Podcasts about beaver builder

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette discusses the upcoming Page Builder Summit with guests Dan Maby and Nathan Wrigley. Scheduled for May 12-16, 2025, the summit aims to unite the WordPress community. Michele highlights the collaborative spirit and the importance of community engagement. Dan and Nathan share insights into the planning process, the diverse range of sessions, and the evolution of page builders. They emphasize the summit's role in fostering learning and connections.Top TakeawaysThe Summit Is Exceptionally Accessible and Flexible: The Page Builder Summit is designed to be easy and low-pressure for attendees. With free access to pre-recorded sessions for 48 hours, viewers can tune in when it's convenient for them. The optional Power Pack gives extended access and extra bonuses.Visibility for Lesser-Known Creators and Speakers: One of the summit's highlights is giving a platform to a diverse lineup of speakers, many of whom aren't regularly featured at large in-person WordCamps or other conferences. It's a space for new voices and fresh perspectives to shine.Sponsorships Make the Event Possible—and Deserve Support: Nathan highlighted that without sponsor support, the summit wouldn't happen. Sponsors like GoDaddy, WS Form, BigScoots, and many others contribute more than just funds—they provide energy, tools, and community-building support.Mentioned In The Show:WPLDNPageBuilderSummit.com MagentoDrupalAnchen le RouxKadenceElementorDiviBeaver BuilderGoDaddyKinstaMelapressBlackwallPress Forward podcastBig Orange HeartWP Coffee Talk podcastBig ScootsWeb Designer ProYour Moxie MavenWeb Designer AcademyZainatain Dynamic.oooAB Split TestBS-Free BusinessWP MavensCroco BlockWS FormsCheck ViewDroip

Say thanks and learn more about our podcast sponsor Omnisend. On this episode of the WP Minute+ Podcast, Matt chats with Toby Cryns, founder of Minneapolis-based agency The Mighty Mo!, about what it's like to run a WordPress agency for 20 years. From building sites in Flash before pivoting to WordPress after Steve Jobs' infamous “Flash is dead” moment, Toby reflects on the evolution of the web industry, the rise of page builders, and the growing influence of AI on development and client expectations.Toby shares his journey of overcoming fear around AI, his experiments with ChatGPT and Copilot, and how he's using these tools to develop a WordPress-based project management app. He discusses how the small business and nonprofit web design market is shifting, the impact of DIY platforms like Wix and Squarespace, and the growing divide between clients who want $300 websites and those who need reliable long-term partners. Through honest anecdotes and hard-earned lessons, Toby explores pricing strategies, client relationships, project management, and the power of sticking with WordPress – even amid uncertainty in the ecosystem.Key TakeawaysAI and WordPress Development:AI is useful as a junior-level coding assistant but still requires deep domain knowledge.Tools like ChatGPT and Copilot have saved Toby hundreds of hours on plugin development.AI won't replace agencies but it will change workflows and create new opportunities.Adapting to Market Shifts:The entry-level web market is increasingly lost to AI and DIY tools.High-end clients may be exploring prototyping internally before approaching agencies.Adaptation is key: agencies that don't evolve risk becoming obsolete.Running a Sustainable WordPress Agency:Project managers and account managers are game changers for scaling without burnout.WordPress plugins like Beaver Builder and services like ManageWP streamline delivery and maintenance.Raising prices (even a little) can be a healthy, overdue adjustment.Community and the Future of WordPress:Despite recent governance controversies, Toby remains hopeful about the WordPress community.The community is WordPress' greatest asset – leaders must help rebuild trust and direction.Gutenberg may yet become the publishing backbone of the modern web.Important LinksThe WP Minute+ Podcast: thewpminute.com/subscribeVisit Toby's Agency: https://themightymo.com/Connect with Toby on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobycryns Support us for as little as $5 to join our members-only Slack group. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette interviews Cami MacNamara a seasoned web designer and solopreneur. Cami shares insights into her business, Web Cam LLC, and her new initiative, "Web Designer Habits," which aims to help web designers develop productive habits. They discuss the importance of accountability, time management techniques like time blocking and the Pomodoro technique, and the benefits of joining online and local networking groups. The episode also teases a collaborative project between Michelle and Cammy involving a planner designed to support web designers in maintaining their habits.Top Takeaways:Small Changes Lead to Big Improvements – Cami emphasized the power of incremental progress, whether in business, design, or personal productivity. Tackling tasks in small steps can make overwhelming projects more manageable and sustainable.Be Prepared for the Unexpected – Michelle shared practical travel and everyday preparedness tips, from keeping essential items in the car to ensuring that your luggage complies with airline regulations. Thinking ahead can save time, stress, and even money.Documenting Processes is Key – The discussion touched on the importance of writing down systems and workflows, especially for solopreneurs. Whether through standard operating procedures (SOPs) or simple notes, having a record helps maintain efficiency and organization.Community and Support Matter – Both Michelle and Cami highlighted the value of connection in professional spaces, particularly within the WordPress and web design communities. Engaging with peers through newsletters, Facebook groups, and live discussions fosters learning, growth, and mutual encouragement.Mentioned In The Show:Web Cami, LLCwebdesignerhabits.comStreamYardWebCamiCafeGoDaddySheinPomodoro TechniqueWordPress TVManaged WPAdmin BarBeaver BuilderCalendlyWPCoffeeTalk

In this episode, Michelle Frechette and Corey Maass  discuss their ongoing project focused on website and product development. They reflect on their progress, addressing the challenges of balancing time and managing tech debt. The conversation highlights their experiences working with a designer, emphasizing the importance of effective communication and feedback. They also touch on the significance of collaboration, and share personal anecdotes about organizing their workspaces. As they prepare for Black Friday, they discuss promotional strategies and the impact of seasonal changes on their work schedule.Top Takeaways:Steady Progress Amid Prioritization Challenges: Both Corey and Michelle recognize the challenges of juggling tasks across IPAWP and OMGIMG. While there's excitement about big-picture ideas (e.g., Meetups, collective empowerment, SEO experiments), they understand the importance of incremental progress.AI and Designer Collaboration for Website Improvements: Corey utilized AI-generated content alongside a designer's expertise to rework their website. While the AI helped quickly produce a series of articles for SEO experimentation, a designer was brought in to enhance the visual appeal and user experience. This blend of automation and human creativity reflects a strategic approach to balancing efficiency with quality.Cross-Platform Engagement is Essential: Michelle's experience with followers migrating to Bluesky reinforces the need to maintain a presence across multiple platforms. Both agree that while Twitter remains valuable for now, having an established Bluesky presence ensures they're ready if a platform shift occurs.Black Friday and Marketing Planning: Michelle and Corey are focusing on Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions. Michelle plans to queue social media posts, while Corey wants to analyze current traffic bumps to inform their approach.Mentioned In The Show:Elgato Key LightFiverrUpworkClaudeLuke NettiCory MillerWe WorkText ExpanderJosh PigfordBlueskyNathan WrigleyCuppaBeaver BuilderThumbPress

In this episode, Michelle Frechette and Corey Maass delve into their experiences with product marketing for a WordPress plugin focused on open graph images. They highlight the significance of customer feedback, better onboarding processes, and innovative marketing strategies inspired by Spotify's year-end wrap-up feature. The discussion is peppered with personal anecdotes and humor, creating a light-hearted yet informative atmosphere. They explore ideas like using AI for targeted landing pages, conducting visitor interviews, and improving their website design to better reflect their brand. The episode concludes with a sense of camaraderie and optimism for their ongoing projects.Top Takeaways:Focus on the Problem and Solution: Corey emphasized the importance of clearly defining the problem OMGIMG solves. This includes addressing specific pain points, like the "image roulette" problem, where inconsistent images affect branding and engagement. Focusing on the problem in copy helps ensure users immediately see OMGIMG's relevance to their needs.Strategic Use of AI as a Creative Partner: Corey is using AI as a tool for creating, organizing, and refining content. This iterative approach—from generating headlines to drafting entire plugins—allows him to quickly put ideas on paper, then tweak them. Michelle also mentioned wanting to lean more on AI, which could further help streamline content creation and brainstorming.Customer-Specific Landing Pages: Corey mentioned creating landing pages targeted at specific customer types, like bloggers, to highlight relevant features and value propositions. This strategy makes it easier for users to see exactly how OMGIMG fits their needs and helps make the messaging more personalized and effective.Interactive Feedback with Visitor Interviews: The idea of using visitor interviews and live feedback sessions with WordPress community members (like Cameron and Marcus) was discussed as a way to gather insights on the product in real-time. This feedback could be essential for fine-tuning both the product and its messaging.Mentioned In The Show:Mark WestguardThis Week In WordPressNathan WrigleyIPA WPJustin WelschSaturday Solopreneur Otter AI Alan FullerFullworks PluginsSet AppBeaver builderClaude AIChris LemaCameron Jones

In this podcast episode, Michelle Frechette and Corey Maass delve into their experiences with design and technical challenges. They discuss the intricacies of using Beaver Builder for creating a 404 page, with Corey expressing frustration over camera issues and a desire to enhance brand representation. Michelle brings up an accessibility oversight in a newsletter and the necessity of attention to detail, exemplified by Google's logo updates. The conversation highlights the significance of accessibility and meticulous design in creating content that resonates with and is accessible to all users.Top Takeaways:Transparency in Business: Corey discusses how transparency has become more prevalent in the startup world, particularly with the rise of platforms like WordPress. He reflects on the value of transparency, even if he doesn't always agree with or fully understand its implications, suggesting that it fosters relatability and authenticity in business interactions.Continuous Improvement: Throughout the conversation, Corey and Michelle emphasize the importance of continuous improvement and learning. They discuss how podcasts, businesses, and individuals evolve over time, highlighting the value of feedback, reflection, and adaptation in achieving growth and success.Collaboration and Support: Corey and Michelle express gratitude for the support they receive from their audience, as well as from other podcast hosts within the community. They highlight the collaborative nature of the WordPress community and the willingness to help each other succeed in their respective projects.Mentioned In The Show:Beaver BuilderBalsamiqJoel SpolskyPeldiAdobePippin WilliamsonBen Laird WPSeriously, Bud? podcastWP Coffee TalkThe Tipping PointDrunk Tank PinkWP MotivateKathy Zant

I think it's one of the most important default themes WordPress has released in a while. Sure, the design is fairly opinionated, but with the mix of new patterns/blocks available, I think someone with a little WordPress know how (and grit!) will be able to design a solid website for their brand or business. Even for the freelancers or agency owners out there, searching to offer a more affordable solution for their clients, I think TT4 can fill that gap. But don't confuse that with it being a solution on par with Kadence or GeneratePress. Certainly not as powerful as Elementor or Beaver Builder. There are large gaps that cause it to fail really quickly. One that stood out to me recently was the lack of mobile design features in the Site Editor. In my latest video, Customize Mobile Views on twenty twenty-four, I demonstrated the lack of simple breakpoint features inside the site editor. I'd have folks comment on my channel asking how to change things in the mobile nav, or on a landing page, with no clear direction on how to do it — in the theme.When the debate of Page Builders vs Blocks comes up, how could we not want to clear up this confusion? A few takeaways from Eric Karkovack's post from the link above: “Some people aren't fans of the Site Editor or Gutenberg. They'll naturally point to its quirks and limitations. Fair enough.”“Perhaps this doesn't apply as much to block themes. More than anything, they may be limited by the Site Editor. There may be a feature that it doesn't yet offer. Thus, you must work within its capabilities.”And this is why there's such a fierce debate from the page builder audience: WordPress still has so much time to catch up — if ever.One area I disagree with Karkovack on, at least in the context of TT4 is, “The gap between commercial and free products isn't as wide**.** You aren't missing the ability to customize the look and layout. Nor are any crucial features locked down.”We certainly are missing some of those crucial features for mobile or even a more robust query block, for example. And while I know it's the Site Editors fault, your average end user doesn't. And I'm much more critical on the default theme experience because, well, it's the default theme!Karkovack encourages us (and WordPress developers) to create a better narrative, which brings me back full circle to where I always land: The core experience is good enough for the masses, but when you need more, you go to a full featured theme or page builder. Though, I don't know if that excuses some of these features missing from the default experience.I think the core experience of WordPress + TT4 can live along side a freelancer's toolkit which also includes Kadence or Elementor, for example. Speed and simplicity being the obvious advantage of the former. And at the end of the day, I think that's perfect, at least for now.And if you invest in that core experience, there are products like Twentig that can supercharge your Twenty Twenty-Four website. I think a 3rd party tool that enhances default themes is very smart. Maybe this is where block based themes and the default experience of WordPress lives? Do we need more? Hit reply and let me know. Don't miss this WordPress contentNow it's time for the links you shouldn't miss!Aurooba Ahmed launches “JS Essentials for WP Devs” with the first lesson dropping on March 4th 2024. Introducing JS Essentials for WP DevsAngie Byron reminds us why your peers might not care about your DevRel/community efforts. No one gives a &*^@# about your DevRel/Community Programs (and what to do about it)Amber Hinds continued the climb up the mountain of accessibility adoption for .org and other WordPress related websites. Apparently some progress has been made. https://x.com/heyamberhinds/status/1760679617873301882?s=20Get a deeper look into Awesome Motive Founder Syed Balkhi's business mind I this recent interview. How to Compound Your Wealth in Unorthodox Ways with Syed BalkhiWP Tavern Launches Writer Hunger Games WP Tavern Launches Writer Hunger GamesWP Mainline shares how you can make more money with LearnDash LearnDash 4.11.0 Introduces A New Way to Generate RevenueEric Karkovack wants us to clear up the confusion surrounding block themes Clearing Up the Confusion Surrounding Block ThemesDon't miss our YouTube videosFollow the WP Minute on YouTube.Learn more about Synced Pattern Overrides coming to WordPress 6.5 New in WordPress 6.5: Synced Pattern Overrides ⭐️Supercharge your Twenty Twenty-Four theme with Twentig Supercharge Twenty Twenty-Four Theme with Twentig!

In the second part of the mini series, Pete and Jeff cover the themes and Plugins they recommend in their 2023 set WordPress set ups. These include: Beaver Builder & ThemerKadence SEMRush / MangoolsGTMetrixInlinksIf you haven't listened to part 1 (all about plugins) check it out here.

If you're a WordPress user, you know how crucial it is to find a reliable and powerful page builder that doesn't require a long-term commitment. Well, look no further! Spectra Page Builder is here to revolutionize your website-building experience.In this episode, we'll dive deep into the features and benefits of Spectra, a lightweight and lightning-fast alternative to other popular page builders like Divi, Elementor, and Beaver Builder. I am going to be checking out this tool as well as a theme they have called AstraBut before we get into the nitty-gritty of Spectra, we'll touch on the renowned Astra theme, known for its speed, versatility, and customization options. I plan on switching to Astra myself and experimenting with its powerful tools in the future, although it may come with a slight learning curve.Speaking of other page builders, I'll also share my experience with Divi, a fantastic tool that offers a plethora of templates for quick website creation. Whether you prefer customizing existing templates or building from scratch, Divi has got you covered.However, website building with page builders can sometimes introduce a new language to navigate. I'll share my recent frustrations and the journey to find a tool that simplifies things without sacrificing functionality. Enter Spectra, a game-changer in the WordPress ecosystem.But what sets Spectra apart? It integrates seamlessly with the default WordPress editor and enhances the functionality of Gutenberg blocks.There is a monthly price as well as a lifetime pricing.Are you tempted to give Spectra a try?Before we wrap up, I want to express my gratitude to our amazing listeners. Your support keeps us going, and we can't wait to bring you more exciting web tool recommendations in future episodes. Stay tuned and remember to follow us on Apple, Google, Spotify, Amazon, and our website to never miss an episode.Value For ValueIf you found this episode valuable, please share it with a friend and if you feel so moved, consider buying me a coffee.Disclosure: Some of these links may result in me earning a commission.I never recommend anything without checking it out.

Co-Founders Robby, Billy, and Justin were running a successful web design agency when a client came to them with a very specific request for a website with a page builder tool. After discovering a market for this, the three founded Beaver Builder, a WordPress Page Builder Plugin in 2014. Robby McCullough joins Sanjay's of today's episode of Side Hustle to Small Business to discuss taking risks, finding your niche, and creating a work-life balance.

It looks like the days of automatically sharing WordPress.com content to Twitter are over. Automattic announced that customers will no longer be able to auto-publish to Twitter via the Jetpack Social plugin.You may recall that WordPress.com's access to the Twitter API was suddenly suspended in April. While it eventually came back online, changes to Twitter's policies have made the continued use too expensive.Automattic says that Twitter's price increase is “prohibitive for us to absorb without passing a significant price increase along to you, and we don't see that as an option.” Bye bye birdie.Links You Shouldn't MissThe Beaver Builder page builder plugin has been on the market for 9 years. The WordPress landscape has changed dramatically in that time. For instance, page builders are now seen as competitors to the native Block Editor. What does that mean for the future? Matt Medeiros spoke with Robby McCullough of Beaver Builder for an in-depth discussion of the topic.There's news to report regarding this summer's WordCamp US. The first round of ticket sales started on May 1 and quickly sold out. Another round of sales will be coming soon. Meanwhile, there will be a different approach to event programming. Organizers are targeting “experienced, seasoned, professional speakers at the top of their industries who are not currently active members of our unique community.” They've put out a survey for suggested speakers and topics. A traditional call for speakers will also be announced in the near future. The event will take place from August 24-26th in National Harbor, MD.WordPress community member Michelle Frechette has launched WP Speakers. It's a free resource that connects speakers and event organizers within the WordPress ecosystem. In a press release, Frechette notes that "As well-connected as I am in WordPress, I couldn't even imagine how much more difficult it might be for someone who didn't know a lot of speakers personally. So WP Speakers was born."WordPress agency Human Made has recently published articles detailing their experimentation with AI. Now they're hosting a virtual event to examine how this technology will impact the content management system (CMS). Word on the Future is a virtual event and will take place on May 25. ★ Support this podcast ★

Robby McCullough of Beaver Builder joins the podcast to chat about the future of page building in WordPress and at his company. Robby and his team have just celebrated 9 years running the Beaver Builder plugin, changing the page building landscape as WordPress users know it. He's excited to press forward into his next chapter of WordPress products with the Assistant plugin. Think of it as the glue to connecting your multiple WordPress websites across the cloud, sharing templates, blocks, and other data. https://twitter.com/RobbyMcCulloughhttps://twitter.com/BeaverBuilderhttps://assistant.pro/https://wordpress.org/plugins/assistant/https://thewpminute.com/support ★ Support this podcast ★

After a time formatting bug caused a 24-hour delay, WordPress 6.2, code-named “Dolphy”, was released on March 29th. According to core contributor Jean-Baptiste Audras, 607 people from at least 50 countries were part of the release squad.Perhaps the biggest development in 6.2 is that the “beta” label has been removed from the Site Editor. The feature was first added in WordPress 5.9 and has undergone steady improvements. A new interface has been implemented this time around.Other enhancements include a revamped UI for both the Block Inserter and individual block controls. Direct access to Openverse media has also been added, allowing users to search, download, and insert openly-licensed content into their sites.For a rundown of key features, check out a handy guide from GoDaddy's Courtney Robertson. Links You Shouldn't MissWordPress.com alerted users that its access to the Twitter API was suspended on April 4. No specific reason was provided by Twitter. As Sarah Gooding of WP Tavern reports, the API powers Jetpack's Social Sharing feature. The situation was in limbo for a few hours, but service was eventually restored. During the outage, users couldn't automatically tweet out new content from their websites. Ironically (or not), Twitter recently announced a “new era of transparency” at the company.WordPress core contributor Mario Santos recently posted a proposal outlining the Interactivity API. This would enable developers to build blocks that are interactive on the front end. Santos notes examples including the ability to “heart” a post and performing an instant search. The project is currently experimental. A plugin is available for testing.The makers of Beaver Builder have announced the launch of Assistant Pro. It's a cloud storage and community template platform. Free page builder templates available for download. In addition, a marketplace allows users to both buy and sell. Templates can also be stored in the cloud and shared with team members.A couple of popular commercial plugins have released critical security fixes. Elementor Pro patched a vulnerability that impacted sites running the page builder in conjunction with WooCommerce. Meanwhile, Advanced Custom Fields PRO patched a PHP object injection vulnerability. If you use either plugin, be sure to update to the latest version.The name iThemes has long been recognizable in the WordPress ecosystem. The maker of popular plugins like BackupBuddy and iThemes Security Pro has undergone a name change. In order to better reflect their products, the company has announced a rebrand to SolidWP. iThemes customers shouldn't notice any pricing changes or support disruption during the transition.Links You Shouldn't MissWordPress.com alerted users that its access to the Twitter API was suspended on April 4. No specific reason was provided by Twitter. As Sarah Gooding of WP Tavern reports, the API powers Jetpack's Social Sharing feature. The situation was in limbo for a few hours, but service was eventually restored. During the outage, users couldn't automatically tweet out new content from their websites. Ironically (or not), Twitter recently announced a “new era of transparency” at the company.WordPress core contributor Mario Santos recently posted a proposal outlining the Interactivity API. This would enable developers to build blocks that are interactive on the front end. Santos notes examples including the ability to “heart” a post and performing an instant search. The project is currently experimental. A plugin is available for testing.The makers of Beaver Builder have announced the launch of Assistant Pro. It's a cloud storage and community template platform. Free page builder templates available for download. In addition, a marketplace allows users to both buy and sell. Templates can also be stored in the cloud and shared with team members.A couple of popular commercial plugins have released critical security fixes. Elementor Pro patched a vulnerability that impacted sites running the page builder in conjunction with WooCommerce. Meanwhile, Advanced Custom Fields PRO patched a PHP object injection vulnerability. If you use either plugin, be sure to update to the latest version.The name iThemes has long been recognizable in the WordPress ecosystem. The maker of popular plugins like BackupBuddy and iThemes Security Pro has undergone a name change. In order to better reflect their products, the company has announced a rebrand to SolidWP. iThemes customers shouldn't notice any pricing changes or support disruption during the transition. ★ Support this podcast ★

Was ist besser zum Bloggen geeignet: Page Builder wie Divi, Elementor oder Beaver Builder? Oder doch der Gutenberg Editor? In dieser Episode zeige ich dir die verschiedenen Optionen und spreche eine klare Empfehlung für den Gutenberg Editor aus. Und eine Warnung vor Page Buildern! Hör rein und du erfährst, was das mit Unabhängigkeit, SEO und Ladezeit zu tun hat. Den Blogartikel zu dieser Episode kannst du hier nachlesen: https://www.blogyourthing.com/page-builder-bloggen/ ********************** Du möchtest endlich deinen eigenen Blog starten? Komm unverbindlich auf die Warteliste für meinen Mitgliederbereich, die Blogothek: https://blogothek.com/ Lade dir den Blog Fahrplan für 0 Euro runter: https://www.blogyourthing.com/blog-fahrplan-download/ Lege ein festes Fundament für einen erfolgreichen Blog mit dem Blog Konzept Onlinekurs: https://www.blogyourthing.com/blog-konzept-onlinekurs/ Für noch mehr Infos & Tipps rund ums Bloggen schau auf meinen Blog: https://www.blogyourthing.com/blog/ Folge mir auf Instagram für Einblicke hinter die Kulissen: https://www.instagram.com/blogyourthing/

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 12th September 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 12th September 2022.

There are lots of options when it comes to website platforms. So many it can be overwhelming to decide which one is best for you and your Virtual Assistant business! In today's episode, I cover a few of my favorite website builders and the pros and cons of each.Mentioned in the episode:Episode on branding: https://desiretodone.com/branding-tips-for-virtual-assistants/WordPress: https://wordpress.org/*Divi: https://desiretodone.com/divi*SiteGround WordPress Hosting: https://desiretodone.com/siteground*Beaver Builder: https://desiretodone.com/beaverbuilder*Elementor: https://desiretodone.com/elementor*Bluchic WordPress Templates: https://desiretodone.com/bluchicIntrovert VA Club: https://introvertvaclub.com/*Squarespace: https://desiretodone.com/squarespace*Wix: https://desiretodone.com/wix*Strikingly: https://desiretodone.com/Strikingly*Weebly: https://desiretodone.com/weeblyWeb Design Questionnaire and Checklist (FREE): https://desiretodone.com/best-website-platform/ (scroll down to the bottom of the blog post to sign up)*Affiliate linkSign up for my weekly newsletter full of VA tips: https://desiretodone.com/newsletter

The out of the box WordPress Builder has been a very popular website building platform, but it's interface is really not user-friendly when editing for layouts and themes. It is for this reason why new page builders were developed, to help with the visual functionality of the website and into making the website faster.  Whether you are choosing to build your website yourself or paying a developer to do it for you is a major business decision that you need to diligently focus on so that it can ultimately get you better SEO results and customer conversion. Choosing the right developer with solid expertise is also a big factor here. We will discuss these topics with our comeback guest, Justin Meadows, in this third appearance on the SEO Leverage Podcast.    Podcast Highlights: 00:00 Prologue 01:11 Justin Meadows is back on the show. 02:04 Introduction of the topic on page builders. 02:34 Justin Meadows' background, his work at Tunedwp.com. 03:36 What is a Page Builder? Isn't WordPress enough? 05:06 Some popular page builders people can use to create a website, a new page, blogs, etc. 06:30 What are some of the possible problems people can encounter in using a page builder?  09:07 Justin Meadow's input on the importance of putting conscious effort in choosing the right page builder?  11:40 The issues on rebuilding websites that have been passed on from the original developer to different developers. 13:04 The side-by-side tests that Justin did between Beaver Builder and Oxygen Builder using Google's PageSpeed Insights test. (...Which result came up better?) 16:26 Recap 18:40 More of the functionality features of some page builders when it comes to being user-friendly. (Elementor and Divi vs Beaver and Oxygen) 22:15 The best advice when you are not sure what page builder to use or if your website's performance is slow? 23:22 Lessons learned from this episode. 24:30  End   Resources: Previous episode where Justin Meadows was a guest: Episode 22 - SEO Requires a Solid Technical Foundation with Justin Meadows https://seoleverage.com/podcast/022-seo-requires-a-solid-technical-foundation-with-justin-meadows/   Episode 27 - Prepare Your Website for Mobiles with Justin Meadows  https://seoleverage.com/podcast/027-prepare-your-website-for-mobiles-with-justin-meadows/   The Divi Builder https://www.elegantthemes.com/documentation/divi-builder/   Elementor Website Builder https://elementor.com/   BeaverBuilder https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com/   WPBakery Page Builder https://wpbakery.com/   Oxygen Builder https://oxygenbuilder.com/   Google's PageSpeed Insights https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ Connect with Justin Meadows: Website:  https://tunedwp.com/ Email: support@tunedwp.com   Connect with Gert Mellak: Website: https://seoleverage.com/ Email: info@seoleverage.com

We human beings are social creatures at heart (yes, even when we're stuck in traffic, or on the phone to a cable company), and we have a tendency to develop a few intense relationships.  Sure, that tendency can make us feel a little needy, but it can also do WONDERS for business.  Whether we realize it or not, the people in our lives can make or break our personal bucket lists AND our business goals. You read right. Those strangers on your LinkedIn profile who are constantly sending you poorly-disguised sales pitches? They might just be your ticket over the next big bridge in your career.  After all, they say it's not what you know that matters, but WHO, and Joe Casabona would agree. From humble beginnings as an undergrad, he used his schoolyard relationships and (admittedly) limited work experience to transition into the world of the web. Although painfully aware that he was no Elon Musk prodigy, Joe was inspired by his close contacts to nurture his business relationships AND charge his worth, until finally, he founded Creator Courses. Now, he spends his days explaining the complexities of web design, coding, and the nuances of WordPress and Beaver Builder.  In this episode of Profit and Impact, Joe takes Nev through the importance of preparing for pitfalls, owning opportunities, and knowing the value of great clients (and even better mentors).  So what's this conversation REALLY about? How to make the most of your relationships The importance of knowing your value The value of experience How to work your way up from the bottom  Why you should listen Joe is a great example of a not-so-negative recession story (it's possible, I promise!). His story is proof that you CAN create an income with the stability to outlast Armageddon (plus, it guarantees you a well-deserved positivity booster).  Links  www.casabona.org/nev  You can quote me on that...  “The people who have given you money are the people who have already bought into what you're doing. They are the people who trust you and have shown you that trust with their wallet, so nurture your current relationships.” - Joe Casabona  “You want to have relationships you can come back to and have conversations with.” - Nev Harris Like what you hear?  Help me reach more ears by leaving a review (and a hefty handful of stars!) here.

What a difference 3-plus-something years makes. Remember the Page Builder race? Then remember when Gutenberg came on the scene smashing the ground, cracking the earth beneath her like Wonder Woman in Zack Snyder's cut of the Justice League? Okay, well, maybe not that glorious of an entry but mirroring the audiences continued mixed reviews… It seemed like only yesterday that my friends at Beaver Builder were on a rocket ship ride to the moon and the likes of using Gutenberg were slim when you saw the install count of the classic editor plugin. Here we are nearing the tail-end of Q1 in the year 2021, and Elementor recently crossed over 7 million active websites, made a not-so-smooth pricing update, and enter into any Facebook group to the bemoaning of users looking to switch to Oxygen builder. Gutenberg has gotten largely better over that time, but still with some massive gaps in its usability. Even tasks like dragging blocks into columns is not as effortless of SiteOrigin's page builder from 6 years ago…okay wait, could you drag blocks in that? Anyway, full-site editing is the next contestant sure to be challenged like the past Core Champions that fled the arena — I'm here rooting for it. I do want this stuff to get better even if I'm not the ideal user for it. I still want advanced tools and themes that get the job done without all of the overhead, but that's just me. Which leads me to the discussion part of this podcast: choosing the Best WordPress theme…for me. You're listening to the Matt Report, a podcast for the resilient digital business builder. Subscribe to the newsletter at mattreport.com/subscribe and follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Better yet, please share this episode on your social media! We'd love more listeners around here. Here are the themes I mention in this episode: Anders Norén — Chaplin & Eskell Neve Theme GeneratePress Blocksy ★ Support this podcast ★

Wondering how to monetize your email list, ethically? Then you're in the right place because that is exactly what I'll be covering in this episode of The Profitable Travel Blogger Podcast! Now let me be clear that I'm not talking about selling anyone's data. Instead, I'm talking about learning how to make money with email marketing in a way that actually nurtures your subscribers.  More specifically, you'll learn: The important steps to take before monetizing your email list How to make money with emails, even if you don't have your own product Four specific email monetization strategies, including one that will help you profitably work with brands How to ensure your emails actually resonate with your specific audience And more! Tools & Resources Mentioned Custom Brand Proposal Template. This will show you how to pitch an email campaign — or another type of campaign — to a brand. You'll first need to opt-in to my email list to snag access to my free Travel Blogger Resource Library here. Then you'll find the proposal template inside.  Beaver Builder Plugin. I use this to create beautiful landing pages using a drag-and-drop page builder. If you also use the Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder extension you'll have bonus modules and features for your pages, like the ability to add an evergreen timer and make an offer disappear after a limited-time. Note that these are affiliate links. I genuinely use and love both products and I think you will, too! Creating A Profitable Automated Nurture Sequence (podcast episode). Learn how to nurture new subscribers with an automated email series that also helps increase profits.  A Proven Step-By-Step Strategy For Growing Your Email List For Free (podcast episode). If you're new to email marketing and growing a subscriber list, this episode is a great place to start learning.  FREE BONUS: Snag FREE access to my Travel Blog Resource Library (30+ resources!): https://jessieonajourney.com/free-blogging-printables/ The printables, video tutorials and mini-courses inside will help you grow your traffic, community, and income! LET'S CONNECT ON SOCIAL: https://www.facebook.com/jessieonajourney/ https://www.instagram.com/jessieonajourney/ https://twitter.com/JessonaJourney https://www.pinterest.com/jessonajourney/ https://www.youtube.com/user/jessieonajourney/  

The last time Dan was on the show, we talked about staying small, operating without that burning desire to scale to unruly levels. I think now, more than ever, we're all starting to realize that growth at any cost isn't for everyone. Small products can become big products, or small products can become many products under one portfolio. Diversify. There's no playbook for any of this, that's the exciting part, though I'd urge you not to fall into the trap of attempting to replicate the success of a founder you follow on Twitter — make it your way. How to sell your WordPress plugin business Like most things in life, there was no perfect path for our hero's journey. Dan narrates us through the entire process of selling his plugin business Sprout Invoices, both technically and emotionally. I'll save the good stuff for your listening pleasure. I'm happy my friend is moving on to another chapter in his career. If you're looking for him, find him at Sprout Ventures. Thank you to lockedownseo.com and ideabox.io for sponsoring the show.If you're looking for an SEO specialist for manufacturing clients, check out lockedownseo.com!Want some powerful add-ons for Beaver Builder or Elementor? Visit IdeaBox.io! ★ Support this podcast ★

This is the WordPress.org page builders i.e. Beaver Builder, Elementor, Divi, Oxygen, Brizy etc, against Wix, Weebly, Squarespace etc. In this debate we're talking about building a standard brochure sites that may need a blog or a shopping cart. So it's not about building out a complex, bespoke site that has masses of unique features. It's about something that's simple and can be done with the native features in the Page Builders. We debate the pros of using both types of page builders and learn some truths along the way...

So many WordPress Page Builders, so little time...and so many strong opinions about them all! How do you go about choosing the right one for your business or your projects? We obviously love Divi around here, but just because it's the most popular WordPress theme in the world (!!) doesn't make it right for every situation (or does it??). On today's episode we are going to have some very special guests discussing their experience with several page builders — primarily Divi (as an all-in-one framework), Elementor, and Beaver Builder — but we will touch on WP Bakery Page Builder (formerly Visual Composer) a bit and break down how to choose the best one(s) for your needs.   Hosts Present: Stephanie Hudson – Sweet Tea Media / FB / @EnjoySweetTea Tim Strifler - Divi Life / FB / @timstrifler Jennifer Weed - Caffeinated Web Studio / FB / @caffeinated_web Bobbie Wilson - @BobbieWilsonTX Leslie Bernal - A Girl and Her Mac / FB / @agirlandhermac Resources Mentioned: Divi Elementor Beaver Builder Oxygen Brizy WP Bakery (formerly Visual Composer)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ada_NzhSDzo

We've had a couple other episodes on Virtual Summits. So for today, I want to break down the tech you'll want to get working together to have a fully functioning summit. **A quick clarification before we get into the tech. There are a few schools of thought on what makes a summit!.  So for the purposes of this conversation, we're talking about pre-recorded interview or lecture style summits.  Those that are consumed on a website (rather than Facebook or YouTube).  And that are free to attend for a limited time. These summits also always offer an extended access to the summit content through an All-Access Pass or other aptly named purchasable digital entity. And communication with your summit attendees will be done through an EMS and a closed Facebook group. We're going to start with the end in mind – all summits need to lead the attendees somewhere. It is vitally important to know the customer journey. Are you going to send your attendees to a course? A membership? A group program? A done-for-you service? There are so many places that we lead our summit attendees to. It's super helpful to know what's next! And as long as what's next includes some kind of content delivery, it'll make it way easier to figure out how and where to set up the paid access portal. Your paid access portal is the first platform you'll want to nail down. It may be a WordPress site with an LMS or membership plugin. Possibly could be a stand-alone platform like Thinkific or MemberVault. The exact solution is something you and your team (and me!) will want to discuss.  We'll want to make sure that all the I's are dotted and T's are crossed. It's important to pick a platform that has the ability to grow with your business vision. Once that platform has been determined, other decisions will be far easier to make… these decisions include the checkout or cart functionality and affiliate management utility. Other decisions also include whether or not you'll need or want to use Zapier.  And, of course, updates to your EMS or other tools that are in your tech stack that aren't quite up for the job of supporting your virtual summit vision. I strongly recommend using the best, right tool for each given task. My personal favorite checkout tool is called ThriveCart. I like ThriveCart because it is a stand alone utility that takes care of affiliate details and selling your product. It also has integrations with a number of other tools that can be used to deliver the goods. And it also consolidates all the common payment tools.  As of the time of this recording these are PayPal, Stripe, Apply Pay, G Pay and Authorize.net.  This puts your consumer in the best buying position by lowering the purchase barrier. The best affiliate management systems put the affiliate as close to the point of sale as possible.  So while there might be an affiliate system close to your content delivery, a better affiliate system is one that is intrinsically tied to the payment. There is a lot more that ThriveCart can do, but that's not the purpose of this episode – if you have payment functionality already then it's likely that will work for your summit as well. We now know the tools we are going to use to deliver the extended access, get paid for it and where our affiliates will be tracked. So let's get to the free summit!  This is where your tech needs to be super solid! It's the first interaction many of your attendees are going to have with you and your brand and your business. If we were building your business from scratch with this summit, it would be pretty cut and dry what tools to use. And I have those available in a nifty download you can get here by scrolling to the bottom of the page! But since you've already got a tech stack to contend with, let's not add more clutter that is going to need to be cleaned up later. Hosting a summit might be a great time to clean out some of the tech tools that you are using to streamline your systems...take your EMS for example. This is one component of your tech stack and virtual summit that needs to be in tip top shape! WHY? So that it can do a lot of heavy lifting. If you're using a system that doesn't have tagging capabilities or isn't well organized it's time to clean that thing up. Your EMS is going to be responsible for keeping your summit attendees excited as the summit approaches.  It will also provide links to the summit content during the event. And guide your attendees through whatever you've got on the heels of the summit. One of the reasons I like EMSs that have tagging is because it is a great built in organization structure. And less pre-cleanup is required to add your summit into the fold. It's just a matter of creating a series of tags that correspond to the different parts of the summit and different ways that your attendees and purchasers interact with your emailed content. Let me dig in a bit more! The more data you have about a given summit attendee, the better off you will be to help the exact right people find their way to the exact right next step with you. With ActiveCampaign (and probably other systems, but I'm most familiar with AC) there is site tracking available. With this functionality, you can actually see which attendees have visited which pages on your summit website! This is super powerful, especially if we're agile in our approach to summit communication. It's far easier to start a conversation with an attendee when you know what has piqued their interest! Not to mention, that it's crucial for a great experience to not sell to the already sold! If someone has purchased the extended access, it is crucial to stop including them in the summit upsell emails. Instead, the communication needs to switch to nurturing the relationship and helping them to use the content that they have purchased. I've worked on summits using ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, AWeber, Mailchimp and Infusionsoft… they all work. So if you're using one of those tools and using it effectively, your summit can be run with that tool. If you think that you might need to cleanup already, I strongly recommend doing the cleanup before you start adding your summit to this tool. And if you don't feel confident that your EMS is going to support your summit vision, let's chat and we'll figure out the next best EMS step for you to take. Before we go too much further, my biggest frustration with some of the EMSs out there is that the automations aren't as flexible as summit hosts' visions. It's a give and take. For example, ActiveCampaign may take 15 minutes to get your emails out to your entire list. It's super helpful to know that and not plan on sending emails “at the time the summit launches” but send them “we're live within the hour.” The rest of the system on ActiveCampaign is so good, that I'm willing to compromise on this little annoyance. All the EMSs have something that is going to go in the negative column on a pro-con list, but in general, if you have a system that is working – stick with it! OK… I've probably exhausted your listening desires around the EMS, so let's move on. My friend and past podcast guest Mark Wade has a great software tool called Virtual Summits Software. It's a robust tool that puts your summit content at the forefront and takes care of a lot of the tech so that you don't need to hire a team. It's certainly a viable option, but it's not the tool that I use with my clients. Mostly because my clients are wanting more customization than what is available in Mark's software. Instead, my go to is to build out your summit on a WordPress website using the Beaver Builder page builder. A stand alone WordPress website is the strong recommendation here… let me explain. Whether your main business website is on WordPress or not, the flexibility of WordPress makes hosting a summit so much easier than any of the hosted platforms. And stand alone means that your summit is the only thing that lives within that WordPress installation – no blog, no services page, no nothing. So it's completely “clean” and poised to present your summit content without distraction. And a page builder – that's mostly because it's so much easier to use the page builder to create the summit pages exactly how you want. Other than Beaver Builder, you might be considering Thrive Architect or Divi. I strongly prefer Architect over Divi but again, if you are used to a certain page builder, use it. These are suggestions and my preferences not a mandate! The next most important tool you're going to need is your video host. For this, there is basically one feasible option – that is Vimeo Pro. At the Pro level you can use their platform for business. And at the free and plus levels it's against the terms of service to use videos in that way. The question I often get at this suggestion is whether or not YouTube is a viable option. Viable, yes, recommended no. And that's because the playback experience is better with Vimeo. There are always new services coming up and a quick search of “Video Hosting Providers” will give you some idea of other options that are out there. But for the price and value, I believe you're not going to do wrong with Vimeo Pro! And with that – we have covered all you need to host a virtual summit – WordPress for the summit website and session pages, Vimeo Pro for your video hosting, an EMS, a checkout mechanism and a paid content portal. Of course, there are far more things that go into hosting a virtual summit than just the right tech tools. And that brings us right back up to the top of the episode where we dove into what's coming after the summit and positioning everything within that light. I see so many mentors and coaches and gurus tout summits as a great list building tool. And they are!  But none of us are building a list for a vanity metric. We are building our lists to grow our businesses! And that's the exact reason why positioning and summit topic matter so much. I'm floating around a virtual summit idea for Tech of Business to host in early 2020. While I have so many ideas as to what I could do with the summit...none of them matter if I don't know what I want to provide to attendees after the summit wraps up. And for that, I have work to do! I know exactly what the offer is, but I haven't created it yet. I've proven it with one-on-one services! Before I can invest everything I need to into the summit, I need to first invest in translating the one-on-one service into the new form that makes sense to come on the heels of the summit. Because I know what I'm going to be offering, I am at the start of the cycle. I can pick a platform to house the new offer and that lays the foundation for how I'm going to implement the summit. My new offer is going to be housed on MemberVault and sold directly through ThriveCart. I want to be able to leverage the robustness of ThriveCart for affiliates and upsells and downsells and bumps and all that jazz (but that is totally for another podcast episode!) With that piece of the puzzle in place, I know that I'm going to be selling the summit extended access through ThriveCart and housing the content inside MemberVault. It feels so good to be 6+ months away from the summit launch and already have an understanding of how it's going to come together. Another piece that I can feel confident about is that I'll continue to use ActiveCampaign for the summit – and looking at my ActiveCampaign account, there is some cleanup I'd like to do before we get to summit promotion. I'll put that on the calendar so that it is complete long before the number of hours I need to dedicate to the summit increases. And I could go on and on about the tech foundation for the summit that I'm gearing up to hosting – I'll be sharing this process as I move through it, including all the tech and systems and processes that I use along the way. I love virtual summits and what they can do for businesses. And I sincerely hope this episode is something that you've also enjoyed. I hope you will come back to when you start to get an inkling that it's time to host your own virtual summit. I'm here for you – getting the exact right tech in place for your business goals! Next week, we've got a super fun conversation coming onto the podcast and as always connect with me on Instagram (I'm @techofbusiness) and book your http://callwithjaime.com to let me know what else you'd like to hear on the podcast!

If you're a Beaver Builder users then you'll know that there are some tasks that you have to perform over and over again when building a website for a client. It's perfectly okay, but Tom Carless thought that it would be better if there was a way to make repetitive tasks go away, so he built Beaver Team Pro. Want to update all those reds to green in one click, yes, want to make all specific button have an icon, yes! It's a great plugin that will save you (and your agency) heaps of time and money...

If you're a Beaver Builder users then you'll know that there are some tasks that you have to perform over and over again when building a website for a client. It's perfectly okay, but Tom Carless thought that it would be better if there was a way to make repetitive tasks go away, so he built Beaver Team Pro. Want to update all those reds to green in one click, yes, want to make all specific button have an icon, yes! It's a great plugin that will save you (and your agency) heaps of time and money...

I met today's guest, Kronda, online a couple of weeks ago. She had reached out to me because we use a lot of the same tools and philosophy and said “we just have to meet!” Almost immediately after we got on a zoom call, I knew I wanted to have her be a guest on the podcast. Kronda is a web developer turned marketer. She helps service based business owners learn to use content marketing to sell their services. Kronda and I share the same root in our business journey because we were both developers. I transitioned to integration and systems. Kronda shifted her focus to content. It's so neat how we both started in the same place, but ended up in different places. Nobody's business is a straight line from “I want to start a business” to “I'm doing what I love and providing my audience exactly what they need.” Kronda's journey: Developing WordPress websites for clients. Maintenance of websites (to try to create recurring income.) Niche down to marketing focused websites (because there her clients would understand how to market the website!) Content marketing, training and instruction. The evolution came about as she realized that the websites she had built for her clients weren't actually helping their businesses! Simply because they didn't know how to use their website as a marketing tool! “Content marketing is huge right now! It's basically television!” Kronda explains, “you watch television because it's entertaining, but people make television to sell you stuff. That's really all we are doing just in a different medium and on a different scale.” About 3 months ago, Kronda transitioned into teaching content marketing to business owners. It's a winning business model for her. Not only does she remain in the digital space, using the knowledge that she has acquired to help others, but she works with business owners who are engaged and want to learn. They WANT to understand it even if they are going to hire it out. I can totally relate to this… When I put systems in place for my clients within a project, I am creating a blueprint for them to use again in the future. It's not a once and done solution. A lot of people KNOW they should be creating content (text, video, images) for their business. The problem is they don't know what to create and having a strategy behind their content. This is where Kronda gives them a framework that is based on their customer journey. It's so important that business owners realize that their customers are 100% on a journey. This journey consists of not knowing about them becoming aware of them discovering their problem discovering the solution to the problem purchasing. So now that you know that information, it makes content creation easier because you can see what people need to learn about your business in each stage of this journey. A great way to think about creating content is, as Kronda suggests, think about what mistakes your market is making... When she thinks about the mistakes people are making and what's keeping them up at night it gives her plenty to write about. As business owners we tend to talk about the things we know about. But what we actually need to be doing is talk about what our future clients need to know. In the end you are selling something that is solving their problem. What you do and how you do it are less important than “Are you going to solve my problem?” It's all about putting your target market in the center of a bullseye and focusing on what they NEED rather than the what and the how. Even though Kronda has transitioned into content marketing she still advocates for certain tools because the content still has to reach people somehow! And while our content distribution channels are varied, at the core, Kronda and I believe that your website is at the core. As I mentioned in the conversation, Kronda and I have developed a very similar WordPress tech stack… we both page builders, themes and plugins we like because these are the things that we have found to make it the easiest to get content out into the world. Kronda made a significant pivot in the way she makes her income. But did not make a pivot in the way she provides value. I know there are a lot of listeners on their own journeys and making their own pivots in their business. You shouldn't throw everything away when you make a pivot. You can pivot and still provide value in the same area of expertise! "When we are creating content, we aren't just creating it for today. We are creating it for our future self as well.” -Jaime Slutzky" "I want to be able to answer virtually any question with a link." -Kronda Adair" There are so many ways to tackle online business. Kronda's pagebuilder of choice is Beaver Builder. Her landing page builder has of choice is Thrive Architect. I use Beaver Builder for both websites and landing pages solely because I want to have fewer tools. There are so many conversion tools available with Thrive Architect that allow Kronda to test different pages. I was curious to know how she came to these tools… short answer, Facebook groups and online communities! Beaver Builder is one of the first tools that she used that actually worked and was easy to use. It's also easy to teach people to use. The great thing about Beaver Builder and Thrive Architect is that if you decide to switch to something else it leaves you the html that is very portable to take somewhere else. I just want to take a second to explain what we mean by shortcodes versus html... Whenever you uninstall the Beaver Builder and Thrive Architect all the content that you have added in to your site defaults back to normal, readable html not broken shortcodes. These plugins are modular and don't leave a nasty footprint of having to go in and do cleanup on your code. Another program I know that often has messy clean up involved is Google docs. When you are writing something in Google docs and you copy and paste it into WordPress it's actually copying extra html markup which doesn't usually cause a problem but it's not the best thing either. This is just an example of something I have noticed because I am on the back end of stuff. I'm sharing this because when your developer gives you a piece of advice we aren't giving it to you just on aesthetic reasons alone. Kronda has lots of articles about these exact subjects. Another article she has is about premium plugins. We discussed the benefits of premium versus free plugins and how we tackle who purchases what and why! One thing she was adamant about was educating her clients on were the things that their site runs on. She would make sure they knew what was making their site run and that if they parted ways what things were going to become the client's responsibility. So that it's not a shock for them if they part ways and they are now responsible for the plugin payments. When you buy a premium plugin, you are buying because you are paying people to support the product, to keep it running, to keep developing, to keep the bugs out, to make it better, and to ultimately make your site work better and do more for you. These premium plugins give you access to a team a developers that are creating a really good product rather than hiring a single developer to do what you need TODAY. Tomorrow you may need something different. We could have spent a lot longer going deeper on WordPress, but that doesn't benefit you, the listener (reader!) So we switched topics to touch on a few other facets of content creation that are relevant! First: File Organization Kronda believes organization is so important. She has a video solely on organizing your files. If you think about when you go to create content or go to use it and it takes you 5-10 minutes to locate it -- you have just wasted precious time. Using a program like Dropbox or Google Drive allows you to create an organized system of where you can keep your files and you know where they are. This allows you, or your VA, to put their hands on these files whenever you need to. Second: Video Creation Kronda uses ScreenFlow for making screen casts of things that she is doing on her laptop and she wants to show how she does a particular process. Loom and CloudApp also do this things if you don't have a Mac. Evernote, Google Docs, and Bear are great for text. She uses a Blue Yeti Mic for podcasts. But she also encourages people not to get too caught up in the tools especially in the beginning. It's more important in the beginning that you are actually creating the content. You can grow into getting as fancy as you want with tools. But there are alot of tools of there that are free and easy to use when you are just starting out. And finally… my two cents :) The WordPress editor makes it easy to do elegant text formatting (using either the classic editor or gutenberg, the new editor). Take advantage of the bold, italic, underline, blockquote and headings buttons… They are very simple to use and make things easier for your consumer to read. No matter where you are in your business, tt's worth spending time just making your text more enjoyable for your consumer to read… if they enjoy reading it they are going to share, comment, and interact with you. Connect with Jaime: Instagram: @techofbusiness Twitter: @techofbusiness Facebook: @yourbiztech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/ Email: jaime@techofbusiness.com Connect with Kronda: Website: https://www.karveldigital.com Tools minicourse: https://www.karveldigital.com/tools Instagram: @karveldigital Twitter: @karveldigital Facebook: Karvel Digital

Matt Medeiros finishes Season 8 with this interview of Robby Mccullough, who is a co-founder of the Beaver Builder page builder and is from the Bay area. Matt and Robby discuss how the Gutenberg release in WordPress 5.0  may impact Beaver Builder,  whether Automattic could have looked at purchasing Beaver Builder, and how a small business owner deals with the ups and downs of running and growing a  remote business. Listen to the end of the episode to find out the original name consideration of the Beaver Builder theme. Listen to this episode: Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Beaver Builder in a Gutenberg world Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:56:05 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:56:05 What you will learn in this Episode: Future of WordPress with Gutenberg changes: Robby – Realizes that it is impossible to predict the future of WordPress. He supports the Gutenberg editor with the block approach to the editing experience. The Beaver Builder page builder was created because of the demand in the WordPress space where the need for faster and easier website building was not being met. There was a real concern of what would happen to Beaver Builder once Gutenberg launched. (1:46) Matt – Asks the question of whether Beaver Builder could have been bought by Automattic. (3:22) Robby – Explains that the discussion of the purchase of Beaver Builder by Automattic never came up. (3:40) The vision of the Gutenberg editor in the latest update of WordPress did not line up with how Robby sees Beaver Builder growing with the community. (6:00) Matt – The innovators of WordPress (people who have created and supported page builders) have come from third-party developers. (6:47) Robby – Beaver Builder has been in the problem-solving space. Big companies can absorb smaller companies but this was not to be with Automattic and a page builder. (9:15) Software creators with SaaS and WordPress: Matt – created a query builder called Conductor years ago. The direction will not be putting that product into a Gutenberg block to monetize it (as Jetpack). The Conductor widget solves a tiny problem for the client and can be considered a niche product. How will Beaver Builder continue to monetize the product? (10:56) Robby  – Beaver Builder started as a web development agency and built Beaver Builder as a product offering. As the growth took off, the web agency was closed. All the focus has been on the page builder but now we are looking into other products that can be viable outside of the Gutenberg audience. The Gutenberg editor does not seem like it will serve clients who need customized solutions or large customers that need an advanced feature set. (13:00) Forecasting the Future of Beaver Builder: Matt – Third party markets have expanded the Beaver Builder experience. These vendors drive a lot of traffic to Beaver Builder but it does not seem that these offerings have been incorporated into the core product. (16:35) Robby – Beaver Builder uses the WordPress model to build and support it like a platform. Beaver Builder supports third-party developers that have been building on Beaver Builder by allowing them to build and extend using the brand. The Beaver Builder community has been the judge of whether or not they want to use those third-party products. Beaver Builder is a bootstrapped team and still has the flexibility to make adjustments to monetize products they see as successful. (17:00) Matt – The concern with open source is that there are many opinionated ideas that may impact theme creators and plugin developers. Open source does not always adjust to everyone's request or concern. Matt Mullenweg with Automattic is in a unique position by remaining approachable and adjusting to requests from WordPress supporters.  This is the first experience for everyone with the Gutenberg editor coming into core. (19:54) Robby – Matt Mullenweg has been on many podcasts and YouTube channels speaking about the WordPress 5.0 release with Gutenberg in the core. He has been participating in groups such as WPTavern to address concerns and is making the attempt to communicate the changes and strategy of WordPress moving forward. (24:00) Marketing and Messaging of a Product: Robby  – Marketing and communications are difficult to continually do. Robby has done this in his role with Beaver Builder and sometimes go through waves of participating and communicating in social channels. It is important to keep getting information out there when you are feeling burned out. (25:11) Matt – There are ups and downs in every project. The ups and downs always occur so know they are coming. Create a contingency plan for the dips. Not everything will be a “hit”. Just do not stop working on it. (27:13) Beaver Builder as a SaaS or Standalone CMS: Robby – The idea of a SaaS actually came up during the early development space of Beaver Builder. The architecture and expertise to support it was the issue. There was not a partner that was really strong in the server and network side. (30:28) Hiring and expanding a team: Robby – You finally reach a point where you want to empower people to take over different or new roles as the business is growing. (33:50) Matt – As you are expanding the business how do you find talent to fill the positions you want to hand off? Is it an outreach through a service or do you start with a social media platform?  You need to address whether you can hire and afford a candidate. (34:12) Robby – It is difficult when growing and building a product. When creating a position, it is important to hire with a culture fit and diversity in mind. You want somebody who can broaden the Beaver Builder message and grow the community. (36:44) Matt – Small companies are able to offer a good product and people will buy it when they know what is being offered. It can be very difficult to hire a person who can perform in many areas. It is important to give new employees enough time to deliver in the WordPress space. A 90-day review may not be long enough to determine if a person is a good fit because the return of investment may take a while to measure. (37:26) Robby – When creating the Marketing job posting for his company, it was important to consider the changes that are needed for a small growing business. A person hired for content marketing must have some sales experience or perform in many areas. (40:21) The Beaver Builder Theme Matt – talks about the outlook for the Beaver Builder theme. It looks like the latest release of the Beaver Builder theme will be addressing design aesthetics. (44:11) Robby – discusses how the Beaver Builder Theme is intentionally not marketed as the shiny object. The Theme is offered as a solid framework that is consistent and is easy to use. Once you learn the theme, it can save you so much time on additional projects. Beaver Builder considered naming the theme Chameleon where the theme could change and adapt with a design aesthetic. (46:26) As Gutenberg grows it is interesting to see how WordPress supported themes will change. It looks like there are many changes coming into the front-end space with styles and design. (47:15) Resources: Morten Rand-Hendrikson WordCamp 2018  Beaver Builder Conductor plugin Gutenberg Jetpack WooCommerce Grado Silicon Valley Gilfoyle Gary Vaynerchuck Beaver Builder Theme Flexbox Pagely To Keep in Touch: Beaver Builder Robby on Twitter Beaver Builder Facebook group To Stay in Touch with Matt: Watch the panel discussion on Matt's YouTube channel. To stay connected with the Matt Report, head on over to mattreport.com/subscribe. We are looking to reach 200 reviews on iTunes, so please help us out. If you like the show, please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. ★ Support this podcast ★

Matt Medeiros continues Season 8 with the third roundtable episode talking to Naomi Bush, Brad Williams, and Rebecca Gill. Matt discusses a recent podcast with Matt Mullenweg and Kara Swisher where he says that he is staying with WordPress for the rest of his life. WordPress powers 31% of the Internet and this panel discusses how there are still so many options for people needing consulting advice and support in the WordPress space. Listen to this episode: Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Finding opportunity while WordPress is changing Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:39:03 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:39:03 Watch this episode: Brad Williams – Builds sites with WordPress and runs a company called WebDevStudios.com.  (0:33) Rebecca Gill – Owns a WordPress agency called WebSavvy Marketing that is located in Traverse City MI. Rebecca is an SEO Consultant and provides a lot of education about SEO. (0:50) Naomi Bush –  runs a company called Gravity Plus. She builds products to help people do more with Gravity Forms. (1:03) Changing WordPress Marketspace: Naomi – Has a focused product centered around Gravity Forms in her business. Ninja forms keeps up with the changes and offers an inexpensive forms solution for WordPress users. There are a lot of people that wanted to get into the WordPress “gold rush”. Even though there is a lot of competition in WordPress it still has a broad ecosystem. (2:23) Rebecca– would not consider going back into a market with stock themes. She would consider the plugin market.  You need to think carefully about the saturated theme market and support that comes with Themes. There is not a lot of money in that market anymore. (2:56) Brad  – There is saturation in the WordPress market. There are many agencies and freelancers that build websites using WordPress. (4:05) Future of WordPress: There has to be an effort to simplify the WordPress experience. Brad – WebDevStudios is 100% WordPress. They can have applications that evolve using APIs and integrate with other systems. They are always looking at what is new and interesting but they still plan on building on WordPress. (5:51) Rebecca – Many businesses are coming to agencies after they have flopped on an in-house experience. They are looking for external expertise. People are realizing that they have made a big mistake sometimes after their SEO drops on a redesign and their traffic has changed. (12:15) Naomi – Gravity forms has been waiting for the new editing experience before making a lot of changes. Add-ins will need to integrate with the software. Naomi has seen that different 3rd parties to plugins have had different approaches to blocks. She will wait to see how this changes in newer releases. (17:16) Brad – Automattic is in the business to make money. There is a new verticle for blocks with vendors. Website builders will need to make a decision on what they use. Brad does not feel that Gutenberg WordPress users will have an advantage in the development space of WordPress. You still need a design eye when creating websites so it is nice to be able to use structured themes when you can.  He fears that the impact of Gutenberg may influence the reputation of WordPress. (14:15) Opportunities for Growth in WordPress: Rebecca – a freelancer or small business agency can concentrate on Gutenberg support for users. Many clients will just want somebody to do the work and not want to learn the blocks themselves. There will always be service opportunities for SEO with website audits and training. (21:15) Training: Rebecca uses Learndash and WooCommerce for courses. She uses GoToMeeting for group or one on one training. There are still clients that just want you to do the work and will pay for that. (27:21) Naomi – Pick a space to specialize and find a niche if you can. Understand your customer and provide a solution for what they need. (22:39) Training: Naomi creates field guides and links to relative documentation for her customers. (28:36) Brad – freelancers will need to understand their WordPress product and also the customer. Many WebDevStudio customers have not shown an interest or desire to know what Gutenberg is about. The Gutenberg discussion has brought the conversation to using page builders like Beaver Builder. (23:54) Training: Documentation with screen sharing is provided to clients. There is training provided around user permissions for clients so they can understand how to add a user who can safely navigate the site. The more information you provide to your clients, the better off they will be. (25:56) To Keep in Touch: Brad: Web Dev Studios Brad on Twitter Lunch with Brad Rebecca: emagine Rebecca Gill Rebecca on Twitter Naomi: Naomi C. Bush Naomi on Twitter Episode Resources: Podcast with Matt Mullenweg and Kara Swisher Gutenberg Conductor Plugin Google Meet Google Hangouts WooCommerce Freemius Shopify Magento Beaver Builder REST API To Stay in Touch with Episode Guests: Watch the panel discussion on Matt's YouTube channel. To stay connected with the Matt Report, head on over to mattreport.com/subscribe. If you like the show, please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. ★ Support this podcast ★

In this episode we get to chat to Sujay Pawar, somewhat of a rising star of the WordPress world. I think that it's quite likely that you've heard of some of the products that his company (Brainstorm Force) have created over the years. Shall I just list them out for you, so that you can say, “Yes, I've heard of those,” at the end? The Astra Theme, Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder, Ultimate Addons for Elementor, Convert Pro, Schema Pro, WP Portfolio and actually there were a few more along the way too! There, I told you that you'd heard of them! Is that enough for you!? Listen to the episode to find out more.

In this episode we get to chat to Sujay Pawar, somewhat of a rising star of the WordPress world. I think that it's quite likely that you've heard of some of the products that his company (Brainstorm Force) have created over the years. Shall I just list them out for you, so that you can say, “Yes, I've heard of those,” at the end? The Astra Theme, Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder, Ultimate Addons for Elementor, Convert Pro, Schema Pro, WP Portfolio and actually there were a few more along the way too! There, I told you that you'd heard of them! Is that enough for you!? Listen to the episode to find out more.

So many of you are now using a Page Builder, admit it! Honestly, why wouldn't you, they are such a great way to cut hours of time out of the development process of your WordPress web site. Well, I'm sure that you've heard of Beaver Builder, one of the Page Builders that you really ought to be using. I could go into all the reasons, but suffice to say that it's polished, reliable, and as stable as a thing which holds horses! Recently the guys over at Beaver Builder released version 2.0 into the wild and Robby McCullough is here to explain all about it.

So many of you are now using a Page Builder, admit it! Honestly, why wouldn't you, they are such a great way to cut hours of time out of the development process of your WordPress web site. Well, I'm sure that you've heard of Beaver Builder, one of the Page Builders that you really ought to be using. I could go into all the reasons, but suffice to say that it's polished, reliable, and as stable as a thing which holds horses! Recently the guys over at Beaver Builder released version 2.0 into the wild and Robby McCullough is here to explain all about it.

In this episode we get to meet Bradley Kirby who has a very cool little plugin for Beaver Builder called Wallace Inline. It's really rather cool, and allows you to update the contents of your Beaver Builder pages without actually using the Beaver Builder dialogue boxes. If you've never used Beaver Builder then you need to know that when you edit content on your page, a little box opens up with all the settings for that 'module'. This plugin changes that and makes editing even more easy!

In this episode we get to meet Bradley Kirby who has a very cool little plugin for Beaver Builder called Wallace Inline. It's really rather cool, and allows you to update the contents of your Beaver Builder pages without actually using the Beaver Builder dialogue boxes. If you've never used Beaver Builder then you need to know that when you edit content on your page, a little box opens up with all the settings for that 'module'. This plugin changes that and makes editing even more easy!

This week we get to meet the man behind the Beaver Builder Facebook group - Dave Toomey. Many of you will know that there is a 8,000 strong group out there, but perhaps you didn't know that it was not started by the folk over at Beaver Builder, but by a lone Irish fella called Dave Toomey. Turns out that running a large Facebook group involves quite a bit of work.

This week we get to meet the man behind the Beaver Builder Facebook group - Dave Toomey. Many of you will know that there is a 8,000 strong group out there, but perhaps you didn't know that it was not started by the folk over at Beaver Builder, but by a lone Irish fella called Dave Toomey. Turns out that running a large Facebook group involves quite a bit of work.

In today's episode we talk to Puneet Sahalot. He is probably best known as the man behind Power Pack, a Beaver Builder addon pack over at wpbeaveraddons.com. We talk a little bit about what coming up next for PowerPack, but we also talk about two new products, Woo Pack and WP Fomo.

In today's episode we talk to Puneet Sahalot. He is probably best known as the man behind Power Pack, a Beaver Builder addon pack over at wpbeaveraddons.com. We talk a little bit about what coming up next for PowerPack, but we also talk about two new products, Woo Pack and WP Fomo.

Today we welcome back Robby and Justin from Beaver Builder. The last time they joined us was for our Christmas special. This time it just feels like Christmas. If you didn't know already the Beaver Builder team have just released their Beaver Themer extension.

Today we welcome back Robby and Justin from Beaver Builder. The last time they joined us was for our Christmas special. This time it just feels like Christmas. If you didn't know already the Beaver Builder team have just released their Beaver Themer extension.

On today's episode, we're talking with Brent Jett.  Brent is a lead designer and WordPress developer at Nehmedia. He is an accomplished photographer who loves taking photos. He also loves his beagles and drinking coffee. Brent spends a lot of his time bridging the gap between good design and development at Beaver Builder during his evening hours and weekends. Listen to the audio Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners S5 E5: Brent Jett Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:47:14 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:47:14 Guests : Brent Jett works for a digital agency called Nehmedia. He is also a major contributor and developer for Beaver Builder working on the 2.0 release along with the Themer development. What you will learn from this episode: A day working with clients at Nehmedia goes from project discovery all the way to development and launch. (6:35) Working with a team at an agency provides all the expertise needed to build a successful business website for a client. (ex: SEO, design, and development). (9:13) The balance of tasks and persistent knowledge in a project needs to be balanced with the team and the right tools. (11:11) YouTube videos were originally created to share how content creation and curation is done. (13:54) Resist the impulse to be perfect. The web is informal so just be OK with your videos. (17:16) Lessons from Building a Software Interface: Beaver Builder is a complex application to build where the User Interface (UI) mapping needs to be constantly addressed. (28:09) When developing an application you need to have logical systems in your interface. The math should not drive the design of the product. (29:05) Pagebuilder features should provide power and flexibility. (30:48) You want to do your best to get inside a person's head the first time they use your product. (37:11) The onboarding experience for the end user is a huge consideration when delivering your software. (39:10) There is nothing better than demonstrating your product. It is better to have a screencast than animation. (40:56) The length of your videos should be measured on where you are going to post your video. Tolerance on YouTube is longer than Facebook. (41:43) A user's interest needs to be hooked in the first 20 to 30 seconds when presenting video content. (42:50) One-take videos are too hard to record. Pause the recording but do not move the mouse so you can easily edit the screencasts. (45:46) Advantages of using Beaver Builder A YouTube channel was created for Beaver Builder to provide users with a deeper knowledge of the product.  (25:00) The Beaver Builder slack channel extended the WordPress community for Brent. The Beaver Builder page builder addressed the frustration around the fragmentation of WordPress. (21:24) Balancing field testing with users will provide you with the data to show you where you may be hung up. The challenge is finding the balance between the feedback and development. The design of Beaver Builder 2.0 will have many color choices that were derived directly from the WordPress color guides. (23:26) Workflow needs to be in place and be understood in order to take full advantage of Beaver Builder. (32:31) Beaver Builder is great for the first time user all the way to the seasoned professional.  (36:00) EPISODE RESOURCES DropBox Paper Nehmedia Follow Brent: Brent on Twitter Brent on Facebook YouTube channel Stay connected with the Matt Report by joining the email list over at mattreport.com/subscribe Matt's easy support videos If you like the show please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. Sponsors: LiquidWeb Beaver Builder ★ Support this podcast ★

On today's episode, we're talking for the first time with Davinder Singh Kainth.  Davinder is an author and has been published on many sites including BasicWP, Simple Pro Themes, and ProBeaver. Davinder has been creating and implementing online spaces for over a decade. He has experience with web design, development, blogging, and SEO. Recently Davinder is very prominent in the Beaver Builder community and has been creating goodness at ProBeaver.com. Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners S5: E4: Davinder Singh Kainth Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window Guests : Davinder Singh Kainth – Lives in India and is an author at BasicWP, Beaver Builder Pro and Simple Pro Themes. Davinder started his career as a successful technology blogger. He migrated to the Genesis Framework and has created several Genesis themes that can be found at Simple Pro Themes. Davinder has a lot of experience with writing, client products, and services. What will you  learn in this episode In addition to web design, development and agency work Davinder has created a successful niche product called ProBeaver.com.  (5:20  ) You can start your career by working with Upwork (used to be Odesk), freelancer.com or Fiverr. You just need to be competent in the area where you are applying. (7:50) You can become a regular on somebody's team when working through Upwork. You start low and show your value through your work and build trust. (11:31) In order to not always be competing at bottom dollar projects, you need to be competent in estimating. As the scope and cost of the project increases, your estimate must also increase. (12:00) Balancing work with clients, products, and content is an art. Davinder does not work for longer than 2 hours of focused work without a break. He has to adjust his work schedule to accommodate the US and Australia. (17:11) It helps to get a partner on large projects that complement your skills. (18:09) Davinder's work is split 60/40 between client work and his personal blog. (19:06) Lessons from running a small business Have a Plan B when starting out freelancing.  It is very helpful to have another source of income or savings until the freelancing takes off. (20:00) You should stick to one page builder when building client sites. It is fine to experiment with page builders on your personal site. (29:57) While experimenting with AdSense from Google, Davinder found that you are 100% dependent on Google for your success.  You have to constantly be changing with Google's updates. (35:06) It can be profitable to start a niche for your business. Davinder used to link to Amazon for his first business centered around toddler potty seats. (35:59) Affiliate links with trusted WordPress products can be another revenue stream for your website. (37:00) If you approach something with your heart, you will find success. (37:31) Be confident about pricing your product. You know the value of your work. (39:00) Advantages of using Beaver Builder Beaver Builder is helping developers create powerful websites and clients can easily manage their sites.  (24:24) Themes are leaning toward builder themes or feature themes that work very well with Beaver Builder. (25:57) Beaver Builder is perfect for the small client that just wants a website with a few pages. Beaver Builder is releasing a new plugin called Beaver Themer that should make building themes even faster. (42:02) The community around Beaver Builder is passionate and very loyal. EPISODE RESOURCES Follow Davinder ProBeaver.com Davinder on Twitter Davinder on Facebook BasicWP Simple Pro Themes Stay connected with the Matt Report by joining the email list over at mattreport.com/subscribe To follow all of Matt's efforts, take a look at Crafted by Matt If you like the show please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. Sponsors: LiquidWeb Beaver Builder   ★ Support this podcast ★

On today's episode, we're talking with Chris Wallace of Lift UX. Chris has been a partner of Lift UX where he has been running a high-end agency with Brad Miller for seven years. Lift UX specializes with WordPress and has realized the benefits of using Beaver Builder for smaller web projects where a lot of custom designs are not needed. Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners S5 E3: Chris Wallace Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window Guest: Chris Wallace – Lives in Texas and is the Creative Director at Lift UX running a boutique agency that also provides client services for customers. Chris shares his excitement for Beaver Builder to help you build WordPress websites easily and responsively. What you'll learn in this episode: The Lift UX agency successfully launched major projects for GoDaddy, Campus Insiders, Pressed Platform, AMC Networks, and others. (5:00) Boutique agency life can be successful with big brands without having many employees. (6:14) It takes a long time to build a network with expert professionals and clients. (11:23) Balancing time between paying the bills, product efforts and new client opportunities can be difficult but clients come first. (15:17). Everyone's business is different. What may work well for finding the value for one client may not work for everyone. (25:24) The future (or flavors ) of WordPress seem to be growing in several ways. There are agencies that already have customers and are trying to expand their customer base. ex: GoDaddy. There are the niche providers where there is a market that is underserved.  Beaver Builder works great for this market segment. (39:00) The products will eventually merge where they will all be running WordPress, using themes and the same plugins. (40:00) WordPress will be dominating. All in one packages seem to be expanding in the market for small businesses.  There will always be a need for experienced consultants. (42:47) There are ways to research how businesses work together. Remote jobs was created to help partners post jobs for employees. (47:00) Advantages of using Beaver Builder: Beaver Builder is not paired with a theme and is not complex to use. (29:38) Beaver Builder is very easy to use, is responsive and is great to try out on a personal project. (30:33) Beaver Builder is a design tool, a wire-framing tool and also can be used for development. It really cuts down the time spent on the design phase of a project. Beaver Builder is a great tool to create a product and provide service for smaller clients in a niche market like churches. This was how Faithmade was launched. (32:41) Beaver Builder is great to use for the clients that have budget restraints. The tool helps you sell the concept that the web is fluid. (35:41) The ease of Beaver Builder can help the “do it yourselfer” get a web site up easily and inexpensively. (43:00) Lessons for boutique agency success: It is important to build a relationship network with expert professionals and know the best person in your industry. (10:00) There are numbers that need to be hit but a smaller agency can invest time that allows exploration of many opportunities. (14:15) You need to build capital and invest dedicated time that finds its ebb and flow in agency work. (16:50) It is tricky to balance client work with products. EPISODE RESOURCES Follow Chris and Lift UX Lift UX Chris on Twitter Faithmade Remote Jobs Stay connected with the Matt Report by joining the email list over at mattreport.com/subscribe. If you like the show please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. THANK OUR SPONSORS LiquidWeb Beaver Builder ★ Support this podcast ★

Jonathan Perez has been running a successful side hustle called SureFire Web Services. He shares the lessons he has learned about running a business and how you should never be afraid to try new ideas and pivot when you need to. Jonathan has started a Facebook group called 0to30K, now called Devenaires. If you create websites full time or as a side hustle, there is plenty to learn from other people who have been there. Jonathan's benchmark to success was getting his first 30K so this is where the name 0-to-30K originated. About this show: On today's episode, we're talking with Jonathan Perez of SureFire Web Services. Jonathan is a consultant/web strategist specializing in WordPress, the Genesis Framework, and now knocking it out of the park using Beaver Builder (which he considers the best page builder period). Guests : Jonathan Perez – Lives in the New York and is a WordPress superhero who runs SureFire Web Services.  Jonathan is a Beaver Builder evangelist who is always trying new things and loves sharing how you can use Beaver Builder to create big business. Jonathan is a father and considers his family as one of the best things that have ever happened in his life. Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners S5 E2: Jonathan Perez Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window In this episode you'll hear: Beaver Builder has empowered businesses and has had a strong community grow around it. (6:15) You can make good money running a side hustle. (8:40) Never be afraid to fail and try many things. Having a full-time job gives you the security and allows you to experiment with many different WordPress things. (11:28) Everything in WordPress is related so it is easy to grow in development, design, and marketing. This helps build a full-service shop offering many services. (15:00) Theme building is very different than building a site for a client. You can put a lot of work into building a Theme and the return of investment is often not there. (16:55) Don't give up too quickly when trying new things in your business and do not be afraid to pivot and try new things. (20:00) Patience is the game when running your business. (21:00) Staying visible helps your business. Ads are a great way to measure your ideas and work with your services. (25:00) You can look at a sales cycle for products. (28:00) The Beaver Builder community grew quickly and has exploded with content and videos. (32:00) Growing an audience and staying in front of people takes constant work. (42:00) Pay attention to being your authentic self. Sending e-mails or “cold calling” is not always a successful marketing strategy. (44:00) Lessons for side hustle success: Reach out to people and get out of your comfort zone. When starting out in a WordPress business, just hit the ground running and then work on processes (50:00) Success is not measured only by having 150,000 subscribers.  (55:42) Client Onboarding Tools: Project Huddle Sprout Apps Project Panorama EPISODE RESOURCES SureFire Web Services Jonathan on Twitter Simple Shop Theme Gary V Dan Norris – The Seven Day Startup The Podcast eBook Beaver Builder Facebook Community Genesis Framework Stay connected with the Matt Report by joining the email list over at mattreport.com/subscribe If you like the show please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. Sponsors: LiquidWeb Beaver Builder ★ Support this podcast ★

Page builders have become very popular in the last couple of years. We are discussing how Beaver Builder has had explosive growth and how it impacts the user experience. What will the impact be for WordPress users in years to come? There are two guests on this show that have a very strong presence in the Beaver Builder community. Listen to the episode: Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners S5 E1: David Waumsley & Nathan Wrigley Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window Guests : Nathan Wrigley – Lives in the Northeast of England. He can be heard on the podcast wpBuilds with David Waumsley. He loves talking about why Beaver Builder is the number one page builder for WordPress. Nathan owns a business called Picture and Word that designs and builds websites for clients. David Waumsley – Builds websites with WordPress, lives by the beach in Goa and is a road warrior traveling to many countries with his wife. David is the second half of the podcast wpBuilds and is another Beaver Builder enthusiast. David creates many YouTube instructional videos using Beaver Builder. In this episode you'll hear: How Beaver Builder has a passionate supportive community around the page builder (03:05) Scaling to an agency level takes a huge amount of time that requires additional skills around people management. Having an agency can take you away from the work that you love, such as development or design. (8:37) When considering scaling your business, make sure you have systems and processes in place that are very well documented. (10:11) You need to get the processes out of your head and down on paper. One way to do this is by explaining difficult things through courses. (12:57) In a small agency, you need to have the flexibility to hand off the responsibility to key employees. (15:38) Outsourcing certain skills is an option for a small business but it is still very important to manage the project and have a way to measure success. (17:44) When looking for an open source CMS, it is helpful to have a business community supporting the product (22:36) Beaver Builder has opened up many business opportunities for website clients. It is a great tool for the low budget everyday client and provides a competitive edge. Beaver Builder allows you to quickly build a website and often eliminate the wireframing process. The client can easily update their own content. Advantages of having a podcast: A podcast can be created to cover the need of answering questions around a product. It allows you to get the information out to many people. Podcasting indirectly raises the profile of hosts. Podcasting is fun. The production of a podcast takes about half a day. When working on your podcast, bundling seasons and episodes helps with the production of podcasts. When producing shows, unexpected things happen. EPISODE RESOURCES Nathan Wrigley wpBUILDS Picture and Word Nathan on Twitter David Waumsley wpBUILDS davidwaumsley.com David on Twitter Other resources Facebook Beaverbuilder community Genesis Siteorigin Fastline Drupal Thank our sponsors! Beaver Builder LiquidWeb If you like the show please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. Stay connected with the Matt Report by going over to mattreport.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Today we are joined by Doug Belchamber for a chat about the development of page builders. Naturally, we're huge Beaver Builder fans so this episode is very much inspired by the Alpha release of "Beaver Themer".

Today we are joined by Doug Belchamber for a chat about the development of page builders. Naturally, we're huge Beaver Builder fans so this episode is very much inspired by the Alpha release of "Beaver Themer".

Debating WordPress Page Builders is like your crazy uncle talking politics at the holiday dinner with the family. But let's do it anyway? Full disclosure, I sell a plugin called Conductor, that often gets confused as a page builder. There's a lot of noise in this space, and lots of strong opinions. For good reason. A page builder changes the way someone experiences WordPress – for better or worse. It's how, when you're using it across your website, you create your content, generate sales pages, or sell products. It removes the need to learn coding, placing that power into the hands of someone who can navigate a drag-and-drop interface. Hopefully. And that's the problem. Purists are outraged that a site owner would choose to overlay all of this technical debt to WordPress, when whipping out SublimeText and crafting a template.php from scratch is so much more “right.” FFS do it the right way Which is the secondary argument to all of this, are page builders “doing it the right way?” WordPress isn't easy, and builder plugins can help ease some of that pain. But the right way, would be to to code it from scratch, or at least that's what some will lead you to believe. Less code is used when you create it from scratch, naturally. Builders add more complexity to a theme, as to say, a theme dictates how pages are created — then you inject a builder's layout logic. Your competing against the WordPress experience. WordPress is moving to page building, you heard it here first. Purists also feel burned (heck, frightened) about builder plugins. Here's a story about how I saved $300 by NOT calling a professional I own a home with a steam furnace. I don't fully know how it all works, but I do know it fills with water, the water is set to boil, creating steam that is pushed to radiators throughout the house. Winter is coming; it's getting cold. The first night we turned the heat on, the furnace didn't “boot up.” Did I call an HVAC professional, on a Sunday? Last time I did that, it cost $300, so I took to YouTube. I researched all the possible issues with my furnace: The thermocouple might be bad. The water basin is too full, or not full enough. The vent to the chimney isn't open.   I found out that the venting system was stuck, and replaced the part — myself. A small business HVAC person never received my call. I saved over $300. Software is getting easier, education is everywhere — now what? Page builders usher in a new kind of DIY'er to WordPress. Clients no longer need to call us for emergency coding work before a big sale weekend, and inexperienced consultants can portray themselves as having more coding experience than they actually do. Heck, maybe I could do house-calls now to fix furnances that don't startup — for a limited-time only $97. It's seen as a threat to our revenue, our livliehood. So what do we do about it? Embrace the change, and find new ways to enhance your value. I'm not saying this is happening at a rapid pace, and that page buidlers are to blame — ALL of the plugins and services being created in our industry are getting easier, empowering a larger group of users. As they should. I have some thoughts on the topic, which I'll save for another time, but I'd love to hear from you in the comments.  I hope you enjoy this episode with Robby from Beaver Builder. The episode Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners S4 E2: Robby McCullough of Beaver Builder Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window The links Robby McCullough Beaver Builder A (semi) critical review of Page Builders from Pippin Williamson ★ Support this podcast ★