WP Elevation WordPress Business Podcast

In the final episode for 2019, Troy looks over the past year and celebrates milestones both within and outside the walls of the podcast studio. But that’s not all. He recaps the top 10 episodes of the WP Elevation podcast along with all the really cool resources and insights that came out of them. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/242

In this episode of the podcast, Simon Kelly and Troy Dean reunite to talk about how to measure the health of your business with five key metrics. But it’s not just about measuring positive or negative cash flow. The scorecard they present assesses both the health of your business as well as you the business owner. Watch the video or keep reading below to find out why that matters. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/241

If you’ve never heard the term “neuroplasticity” before, this episode of the WP Elevation podcast will change that. 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. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/240

So to help you with your content marketing, we've dived back into the vault and found this incredibly helpful podcast where I interviewed my good friend Jeff Bullas who is the man when it comes to blogging, content marketing and gaining maximum exposure. This is a republish of a post from 2017 but it's still highly relevant. Enjoy! To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/239

When it comes to the finances of your business, would you say that you have a complete handle on it? Most agency owners don't. And there are so many reasons why. Firstly, you're not an accountant and you don't have time to become one right? Secondly, it's scary, overwhelming, confusing... and can I say it? A little boring. 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. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/238

Mario Peshev, the founder and CEO of WordPress development agency DevriX, sheds some light on how he’s handled hiring a team, from the early days of the agency to today. With a team of about 50 people working for the agency, Mario has also had to focus on creating processes and systems to ensure that everyone and everything runs as efficiently as possible. Tune into this episode of the WP Elevation podcast to get a major dose of hiring and team management inspiration. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/237

Kim Barrett is the founder of Your Social Voice, a social media lead generation agency and a best-selling author and speaker. But that’s not really what he came to the WP Elevation podcast to talk about. Instead, he and Troy touch upon his entrepreneurial beginnings as well as how he’s found lasting business success working in the Facebook advertising space. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit http://wpelevation.com/236

As Pagely moves into a new era with serverless application hosting, CEO and co-founder Joshua Strebel takes a trip down memory lane in this episode of the WP Elevation podcast. He and Troy talk about managed hosting, chasing the top of the stack, using revenge as fuel as well as Joshua’s predictions for the future of WordPress. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/235

If you’ve been on the fence about WP Elevation, there’s no better way to get off it than by hearing a first-hand account of what it’s like. In this episode of the WP Elevation podcast, Noah Britton talks about his business before and after WP Elevation, and how better processes and a change in mindset helped him cut his client list in half while tripling his revenue. This is his success story. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/234

Glen Carlson is the co-founder Dent Global, who run structured accelerator programs that produce entrepreneurs that stand out, scale up and make a positive impact in the world. They’re best known for the award winning ‘Key Person of Influence’ program, acknowledged by INC.COM as “One of the top personal branding conferences in the world”.  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.  To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/233

In this episode of the WP Elevation podcast, Troy is joined by Christie Chirinos, the product manager of managed WooCommerce hosting at Liquid Web. There’s more to this episode than just talk of managed hosting though. Tune in if you want to learn more about what product managers do as well as to learn how Christie uses the Eisenhower time management matrix to decide which fires to put out each day. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/232

Have you ever thought about how much more productive you’d be or how much money you could make if only you kept your hands off of your phone or your mind from wondering what’s happening on Facebook? In this episode of the WP Elevation podcast, Nir Eyal talks about the research he’s done on the psychology of habit-forming products, what he’s learned about overcoming distractions and the books he’s written to capture both of these ideas. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/231

Serial entrepreneur and full-stack product designer/developer Brian Casel visited the WP Elevation podcast to talk about the value of selling productised services. And although his background is in design, Brian has created a wide variety of products, including a website-as-a-service, a done-for-you content marketing program and an online course. All of which he discusses on this jam-packed episode of the podcast. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit http://wpelevation.com/230

As a WordPress consultant, you’re always on the lookout for solutions to make your job easier while helping you get your clients better results. But you have to be careful about adopting new tools. Use the wrong one and it could cause more issues than there were before. That’s why Akshat Choudhary and the team behind the BlogVault backup plugin have taken extra care in developing their product… over the last seven years. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/229

If you attended WP Elevation’s live event in Santa Monica earlier this year, you’ll recognise Dana Malstaff as one of the guest speakers. She’s the CEO and founder of Boss Mom and a content strategist extraordinaire. In this episode of the podcast, she and Troy talk about the value of having a kickass content strategy and how to go about formulating one for your business. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit http://wpelevation.com/228

In Part 1 of his email marketing masterclass on the WP Elevation podcast, Paul Sokol talked about campaign planning and automation. In today’s episode, he dives into Part 2 and the subject of list hygiene. 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: To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/227

David Wood has not only coached hundreds of entrepreneurs, coaches and corporations, he’s gone through his own journey of professional and personal growth (which continues to this day). In this episode of the WP Elevation podcast, he and Troy discuss the scepticism some feel about coaching and talk about how powerful truth, daring and caring can be for those who are ready to make a change. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit http://wpelevation.com/226

WP Elevation alumnus Suraj Sodha tells the story of how he found great value (and profitability) in recurring revenue business models. But he didn’t stop at selling WordPress maintenance plans to clients. Suraj created WP Maintain, a WordPress maintenance company solely dedicated to providing top-notch after-care for website owners and other web designers. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/225

As you strive to elevate your business, do you ever feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle that you can’t possibly win? Or worry that you’re just not cut out for entrepreneurship? It’s not uncommon to be apprehensive and maybe even a little sceptical of what the future holds. But, as Samantha Hearne explains in this episode of the podcast, you can’t afford to allow fear to keep you from taking action. Listen now to find out what she says about entrepreneurial anxiety and impostor syndrome. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/224

Before 2015, Amber Hinds was working as a freelancer and her husband Chris was working in the restaurant industry. They knew what they wanted their life to look like, but it was impossible to achieve it with the choices they’d made. So, they entered the Blueprint program, adopted a clear niche and created a business that allowed them to hit the road. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/223

Once you’re inside the WordPress community, people welcome you with open arms and provide guidance and insights you wouldn’t otherwise be able to glean on your own (at least, not easily). And that’s exactly why Ivica Delic decided to leave his 20-year banking career to become a WordPress freelancer and to spend more time with his 20+ Facebook groups. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/222

The first half of this episode of the WP Elevation podcast is chock-full of wisdom about resilience and resourcefulness. So, even if you’re not interested in getting in on the influencer marketing game, tune into the episode to learn how these two characteristics and mindsets have helped both Shane and Troy get to where they are today. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/221

This episode of the WP Elevation podcast is not like the typical episode you’ll find here. That’s because I'm joined by Paul Sokol, a former Infusionsoft campaign builder and current thought leader and marketing automation nerd. Rather than cover the usual “where have you been?” and “what do you do now?”, Paul walks us through a number of marketing automation and campaign planning scenarios. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/220

How much thought do you give to online privacy when building websites for clients? According to the team behind Termageddon, an auto-updating privacy policy generator, this needs to be something that agency owners take very seriously… and spend less time managing. Hear what they have to say about the matter on this episode of the WP Elevation podcast. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/219

When it comes to selling WordPress plugins and themes, are you making as much money as you possibly can? Vova Feldman talks about how Freemius helps developers maximise this opportunity on this episode of the WP Elevation podcast. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/218

Consider this episode of the WP Elevation podcast part “Meet an Elevator” and part “Ooh, look! A shiny new tool!”. You’re going to get an introduction to Vito Peleg, hear a bit about his journey from rocker to Elevator and learn all about his new WordPress plugin that’s set to revolutionise the way you collect client feedback. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/217

Finding the right tools to manage your business, hiring the right team members to support it, and having enough hours in the day to get everything done — sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Pete Everitt of SO... Digital Communications sheds light on how to manage a successful agency, its team, and the growing Marketing Development Ecosystem. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/216

I know, I know… “Sales funnel” is a bit of a buzzword at the moment. But this episode of the WP Elevation podcast — featuring brilliant teacher Dave Foy — is going to change how you view sales funnels and how you use them in your business. More specifically, you’re going to learn how to use sales funnels to sell high-ticket products and level up your business. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/215

James Schramko from SuperFastBusiness

In this episode of the WP Elevation podcast, Matt Diggity tells Troy about his journey from electrical engineer to SEO. He also reveals a number of SEO tips he uses to get websites to the #1 position in Google SERPs (and hold them there). To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/212

Have you ever wondered how much a new lead is actually worth to your business? And, more specifically, whether you have a particular funnel or channel that brings in more valuable leads over others? It can be frustrating trying to glean these kinds of insights from a tool like Google Analytics (because you can’t), which is why Troy’s discussion with Keith Perhac is a must-listen. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/211

In this episode of the WP Elevation podcast, Troy talks with Brian Jackson, the Chief Marketing Officer of Kinsta. Don’t expect this to be a typical chat about WordPress hosting though. This is an in-depth examination of how Kinsta has leveraged great support and content from Day 1 to grow its business and establish authority in a crowded space. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/210

If you missed the opportunity to see Chris in Santa Monica or you simply want more juicy tips on how to use storytelling to get the right clients, give this episode a listen. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/209

This episode of the WP Elevation podcast features Larry Kim, who recently sold his first company for a not-so-small sum of $150 million. As he’s now in the early stages of building a new company called MobileMonkey, there’s no better time to pick his brain about business growth. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/208

In this interview, Daniel talks about how he got into the marketing space and what tips he has for content marketers and others trying to make a meaningful impact with their content. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/207

In this episode, we talk about Kim’s migration away from her old identity as The WordPress Chick and her foray into content marketing product development. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/206

Kate Toon is an award-winning SEO copywriter and SEO consultant with almost two decades of experience in all things advertising, digital and writing. Originally from the UK but now based just outside Sydney. She has worked with big brands such as eHarmony, Curash and Kmart. And she’s helped countless small businesses produce great content and improve their copywriting and SEO. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/205

Kim Barrett, the founder and CEO of Your Social Voice sheds some light on what the impetus was to hastily start his own business, some missteps he made along the way, as well as how he productised his service as a result. To read the full show notes for this episode, visit https://www.wpelevation.com/204 

Do you find it hard to admit to those around you that you're not doing ok? Perhaps even admitting it to yourself if difficult. Today's guest has been there and come through the other side to tell you his story. 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 forMake 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

What does it take to build a successful digital marketing agency from the ground up? On this week’s episode we are joined by Mickey Mellen, who is a veteran WP developer and co-founder of GreenMellen Media. We talk about choosing your niche, hiring, vetting clients, making sales easy, and much more. This episode is a must-listen for anyone who dreams of going from freelancing to running a successful digital agency. Tune in to this week’s episode of the WP Elevation Podcast to learn how Mickey made it happen! 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.

Do you ever wish you could move away from just taking orders from others about what they want from a WordPress site? Or maybe become known as a thought leader instead of just another developer? This week’s guest has a plan for building authority and finding your voice as a consultant. 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: Start talking about yourself as someone who creates value for clients, drawing on past experiences as examples. 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. 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

It’s easy to get distracted from crazy headlines and overnight success stories. The truth is, that these stories almost always just focus on the highlights and disregard the challenges and hardships people go through. Today’s guest, Miles Beckler truly represents a rags-to-riches journey. 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!

Neil Patel has been on my wishlist of podcast guests for quite some time now. He’s the co-founder of so many amazing tools that all of us digital marketers use, like Kissmetrics, Crazy Egg, and Ubersuggest. He gets over 3 million hits on his website per month! And if I had known inviting him was as easy as sending an email, he would have been in the guest seat much, much earlier. Luckily for us, he’s here today on WP Elevation Podcast, and in this episode we talk about how to optimise user experience on your website. 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

At leas one-third of the people we know are introverts. Should introverts push themselves to become extroverts or can they stay in their comfort zones and still build successful businesses? 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!

We all want to build better WordPress websites. Unfortunately, they don’t always end up looking great. If there was a way that you could bundle it all and build a website in, say, a weekend, would you take it? 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

Should you start a podcast or are you already too late? There's a lot that goes into running a podcast, but Joe Casabona is here to help us out. 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.

From an individual standpoint, it's easy for a lot of us to see the appeal of working remotely; you can work from home, from the coffee shop, on the road or even in the air. But when it comes to working as a team, remote work can pose a few extra challenges. This week's guest is here to talk to us about how you can build a great remote team, keep them productive and accountable, and retain great talent while scaling up. 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

Many of us have a love-hate relationship with LinkedIn; we’ve all got profiles, and we get connection requests, sure—but do we really know what we’re doing with it? 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

How do you go from dropping out of university and paying bills by doing odd freelance jobs to running an award-winning WordPress development agency? 93Digital founder and managing director Alex Price is here to tell us how. 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

One of the best things about WordPress is the tight-knit, supportive community of designers and developers that has sprung up around it over the years—so how can you make the most of it for your business? Nathan Ingram, WordPress business coach and head of training at iThemes, is here to tell us. 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

Cash Flow Problems Colin Hewitt is no stranger to the struggles business owners face in trying to manage cash flow. That’s how he came up with the idea for Float six years ago. 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, in this very moment, 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.