podcast swayed them his way!

What Has Been the Biggest Challenge in Running His Business?
Jurgen says that cash flow has made it stressful at times. You get to a point where you spend a lot of money, put out a lot of proposals and you're counting on getting a lot of money coming in, but client's delay. However, when it rains, it pours and sometimes you can take on too many clients!

A few years ago he changed his business model from building websites as a single service, to monthly retainer payments from most of his clients which definitely helps with the cash flow situation and building long-term relationships.

Jurgen tells the client up front that if they want a website build with him that they need to go onto a care plan. That usually works pretty well. With the bigger projects, he tends to do it over a 12 month period so it gives them the chance to scale it and show them how it is working. The idea then of course, is that they continue on.

Mindset
How does Jurgen stay positive? He says that you have good and bad days but he tries to remind himself that at any given time in this world there is someone out there that is desperate for the magic that only you can provide and you can transform their lives. So you need to find a way to get out there and find those people, get in front of them and build your business in a way that feels good for you and makes you profit and growth.

Understand that there might be people that you think are doing things better than you, but that there are clients who will be a better fit for you and what you do. So there is no need to compare!

Balance
Jurgen takes time to get out on his bike for an hour or so first thing in the morning. When he is on his own a lot of good ideas come to him. If he skips a day then he doesn't feel right.

He says to do whatever you're passionate about to get away from work and switch off a bit.

He had an interesting conversation with guest Dr Fiona Kerr on his podcast recently who is a neuroscientist and talked about how when we switch off the mind we actually become more creative and it helps you develop new ideas. Find the link to this in the links section below.

Day to day Tools: 

• Ryver, which is a Slack alternative, where they do all their communication
• Zoom link for live chats
• Zapier for integration
• Paperform which is similar to Gravity Forms

Where to From Here?
Listen in at the end to find out where his business is going and his exciting upcoming plans. Including a joint venture which will include training programs and his annual business planning retreat with the next one being in Vanuatu. So Stay tuned for that one!

And that's a wrap! Jurgen is a wealth of knowledge, so please feel free to ask him any questions in the comments section below and he will get back to you.

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About Matt
Matt started out in IT after he left the military but eventually got tired of the corporate world and decided to go out on his own six years ago and start an IT company working as an IT consultant.

He had been building websites for years as a hobby and as he was consulting his clients, they either had bad websites or none at all. So being their IT guy they started talking to him about it. Not thinking it would be a full-time thing, he made a few websites and realised he was pretty good at it and that he enjoyed doing it. So 2.5 years ago, he transitioned to web development and hasn’t looked back since.

Matt's Companies
Matt has three companies at the moment- His first being the web design company Aledor (his surname backwards!) where he builds and redesigns websites for service professionals such as accountants and lawyers.

His second company is Tech Site Builder which is a turnkey website platform specifically designed for computer repair workshops. He acquired this company when he was running his own IT consultancy. Through his podcast series, he made a lot of contacts in the computer repair industry. A fellow podcaster had created Tech Site Builder as a WordPress theme and was selling it packaged with tutorials. However, he wanted to get out of the industry and so he sold the theme to Matt.

Matt then transitioned it from a theme to a turnkey website. Similar to Squarespace, you sign up for a low monthly fee and you get a starter website template with all the tools and plugins that they need. He has been doing this now for two years and it has created a recurring revenue for him with little input as most of it, including the onboarding process, is all automated.

His final project is TurnKey Websites BluePrint which teaches other website consultants how to build their own turnkey website. This will be launched in a couple of months.

How Does He Stay Focussed on Multiple Projects?
Research shows that multitasking isn’t efficient and you get the best work done when you focus on one thing at a time. So with his separate projects, he likes to focus on it, get it launched and then come up with a process to keep it going with minimal involvement from himself. He has a VA who looks after a lot of things as well.

Matt says that he didn’t go out searching for these new projects - they fell into his lap. When you're doing what you love, then this is what happens!

Staff
He has a part-time VA who works four hours a day as well as a part-time developer. The developer is based in Eastern Europe and the VA is in the States. Matt found her accidentally on Upwork when he hired her to do some photo edits. She had such a great manner that he asked her to be his VA because it is hard to find a good person online.

Matt has been through many freelancers and VAs and learned from his mistakes so you need to hold onto a good person when you find them!

What is Matt's Sweet Spot?
It has evolved over the years and he has seen the common thread throughout everything he has done - he is really good at communicating, breaking things down and being able to explain complex tech stuff.

He has so many aspects of his job that he enjoys doing, but he knows this is his strength and so he builds on it. He outsources the tech side of things and is slowly trying to let others take the reins a little bit. He finds it hard to let go of that control but once you find the right people that are even better than you at what they do, then that makes it much easier.

What Has Been the Biggest Challenge?
His biggest challenge when growing his business has been budgeting and understating how to put the money where it's most useful. Matt has gone through phases of Shiny Object Syndrome and blowing all his money on new tools for the business. So what helped him get over this was the book “Profit First” which teaches you how to budget your business finances.

Pricing
The key for Matt was finding his niche. The more you narrow down your services, the clearer the pricing becomes as well as the marketing and the message. Once he was able to find his focus, then people were coming to him and he was able to increase his prices to filter out the people who price shop to find the people who are really serious about working with him to get a great result.

Through his sweet spot, Matt was able to find his niche. But what about people starting just up and who need to be everything to everyone? How should they find their niche?

It's something that comes with time and can't be forced. The key is to know that you will eventually need a niche, but that you will need to be everything to everyone while you're starting out. It has to be something that you learn over time through the type of client that is attracted to you, or by discovering what area you are best at.

It seems counter-intuitive to focus on a niche because you have a fear of missing out and won't be able to help as many people. But he said that it has had the opposite effect on his business. Word gets around the industry that is your niche and you are seen as the expert in their industry.

Mindset
Everyone has times when they're ready to throw the towel in when it comes to running your own business. Matt says that the struggle never ends and sometimes it gets more exaggerated as you get more experience. You need persistence and to stay positive.

To get out of any dips in the business he has had to change focus. When he was working on the web development it was a struggle to get clients through the door, so he realised that he needed a different focus that would bring him recurring revenue.

When he hits a problem, by changing focus he is able to go back to what wasn't working. With a fresh mind he can then tackle it from a different angle and take it to the next level. Through doing that he changes perspectives and builds mini businesses so that if one crashes and burns, he still has the others to rely on. Matt likes to hedge his bets!

Balance
So how does Matt balance personal and professional life? He purposely built these businesses to be flexible so he can work anytime from anywhere. He is a big fan of taking an afternoon off to go to the mall or places that are busy on the weekend and then sometimes working weekends instead. He also plays the trumpet, so he has the flexibility to play a gig and then sleep in.

How Does He See His Businesses Evolving?
Matt doesn’t like to plan ahead too much. He waits for opportunities to come to him. If he had a five-year plan for his IT business he may not have jumped on these opportunities that came to him. He likes to have short-term goals for his business and change them up. For example, subscriber, revenue or retention-based goals. But he keeps his mind open and businesses flexible to allow new opportunities to come to him.

Tools
Theme: His favourite WordPress theme is the Genesis Framework by StudioPress. Sometimes he builds a custom child theme off that.

Plugin: He is a big fan of Restrict Content Pro he has been using it as a membership plugin and also for the sign-up process on his website. You can also use it to sell products online through a login process for the customer.

Day to day tools: The stack he uses is Slack, Trello, Freshdesk (for support desk for all of his platforms), Process Street (for processes and checklists), and Active Campaign (for email marketing). He then ties them all together with Zapier.

He likes the flexible solutions!

Well, there you go... Matt's formula for success! I hope you got some inspiration from today's podcast. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Who is Phil Singleton?
Phil is well known as the best selling author of SEO for Growth which he co-authored with John Jantsch. However, Phil considers himself a web designer with a difference - he creates lead generation websites that turn into recurring income for his clients and he uses the books that he has written to leverage his business.

Writing Books - Not as Difficult as You Think
Phil says that writing a book was surprisingly not as difficult as he thought it would be.

Phil joined Duct Tape Marketing (which was started by John Jantsch) as a certified consultant. He did a presentation on SEO to a Duct Tape Marketing group which impressed a few members of the audience. Fast forward six months and he had sold his first bestseller - Small Business Owners Guide to Lead Generation.

He wrote that with a group of six other experts. At first writing a book seemed to be an impossible dream for him, but it ended up being easier than he thought by using Amazon's self-publishing platform called Create Space. He then used some hacks to leverage influencers and gain SEO value (more to come on that topic).

Phil explains that the first book was relatively easy because there were six people involved and they hired a ghostwriter who spent hours which each of them to gather the information and write the transcript. They asked John Jantsch to write the foreword for them which was a huge help, as he is a Wall Street Journal best-selling author (aka an awesome influencer).

The biggest eye-opener for Phil in this process was how easy it is to get endorsements if you simply ask for them. This also helps the endorser as it reaffirms them as an influencer and expert.

It was then he realised the power and ease of endorsements for growth. He was able to leverage these endorsements and essentially have other people doing the marketing for him.

[vum-bigtweet tweet="How to leverage influencers and repurpose your content with best selling author Phil Singleton on WPE podcast"]

How to Go About Writing a Book?
If you choose to go with an agency to write, edit and do the artwork, they are good at what they do, but they will mark it up with a pretty good premium.

If you want to do it in-house, it's not as hard as you think to find the talent to do the editing, you can even find them on a platform such as Fiverr.

He spent 6-12 months writing his second book which he then took to John with the idea that if he co-authored it with him then they could launch other businesses from it. John agreed and this was a game changer to have him involved. John then added his input to the book, edited it, and voila! The best-seller was born.

They planted as many experts as they could into the book to give it credibility and also to bring those people in to endorse it. That was a huge part of the launch process because many of these people put the book into their own marketing channels.

Tune in at the 16-minute mark where Troy talks about how he leveraged influencers to grow this podcast series.

What’s the Payoff for Writing a Book?
Phil explains that it has brought him clients from all over the States now rather than just Kansas and most of them tell him that they have read his book. So in that way, the book has helped him grow his business.

However, the main reason for doing this was to build an authority website off SEO for Growth and then use that to build a network of agencies that don’t have the ability to rank in SEO in their city. The payout is still in progress as this is still in its growth stage.

Listen in at the 24-minute mark to find out how he manages his time and prioritises what is important when working on a project.

Phil has been focussing lately on leveraging from podcasts and blogging. A recent project was working on a strategy for 10 lawyers who created a 150-page book by repurposing their blogging content. He was able to make them the authority on these legal topics which lead to being guests on podcasts and opened many other doors for them.

Where Do You Start When You Want to Sell SEO Services?
Phil has three websites - one is marketing, one is web design and the other is SEO. Interestingly,   80-90% of their leads for SEO come from the web design website. This is because people come to you wanting a website but you end up talking to them about how they need a marketing strategy.

Phil's Super Secret Tip
Transform yourself from being seen as their web designer to a digital marketer. 

How does Phil do this? He creates a mock-up for them with a blog feed, social media feed, reviews, and video. The client will usually come back and tell him that it looks too busy and that don't have the time to be creating that content.

So he then has the conversation about the effect that taking those elements off will have on their SEO and lead generation. He explains that a website is actually a marketing platform and how you scale the business out and generate recurring revenue.

[vum-bigtweet tweet="Transform yourself from being seen as their web designer to a digital marketer. Best selling author, Phil Singleton, on WPE podcast"]

He recommends that you ask your clients about their competitors and who is doing it better than them. You then use an SEO tool such as SEMrush to pull up the data to show them what they are doing with their website.

Troy makes a good point that the way to stop competing with other web designers is to change the narrative that a potential client may have in their mind. They already don’t want to spend money on their website because they don’t have a proper understanding of what it can do and they perceive it as a sunk cost.

How Kansas City Web positions and differentiates themselves is very clear in the first thing that you see on their website: “They sell websites. We build lead generating websites. Big Difference. Huge”. To add weight to their expertise, they then showcase the book and all of the endorsements from influencers. Once clients see this they then trust that they are the experts.

When he goes to meetings with potential clients he also takes the book with him and advises that they read it and put it into practice. Usually, they can’t be bothered reading it but it works to differentiate you from competitors

You need to change their mind frame to understand that it isn’t a sunk cost. It’s a revenue generator and it's going to make you money.

Tune in at the 40-minute mark to find out about Phil’s lead generation on his own websites.

Leveraging Podcasts
Phil started doing his own guesting campaign to get backlinks. After he guests, he then sends his review funnel to them which means he gets many reviews on Google. These backlinks then help you organically and also builds trust for your website.

He is now starting his own podcast series which he will officially launch very soon where he will interview people, get niche authorities and use it locally to get access to "bigger fish". They may not want a website from him initially, but they will probably say yes to being a guest on the podcast.

Well, there you go. Some great hacks from Phil right there! There's more gold to be found when you listen in to the full podcast.

Let us know what you think in the comments below - and if you have been able to repurpose your content, we would love to hear about it.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Who Is Andre Gagnon?
Andre has been in WordPress business for 10 years. He tells us that he started his own business because he needed to make money after being fired from a job, so he began creating themes. His latest development is ProjectHuddle which is a plugin to make it easier to get feedback from clients on their website design. The client is able to point to a specific part of the website and make a comment on the actual spot that they are wanting to alter.

Why Is It Important to Get Feedback Right in the Design Phase?
Part of it has to do with the fact that if you are an agency you are a service business. What we do is fun, we are creating something for them and the client wants to be involved in the process. So part of your business is to include your client in the process and let them know every step of the way, what you are doing.

Whether you like it or not, client feedback is about project management.

The go-to tool is email, but this opens you up to scope creep. The client shoots off an email when they think of something and then forgets about it. It is hard to track the number of changes and they may get annoyed if you are unable to get back to them right away.

However, with ProjectHuddle, both you and the client can see what changes have been requested and can better understand scope increase and whether changes fit into the budget.

What Are the Steps to Take to Manage Scope Creep?

Effective Communication
Get the information that you need from the client. They know their goal, but it is up to you to paint the picture of how to get there especially if it is a complex project.

No project stays the same and there will be changes along the way, so make sure you build a buffer into your cost and budget in the time it takes to communicate things as well. Ensure that this is clear in the proposal and set the expectations from the start. 

And remember - you can’t over-communicate with a client.

Ask Why
ProjectHuddle helps ask specific questions. This makes the communication more effective - rather than just sending over a design and asking what they think.

They may not know how to put into words what they want to change, so you need to ask the right questions.

For example, if the client tells you that the logo should be bigger, you need to say “Can I ask why”? They are then forced to explain what they think the end goal is. Those reasons are more important than the change itself.

They might request a change, but is that really what they want? You need to know the goal. We know how to make a site convert, but are they just guessing what is going to increase those odds? From asking "why" you might come to the conclusion that it actually isn't about making the logo bigger, maybe they just need to add more branding on that page.

Sometimes once you delve into the reason you may find out that is not the problem at all. 

Feedback Is Not Always a Bad Thing
Client feedback is a good thing as long as you have set up the proposal, budget and expectations properly.  It can be a blessing because you can increase the budget and upsell some areas.

In addition to this, sometimes the client's scope can change and the different avenue you go down can end up better as a result.

Qualify the Customer
Get to know the client even before they’ve signed on. How the customer handles the feedback from the beginning such as proposals is an indicator of how they will be for the rest of the project.

Sometimes when you look back on those nightmare clients, you can see that there were warning signs early on. So you need to spend more time discovering them and make sure you get the deposit upfront.

There is emotion involved in this for them because their business is their heart and soul and of course, so they want to have some control. Keep in mind that the more involved that the client wants to be, the higher the budget will be because it will involve a lot of changes.

Set the precedent that you’re not going to make decisions based on taste because everyone’s taste is different. It’s based on the goals. If they don’t like the design then you need to dig deeper to discover whether it's about personal taste or something that will help accomplish their goals.

If the client is talking just listen, even if you don’t agree. Everyone just wants to be heard. If you don't first listen and then explain your reasons as to why you can't make a change, then that causes friction. Instead say "I understand your vision, but I can't do that because...."

Get to Know Your Client's Business
Being a web developer means that you are a therapist and business consultant too.The more you know about the business, the easier it is to handle feedback. Then you speak their language as a business partner. You transition from a web designer to someone who understands their vision, values and goals. This builds trust and they can rely on you to make decisions.

You are putting their business into a digital realm so you need to know everything about it.

Don’t just send over an entire website and ask them what they think. Ask specific questions not based on tastes but specific to their goals and business.

Centralise the Feedback
If you receive feedback from phone, email or skype, this means the records are kept everywhere and hard to keep a track of. Whereas with ProjectHuddle it’s all in the one place which makes it easier for the client to understand how many changes are taking place and how that will affect their budget.

Email can be treated like an instant messenger and they expect instant feedback. Whereas when you make ProjectHuddle part of the process then they don’t have that same expectation.

• Qualify the customer
• Communicate the process early
• Build the relationship with your client
• Get to know their business
• Over-communicate
• Ask why
• Centralise the feedback

That's it for this episode. How awesome were those tips from Andre? Now go and get your process set up and stop that endless feedback spiral! Oh, and be sure to leave us some comments on what you think of these tips, or if you have your own effective process. We'd love to hear from you on this topic

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What Is Elementor?
Elementor is an Israeli company based in Tel Aviv who have grown to be a very successful compant since the release of their page builder.

Page builders are visual design tools that have changed the way we build websites within WordPress. Although Word Press is a great CMS it isn’t that great at designing websites and you have to rely on themes to get it to look a certain way. With a visual page builder, you can see it as you design it and it cuts down the workload of a web designer substantially. Before page builders, you needed to create the prototype in Photoshop and transfer it using codes, HTML and CSS. Now you can easily create everything live, not worry about coding and focus more on creating beautiful pages.

Troy has been saying for years that a website lives in the browser, not in Photoshop. So if you are designing websites in Photoshop and getting them cut up into HTML and CSS then your days are numbered. There will always be a disconnect and a discrepancy between the image and then building it into the browser.

These days everyone has a website and it can require regular updates to content and images. So you need agile flexibility which a page builder gives you.

A Bit About Ben
Ben has been in the online marketing industry for over 10 years, specializing in content marketing. He started out in an SEO firm and then started his own marketing business where he created his own websites using WordPress.

Even before Elementor had launched the page builder, Ben knew of them because he had been using one of their themes for a website. One day he visited their site to renew his licence and saw that they advertised a marketing position. He applied and now here he is!

Listen in at the 8.30min mark to find out where the inspiration came from for the Elementor page builder.

The Page Builder Market
Visual Composer was the first page builder released and it exploded from there. There are a lot of other page builders out there now which came out in quick succession such as Beaver builder and Thrive. So what exactly makes Elementor different and gave them the confidence to go ahead with the product?

Well, Ben says that it wasn’t a contest of features for them. The vision was to excel in three main areas:

Speed: It needed to be fast so that when you drag and drop, you don't need to wait. It would all be instant.
Design advantage: The design needed to be highly detailed with attention to design trends. It is important for designers to have all the design elements such as shape dividers, overlays, box shadows and gradients. With bootstrapped companies, you see the same type of design over and over again. They wanted anyone to be able to create beautiful websites.
Ease of use: It's important for everyone from newbies to the professional designers to be able to use it. The interface had to be user-friendly and easy to use.
How Did They Get Traction in Such a Crowded Marketplace?
Ben says that firstly you need a great product but of course, that alone is not enough. You need a big emphasis on marketing. They used a lot of channels and experimented with new audiences and new ways of reaching people until it eventually paid off. It is still a lot of work and it isn't easy. Even if you have the best product you will still have people saying negative things. "Like a comedian, you will have hecklers, so you need a thick skin".

What's Been the Most Successful Marketing Channel?
Elementor gives a free plugin offering more free features than a lot of the other page builders on the market. Once people realise what an amazing product is it, it is then ok for them to upgrade to the pro version
Email marketing is also a focus for them. They have a newsletter so that they can advertise their releases, blog posts and news
Outreach and Collaborations are also a vital component of their marketing. Ben says that you need to contact the right people (such as he did with Troy) and find a way to collaborate where both parties benefit.
[vum-bigtweet tweet="Outreach and collaborations are important if you want to succeed within a saturated market. Ben Pines from @elemntor on WPE podcast"]

How They Capture Email Addresses
When you download the plugin you can enter your email to subscribe to the newsletter which is mainly about feature updates. Once they have their email addresses, they can also tease the audience with what’s available in the pro version.

Troy points out that Elementor doesn't have a lead magnet to get people to subscribe it simply says “Join our 165,000 newsletter subscribers” Their list has grown it organically from people wanting to know about the product.

Ben is thinking of doing something to educate people as a lead magnet soon. They have invested a lot of resources into tutorials and so they are thinking of offering a free course as an incentive.

How Does Elementor Decide Where to Focus Their Resources?
The owner of Elementor recently shared his vision with Ben. These are the elements he says that you need in the company:

Firstly, you must have tutorials and documentation
Celebrate whenever you can! Every time you get the chance to celebrate something, take it. Whether it be a year in review, Black Friday, Christmas... basically anything! He gives a great analogy here - when you enter a store and you see all the Christmas decorations, although you perhaps hadn’t thought of buying any, seeing them gets you in the spirit. Elementor likes to give their employees a “chance to go wacko”.
Outreach and collaboration are also important to them as he mentioned earlier. A recent collaboration was with ColorMag, a magazine theme with over 100,000 users. ColorMag recently updated their theme to work with Elementor widget so they made a video tutorial which benefits both companies. Check it out in the links section below.
Managing the Team
When he started with Elementor they were a team of five and now there are 20 employees and growing. They all work in the one office which he says is so much better for communication than having a remote team. "Having your support team sit next to developers is so much easier as they can turn around and ask questions whenever a problem arises." In terms of support though, if you want 24/7 support, it is better to outsource some of those employees in a different time zone.

[vum-bigtweet tweet="Growing your business within a saturated market. Ben Pines from @elemntor talks to us about elements that lead to their success"]

Elementor Features
The template library is one of the best features that Elementor has. They have over 130 templates that are beautiful and responsive. You can also save your own templates and reuse them.

Autosave is also being launched next week so that your content is protected. They have also now added a "save draft" feature so that you don't have to publish changes straight away.

Elementor is also soon to release the theme builder which will allow you to do full website design.

Elementor also differs from some other page builders in that it doesn't use shortcodes. Usually, when you deactivate a page builder, it leaves a lot of shortcode in your content editor which causes problems. However, when you deactivate Elementor all the content remains and the CSS is saved in external files.

Gutenberg - a Threat to Page Builders?
With the new version of Elementor, they’ve added compatibility with Gutenberg. They have been working closely with the Gutenberg team to iron out any glitches.

Ben says that Gutenberg is a great way to work on your content but it's not a professional design tool. It may evolve to that but Elementor has a clear vision to adapt and work with them. He thinks that Gutenberg is actually a great step forward for WordPress.

[vum-bigtweet tweet="Is Gutenberg a threat to page builders? Ben Pines from @elemntor on WPE podcast"]

Fostering the Community Around Elementor
Ben says that the community is fostered from gaining feedback and by being in constant communication with their Facebook group which has over 10,000 members. The key is to grow your company from the inside of the community. You can build your business just by answering people’s questions. They have been able to foster a community that is supportive and helpful to each other.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What Exactly Is Oribi and Who Are Asi and Noam?
Asi is the head of marketing and Noam works on the product at Oribi, which is the first analytics and insight tool designed for any type of business of any size.

There are many analytics tools out there but most business owners don’t really know how to understand the results and how to use that for their business. Oribi fills this void between answers and questions so that business owners can easily understand results and get the most out of their website.

Insight Is More Important Than Numbers
It's not about the numbers it's about the story behind the numbers. The product translates the figures into everyday language that everyone can understand. A lot of web developers aren’t data analysts. They can install google analytics but then don’t know what to do with it and may end up paying an analyst or agency to work it out for them.

Why Is It Important for Businesses to Understand the Data?
Simply put - using the data will help them make money for their business. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. You need to understand cause and result. For example, what happens when you make changes to your marketing mix or the way you target your audience. You need to measure the success of that with actionable analytics.

What data you want will depend on your position in the company. For example, Asi is the head of marketing so he looks at the sales funnel and which marketing channels perform the best. Whereas Noam looks at the funnel and at which stage we lose the people and then how we can fix those leaks.

As a small business owner, you would need to look at everything from A-Z and it can be overwhelming. They see all of this data and don’t know where to start and what to look at. Do you start with measuring traffic? Opt-ins? Country? Browser? What are the important metrics? Sigh. My head hurts!

Asi and Noam say that it’s also about the data that you choose not to display. You need to keep it lean and focused. When you log into Oribi you get the data you need and you won't get lost. If you do choose to dig deeper you can of course.

[vum-bigtweet tweet="It's not about traffic, it's about conversion. Analytics experts Asi and Noam from @GetOribi tell us what we need to be measuring on WPE podcast. "]

What Do You Do If You Want a Client to Use Oribi?
First, they need to sign up to Oribi, then you add a tracking code to the site. You don’t have to define anything because the script automatically identifies 100% of the events and page visits and you don’t need to change any code to install it. Easy!

What Should We Be Measuring?
Depends on the type of customer because each business has their own set of goals. If it’s a website that displays ads then obviously they need as much traffic as they can. However, most websites need people to subscribe or to buy something. So those are the ones that need to improve their sales funnel.

Many people focus on the traffic, but the conversion is more important and also the source. Mike mentions that he tracks the conversion from when the visitor comes from Google compared to when they come from social media. Then you know where to invest more time and money. One may bring you more traffic, but the main thing is to find out which one converts so you can focus your efforts there.

Even if you didn't know that breaking it down by channel was important, it doesn’t even matter because Oribi will give you all the important information. The problem with a lot of other analytic packages is knowing what to focus on.

You cant just measure one metric at a time. You need to measure a few at the same time. Decide what your KPIs are and then measure from there. Sometimes your goals change and if you don't change the analytics accordingly you don’t get the answers you need.

Improvement is easy to track as you can easily attribute that to a campaign or a change that you have made in the marketing. However, understanding why numbers are down is more difficult. So when you have the answers to what isn’t working and why then that's the sweet spot for you.

[vum-bigtweet tweet="With analytics, people tend to focus on what’s working but you need to look at why you lose numbers too. Asi and Noam from @getoribi on WPE podcast"]

Most business owners aren’t aware of how useful analytics can be for their business and don’t know what questions to ask. So as web developers it is our job to know the questions to ask that will lead clients to the right answers.

Ask your client:

Who are the customers?
What are the companies goals?
What are the KPIs?
What are the key points of action on the website?
[wpecallout title="Golden Nugget Tips:" align="left" image="/wp-content/themes/wpelevation/images/callout/nuggets.png"]

It's not about traffic, it's about conversion
Look at the numbers that go down rather than up
Breakdown the conversion by channels[/wpecallout]
Oribi has a free trial so for more details click the link in the links section below. Sounds like it will make life a whole lot easier for many people.

So that's a wrap! Thanks for tuning in. Let us know if you have tried or are currently using Oribi. We would love to hear your feedback in the comments below.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

That's it for this episode. We hope you collected some gold here! Let us know what you think of this podcast or if you have tried inbound marketing in the comments below.

Who is Joe Howard?

Joe Howard is the founder of  WP Buffs which is a WordPress Maintenance company and a CTO for entrepreneurs and small businesses who run WordPress websites. They have headquarters in Washington DC but work with a remote team all over the world.

Joe has been working with WordPress for seven years now and running WP Buffs for two years. He started out in client services and building websites and made the transition to maintenance because his strength is marketing rather than technology. Joe is passionate about inbound marketing (having leads find you rather than going out and finding them.)

When Joe was building websites he was semi-successful and usually had some work going on, but when he wasn’t building websites he wasn’t getting paid and it made it difficult to find a recurring revenue model. So he decided to find a business model that was more scalable.

Stepping into a Saturated Market

Joe saw that WordPress maintenance was already a crowded space but he liked the challenge because he was always good at executing things.

First, he needed to validate the idea by researching the market so he Googled other companies to find out about his competition. He knew there were companies that he couldn’t compete with for at least the first couple of years.

He also did a keyword analysis for "WordPress maintenance" and "WordPress help" and discovered that a lot of people were searching for it. Which meant there was a large demand for it, proving that there was a viable market.

He needed to build it as lean as possible so it has been a bootstrap company since day one. This was a good move to help it grow and now he is able to compete with the bigger companies.

Building Your Brand

Joe explains that you need to build trust with your audience which is a work in progress. When they started out, he put some focus on how they wanted to differentiate themselves from competitors, but the brand was also from built user feedback, what people are saying about you online and learning from what people want.

He says that the most important thing to remember when you are starting out is that you don’t know too much about what you're doing. The people who are the most successful are the ones who learn from their customers and their mistakes. Improve based on suggestions and make sure you're flexible and change things as you go along. "You will throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks." Once you know what works, then you are on your way!

A common fear is that people aren’t prepared to make a decision as they think that it will be set in stone. But when you're starting out, you don’t have a huge database of people that you need to explain the changes to, such as price increases. So explaining to 10 – 50 customers is easy! Maybe you will have one or two complaints but overall it is much more important for your company to make those changes. Be bold and make decisions and don't be afraid to make mistakes. 

Working with a Remote Team

Joe initially needed to bring people on board fast as he needed to get work done. Now he has switched things more to being proactive with hiring rather than reactive. He references a great Kinsta article here where they talk about how to "Hire Slow and Fire Fast". Check out the link below the show notes.

Onboarding Documents

Joe talks about the importance of onboarding documents for new starters which include culture documents. This is particularly necessary as it is more difficult to get a remote team on board with the same brand vision and maintain consistency across the board.

One of the companies that he looks up to is Human Made and they recently released their onboarding documents. You can get some good ideas from this so check out the website in the links section below.

How He Finds His Staff

He hires most of his employees through recommendations from his current WP Buff staff. Or they use Post Status who have a Wordpress specific job board which isn't as big as a zip recruiter but it is focused and well known in the WordPress space.

Getting Started With Inbound Marketing

What can you do in the next 2 weeks if you are a new company?

The first thing you need to do is idea validation. You need to know if people are searching for this by conducting a keyword analysis. Assess the viability through the volume of searches.

Joe's favourite tools to use are:

• Ubersuggest: This gives you a comprehensive list of keyword ideas especially longtail searches which are easier to rank for.
• Google: It will give you a little list that drops down when you start searching and then you scroll to the bottom of the page and it gives you suggested terms at the bottom - and it's free!
• SEMrush: is good for competitor analysis and they have a free trial where you can download as much data as you want.

The second thing to do is separate your keywords into viable topics. If you want to effectively target certain keywords for blog posts or certain pages, figure out the best keywords for a blog or an interior page of your website.

The Long-Term Investment

When you start out your business you need to understand that whilst blogging is time-consuming it is also a medium to long-term investment. It takes discipline so the key is to create a plan for yourself and stick to it. It won't take too long to realise the investment after a few months when people start entering information into your contact form. It will build slowly but surely.

[wpecallout title="Outreach for Blog Posts - Joe's Super Hack" align="left" image="/wp-content/themes/wpelevation/images/callout/lightbulb.png"]The most successful way I've done inbound marketing is by keeping a BCC list of WordPress friends to send important blogs to.

When sending emails, I send a more personal one to them and ask for feedback.

Always be friendly and present, and look for how you can add value to people's lives and businesses.[/wpecallout]

How to Know If It Is Working

Measuring traffic to your site is important to do on a monthly basis. With Google Analytics you can set up goals so you can track visitors to specific pages such as a campaign page.  If you're increasing traffic but not conversions, then you know it’s a conversion issue.

Set a repeat task to do marketing and conversion each week and do the basics well and consistently. It's not rocket science. By having a dedicated time to work on tasks rather than in 15-minute increments, it will make you much more efficient.

Listener Questions

What is your favourite project management tool?

Teamwork. For onboarding new care plans, new employees and everything project based. It also manages their white label service.

What tools do you use to run a remote team?

Teamwork Chat for day to day communication. It is similar to Slack but Joe is in many groups on that platform so there is too much transition and he can't work effectively. For video communication he uses Zoom.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
Listen in to find out!

That's it for this episode. We hope you collected some gold here! Let us know what you think of this podcast or if you have tried inbound marketing in the comments below.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Writing "The Art of SEO"

Stephan is best known for the Bible on SEO “The Art of SEO”  which is currently in its third edition. The book came about because he was sharing his knowledge at the conference "SMX Advance". He believes that what you put out into the universe you get back so he gave away some of his best tips. Everyone in the SEO industry was there including Rand Fishkin (the founder of Moz) and three weeks later Rand approached Stephan in the speaker room and gave him a hug! They had a great conversation and decided to write a book together.

He had never written a book before, but there were four co-authors for the first and second edition. Having four authors was tricky because the voice needed to be consistent so they hired a ghost editor to ensure that it was written all in the same style.

Why SEO?

Stephan was studying for a PhD in chemistry but had always had an interest in programming and creating websites. In 1994 when web development was taking off, he attended the second international Word Wide Web Conference where he met one of the creators of Netscape and NCSA web server, Rob McCool. Tim Berners-Lee was the keynote speaker. Stephan was starstruck and knew he had to get into development. So he dropped out of his PhD and started an agency called Netconcepts and they started specialising in SEO.

Hot tip: Get a blue chip client, even if you have to buy that client.

This was when he was able to get his big break. They had a lot of clients from a web development point of view but no large SEO clients. He wanted a huge eCommerce client that was also a household name. So they went after Target. They offered to do a website and SEO audit for free in exchange for a testimonial. That was a game changer for them because this testimonial was a huge credibility builder.

It cost them a lot in resources but it was well worth it.

Tune in around the 11-minute mark to find out how he as able to make millions from click revenue and what he did after he sold that business.

Always Look After Your Personal Brand
Now Stephan focuses more on his personal brand. If you keep putting it off because you have no time, that is a bad idea. It is the brand you will carry with you to the grave. So he wrote a book “Social eCommerce." It is his own book and doesn’t pigeon hole him into being “that SEO guy”.

He recommends that you have at least two distinct areas. "Don’t be a one-trick pony." For example, you may work with WordPress but then also love playing an instrument. How can you combine these two things? Get creative! If you have two dimensions and find a niche, it will prevent being “replaced by the robots”.

Listen in around the 19-minute mark where Troy and Stephan agree to disagree on what will happen as robots will take over human roles. Stephan also gives us a look at how technology has evolved over the last 100 years and how it will continue to speed up until computers will be smarter than us. They discuss things that will blow your mind including Moore's Law. 

Keeping this in mind, you need to think about what is going to happen in your industry two years and then 10 years down the track. Think about how will it impact you and what you need to do to be ahead of the curve.

Your client needs to rely on you to be proactive and pre-emptive. Make sure that the client relies on you to know the latest technology, never allow them to come to you and ask about a new advance in technology.

Think about the bigger picture and more into the future and that will help shape your business. If you’re doing something that’s a commodity and doesn’t have a future then get out now.

Where Will SEO Be in Five Years Time?
If you are the kind of SEO consultant who is doing the basic stuff such as figuring out which keywords are better than others, remember that these things have a shelf life. If that’s all you do you, you will be left behind. The same goes if you are doing low-level WordPress development, then you will also be replaced by a robot soon enough.

What Do You Jump into If You Are Working at a Low Level of SEO or WordPress?
If you’re doing SEO, then you need to look at the cutting edge part of SEO such as RankBrain and really understanding this Google algorithm that’s all about machine learning. Everything will be running off of Artificial Intelligence at Google in only a matter of time. So in order to go into battle with AI then you need to be an expert in AI.

How Do You Start the Conversation About Selling SEO Packages to Clients?
It is something that clients don’t understand and it is a difficult conversation to have. So Stephan's advice is to "stop educating the client and start poking at their pain point".

You say to the client, "Here’s where you are at now, and here is where you would like to be." So make it painful and obvious about how far they are from that point. You will make their brains hurt if you tell them about all of the options that you have for SEO so instead make them see that there is a problem and ask - "What is it worth to you to be there? What do you think that should cost you on a monthly or yearly basis?"

Show Results
Then you need to show the client results, so track the rankings using a rankings tracker such as Rank Ranger or Authority Lab. Show them how far they are coming along and don’t get too caught up in the fine details of explaining what you did. Stephan recommends charging by results rather than by the hour because you have the value that exceeds an hourly rate.

Stephan's Personal Brand
Stephan is more than his work as well. He was a foster child and he sees his difficult childhood as a gift. He now has three beautiful daughters and he wouldn’t have them if he didn’t have the childhood he had. He had to grow up fast and got married when he was 19. He attributes his happy life and success now to how he got through his childhood with resilience and strength.

He used his story to be able to help other foster children and bring awareness to the topic and let people know how they can help. He also helps with a non-profit that builds schools in Africa. He says that by doing these things you are also still building your personal brand.

He has also had TV appearances which means that you are seen as the authority on the topic that you are discussing. Your value then increases because you are seen that way.

"Facts tell and stories sell".  Stephan says it is so important that people relate to you. They need to know that you understand them. So don't be afraid to be real and be vulnerable.

And that's a wrap! Troy and Stephan covered some super interesting topics here and even more if you listen in.

That's the final podcast in this season. We hope you've enjoyed and learned from the high calibre of talent we've had on the show over the last 10 weeks. 

Stay tuned, we'll be back in January with a new and improved podcast format. You're going to love it!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Who is Laura Elizabeth?

Laura has been a designer for the last 7 years. She started out with one year in an agency then became a freelancer. Last year she transitioned into product development of a WordPress plugin called Client Portal. She also teaches how to design in a non-pretentious way and she still does the odd design job from time to time when a cool project comes along.

How Can We Build Better Client Relationships?

Laura came to realise that most of her income was coming from repeat work and referrals. This is because of the importance that she puts on giving her clients a memorable experience. She came from an agency background and when she became a freelancer, she felt that disadvantage of not having a nice office to bring your clients to, so she focused on standing out and giving them a great experience instead.

Laura says that most clients have a business goal that they want to achieve but they want to enjoy the process as well. As a designer, a lot of what you do is really fun and it’s exciting for them to see their business take on this whole new look.

[vum-bigtweet tweet="Want to get repeat work and referrals? Find out how to make your the development and design process enjoyable for your clients."]

How Do You Make the Process Enjoyable for Clients?

Laura’s favourite way to do this is to make the process repeatable and smooth. Some designers make the mistake of assuming that the client knows how a project works and what is involved. However, clients are generally nervous to work with you because they are investing a lot of money and not sure what to expect. You need to gain their trust with a lot of quality communication.

Don’t assume that if the client isn’t bugging you that they don’t want to know. Assume that the client is waiting to know what is happening all the time.

Many designers and developers complain that their client is bugging them with constant questions, but this just means that they are feeling insecure about the project. If you communicate with them frequently, it helps to alleviate this worry. Laura used to tell her client's that every Monday morning they will receive an email outlining everything that she did in the week prior, what she will be doing the following week and what she needs from them. She says, to just keep it simple and create a template with bullet points.

Where Did Her Inspiration for Client Portal Come From?

She made the client portal for her own business to be able to manage her clients but she didn’t intend on selling it at first. She only started selling it when she realised that there was a demand in the market for such a product.

It had got to a point where she was finding it difficult to manage all of her clients and she didn't like the idea of giving design work over to a freelancer.  Instead, she went through her client process and noted down every single detail from every email, deliverable and interaction that happens. She realised that it was all the same for every client apart from the design.

From there she made a portal where the client logs in and comes to a dashboard where they see every deliverable that is in progress, completed and what is coming. It shows when the next phone call is and when she is available.

Clever Creation

She had designed the website and got developers to code it so she took bits of her website to hack together a dashboard. She then put it up for sale and offered a presale discount so that she could use those funds to develop the product. She then hired a developer to do the plugin once she had the revenue. So clever!

How Important Is It to Put Yourself in the Client’s Shoes?

It’s the job of a designer and developer to put yourself in your client's shoes. Sometimes we can get too focussed on the design rather than the experience that the client is having with you. It just requires a small mindset shift.

At the same time, you also need to educate the client that the website isn’t actually for them, it is for their customers. Laura says that sometimes a client may come to her for a redesign when their current look isn't working, but she will explain to them that the problem may not be the actual website. It can be lack of targeting or marketing as well. So she would sometimes have to tell her clients to come to make some changes and them come back to her with revenue rather than use their savings.

What is Design Academy?

She was working with a lot of developers who all had really cool side projects and needed designers to help them. So, she created a free resource which helps developers learn how to design without having to pay a designer. That means that they can then get their side projects up and running and once they have revenue, they can pay a designer from that. Her plan is to turn this into a course early next year.

Tune in at the 27-minute mark to learn more about what is involved in this course.

What’s Next for Laura Elizabeth?

Her focus is Client Portal at the moment with a new version being released early next year. Then next year she will go almost full-time with Design Academy and get a solid course going.

Wow, such a good reminder! Get communicating everyone!

If you have any tips or hints on what has worked well for you to create a good customer experience, we would love to hear about it in the comment section below.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Background

Corey started in 2003 in the early days of WordPress when it was good for blogging but not much else. He was a terrible blogger but a passionate bass player and had been wanting to build an online magazine just for bass players. However, he wanted more than a website, he wanted to connect and build a community. He also wanted to find a way to program WordPress to push the content out by targeting specific interests. He didn’t know where to start so he kept it really generic at the beginning and his audience could subscribe to a newsletter, MySpace (and yes apparently it still exists for musicians), Facebook and Twitter.

At the time, he was big on Twitter and he hardly touched the Facebook page, but it was Facebook that was growing significantly. So, he focused on Facebook (reluctantly) as it was clear where people wanted to connect. By the end of the first year, they had 10,000 Facebook fans! Back then it was easier because Facebook pages used to accommodate these actions easily but now they have shifted their algorithm, so it is much harder, unfortunately.

Corey's focus is now a lot more on email, using their own plugin which allows the content to get out to their audience in a way which targets the person's interests, rather than having people subscribed to everything they do.

At the 8-minute mark, Corey talks about how they use MailChimp which has the RSS to email capability. Listen in here to find out more about these handy tricks to save you so much time and energy on getting your content out there.

Segmenting and Targeting Tips

Be intentional about who you speak to and what you send
Put a subscribe box at the bottom of an article for that category so that you are engaging them in the content that they actually want
How Do You Start to Build an Online Community?

When Corey started out, they had to go with lesser-known bass players for their podcasts. It is more difficult at the beginning, but you build up your audience slowly. They also made sure they were getting involved with industry events to make connections there.

Once You Have an Audience, How Can You Create Revenue?

Corey has set up a variety of different sponsorship packages for things such as contests. Their revenue also comes from No Treble's online store where they sell t-shirts. Their best seller is the t-shirt with their logo on it which shows what a sense of community that they have been able to create.

Managing Communication and Engagement with Your Community

Corey reads every comment because he wants to know more than the stats and get the sentiment behind the feedback. He also has a closed group with about 5,000 members which is very different to the public group. They have pinned guidelines and questions you have to answer before you are able to join. He formed these guidelines by inviting the people he wanted to join and then asked them what they wanted to see to ensure the group has all the relevant content that they want and need.

1. Find your niche
2. Find out what content they want
3. Get the right content to them to minimise the number of un-subscribers who feel like they are getting spammed with irrelevant information
4. Listen to your audience

Awesome tips Corey!

Have you found a way to get relevant information to your community? We would love to hear how!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Meet Bridget

We start out with a little background on Bridget. Amongst all her projects, she explains that her passion is blogging about social media marketing which you can find on her site at bridgetwillard.com. Her other passion is giving back to the WordPress community through volunteering at WordCamps, the most recent being WordCamp LA where she teaches people about blogging and using Twitter. These camps are a huge success - with one on every weekend around the States. One of the reasons why WordCamps are highly successful is because they are able to keep the price affordable thanks to the volunteers.

What To Expect at a WordCamp

It’s cheap
"Tech changes every 20 minutes!" so you are getting up to date information
 You're meeting people in the same space as you, or potentially will work in the same space as you.
It is a very supportive space
The WordPress Community Support

Bridget then talks about the support she feels from the WordPress community and why she enjoys WordPress networking. 16 months ago when her husband passed away she had no money for the funeral. Her bosses set up a website and they raised $1,300 for her. She was so touched that all of these people she didn’t know were helping and she finds that’s what the WP community is all about – support. But you need to remember to give back too.

With the recent hurricanes in the US, we have been talking a lot lately about the need for a good network of support behind you in case something happens in your life. It is good to have a reminder that even if you’re an introvert, you can still have this support online. Bridget says "we are a community of introverts so everyone is in the same boat!"

Why Volunteer?

Bridget believes that when you give introverts structure, it makes them feel like they belong. She felt like she found her tribe when she first volunteered. "Volunteering makes you have a sense of belonging and gives you encouragement."

Bridget talks about how scary it was talking in front of everyone at first, but how important it was for herself to do it and get out of her comfort zone. She received some good advice beforehand from a co-worker "Everyone in that room is rooting for you. No one wants you to fail" Love that advice!

[vum-bigtweet tweet="Everyone in that room is rooting for you. No one wants you to fail @gidgey on WPE Podcast "]

Find out more about WordCamps and how you and get involved around the 6-minute mark.

Women Who WP

The group started in 2015 when Jen Miller and Elizabeth Shilling decided to start a dinner and talk about WordPress. They invited Bridget to talk about social media marketing and then it evolved into "this movement that is bigger than us".

People ask her why it is a group for women only. And she says that "women dialogue differently" and that even though we want equal opportunity doesn’t mean that we aren’t different to men. We need to celebrate the diversity! Listen in at the 19-minute mark where she gives some amusing examples of different dialogues!

Bridget says that one of the things that make the meetups a great success is that at the end of the dinner everyone goes around the table and talks about what they learned in the last 30 days. This is great for networking, giving everyone the chance to speak and to see that everyone is learning. Everyone has that "imposter syndrome" where we think we aren’t good enough, but you get to see that everyone is just learning no matter what level you are. Everyone has different talents and skills that they can share.

Women in WordPress

Recently we asked our WP Elevation Facebook group for their opinion on an article written by Emma Hinchcliffe about two women entrepreneurs who created a fake male co-founder to deal with sexism (and it worked). I ask Bridget for her thoughts on this, as the WP community seems to be supportive no matter what gender. Is it just the clients who have this view?

Bridget says that there are studies on social media showing that even women will follow a man before they follow a woman. So, we actually have a lot of gender bias within ourselves. She says, “Let’s draw a circle and step into it and start with us… Am I going to ask a man for help or am I going to ask a woman for help?” Sometimes the decision isn’t about gender though, it can also be about the title of the person, for example, CEO vs Marketing Manager.

She says that her next point is a bit controversial but she asks - are we the ones who are eroding our own boundaries when we are managing expectations with clients or is it because we are a woman? So, if we tell a client that we aren’t going to launch the site until we are paid but we do it anyway, is it because we are a pushover or because we are a woman?

We need to protect our boundaries. And if you do a free service, send a $0 invoice so they know they got something for free. Women are givers and that can be taken advantage of. How are we empowering ourselves if we make a fictitious man as the CEO to get more clients? Those are the clients we don’t want!

At the end of the day, it is about setting boundaries and managing expectations.At meetups, you can talk about these things instead of feeling isolated and alone in your entrepreneurship as an agency.

A Message to All of You Entrepreneurs out There!

"I would like my freelancer friends to stop calling themselves freelancers, and start calling themselves agencies cos you are! Love, Bridget"

[vum-bigtweet tweet="Drop the freelancer tag. You are an agency or consultant! @gidgey on WPE Podcast"]

Let’s Talk About Give Donation

It is a full-featured donation WP plugin that makes its own forms and has great reporting. It is more robust than a Paypal button and they don’t take commission like a lot of other plugins.

Being a part of the creation of this plugin has been very rewarding for Bridget. She says she loves to be able to help people to do good in the world. It empowers people and that is what she loves as she used to have a victim mentality. Bridget was in a job she didn’t like for a long time because she didn’t think she was worthy enough. She listened to an audiobook “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Shae whilst driving to a job she hated every day. She says that she didn’t know that you could be happy at work. “I was 42 and I cried like a baby. I decided if the millennials get to be happy, then I get to be happy too.” And now here she is helping people to make a difference in the world!

How Does Bridget Keep Her Balance?

Bridget says that volunteering is her balance. She loves giving back and encouraging people in the WP community. After all, it's the WP community who make, create and maintain a code base that is open and free for everyone. How amazing is that?

When you spend your time focusing on helping other people, you do get that balance

She also loves what she does, so, with social media being her passion, she is on it constantly, but she doesn’t find that a burden. (She does karaoke every Tuesday night with her friend Julie to maintain the balance!).

"The balance isn’t just – ‘I’m doing a four hour work week!’ That’s not real life…. There is this ridiculous perspective that you can just magically create work and have the dream, but there is no dream without the work. You have to do the work. The balance is in seeing why it is important and how you’re affecting other people.  At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the people and the relationships you have with them. Nothing else matters."

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the people and the relationships you have with them

Well said, Bridget… well said!

What a lady! We would love to hear your take on networking and women working in WordPress. Please share your thoughts or stories below.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Meet Bridget

We start out with a little background on Bridget. Amongst all her projects, she explains that her passion is blogging about social media marketing which you can find on her site at bridgetwillard.com. Her other passion is giving back to the WordPress community through volunteering at WordCamps, the most recent being WordCamp LA where she teaches people about blogging and using Twitter. These camps are a huge success - with one on every weekend around the States. One of the reasons why WordCamps are highly successful is because they are able to keep the price affordable thanks to the volunteers.

What To Expect at a WordCamp

• It’s cheap
• "Tech changes every 20 minutes!" so you are getting up to date information
• You're meeting people in the same space as you, or potentially will work in the same space as you.
• It is a very supportive space
• The WordPress Community Support

Bridget then talks about the support she feels from the WordPress community and why she enjoys WordPress networking. 16 months ago when her husband passed away she had no money for the funeral. Her bosses set up a website and they raised $1,300 for her. She was so touched that all of these people she didn’t know were helping and she finds that’s what the WP community is all about – support. But you need to remember to give back too.

With the recent hurricanes in the US, we have been talking a lot lately about the need for a good network of support behind you in case something happens in your life. It is good to have a reminder that even if you’re an introvert, you can still have this support online. Bridget says "we are a community of introverts so everyone is in the same boat!"

Why Volunteer?

Bridget believes that when you give introverts structure, it makes them feel like they belong. She felt like she found her tribe when she first volunteered. "Volunteering makes you have a sense of belonging and gives you encouragement."

Bridget talks about how scary it was talking in front of everyone at first, but how important it was for herself to do it and get out of her comfort zone. She received some good advice beforehand from a co-worker "Everyone in that room is rooting for you. No one wants you to fail" Love that advice!

Find out more about WordCamps and how you and get involved around the 6-minute mark.

Women Who WP

The group started in 2015 when Jen Miller and Elizabeth Shilling decided to start a dinner and talk about WordPress. They invited Bridget to talk about social media marketing and then it evolved into "this movement that is bigger than us".

People ask her why it is a group for women only. And she says that "women dialogue differently" and that even though we want equal opportunity doesn’t mean that we aren’t different to men. We need to celebrate the diversity! Listen in at the 19-minute mark where she gives some amusing examples of different dialogues!  

Bridget says that one of the things that make the meetups a great success is that at the end of the dinner everyone goes around the table and talks about what they learned in the last 30 days. This is great for networking, giving everyone the chance to speak and to see that everyone is learning. Everyone has that "imposter syndrome" where we think we aren’t good enough, but you get to see that everyone is just learning no matter what level you are. Everyone has different talents and skills that they can share.

Women in WordPress

Recently we asked our WP Elevation Facebook group for their opinion on an article written by Emma Hinchcliffe about two women entrepreneurs who created a fake male co-founder to deal with sexism (and it worked). I ask Bridget for her thoughts on this, as the WP community seems to be supportive no matter what gender. Is it just the clients who have this view?

Bridget says that there are studies on social media showing that even women will follow a man before they follow a woman. So, we actually have a lot of gender bias within ourselves. She says, “Let’s draw a circle and step into it and start with us… Am I going to ask a man for help or am I going to ask a woman for help?” Sometimes the decision isn’t about gender though, it can also be about the title of the person, for example, CEO vs Marketing Manager.

She says that her next point is a bit controversial but she asks - are we the ones who are eroding our own boundaries when we are managing expectations with clients or is it because we are a woman? So, if we tell a client that we aren’t going to launch the site until we are paid but we do it anyway, is it because we are a pushover or because we are a woman?

We need to protect our boundaries. And if you do a free service, send a $0 invoice so they know they got something for free. Women are givers and that can be taken advantage of. How are we empowering ourselves if we make a fictitious man as the CEO to get more clients? Those are the clients we don’t want!

At the end of the day, it is about setting boundaries and managing expectations.At meetups, you can talk about these things instead of feeling isolated and alone in your entrepreneurship as an agency.

A Message to All of You Entrepreneurs out There!

"I would like my freelancer friends to stop calling themselves freelancers, and start calling themselves agencies cos you are! Love, Bridget"

Let’s Talk About Give Donation

It is a full-featured donation WP plugin that makes its own forms and has great reporting. It is more robust than a Paypal button and they don’t take commission like a lot of other plugins.

Being a part of the creation of this plugin has been very rewarding for Bridget. She says she loves to be able to help people to do good in the world. It empowers people and that is what she loves as she used to have a victim mentality. Bridget was in a job she didn’t like for a long time because she didn’t think she was worthy enough. She listened to an audiobook “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Shae whilst driving to a job she hated every day. She says that she didn’t know that you could be happy at work. “I was 42 and I cried like a baby. I decided if the millennials get to be happy, then I get to be happy too.” And now here she is helping people to make a difference in the world!

How Does Bridget Keep Her Balance?

Bridget says that volunteering is her balance. She loves giving back and encouraging people in the WP community. After all, it's the WP community who make, create and maintain a code base that is open and free for everyone. How amazing is that?

When you spend your time focusing on helping other people, you do get that balanceBridget Willard

She also loves what she does, so, with social media being her passion, she is on it constantly, but she doesn’t find that a burden. (She does karaoke every Tuesday night with her friend Julie to maintain the balance!).

"The balance isn’t just – ‘I’m doing a four hour work week!’ That’s not real life…. There is this ridiculous perspective that you can just magically create work and have the dream, but there is no dream without the work. You have to do the work. The balance is in seeing why it is important and how you’re affecting other people.  At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the people and the relationships you have with them. Nothing else matters."

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the people and the relationships you have with them Bridget Willard 

Well said, Bridget… well said!

What a lady! We would love to hear your take on networking and women working in WordPress. Please share your thoughts or stories below.

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How Your Grew Her Business... Fast!

She started as a social media consultant and ran a consultancy for four years purely from word of mouth referrals. However, she got to the point where she was burnt out with too many clients and working solo.

She explains that this YouTube thing all started by accident!  Her clients kept asking her the same questions and she was constantly on phone calls and in meetings which were a waste of her time. So she decided to do a YouTube tutorial about live streaming for your business and how to use Periscope which had just come out.

She sent it to her clients, not thinking much of it, but by the next day, she had 1,000 views. (Which has now grown to 80,000 views.) This is when she realised the power of Search on YouTube and making videos that people are looking for. And that’s how she built her channel up so fast within only two years.

The beauty of YouTube is that it is free marketing. You aren’t paying to get views and she gets leads every single day. So why isn’t everyone using it?

Why Should People Be Using YouTube for Their Business?

You can teach your customers. This is the main reason to use it. It is an educational platform to give  “How To” tutorials and to do them in a way that is unique to you.
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world (Google is the first)
Creating content that your customers are looking for is how you grow and gain momentum really fast and you build your lead generation machine... literally while you sleep!
It’s free! People are happy to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to have an advert placed at certain times of the day! This is out there 24 hours a day at no cost. She does pay for advertising now that she has traction though, so combined with her YouTube tutorials, that works great for her. However, you need to have a little bit of money in the bank before you invest in advertising.
[vum-bigtweet tweet="Grow your business fast with YouTube. Listen in to @ylenarduzzi on the WPE podcast"]

What Is the First Step to Making a Video?

Listen to your customers. If you don’t have customers yet, go to your competitors and see what comments they are getting and what is being asked. Check for FAQ pages because if one person is asking it, there are thousands more that are asking too.

Why Would I Give Away This Information for Free?

People often ask y why they would post information on how to do something when they want to get paid to do it for them instead. y says that people are inherently lazy and when videos get too technical and “make your head want to explode” that’s when you go to the expert and ask for help - which is now you!

y says that she puts so much information out on her YouTube channel for free because the more value she puts out in her videos, the higher she ranks, the more comments she gets, Google then favours the content, the more people see it through Search, the more people say “She is the expert, I want her to teach me and I’m going to buy her stuff”!

[vum-bigtweet tweet="When it comes to content “The more you give, the more you’re going to get in return” @ylenarduzzi on WPE podcast"]

If you're worried that you have missed the boat on using YouTube for your business, it isn't too late. y says that all you need to do is out-value your competitors on there!

What If You Don’t Have the Best Equipment?

She started out with an $80 webcam (the C920), a LAV microphone and instead of using a tripod she used a stack of books and sat in front of the window. She did that for the first year when she got her first 50,000 subscribers on YouTube! The production quality doesn’t need to be high, what does need to be good is the content.

[wpecallout title="Gold Nugget Tip:" align="left" image="/wp-content/themes/wpelevation/images/callout/nuggets.png"]Take your ego out of the equation, don’t worry about what you look like and just start with what you have.

“There is something to be said for authenticity and using what you have.”

If you have a phone then you can start making videos - no excuses![/wpecallout]

Listen in at the 15-mark where y tells us about making her first viral video in her pyjamas!

As a recovering perfectionist, y has learned that “done is better than perfect”. Just get your content out there and make sure it works before you start tweaking or changing things. If you compare the quality of production from when she started to now, it has improved so much, but that has taken a lot of time and she was able to do that because YouTube grew her resources to be able to. Just be truthful about where you’re at.

Tune in at the 20-minute mark, where y offers tips on how to get over the fear of being on camera.

[wpecallout title="Bonus Tip: Get to the Point!" align="left" image="/wp-content/themes/wpelevation/images/callout/inspiration.png"]Long intros and explaining why people should watch the video are two of the biggest killers for attention. The longer that people watch your video, the higher you will rank.[/wpecallout]

Posting Strategy

y does 1 video a week. It is too hard to run a business and do more than that. Each video takes a lot of work even in the uploading to get it optimised. Quality over quantity but keep it consistent.

People make the mistake of making content and then just moving on to making the next pieces of content. You need to take the time to get it out there. Promote and optimise it.

Even if you have a small following on IG, share your video, because that is how it is going to grow. The work is not done when you hit publish.

There is so much more gold in here so make sure you listen in!

How have you been able to grow your business on Youtube? Let us know below!

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How Did 17hats Begin?

Donovan Janus is the CEO of 17hats which is an all in one business management app where you can manage client communications, proposals, contracts, bookkeeping and more.

His idea for the software happened when he was working for an online gallery system at the time. The company was trying to generate and followup leads but they were wasting too much time on these processes. (And we all know, as business owners, we never have enough time!)

He tried to find a complete solution for the client onboarding process, but nothing such as this existed at the time. So, he decided to build it himself, and despite being told they were crazy, the demand for the product was huge and the company grew quickly.

The Struggles of Growing Your Product

Donovan says that an influential book for him has been “The E-Myth” by Michael E. Gerber which explores the different stages of growth within a business. One of the stages is when you become ashamed of your business - which is where Donovan was at the beginning of this year. They had been in business for two years and had grown to 75 employees, but he started to see the cracks in the foundations of the business and was embarrassed, especially about their lack of customer support.

They had launched a service called “Ally” where they actually run businesses for people and it was meant to have superior customer service. Whilst it was a good idea, it became too much and they weren’t ready for it.

Two years in and they realised that they needed to make changes because the way it was going wasn’t sustainable. They had to start again from basics and turn everything back around which took a whole year to do. They shut down the Ally service and brought those people to customer support. These were people who have actually run businesses before so the support went from something that was embarrassing to “a point of pride”.

How Did He Simplify His Business?

Donovan tells us that recently he ran into his business coach from when he was 18. After discussing his business ventures with him, the coach told him that they had failed because he over-complicated them!

1. His first business was successful, but then he added too many products
2. The second company was going ok until he added more complication by introducing a photo app.
3. And now with 17hats, he had added a human service to a software company

Donovan has learned that often people overcomplicate their business because a client has suggested an idea. But if a client does this, you need to ask yourself what the side effects of this will be.

[wpecallout title="Gold Nugget Take-Away:" align="left" image="/wp-content/themes/wpelevation/images/callout/nuggets.png"]Don’t overcomplicate things when it comes to your business![/wpecallout]

The Importance of Having a Mission and Vision for Your Company

Donovan says that the first thing you should do is define your mission and vision. He did this with his team before they even started the coding for the product. A couple of months ago they reviewed their mission and they were surprised to see how much they had got off track.

One of the things that they always wanted to be was affordable for small business owners. However,  not only had they raised the price, but they had also overcomplicated it with three different pricing plans. So they have now lowered the pricing and gone back to one plan.

If you don’t take the time to define your mission and vision, as a result you have a harder time making decisions. Defining this gives you so much clarity.

Simplifying Your Company’s Structure = More Time

The company has gone through many structural changes as it has grown. One of the challenges has been that as the company grows, processes slow down because everyone wants to put in their opinion and different people have to sign off on things. So they have simplified the structure and they work from a 90-day roadmap where everyone knows what they need to do and they have the full responsibility for that without having to go through all of the red tape.

Now he has time to get back to programming!

Books That Donovan Has Drawn Inspo from

1.The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. He turns to this book for inspiration just to know that the things that they are going through are normal.

2.The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz. This will take you back to foundations and what matters most in management such as bad clients and employees, and how to handle those situations.

 Multitasking Slows You Down!

The company uses Slack but he is trying to limit how much they use that. He tells his employees that every time they send a message, that it costs $5. Why?  Because it stops their workflow and switches their intention. (It’s all about focussing people!)

A fun exercise to do with your employees so you can see how less productive you are when you multi-task:

1. Write down the sentence “I am good at multitasking”
2. Underneath each letter in this sentence, write a number counting up from 1.
3. This time try writing the letter and then the number, the next letter and the next number etc

See how much longer that took! By focusing on one thing at a time, you get so much time back.

So there you have it. Some simple but awesome tips to help you get back to what is important in business. Tune in for that and more on this week’s WP Elevation Podcast!

We would love to hear your thoughts on Donovan’s advice. Have you experienced any of these struggles and simplified your business as a result?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.