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In this podcast episode, host Michelle Frechette welcomes Carrie Dils, Mika Epstein, and Ryan McCue to discuss their roles in the WordPress community and the new FAIR project. The group explores FAIR's mission to create a federated independent repository system for WordPress plugins and themes, focusing on decentralization, community-driven moderation, inclusive governance, and privacy. They address challenges like supporting premium plugins, reducing environmental impact, and fostering global participation. The episode highlights FAIR's collaborative, open-source approach and invites listeners to get involved through GitHub and community meetings, aiming to shape a more innovative and inclusive WordPress ecosystem.Top Takeaways:FAIR Is Reimagining Plugin Discovery and Trust for WordPress: FAIR is building a more open, decentralized ecosystem for WordPress plugin discovery—empowering both end users and developers. By enabling verified directories and authenticated plugin listings (via methods like DNS verification), FAIR provides an alternative to the limitations of the WordPress.org repo, while increasing transparency, user safety, and trust.Community Participation Is Central to FAIR's Success: The FAIR initiative is deeply community-driven. Contributors are encouraged to get involved through GitHub Discussions, introduce themselves, offer help, or join working groups. The leadership team is intentionally building these groups based on people's skills and availability, rather than predefined roles—making FAIR flexible, inclusive, and open to evolving needs.FAIR Encourages Innovation Outside Traditional WordPress Constraints: The project provides an alternative path for plugin creators who may not want to follow the traditional WordPress.org model (e.g., having to release a free version first). With FAIR, creators can request to be listed in aggregator directories that are more flexible, values-aligned, or niche-focused—fostering innovation and lowering barriers to entry.FAIR Is Still in Early Development—and Actively Growing: While the FAIR plugin and protocol are live (accessible via fair.pm), the ecosystem is in its formative stages. The team is prioritizing essential needs (the “MVP”) and building infrastructure to support future growth in documentation, marketing, design, development, and user testing. They welcome feedback on plugin issues, conflicts, and ideas, encouraging broad experimentation and iteration.Mentioned in the Show:FAIRLinkedIn LearningAwesome MotiveLez Watch TVHuman MadeAspire PressGravatarLinux Foundation ProjectBlueskyWPCCBlack PressMastodon DrupalCourtney RobertsonAutomatticMediaWikiMonster InsightsGravity FormsFastly
On the podcast today we have Carrie Dils. Carrie is a WordPress-loving freelance developer with more than twenty years experience in web development, and full-scope WordPress projects. She teaches WordPress and front-end development courses for LinkedIn Learning, and blogs regularly about WordPress and the business of freelancing. This is another of the podcast interviews which were recorded at WordCamp Europe in Athens. It took place soon after Carrie had completed her workshop at the event. This workshop was entitled ‘International Appeal: Making Your Themes and Plugins Translatable'. In the podcast we talk about how developers can make their plugins and themes available in multiple languages. Carrie explain why this is a good idea as well as how you might achieve this. She also discusses some of the resources which have been most helpful to her when learning about this important topic. If you're a developer who is curious about making your code available to a wider audience through internationalisation, this podcast is for you.
On the podcast today we have Carrie Dils. Carrie is a WordPress-loving freelance developer with more than twenty years experience in web development, and full-scope WordPress projects. She teaches WordPress and front-end development courses for LinkedIn Learning, and blogs regularly about WordPress and the business of freelancing. This is another of the podcast interviews which were recorded at WordCamp Europe in Athens. It took place soon after Carrie had completed her workshop at the event. This workshop was entitled ‘International Appeal: Making Your Themes and Plugins Translatable'. In the podcast we talk about how developers can make their plugins and themes available in multiple languages. Carrie explain why this is a good idea as well as how you might achieve this. She also discusses some of the resources which have been most helpful to her when learning about this important topic. If you're a developer who is curious about making your code available to a wider audience through internationalisation, this podcast is for you.
In this Episode: Learning, then Teaching WordPress DevelopmentCarrie's path to WordPress was an interesting one. She started in web development doing ASP.net, before quitting that and going to work at a Starbucks. She went there because she had aspirations of opening her own coffee shop, and thought on the job learning was the best way to do it. While she was there, her managed introduced her to WordPress. She started freelancing, and was easily able to replace her Starbucks income with freelance income. From there, she dove into Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning) courses to learn WordPress, and eventually started teaching there herself. Her approach to teaching develop is fantastic – definitely worth having a listen just for that! Key TakeawaysOne of the most rewarding things about being a freelancer is helping different companies work through a solution. By mixing up your client base and not just taking the easy jobs, you get to solve different problems. When it comes to teaching WordPress (or anything), start with an assumption about the learner. What do they know? What do they need to know? What's the primary outcome for the course? Learn something like you're going to teach it. Don't just know how to do it – understand the “why” behind the “how.” Even if you don't make courses or do talks, this skill will help you with coworkers and clients. There's a lot of knowledge to share! Don't keep things to yourself for “job security.” Use the tools that work best for you. For Carrie, VS Code, GitHub, and WP-CLI are invaluable. Don't just use tools because they're shiny and new. Determine if you need them and what you need them for. The Official Plesk Podcast: Next Level Ops FeaturingJoe CasabonaJoe is a college-accredited course developer and podcast coach. You can find him at Casabona.org.Carrie DilsCarrie Dils is a Frontend Developer and LinkedIn Learning Instructor
On May 25th, 2022 we celebrated WordPress's 19th anniversary. With the help of wp19.day — and partners Envira Gallery, Post Status, and GoDaddy Pro — two live events were held that day. Each had a group of guests that have been deeply involved in the WordPress community for some time.This episode of Comments records the second event. It happened later in the day as a celebration. Several different WordPress meetups also joined us on Zoom along with our guests.As in our previous episode, we started off sharing a few favorite memories but then quickly got into a deeper conversation about the state of WordPress now — and what we hope to see in its future.Guests: Mary Job, Nathan Wrigley, Naoko Takano, Carrie Dils, David Yarde, Joe Simpson Jr., Pat Ramsey, John Jacoby, Yvette Sonneveld, and Taco Verdo.Post Status Comments
Carrie Dils was building communities before it was cool. And was actually doing the building! In today's bit, Carrie tells us about how she built her podcast community and the pros and cons of doing your own dev work.Listen to the entire episode at https://howibuilt.it/005Be sure to subscribe at https://howibuilt.it/subscribe This clip is brought to you by WP Wallet ★ Support this podcast ★
Carrie Dils was building communities before it was cool. And was actually doing the building! In today's bit, Carrie tells us about how she built her podcast community and the pros and cons of doing your own dev work. Listen to the entire episode at https://howibuilt.it/005 Be sure to subscribe at https://howibuilt.it/subscribe This clip is brought to you by WP Wallet
Carrie Dils was building communities before it was cool. And was actually doing the building! In today's bit, Carrie tells us about how she built her podcast community and the pros and cons of doing your own dev work.Listen to the entire episode at https://howibuilt.it/005Be sure to subscribe at https://howibuilt.it/subscribe This clip is brought to you by WP Wallet Get your FREE copy of my Automations Library ★ Support this podcast ★
Carrie Dils was building communities before it was cool. And was actually doing the building! In today's bit, Carrie tells us about how she built her podcast community and the pros and cons of doing your own dev work. Listen to the entire episode at https://howibuilt.it/005 Be sure to subscribe at https://howibuilt.it/subscribe This clip is brought to you by WP Wallet
LinkedIn Learning is a force in the online course space, with hundreds of courses, millions of learners, and a well-oiled machine for putting out great content. I, along with today's guest, Carrie Dils, are fortunate to be long-time instructors for the platform. I invited Carrie on to catch up, and I thought it would be fun for us to exchange notes on how we come up with ideas for, and then record, our LinkedIn Learning courses. In Build Something More, it gets even more fun as we talk about the courses we thought would do SUPER well but turned out to…well…not. Top Takeaways: Carrie and I both followed in the footsteps of people we learned from; if you have an appreciation for learning, teaching is a great next step!Carrie likes to pitch ideas for courses on topics she wants to know more about. In order to teach something well, you need to know it well!We both shared our love of recording in LinkedIn Learning's campus booths. Having a stellar process, and the right environment for instructors is a big win. If you're creating courses, the advice we share in this episode can help you figure out what works best for you. Show Notes: Carrie DilsCarrie on LinkedinCarrie on TwitterMorten Rand_Hendrikson on TwitterJoin the Creator CrewSponsored by: TextExpander | LearnDash
It's the WP Minute! This is Carrie Dils and I'm filling in for Matt, who's tweeting about podcasting. This episode is brought to you by Easy Support Videos. Support your WordPress users by embedding videos and screencasts right inside the WordPress admin. Learn more at EasySupportVideos.com! You know the drill, everything I mention here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Check out thewpminute.com for the links. Let’s get to the News Stay tuned for the direction of block development in the next few months. Justin Tadlock over on the WPTavern wrote about whether block development is merely a templating system with no build process. Since there still is a big concern around the direction of block development, he went ahead and reviewed where the React-based WordPress block editor (sometimes referred to as Gutenberg) had been hitting speed bumps for WordPress developers who have been more PHP Centric. Helen Hou-Sandi also published on her blog how she spent the last 8 months telling anybody she talked to about custom WordPress block development. They were way less scary and much easier than she thought they were going to be for somebody with minimal React experience. She said that a big game-changer for adoption and shifting thinking would be to find a way to unify templating between the front-end and the editor, essentially swapping the places where you output content with the corresponding editor component. My personal opinion: “That sounds amazing”! Helen says: “these are experiments and there will likely be many failed paths”, and that the focus remains on the problem to be solved during the research and experimentation phase, not on the implementation details. If you want the scoop on React and the possible direction of block development make sure you check out her post and follow updates on Twitter. For you plugin developers seeing plugin changes on WordPress.org: Mika Epstein reported on WordPress.org that inaccurate stats were adjusted for 100 plugins recently because of a stats gathering change. This means those plugins had their active install stats seemingly adjusted downward. She wants you to understand this was painful for a number of developers and they held off on announcing this as they were still doing a bit of triage and making sure it was blocked. Sorry about that confusion and it is corrected now. Let’s Talk about WooCommerce If you follow Bob Dunn for WooCommerce news, he announced that his Twitter handle changed for all things Woo. Jump over to @DotheWoo for updates and news. Moving on to the Grabbag If you are a runner, walker, or crawler this one is for you. WordPress has a virtual 5k scheduled for October 1 through October 30. This race is virtual and “virtually” anyone can participate in the race with the possibility of completing the 5k race. You can track your route on your favorite app or record the 5k off the grid. And you can register for the
¡Buenos días! Estrenamos veranito ☀️???????? en Freelandev comentando un tema bastante recurrente en las últimas semanas por la importancia que tiene para los que nos movemos en el mundo WordPress y que puede afectar a nuestro día a día como desarrolladores. Pero antes.... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Tranquila, adelantando trabajo de clientes. Intentado grabar sin éxito un tutorial (niños + vecino con obras) Meetup Granollers hablando de seguridad en WordPress Contenido esther Siguiendo con los pseudo-directos de la web corporativa en WordPress y en el blog: Semana Nahuai Lanzamiento exitoso del membership que estaba montando para unos clientes. Atendió a las charlas de Flavia sobre WP Automator y Pablo Moratinos en Sin Oficina. Contenido Nahuai Tres nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis, entre ellos: Tema de la semana: A Nahuai le han llegado varios emails de personas preguntando sobre que dirección tomar a la hora de apostar por una forma de crear webs: Empezar a usar Genesis o esperarse al que el Full Site Editing se integre en el core de WordPress.Empezar a usar Elementor porque ya es FSE. Wait, what!Esperarse a que todo esto se estabilice. Importancia de usar temas que estén optimizados para el editor de bloques. Unos 25 temas de Genesis lo están (14 de ellos también tienen la home creada con bloques). Va afectar de forma muy distinta si eres un usuario, un implementador/desarrollador o si creas temas comerciales. A pesar de que vienen cambios importantes para los desarrolladores no hay que perder de vista: El Full Site Editing no se incorporará al core de WordPress, como muy pronto, hasta finales de 2020.Un año y medio después de la salida de Gutenberg, el porcentaje de temas optimizados es bastante bajo.Los temas «clásicos», bien sean child themes de Genesis o no, seguirán funcionando durante años.Te puede afectar más si eres un creador/a de temas que si los implementas para clientes. Keep calm and continue building websites. Novedades Extensiones Chrome ralentizan la carga de páginas: https://www.debugbear.com/blog/2020-chrome-extension-performance-report Recopilación lo hablado en las reuniones de Genesis Shapers: Recopilación de Carrie Dils sobre el futuro de WordPress y Genesis: https://studiopress.blog/future-wordpress-genesis/ José Conti expone su visión de la GPL en su último post: Vivir GPL o explotar GPL Tip de la semana WPevents.app: mapa visual de los próximos eventos de la comunidad WordPress: https://wpevents.app Menciones Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.
This week's theme is freelancing! How to get started, find clients, the most common mistakes to avoid, and how to make tough decisions - like choosing expand your team... or remain solo. Listen to the full episodes below: E22 – Princess Leia on developing fearless freelancers (Carrie Dils, Fearless Freelancer) E26 – Darth Maul on sales and marketing for freelancers (Jennifer Bourn, Profitable Project Plan) E40 – Working and thriving solo or as a small agency E46 – Boba Fett on starting a freelance career (Sam Smith, gsamsmith.com) E69 – Harry Potter on hiring the top 1% of freelancers (Nathan Hirsch Freeeup.com)
Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! My guest today is Jason Resnick of the Live in the Feast and Ask Rezzz podcasts that help freelancers take action ON their business to build recurring revenue. I was introduced to Jason by Carrie Dils, another web developer that I interviewed back in Episode 210 all about how to be a fearless freelancer. She reached out to me and recommended I invite Jason on the show because she thought you guys would benefit from what he has to say about freelancing and side hustling, and I’m so glad that she did because our conversation was eye-opening for me! A web developer by trade, Jason’s focused solely on WordPress for several years now - and he loves WordPress for the same reason I do - it’s gives us total freedom as web developers to create whatever we can imagine - but more importantly, it works really well on the backend for our clients. Jason believes that a rising tide raises all boats, and he’s super active in the WordPress and freelancer communities, and he’s committed to helping freelancers and web designers build a business that stays out of the feast and famine cycle. Today we’re talking about: Jason’s transition from side-hustle to self-employed. How Jason helps freelancers figure out who their ideal client is - and isn’t! Jason’s advice for how to get customers when you are just starting out and how to generate recurring revenue. How to set yourself apart as a freelancer. Why what you do is the least important thing you can communicate to your potential clients, and what to do instead. How Jason packaged his expertise to help other freelancers be successful. Why it’s important to get out of your comfort zone. Jason’s best advice for you if you’re struggling to get traction in your side hustle. The one belief Jason had to change about himself to get where he is today. My favorite quotes from Jason: You have got to niche down, you’ve got to specialize a little bit so you are talking to a singular person, solving a singular problem. Inject your own personality into what you do each and every single day. Resources Mentioned in this episode: Jason’s website - rezzz.com Feast Membership + Community Live in the Feast Podcast Ask Rezz Podcast Connect with Jason: Twitter: Best place to connect Instagram: BTS + Life LinkedIn: All about business Facebook: I'm told I need to be
Carrie Dils is a web developer instructor and freelance coach. She teaches front end web development and WordPress courses over at LinkedIn Learning. The post Episode 100: Carrie Dils appeared first on Hallway Chats.
Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! Today I'm talking to fearless freelancer and WordPress expert Carrie Dils all about how she transitioned from 1:1 client work to monetizing her knowledge on a bigger scale. If you want to move beyond time-for-money in your side hustle, this is the episode for you! Carrie has been around in the WordPress and web design community for many years – I’d even seen her name around well before I decided to start freelancing – I’d be working on a website at my day job and run into a snag, start googling and her blog would come up quite often. Her name is Carrie Dils, and I came across her again when I booked a new web design client with a pretty challenging project. I was researching how to do something, came across Carrie’s website again and saw that she had a way to just book a paid consultation call by the minute – which we’ll talk about later in this episode. So I booked a call, got some advice and then invited Carrie on the podcast to talk about how she monetized her WordPress knowledge beyond one on one client work. In today’s episode, Carrie and I dig deep into: The tipping point where Carrie took the leap from day job to full time side hustle. Creating multiple streams of revenue outside of 1:1 client work as a web designer. How to do content marketing as a web designer. How to easily sell your expertise – in any subject – by the minute. How Carrie dealt with imposter syndrome when she was first starting out The #1 skill to have as a web designer. Why you shouldn’t try to do everything yourself in your web design business. Why Carrie shifted from writing Genesis and WordPress tutorials for freelancers to teaching them how to be a successful freelancer. Carrie’s #1 piece of advice for a new web designer. Carrie’s advice on pricing. The belief Carrie had to change about herself to get where she is today. Just a quick heads up – you’ll hear some background noise in this interview – Carrie had to duck into a coffee shop to do the interview, which is totally cool with me! So let’s dive in to my interview with WordPress Expert and Fearless Freelancer Carrie Dils. So if you’re a web designer or you’re thinking about freelancing, head on over to peptalksforsidehustlers.com/freelance and that’ll send you over to my blog post all about how I got my first web design client, and you can get your hands on a freebie – my 7 Step Website Consultation Checklist and script that will walk you through how to do a consultation call with a potential client. All the resources mentioned in this episode can be found over at peptalksforsidehustlers.com/210 – and if you’re not a web designer but you want to build your own website for your side hustle, head on over to peptalksforsidehustlers.com/5day and sign up to take my Free 5 Day Website Challenge which will walk you step by step how to build your entire website with WordPress in just 5 days. See you next week! Resources mentioned in this episode: Carrie Dils How to Successfully Freelance (*this is an affiliate link) Smart Passive Income E-myth Book Profit First – Mike Michalowicz Entreleadership – Dave Ramsey Bio: Carrie Dils is an independent contractor and developer with 20 years of experience in web development and deep experience in full-scope WordPress projects. From small, locally-owned businesses to Fortune 500 companies (including Disney and Nvidia) Carrie has worked with clients to deliver creative and successful digital solutions. She’s passionate about education and empowering others to do the work they love. She hosts the OfficeHours.FM podcast for digital freelancers and small business owners, helping them grow their service-related businesses. She teaches WordPress and front-end development courses for Lynda.com and LinkedIn Learning. She also offers a series of business courses for freelancers at The Fearless FreelancerTM. When Carrie’s not working, she’s probably reading a book, playing with her dogs, drinking a craft beer, or taking an absurdly long walk.
This week we brought in our first guest host, who is embarking on her own adventure and living her ridiculous life, the always incredible Carrie Dils. We talked about our shared pasts and what the future might hold for all of us when (or if) we ever grow up. We recorded this episode at the beginning of Carrie embarking on a cross country trip at the beginning of January. Now, she is in California and has visited many friends along the way. Follow along with her on Twitter @cdils and see what she is doing now, and on her website at: https://carriedils.com/
Ever wondered how to freelance or how to be a more successful freelancer? Carrie spills the beans on everything...from why you feel like you’re not being paid enough, why not knowing what to do is okay as long as you have persistence, how to network with like-minded people, and much more! She’s a teacher at heart so have your notebooks ready, enjoy!
EPISODE 11 – Committing to a Twelve Week Year “Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.” — Fitzhugh Dodson On this week’s show, I will be discussing the concept of the twelve week year, how I used it to get out of a creative rut and how it can be used to focus your vision and complete goals quickly. It’s a bit longer than usual episodes but it’s filled with valuable and important stuff. Before I go on to that though, in last week’s episode I set out to discount the myth that multitasking is somehow a more productive way of working than just doing one thing at a time. The ONE THING AT A TIME PHILOSOPHY is not the easiest thing to do, and I perhaps find that especially true for creatives. As we constantly find ourselves thinking of more and more things we could develop or work on within ourselves or our creative projects, be they films or whatever, we often trip over the last idea we had with a fresh new one and short circuit it. Multitasking does exist of course, as any mother or father working from home with a toddler at their heels will confirm, but in productivity terms, it’s incredibly inefficient and as we get older we simply become less and less able to pull it off. If you missed the episode do scoot back and have a listen as it’s got some good food for thought in there but if you did and have been giving it a try, as always please get in touch via twitter or the website links and let me know how you are getting on. If you have a particular element of your life or work that you are struggling with then please get in touch and I’ll see if I can work up a new episode to help you to deal with it. ANECDOTE Sadly I lost my brilliant dad at the start of 2017 and just a few months later I lost my amazing mum too. It was not a good year and by September I found that I was struggling to get things done in both life and work. I always seemed to be a step behind and I was firefighting my way through everything last minute, that’s if I got things done at all. I’ve talked about firefighting a few times here and YOU CAN WORK THAT WAY BUT what it does is that it takes your attention away from larger problems and those problems play heavily on your mind. It also makes your goals secondary to whatever the current problem is that you are dealing with. It got to the point several times in the years leading up to my own first twelve week year where I had to just stop and those that follow my twitter feed will know this, I have to shut it down to allow me to focus on what is absolutely vital. The white noise that I talked about in episode 3, just saturated my thoughts with 10’s If not hundreds of small to large sized tasks and commitments and I got heavily bogged down and kinda lost. Of course, now I have ways to avoid this, but that’s really because I was able to get myself out from under a host of problems by committing to a 12 week year and in turn that started me on my way to high-level thinking. It’s worth saying that even productivity systems can become white noise if you try to follow too many at once, but I found the 12 week year and basically, with a fairly thin understanding of it I threw myself in. I’ll go into it in detail a little later but I usually describe it to others as taking your new year’s resolution, what you want to achieve by that same time the following year instead of putting it 12 weeks away. For example, let’s say you want to make a short film. You say. I want to write, shoot and edit a short film by this time next year that’s my vision, that tells a story that I want to tell, or you want to learn how to edit by this time next year, or you want to make a change in career by this time next year, or you want to lose a few pounds or here’s one, you want to launch a podcast by this time next year. Instead of saying by THIS TIME NEXT YEAR, the traditional way you instead put that goal just 12 weeks away. So a twelve week year simply takes the focussed energy at the start and end of a new year’s resolution - The first six weeks and the final six weeks of the year and misses out the middle bit. The 9 months of the year where you got distracted from your vision. It focuses your time and energy and makes achieving your goals a real possibility. “People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.” — Earl Nightingale My goal when I set my own 12 week year up was to clear the decks of incomplete projects, unfinished personal matters and promises to help others out within that time and I largely succeeded. I successfully killed off projects that were going nowhere, completed tasks that had been lying unfinished for well, some of them, years and I either end lined or escaped from all but two other matters. One was a project I’d been dragged into and that the producer simply wouldn’t let go, and I found myself in the end, out of politeness, agreeing to extend my involvement – I shouldn’t have done it but I did, and the other was an insurance claim for water getting into my house which in the end I simply had to concede to as a kind of half agreement with them a few weeks later – by that stage it had been two whole years unresolved and the 12 week year put real pressure on them. I learned that corporate matters like an insurance claim are very difficult to get working to your speed. Everything else though and I’m talking some 11 or 12 quite complicated matters, as well as many many smaller ones, got resolved within the 12 weeks. Of note is that NONE of the people that I gave deadlines to for the release of my voluntary creative involvement, actually completed or indeed really even started their projects within the 12 weeks I gave them to do so. These were creative projects which I can only assume were started by people on a whim, and they had called me or invited me on board and this was before I taught myself to say no of course, but they never went anywhere. It’s not that they couldn’t keep up with the pace that I set, THEY COULDN’T EVEN TAKE THE FIRST STEP ONTO A PACE – THERE WAS NO PACE. I’d been sweating and giving up mental energy to these projects when the people who apparently were driving them were really just waiting for me to do it for them. That realisation and my higher level self’s acknowledgement of it made saying no to future involvements all the easier. I did try another 12 week year just after the first, trying to pull together within it both this podcast and a web series and that 12 week year failed, well kinda failed and the reason was that I was 1 – Uncertain of exactly what I wanted to do with this podcast and my goal was therefor unspecific, And 2 – That the project I’d let slide on the previous 12 week year slammed right into my one and took all of the spare time that I’d worked so hard for, off of me. I had to manhandle that project to completion and if I hadn’t it simply would never have shot. In effect, I dropped my own project in favour of someone else’s and killed my second 12-week plan myself. All really out of politeness. I’m quite aware as I work on these episodes that at times I may sound harsh, or unsupportive or negative even but I have deep regrets from wasting my time and energy with experiences like this, and I must tell you that giving up your own hopes and dreams to commit to furthering someone else’s vision, no matter how nice they are, is not a good thing for the soul. I’m currently nearing the end of my 3rd 12 week year, and my goal with this one – to launch a podcast on the subject of productivity by the end of September 2018. How am I getting on? THE LESSON So committing to and completing a 12 week year is really pretty difficult but if you can get through it, and NOT GET DISTRACTED you will achieve a hell of a lot. I present this episode as I know just how powerful it is and I absolutely believe in it. The TWELVE WEEK YEAR IS a PRODUCTIVITY SYSTEM created by BRIAN P MORAN and his business partner MICHAEL LENNINGTON, outlined in a NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING BOOK (link in the show notes) and an accompanying website of the same name that debunks traditional goal setting, using annual goals, as an ineffective goal-achieving approach. The 12 Week Year Is Not About Mustering More Discipline, Willpower, Organizational Skills, or A better Mindset, it is simply a focussed approach to goal setting which takes your long-term vision and brings it closer. Please buy your copy through one of my Amazon Affiliate Links. I get a small cut and it helps keep teh podcast costs down a wee bit. AMAZON US: https://amzn.to/2RUaj98 AMAZON UK: https://amzn.to/2yfN3tW RESEARCH ON NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS suggests that when you set one and commit to it on the 1st of January that it is very likely that you might put in a good effort towards that yearly goal for 5 or 6 weeks at the start of the year, hitting the gym or writing down ideas etc. but by the time you are 6 weeks in, that LIFE AND WORK AND OTHER MATTERS will have taken your focus and frayed it, diluted it and you’d probably have abandoned your goal to deal with what was immediately on your plate. It goes on to suggest that maybe towards the end of the year you pick it back up again, and say to yourself, well I must do that thing that I said I would, and you might return to the gym, or perhaps you may have decided just to let it go. AN IN DEPTH LOOK AT THE TWELVE WEEK YEAR The 12 Week Year is a highly practical guide for taking you from thinking about the things you should be doing to push your business or your project or your life forward to actually doing those things. I’m basing my next section on an article by Carrie Dils called How to Squeeze a Full Year out of 12 Weeks. I did a good bit of additional research but I really liked her conclusions. There are 4 stages to this: Firstly you must SET “PILLAR” GOALS “Goals are dreams with deadlines.” ― Diana Scharf Now I’ve kind of avoided getting specific on goal setting so far in this podcast but the time has come for you to start thinking long term. The whole point of higher level thinking is to intelligently move yourself towards your own goals be they short or long term. And you need to start thinking about it if you haven’t already – The question is this - What is your long-term vision for your life? Where would you like to be true about your life in 10 years. Would you like to be debt free? Would you like to have a family? Would you like to achieve a certain salary? Own a holiday home? Move your career to a significant place? This will be your pillar goal. Take your time with this. Get to grips with it. I’ll revisit goals again and again on this show. For now, the idea is to pick 2-3 core goals for each 12-week cycle that serve your larger vision. Did you know that - If you write a goal down the probability of you doing it goes up 80%? Write a compelling vision of the ideal future that you’re working towards. The second stage is to GET RID OF ANNUALIZED THINKING Imagine getting a week’s worth of progress made in one day. Think critically about the tasks that are truly most important to your goals and spend your time on those things. What can I focus on in the next 12 weeks that are in service of my Pillar goals? Plan the daily or weekly tasks that serve those 2-3 primary goals and if your daily activities aren’t supporting those goals, you’re doing the wrong thing. Create habits to make taking regular action as easy as possible. Here are some examples that serve my current goal of creating this podcast. Create the website that supports the podcast. Learn how to submit to iTunes. Create test episodes to learn from. And how have I tackled these? I stopped my involvement in other peoples creative projects in order to focus on my goal. I tried three different word press designers, wasted time with them, and I eventually took over and built it myself in Wix. I researched how to get onto iTunes by following you tubers and listening to podcasts that talk about the subject. I hired a friend with a podcast to advise me on creating this one, and I recorded tests and rerecorded episode 1 three times before settling. I narrowed my focus, out with the day to day work of fight direction which is incredibly busy this year I must add and I focussed only on my podcast goals in my spare time. I deliberately avoided being drawn into other ideas and projects that took my fancy. Thirdly - DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE OF PLANNING. Planning is some of the most productive time you can have. You have to set focused tactical goals. Plan what strategies and actions will move you closer to your goal and your future success. To achieve a year’s worth of work in the next 12 weeks requires a style of planning and execution that forces you to shed the low-value activity that keeps you stuck. Engage with the word tactical and don’t be afraid to say no to things that will distract you or slow you down. You have to make a detailed plan, with dates to hit - and stick to it. My detailed plan for his podcast has three elements to it: 1 Be ready by the 12th of September – My ideal launch date. 2 Have 15 episodes researched written and recorded by that date. Today is the 7th and I am on episode 11. I will put off recording 12-15 as I’m not in Glasgow so cannot complete. I will however complete by the 20th. 3 To launch with a website which will support the show and is simple to look at but offers the opportunity for expansion. The website planning is very complex in itself. I have been getting up early - between5.30-6am in order to complete a little bit of work on the podcast every day. As I near the end, it is slotting into every spare moment that I can find, between risk assessments, travel and fights. Lastly – YOU SHOULD KEEP SCORE Make your goals SMART That is (Specific. Measurable. Actionable. Relevant. Time-sensitive.). If you can’t measure progress, how do you know how you’re doing? Keep score so you know what’s working and what’s not so that you can make adjustments along the way. It enables you to celebrate wins and consciously identify problem areas. Here are some common problems that you may face along the way. COMMON MISTAKE #1: Trying to change everything at once - This is the number one mistake people make. Start with one thing and do it well. Once you get a few wins under your belt, you’ll gain skill and confidence with the system and you’ll be able to achieve even more. COMMON MISTAKE #2: Not having a strong enough “why” You absolutely MUST have a compelling personal vision. This is the “why” behind what you want to accomplish and achieve. It provides the motivation to follow through and take action, even when you don’t feel like it. Don’t get caught up trying to please someone else or copy someone else. Find your own why. COMMON MISTAKE #3: Not tracking your actions. This is important because you are what you repeatedly do. You are always building habits, either by intention or by accident. Tracking is a daily reminder that you’re growing. COMMON MISTAKE #4: Going it alone - If you’re serious about achieving your goals, the best thing you can do is tell others about it. There’s an African proverb that says, “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” So share your vision & goals with a friend or a colleague. In the productivity world, there’s something called an accountability partner. I’m sure if you put some effort into it you can find someone who it would be mutually beneficial to share with. SUMMING UP Brian P. Moran says in the 12 week year that “the number-one thing that you will have to sacrifice to be great, to achieve what you are capable of, and to execute your plans, is your comfort.” I’ve gone into some detail here but the book covers this topic very well. Follow the link in the show notes to get yourself a copy. It’s got so much value in it that I’ve really just had time to touch upon here. In the interest of honesty, I have to admit that I have deliberately put back my launch of Film Pro Productivity from the 12 September to a bit later in the month. The reason for that? I’m directing fight sequences simultaneously on 3 different television shows now and one is on the Island of Shetland at the top of Scotland, one is on the Isle of Skye to the North West and the other is in Central Scotland, In Glasgow. I simply can’t make my own launch date as I have to follow the work. If I launched on the 12th, which tbh I can, then I would not be able to promote it. I have delayed a little to gain a lot. This twelve week year episode is my first foray into the subject of goal setting. I hope that you’ve found it useful and inspiring. “One part at a time, one day at a time, we can accomplish any goal we set for ourselves.” — Karen Casey CALL TO ACTION I’m not going to suggest that as a call to action for next week you begin a 12 week year – all I ask is that you think about how it could work for you and start deciding on your life and work goals. That’s enough for now. ENDING Next episode I’ll be talking about Timewasters and How to deal with them – I’ll try and make it a shorter episode! For now though, thanks so much for listening – and I urge you to take control of your own destiny, keep on shootin’ and join me NEXT TIME on Film Pro Productivity. The music that you are listening to right now is Adventures by A Himitsu. You can view the show notes for this episode at filmproproductivity.com/episode11 If you’re struggling with something you think I can help with or would like to tell me how you are getting on then please get in touch via the contact page on the website. Alternately you can get me on Twitter @fight_director or follow the show @filmproprodpod Please subscribe to the podcast and if you are in the caring/ sharing mood then I’d really appreciate it if you would spread the word and leave an AWESOME review. Sources: https://carriedils.com/book-review-the-12-week-year/ https://12weekyear.com/ http://www.asianefficiency.com/systems/12-week-year-mistakes-2/ Thanks: A Himitsu Music: Adventures by A Himitsu https://www.soundcloud.com/a-himitsu Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... Music released by Argofox https://www.youtu.be/8BXNwnxaVQE Music provided by Audio Library https://www.youtu.be/MkNeIUgNPQ8 ––– • Contact the artist: x.jonaz@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/ahimitsu https://www.twitter.com/ahimitsu1 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgFwu-j5-xNJml2FtTrrB3A
In this episode of PressThis we interview the infamous Carrie Dils on leveraging the Genesis framework for agencies and developers. Carrie details what you need to get started, the basic concepts of Genesis, and how to leverage Genesis to help you create better sites at a faster pace. Carrie is a community veteran with excellent Genesis courses on Lynda, LinkedIn, and carriedils.com. Listen now!
In this episode of PressThis we interview the infamous Carrie Dils on leveraging the Genesis framework for agencies and developers. Carrie details what you need to get started, the basic concepts of Genesis, and how to leverage Genesis to help you create better sites at a faster pace. Carrie is a community veteran with excellent Genesis courses on Lynda, LinkedIn, and carriedils.com. Listen now!
There are some people that you're drawn towards aren't there? People that you like to listen to, people that you like to read about. When I started to use WordPress a few years ago, I was constantly on the lookout for people who were producing great content that I could consume to further my understanding of how WordPress worked and of how I could make it do what I wanted it to do.I'm sure that you have your list of people who fill this criteria, the people that you want to listen to and read about? Carrie Dils is one of those people for me. She's be creating content in the WordPress space for ages and not just that, she's been producing a whole load of different forms of content.
There are some people that you're drawn towards aren't there? People that you like to listen to, people that you like to read about. When I started to use WordPress a few years ago, I was constantly on the lookout for people who were producing great content that I could consume to further my understanding of how WordPress worked and of how I could make it do what I wanted it to do.I'm sure that you have your list of people who fill this criteria, the people that you want to listen to and read about? Carrie Dils is one of those people for me. She's be creating content in the WordPress space for ages and not just that, she's been producing a whole load of different forms of content.
Today’s guest is Carrie Dils. Carrie is a freelancer, podcaster, writer, educator, and web developer. She runs a very popular blog where she shares her experiences as a business owner and teaches others how to build their own freelance businesses.
This season is all about the freelancer and business owner. We sometimes forget the origin stories of why we do what we do. We often feel alone sitting behind our laptop and think we are the only ones struggling or succeeding. We’ll chat with some amazing, creative, and brilliant business owners about their defining moments in life, some struggles they faced and how they overcame them, learn unique strategies of running a freelance business, and of course have some laughs too. We talk to Justin Jackson, Curtis McHale, Philip VanDusen, Paul Jarvis, Carrie Dils, Vincent Pugliese, Matt Inglot, Val Geisler, Bridget Willard and more! Head over to http://liveinthefeast.com to subscribe and never miss an episode.
Carrie Dils joined Jonathan Denwood and Kim Shivler for Episode 279 of the WP-Tonic Podcast. A long-time, successful WordPress freelancer, Carrie has launched a platform to help other freelancers find success in business. In this episode, Carrie shares her top tips for creating a successful freelancing business including Small Business Administration Resources and using clarity.fm to charge for consulting phone calls. Carrie Dils began working at Starbucks. She had a vision open her own coffee shop, and thought why not learn the ins and outs of how to make coffee and get paid to do it. But soon, she realized she didn’t want to depend on others for success. Not that her team wasn’t great, but she was done trading hours for dollars. For her birthday, Carrie’s dad signed her up for an annual subscription to Lynda. She started taking classes taught by Morten Rand-Hendriksen which is where her career started rolling as a freelance web developer. Now, she’s been consulting and educating for 3-4 years. Working for Lynda, she travels to California to record lessons around 3 times a year. She began blogging tutorials on her website as a way to give back to the community. The WordPress community is very generous with learning, and the positive affirmations and people she is able to help through teaching are strong motivators for her. https://carriedils.com/ https://twitter.com/cdils https://www.lynda.com/Carrie-Dils/965233-1.html
Carrie Dils guest hosts this episode of ZenFounder and interviews Marc Benzakein of ServerPress, about his personal health transformation. They talk about the steps he took to making his health a priority. Office Hours Podcast Support ZenFounder Episode Transcript Sherry Walling: Hey guys. Today I bring you another interview guest hosted by my great friend, Carrie […] The post Episode 138: Fuel Your Body to Fuel Your Business appeared first on ZenFounder.
Carrie Dils guest hosts this episode of ZenFounder and interviews Marc Benzakein of ServerPress, about his personal health transformation. They talk about the steps he took to making his health a priority. Office Hours Podcast Support ZenFounder Episode Transcript Sherry Walling: Hey guys. Today I bring you another interview guest hosted by my great friend, Carrie Dils. In this interview, Carrie’s going to talk with Marc from ServerPress about his pretty radical health transformation. He talks about the steps that he has taken over the last year to put his physical health and well being sort of front and center in his life. Last week we talked about sleep. This week we’re talking about physical wellness, exercise, nutrition, all those things. And these topics are super essential to the well being of a founder, of an entrepreneur. Not just so you look cute in a swimsuit but because our bodies and minds are deeply integrated. So, in order to work well, to feel good, to be the best version of yourself in your relationships, you actually need to have a pretty strong foundation of health within your body. In the ZenTribes group we begin with this topic. We begin with the building blocks of sanity. The basics of physical health that need to be in place in order for you to function at your best, both in your business and in your life. So, enjoy this conversation between Carrie and Marc and thanks again to Carrie for guest hosting for me this week. Be sure to check out her podcast Office Hours.FM it is super cool. Lots of great ideas and feedback going on there, especially for freelancers. And I will look forward to being back with you in a week or so. Carrie Dils: Hey Marc it is so good to be chatting with you today. How are you doing? Marc Benzakein: I’m doing really good. I’m enjoying sunny Southern California weather right now. Carrie Dils: Well I’m enjoying kind of dreary North Texas weather. So, yours sounds like the better spot to be. Marc Benzakein: Well it is until it gets to be 90 degrees and you start to fade away. Carrie Dils: Fair enough. For folks you haven’t had a chance to meet you, can you share a little bit about you and who you are and what you do? Marc Benzakein: Well my name is Marc Benzakein. I typically live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with my wife and nine children. Seven of whom we are working on adopting. I run a company called ServerPress LLC. where we make software for WordPress developers and designers. And I workout and diet and have learned a lot about myself mentally and physically in the last year or so. Carrie Dils: That’s exactly what I’m hoping to chat about is, sort of, your journey to health and fitness over the last, what would you say, year or two years. Marc Benzakein: Next week marks a year in [inaudible 00:03:21] so October 8 actually marks my one yer anniversary that I really started putting a lot of effort into it. Carrie Dils: Okay, so what was the impetus to get your rear in gear, if you will? Marc Benzakein: Well, last year in July I turned 49 and all of a sudden the 50 ye
In this week's podcast episode. Rebecca is joined by her good friend Carrie Dils. The two spend the session chatting about the importance of freelancers understanding the nuances of SEO for developers. Carrie and Rebecca have co-hosted two SEO Bootcamp workshops and Carrie also wrote four-part blog post series called 30 Days to Better SEO. Carrie utilizes her SEO knowledge and breaks it down into bite-size pieces for developers. Read the show notes: https://www.seobits.fm/podcast/ep18-seo-for-developers-expert-advice-from-carrie-dils/
Carrie Dils guest hosts this episode of ZenFounder and interviews Dr. Jeffrey Clark, a psychiatrist and entrepreneur, who has developed an expertise on sleep. They talk about how to build better sleeping habits and its long term benefits. Office Hours Podcast Slumber Camp Support ZenFounder Episode Transcript Sherry Walling: Hey guys. Today’s episode is hosted by my good friend Carrie Dils. Carrie Dils is a force within the WordPress community. She’s also the host of TheOfficeHours.fm podcast, and she is an incredibly stellar human being. Anyone who’s in a room with Carrie is laughing, is feeling listened to, is feeling cared about, and she’s way smart. She today is going to interview Dr. Jeffrey Clark. Jeff is a psychiatrist and an entrepreneur. He’s also someone who is developing this deep expertise in sleep, and anyone that I have talked to in the entrepreneurial community is struggling with this. Often, sleep is the first thing to go when we’re busy, and when our families and businesses have demanded us. Jeff has some awesome wisdom to throw down, and some great strategies, and I think this is going to be probably one of the most important episodes that we put out this year because of the importance of what Jeff has to share. Carrie is hosting today because Rob and I just had some things happening in our family that have made us say, “Wow, we need to slow things down and we need some help.” I asked Carrie to help, and she did amazingly with two days notice. Took over this interview for me, and she’ll be hosting the podcast this week, and then another one in the coming weeks, and I’m so grateful to her for stepping in and helping out, and Rob and I will be back on soon, and explaining a little bit of about some of the crazy and amazing things that are going on in our lives, and in the meantime I give you Carrie and Jeff. Carrie Dils: Jeff, it is really wonderful to have you on the show today. Thanks so much for agreeing to come on. Jeffrey Clark: Oh, my pleasure. Glad to be here. Carrie Dils: Yeah. One of the things that particularly excited to talk about, and when Sherry asked if I would be willing to do this interview I was like, “Heck yes,” because this is a topic that is fascinating on multiple levels, and applies to absolutely everyone, and that is sleep. Maybe just kind of briefly share how did you … You’re a psychiatrist. How did the sleep component come to be something that you were particularly interested in? Jeffrey Clark: Oh, absolutely. I started learning about sleep all the way back in … During my undergraduate degree. I was a neuroscience major, and so sleep is one of the most interesting physiological functions of the brain, and it turns out to be important for all sorts of diseases and illnesses, and in my roles as a psychiatrist I treat a lot of people who have sleep disorders on top of anxiety or depression or bipolar disorder. Also, I found that in a lot of my colleagues, sleep was a major challenge, and I just started to get more and more interested in it during my first year as a resident where I was working 80+ hour weeks most of the time. I realized I was just totally burnt out, and tired, and frustrated. Sleep became a personal passion of mine. How to figure out how do I get better sleep? Even with limited time I can find a way to hit the
Carrie Dils guest hosts this episode of ZenFounder and interviews Dr. Jeffrey Clark, a psychiatrist and entrepreneur, who has developed an expertise on sleep. They talk about how to build better sleeping habits and its long term benefits. Office Hours Podcast Slumber Camp Support ZenFounder Episode Transcript Sherry Walling: Hey guys. Today’s episode is hosted […] The post Episode 137: The Life-Sustaining Magic of Sleep appeared first on ZenFounder.
Diane Kinney is a WordPress Developer, Designer, and Marketer. And soon, she’ll be adding author to that biographical line. She and Carrie Dils are working on a book called Real World Freelancing that talks all about what it really takes to be a freelancer. In this episode, she and I talk all about the writing process, decisions […] The post Episode 35: Diane Kinney & Writing an eBook appeared first on How I Built It.
Welcome to the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and via RSS for your favorite podcatcher. Post Status Draft is hosted by Brian Krogsgard and this episode's special guest, Carrie Dils. Carrie Dils has been self-employed for a long time. After years of client work, she now makes her full-time living through multiple different channels, but is not currently doing client services. In this episode, Brian and Carrie talk about various methods for generating revenue, and some helpful tools to do so. Links Why Procrastinators Procrastinate ConvertKit Mailchimp Chimp Essentials Mailchimp course Paul Jarvis on Carrie's podcast Sunday Dispatches Nerd Marketing Amy Lynn Andrews Todoist Simplenote Getting Things Done 1Password Interview with Diane Kinney Links to Carrie's Work Experience as an Uber driver Office Hours Carrie’s blog WordPress courses Utility Pro theme Real World Freelancing book Sponsor: Prospress Prospress makes the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin, that enables you to turn your online business into a recurring revenue business. Whether you want to ship a box or setup digital subscriptions like I have on Post Status, Prospress has you covered. Check out Prospress.com for more, and thanks to Prospress for being a Post Status partner.
Watch the video of this podcast here. When I first heard the title of Carrie Dils’ book I knew immediately I wanted to have her on the show! It’s called Real World Freelancing: The No Bullsh*t Survival Guide, and Carrie says the content is based on the roadmap she wished she had had when starting out at 22. On this episode of WP Elevation, Carrie and I talk about that book as well as her tips for freelancers on how to manage their time, their finances and their mental health. When it comes to managing your time as a freelancer, Carrie understands it can be difficult. She says that it is one of the hardest things to wrangle! You can get distracted so easily, especially when you aren't working for anyone else or don’t have hard deadlines to keep you on track. The key to managing your time is to track it. You want to know where you are spending your time, first and foremost. A great way to do this is with the Rescue Time app. It is a free app that you can configure to track where you spend your time on which app. At the end of each week, it sends you a recap of where you spent your time in each app. So if you are a developer, it'll tell you that you spent 20% of your time in your code editor, 3% on social media apps, etc. It's brutally honest, and there is no hiding! She says if you use that for a few weeks and watch where your time goes, it'll be very helpful. Next, I asked her about finances. Carrie explains when you are staring out, it's important to know what money is coming in, from where and what is going out. So her tips for doing this easily include keeping personal finances separate from work finances. She recommends you have a separate work checking account, credit cards, etc. It’s something her father told her to do, and it’s been a great help in her business. The second recommendation she has is to regularly reconcile your books. Stay on top of matching transactions using Quickbooks, Freshbooks, or whatever program you use. And by doing it regularly she means do it weekly, it will be much easier and take far less than time then if you put it off for six months or a year! When I asked her about mental health and what she does to take care of herself, Carrie had several more great suggestions. She has created a rule that one day of the weekend - either Saturday or Sunday - she does not turn her computer on. Before she implemented this rule, she found herself working seven days a week. Most of the time it was only a few hours on Saturday and Sunday - but as her husband pointed out - it still works. Now she leaves her computer off on Saturday or Sunday, and she looks forward to doing so! It helps her and is a big deal for her family. Her second tip is to take a break. She makes a point of leaving the office and going outside for a walk or a run every day. It helps her come back refreshed and invigorated; she even finds she is more creative after. It’s a good idea to get out and clear your mind for a bit. We also discuss working on your business: what that means exactly and why is it important plus Carrie gives her top bits of advice she'd give for someone starting out. You’ll definitely want to hear those so listen in to today’s edition of WP Elevation!
This week I interview Carrie Dils Upcoming Events WordCamp Alicante, Spain – March 4 WordCamp Lancaster PA – March 4 Segment 1: In the News Sorry for extra emails, and possibly changing that service. Stay tuned! Segment 2: My interview with Carrie Dils Carrie’s Tools: ToDoist Slack Adobe Photoshop Follow Carrie Twitter: @cdils Web: CarrieDils.com…
This week I interview Carrie Dils Upcoming Events WordCamp Alicante, Spain – March 4 WordCamp Lancaster PA – March 4 Segment 1: In the News Sorry for extra emails, and possibly changing that service. Stay tuned! Segment 2: My interview with Carrie Dils Carrie’s Tools: ToDoist Slack Adobe Photoshop Follow Carrie Twitter: @cdils Web: CarrieDils.com…
Carrie Dils is a WordPress Developer and Consultant who is currently using her expertise to write a book for freelancers. Real World Freelancing: A No Bullsh*t Survival Guide, will walk freelancers through client management, business strategies, processes & tools, marketing, mental health, and more. Click here to get on the waitlist and be the first to be notified once it’s been published. In this broadcast, Carrie Dils and I talk about: What inspired Carrie to write her upcoming book, The Real World of Freelancing What most freelancers get wrong and how to correct it Should you try to productize your services? The four factors of raising your freelance rates How to connect with Carrie Dils Online: CarrieDils.com OFFICEHOURS.FM Podcast @cdils Her Upcoming Book: Real World Freelancing Resources Mentioned: The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss Click toTweet: If nobody tells you you re too expensive right now, then you re too cheap. – @cdils If you enjoyed today s podcast, please leave a review on iTunes here. Thanks so much in advance for your support. The post ITT 091: How to Become a Better Freelancer with Carrie Dils appeared first on Tom Morkes.
Sherry talks about the importance of appreciating what is good about life and to honor, protect, and love things that are beautiful in response to the ugliness that is going on in the world. Support ZenFounder Webinar with Cory Miller Rob will be at SaaStr next week Sherry will be at the Bureau of Digital’s Owner Sumit Sherry’s recent podcast interviews: Freelance Transformation Unemployable Office Hours FM Versioning Show Episode Transcript Sherry Walling: Hi, folks. This is sort of the season of Rob and I being here and there and everywhere. It’s just me on the podcast today. He is getting back from one trip, and getting ready to go on another trip, and so we are sort of passing like ships in the night. If you are at [Sastar 00:00:15] next week in San Francisco, then be sure to connect with Rob. He is there and I’m sure he would love to talk with any ZenFounder fans. Then I will be in San Diego in the middle of February, the 20th through the 22nd, for the Bureau of Digital Owner’s Summit. If any of you are heading that way, I would also love to chat and connect in person. January was a busy month for me in the podcast world. I got to be a guest interviewee on several podcasts, several of my favorite podcasts. I got to talk with Brian Clark of Copyblogger. He interviewed me on his Unemployable podcast and we talked about psychology and entrepreneurship. I also got to be on the Versioning Podcast and talk about imposter syndrome and then had such fun talking with Carrie Dils on OffHours.FM and Matt Inglot on Freelance Transformation. If you’re not totally bored of my voice and my perspective, then definitely check out those interviews, as well as check out some of the other episodes that those great folks are putting together for the founder community. Sherry Walling: So, we just returned from a family vacation a little bit north of Cancun. We had a lovely time together as a family spending lots of time in the pool, in the hot tub, and the resort where we were staying had a swim up bar. Which, my kids thought was the most amazing thing ever. And they had a whole kids menu with lots of different milkshakes, smoothies, d
Carrie Dils returns to WP-Tonic for her third appearance. She is the queen of the Genesis Framework and also the host of the popular Office Hours FM podcast. We ask her about the future of Genesis, multiple income streams, teaching courses, and podcasting. You can find Carrie at https://carriedils.com/. She also hosts one of the top WordPress podcasts at https://officehours.fm/. Episode 156 Table of Contents 0:00 Podcast intros 1:23 Carrie's origin story and how she got into web development. 2:48 How has the WordPress ecosystem changed over the past few years? 5:03 Has the bar gotten higher for making a living in the WordPress community? 6:29 What advice would you give to WordPress entrepreneurs? 8:45 The value of positioning and hiring for roles that you don't enjoy. 10:39 We all want diversification of revenue streams. How did Carrie build multiple streams of revenue? 12:31 Some practical advice on podcasting and teaching. 15:38 How important is it to teach others? How does this build your authority for the future? 18:17 The hidden value of hosting a WordPress podcast. 21:28 How does Carrie balance all the things she has going at any one time? 24:15 Carrie's insights on WordCamp US 2016. 27:11 Thoughts on the announcements about the release schedule of WordPress cycles in 2017. 30:40 Recent WordPress news that Carrie finds positive. 31:21 Thoughts on Genesis in combination with Beaver Builder. 33:10 How Genesis is different from vanilla WordPress, and how it is similar. 37:28 Carries thoughts on putting content behind a paywall and types of membership sites that work. 40:30 Thoughts on work-life balance, and what true freedom in entrepreneurship really means. 43:07 Podcast outros =================== Find bonus content for this episode on the WP-Tonic website: https://www.wp-tonic.com/podcast/156-carrie-dils/ =================== Subscribe to WP-Tonic on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/wp-tonic-wordpress-podcast/id893083124?mt=2 =================== WP-Tonic is both a WordPress development and support service, and the publisher of a weekly WordPress business podcast. We talk to some of the most successful and helpful people in online marketing, web development, web consulting, and business.
In this episode, I'm chatting with Carrie Dils. Carrie is pure awesome. She shares her thoughts on this past year, and what she has planned for 2017 including an upcoming book, Real World Freelancing with Diane Kinney. She is the host of one of my favorite WordPress business podcasts, OfficeHours.fm and is a huge Genesis fan. Let's get started. Meet Carrie Dils Carrie Dils is a WordPress developer, consultant, speaker and teacher based in Fort Worth, Texas. She loves sharing what she's learned with others to help them be more successful in their business. She hosts a weekly WordPress podcast at OfficeHours.fm and is a course instructor for Lynda.com. Show Notes Carrie's site: CarrieDils.com Podcast: OfficeHours.fm Twitter: @cdils Courses: Carrie's Courses on Lynda.com A Few Valuable Links & Resources : DIY SEO Course by Rebecca Gill Smart Passive Income - Pat Flynn Erin E Flynn - Courses, Templates & Tools for Web Designers Utility Pro theme by Carrie Dils Courses from Carrie on Lynda.com Office Hours Episode 122 with Chris Coyier Complete Transcript: Open PDF version of this transcript in new window Jackie: Hey everybody, it's Jackie D'Elia with another episode of rethink.fm, and I have my very, very special guest, Carrie Dils, on the show. Hi, Carrie. Carrie: Hey, Jackie. You're my very, very special host, so I'm glad to be on the show. Jackie: Thank you. This is the final episode for season one, it's episode 12, and I thought it would be really fitting to have a conversation with you. You were a big inspiration for me starting my podcast, and just to have you here is awesome. I know everybody else is going to enjoy it as well. Carrie: Cool, let's do it. Jackie: For the one or two people in the WordPress community that don't know who you are, would you introduce yourself and tell us what you do? Carrie: Sure. I'm Carrie Dills, based out of Fort Worth, TX. I, historically, have done front end development and years and years of client services and, over the past year or two, have transitioned into teaching WordPress and front end development, some of that on my own and some of that over at lynda.com. That's where I spend most of my time. Jackie: All right. I've got questions for you, like I normally do. Carrie: I love it. I love that you had so many questions you had to start your own podcast just to get questions answered. Jackie: Just to get questions out, or just to say, "I have got a couple more to ask this person." Yes, it's been a great experience so far. I just did a recorded podcast episode with Joe Casabona from How I Built It. We did a podcast recording that ended up taking too long so we had to split it into two episodes, but we were both talking about ... We both started our podcast right around the same time and we're in a mastermind group together and did a lot of chatting back and forth about what the experience was like. I think one of the biggest things for me was just trying to figure out all the mechanics of getting everything to work in a podcast. So, hats off to you for being the one out on the pioneer frontier with that. Carrie: Thank you. Jackie: The first question I've got for you is: I love your year end posts that you do on your blog and I was wondering if we could talk about this one that you just published. You had published a blog post and you went over what has been going on in your world for the year and what your review was like and some guides and goals for 2017. What prompted you to do that and what keeps you motivated to keep doing it? Carrie: This was my fourth time to write a post like that in December. I don't really know what prompted me to do it the first time around. Now I just do it because I've set a tradition and I can't stop tradition.
Many freelancers dream of the day that they'll have sources of income other than from client work. Some hope to stop taking clients for good in favor of selling online training instead. Carrie Dils did just that. A long time web developer, Carrie adopted the WordPress platform to do client work as a freelancer. But... Listen to episode
On this week’s episode, Brian and Lauren discuss their favorite moments and guests that have appeared on the show during Season One of StudioPress FM. In this 25-minute episode Brian Gardner and Lauren Mancke discuss: Their favorite episodes of Season One The most downloaded shows Most memorable guests and topics What they’re looking forward to in Season Two Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Follow Brian on Twitter Follow Lauren on Twitter The Transcript The Season One Recap of StudioPress FM Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, Brian and I discuss our favorite moments of Season One of StudioPress FM. Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner, founder of StudioPress. Today, on this very last season episode for Season One, I am joined, as usual, with Lauren Mancke, vice president of StudioPress, mom of one, soon to be three. Looking forward to just wrapping up Season One. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. Thank you for joining us again this week. We’re closing out Season One and we will be doing this week a little different. We have no guests. It’s just Brian and I talking about some of our favorite moments on the podcast so far. Brian Gardner: Typically we like to go somewhat scripted, where we prepare questions for those that we’re talking to, but Lauren and I, this morning, we’re going to just completely wing it. We have just some general idea of what we want to talk about for this closing episode. It won’t be long. It’s hard to believe it’s been 16 episodes already. I know that for you it might feel a little bit longer because you started editing the first handful of them or first half of them and then we turned that over because you have more important things to be doing, but can you believe, 16 already? Lauren Mancke: No. It’s really flown by. Brian Gardner: I remember when I did No Sidebar, it seemed like it took just forever to edit the shows. I wasn’t structured when I set it up and it felt like it was hard to find ideas and guests and things like that. I’m almost forcing us to close the season down because we have a lot of stuff we have to do before the end of the year, but I don’t want to, because I’ve been having so much fun. It’s been great talking to the members of the community. When I sit down and try to think of who do we want to talk to next or what series we want to have, I’m loaded with all of this, these ideas, these people. There are so many people. I want to do two episodes a week, which of course isn’t realistic. There’s just so many people to talk to and so many topics to cover. For me, it’s been fun so far. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. We’ve already got some great people lined up for next season, so it’ll be good to take a little bit of time off and get that all organized and lined up for next January. Brian Gardner: I almost feel like we have a legit show here, where we actually follow a format and we have a good audience. We get at least a few thousand listens on every show, if not more. I don’t know. I feel really good about what we’ve done. It’s our first full-time gig together, doing the podcast thing. What do you think so far? Have you felt like this has been a successful journey? Lauren Mancke: Yeah. I’ve really been happy with who we’ve gotten a chance to talk to and hearing everyone’s story. It’s really cool how so many people have that same sort of, they were doing something else and they found WordPress and then they built this whole thing. It’s great to hear everyone’s different take on that journey. Brian Gardner: The good thing about WordPress and the cool fascinating thing I find is that even though we have generally that same story, we all come from just much different backgrounds. We also are in the middle of just different types of expertise, where some people come in as designers, some people come in as marketers, some people come in with a technical or programming background. You’ve got a designer who was sitting at a bored day job and then you’ve got like a technical guy who was working for the man and wanted to do his own thing. There are so many different levels of skillset and just expertise that’s being represented within the WordPress space. It’s fun to watch just how many people from how many different avenues of life are coming together in this whole open source project. Lauren Mancke: For sure. So many different types of personalities, too. It’s not just the same type of person. You’d think all these WordPress people would be maybe slightly nerdy or whatever, but it’s not true at all. It’s so many different types of people, and they’re all really cool. Brian Gardner: Yeah. Even within the short spurt we did here at the end with the designers, even the designers that we talked to like Bill Kenney at Focus Lab and Jason Schullermega and Megan Gray, even within just one segment of that audience, you’ve got people with different personalities and flavors. Bill works and owns a creative agency and Megan’s by herself and Jason’s doing a startup. Yes, there’s a lot of resonating stories, but even within a certain sub-niche of the WordPress designer ecosystem, there’s just so many types of different people represented. That wasn’t boring because everyone brought something unique to the conversation. Hopefully, designers and people who don’t design and do other things even were able to pick up something from that as well. Lauren Mancke: In WordPress, I think, when you mentioned the guests specifically, it makes me remember all the different things that make each one of those people unique. You got Bill, who is very, very good at being efficient and I love that about him. He has so many ways of doing that and that’s his focus. He can tell other people about that. Then you got Jason, who is; he’s just a family guy. That’s his passion and you can see that with everything he does and everything he talks about. Those are just fun and unique things that everyone who works on WordPress, they can be their own person and tailor their job and their company around those skillsets that they have. The Most Downloaded Shows Brian Gardner: You know one of the things I think for me that I found for me interesting as a metrics guy and somebody who looks into that kind of thing? There were certain episodes that I thought would have been more popular than others and vice versa. When I would go in and see the analytics and the number of downloads and so on for each one, there were a few that surprised me where I was like, “Okay, this one’s probably not going to do as well, maybe because of the audience. It isn’t such a widespread thing or an ‘interesting topic.'” Then those were the ones that got the most distribution and those that were shared the most. It’s funny how you can draw up a game plan. Nine times out of 10, things go the way you want, but then once in a while you get that one where I’m like, “Wow. That was the one I almost didn’t even suggest doing and it was the one that was in the top three or whatnot of most listened to shows.” That just goes to show, you never know. Lauren Mancke: What were some of the more popular shows that we had this season? Brian Gardner: You’re going to make me look that up, so I’m going to make you talk while I go look that up. Lauren Mancke: You know, we can edit this, so we can break for a second. Brian Gardner: I know. All right, so I was able to pull up the analytics. Sadly enough, three of the bottom four episodes were the first three, which were my story, your story, and the redesign of StudioPress. I don’t know if that’s an indicator of the fact that it was new, and not as many ears were on the show, or if people were just don’t find that interesting. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. Let’s go with the first. Brian Gardner: I’m going to go with that one. Top to bottom, I’m just going to spitball these out here quickly. A Beginner’s Guide to SEO That Works is the number one show. We did that with Rebecca Gill at Web Savvy. I had a feeling that that one … SEO is a topic that a lot of people want to talk about. Lauren Mancke: I thought that was a very informative episode. Lots of good nuggets on that one. Brian Gardner: Yeah. I actually took the show notes to that and the transcript, and wrote up my own little iteration of that. I think I talked about this back then, that I was going to try that a couple of times with these and try to use that from a curation standpoint, a re-purposing content, and so I pulled some of the best things that Rebecca had to say and wrote a blog post about that, and tried to rank for, I think it was a Beginner’s Guide to SEO or something like that. I think last time I checked, that was on page three of Google, so it kind of sort of working. Yeah, there was definitely a lot of stuff that came out of that that was good. Number two, and this does not surprise me just because I know that Matt and some of the folks at Automattic were helping with the distribution of this, and that was the show we did, How and Why It’s Okay to Make Money with WordPress, which of course we just talked about just all of the different types of people within WordPress, so that makes sense because that would appeal to everybody. The next one was How to Scale a Freelance Business. That, I believe, was the one that we did with Bill Erickson. Then How to Build an Online Education Business, now this is the one I was referring to earlier that I didn’t think was going to strike a chord as much, just because it seemed a little bit more of kind of a sliver segment specific to doing an online education because that’s not what we’re all in the deal here for. We did that with Tonya Mork. That was a good one. Great information. She’s got a ton of knowledge. She’s worked 20, 30 years in her field, so she has a ton of expertise that she brings to the table, so that was one a little bit surprising. The How to Sustain a Profitable Creative Agency came next. The Importance of Entrepreneurial Mental Health with Cory Miller. That was probably my favorite episode that we recorded just because it kind of dove a little bit more into just the personal touchy-feely stuff, which I’m a huge fan of. Again, a lot of these were within 1% to 2% of downloads, so it’s not like certain episodes crushed other episodes, but that’s a quick recap. Then of course you and I, and our whole stories, are down there at the bottom, pulling up the caboose. Lauren Mancke: Nobody cares about us. I’m just kidding. Brian Gardner: Which is why we have guests on the show. Lauren Mancke: Yes, exactly. Brian Gardner: Because they’re the ones people will want to listen to. Their Favorite Episodes of Season One Lauren Mancke: I think the Cory Miller episode was very good as far as the content. I think all three of us were tearing up on that one. Brian Gardner: Yeah. I wish I would have seen Cory’s talk at WordCamp Denver just because, and I’m sure it’s on WordPress.tv, but that is something that I think without a doubt every single person who listens to the show struggles with in some regard. Some better than others. I’ve had my seasons of even within the last six years, after we merged the company, of really struggling, especially early on. This was before we brought in the mid-level management and brought in people like you, who came in and really helped do a lot of the stuff that I do. I remember, I think it was within the first year, we came together as partners in Boulder. I had a meltdown and I was like, “Look, guys, I’m just completely fried.” I remember Brian Clark said to me … He says, “Just take the next month and a half off. Do nothing.” I was like, “What?” Like, “No, I m a creative. I can’t do nothing.” It’s one of those things where it creeps in and life gets in the way and clients get in the way. Hard work and stuff like that do pay off, but the whole entrepreneurial mental health thing is something that I think far too many people don’t discuss or don’t have an … It doesn’t even have to be talked about across the internet via a podcast. You got to have a couple of people in your life who even if it’s a Skype call … I know Cory a lot of times has tweeted things out saying, “Hey, I just got a message from a friend and it meant the world.” Just things off radar, offline. Just check in with the people, whether they are people who you work for, who work for you, or people like Jason, who are just peers within the community. That stuff matters, so I’m glad we had a chance to talk about that. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. I think when you’re working on the internet, it’s easy to get lost in that. You’re connected to everyone, but you’re also connected to no one if you’re just in your own little bubble and you’re not really able to sit down and talk with people face to face or, like you said, even on a Skype chat or something like that, so it’s an important issue. Brian Gardner: All right, so let’s talk about some of the other episodes. I’m just going to look down and just see. I know we talked, as I mentioned earlier, Brian and Jennifer, husband and wife team. They own their own agency and we talked a lot about … You weren’t on that episode because I think you had mom duty that day, but that was a good episode because it talked about work and family balance, which is in a way relevant to the mental health thing, where as creatives and those who do stuff online, we have access to the internet 24/7, and so it is difficult at times to balance work and home life. I struggle with it sometimes. There are times where I literally have to just shut my laptop and tell Shelly, “Do not let me open this because I need to go play catch with Zach because that’s important, because I don’t want him growing up thinking the computer is more important than him and so on.” For you even, you’re a mom and have two more on the way, and all of that. I mean, what’s that going to look like for you next year? Lauren Mancke: Well, I thought that episode would have been good for me to be on because I ran a creative agency with my husband, so I know a little bit about that. I even notice my son isn’t even two and a half yet and he’s already … He’ll come in and sit at my desk and say, “I’m working. I got to get on a conference call.” He picks up. He puts on the headphones and he pretends that he’s on a conference call. I’m like, “I don’t know that I want that to be my legacy with my son.” So spending more time with family is definitely a priority. Brian Gardner: Yeah. Going back to Jason and the episode that we had with Tim, that was the one thing, over the last few years, of things that I see online that I get envious about, is the ability that some people have to do that and make that so important. By all means, I don’t shun my family. Shelly is at home all day long, so we get to talk to each other. I’m home at 3:00 o’clock when Zach comes home, so we do have our time together, but Jason, of anybody I’ve ever seen online, puts more importance on his family, his wife, especially his daughter. I can’t imagine the bond that they’re going to have throughout their life because of how much importance he placed on the balance of work versus time with them. It’s fun and sometimes, like I said, I get envious of the fact that people are able to do that, maybe not so much as I wish I could, but yeah, it’s important too to balance that out because relationships, marriages, mother-daughters, father-sons, those types of things, in my eyes, big picture, matter way more than what we do for our jobs. Anyway, that’s the kind of thing that I think just everybody needs to hear, that it is important to balance work and life. All right, so another one of my favorite episodes was when we had Shay Bocks on and talked about food blogging. That also is something that I thought would have been a little bit more less heard because of the fact that it was very niche-specific. I think it resonated with a lot of people because people took things that she said out of the food blogging discussion we were having and those are the things that could have been easily applied to any other niches. So I think even thought it was a food blogging episode, a lot of the stuff that Shay talked about, things that we discussed, could have certainly been used across the sphere. Food blogging to me is interesting because it’s one of the … It sort of came out after real estate, which is sort of not really been that big a thing anymore, but the food blogging industry has exploded. You know, Will, your husband likes to cook and you like to take photography and you’ve done a couple of food-oriented themes on StudioPress. I can’t believe how popular that still is and how many people still … Foodie has regained number one status on theme sales on StudioPress. With the exception of two, maybe three months over the last almost two and a half years now, it’s been number one every single month. Shay and I talk probably at least once a month just about stuff in general and she’s always like, “I’m waiting for the ship to sink.” I’m like, “Don’t.” I’m like, “Embrace the fact that …” Shay has done something of a big lesson for all of us. If you do something that works, instead of trying to replicate that somewhere else, really hone in on that. She’s really crafted her business around the idea of food blogging and she re-branded her company, called Feast Design Company. How more relevant of a brand name than to work within the niche? That is also something I think has been fascinating for me to see, is people within our community really identify where they belong and then really attack at that point. Lauren Mancke: Shay is also just a great person. It’s really great to see her succeed and all of her success. She’s just a wonderful, wonderful human being. I think too, also, food blogging, people … We’ve talked about focus on family. I mean, that’s a trend. People are spending more time, I think, focused on their family and eating and community and all of that, so I don’t see food blogging going anywhere any time soon. Brian Gardner: Yeah. People always eat. There’s always going to be the internet and the will to make money. For people, not so much Shay, but the people who use Shay’s themes per se, that’s the dream, right? Living the dream, we talked about that with Jason, is to take your passion, something … In this case it’s something that you do at home, so you could literally be hanging out with your kids and working at the same time, and even having them help. I recently redesigned a website called Simple as That Blog with Rebecca Cooper. She’s got to a really, really big website. She’s got four kids and she’s a great photographer. She does a lot of her DIY craft and recipe type of things with her kids. She uses them as props. They get dressed up and they do things. For her, it’s a really creative way to do that work-family balance thing because she includes her kids with her work, and so therefore there’s no … I don’t know. Just disconnect between the two, and so I think food blogging is just another example of where that can be done. All right, so the episode that I actually wasn’t sure we would be able to do, mainly because I know Matt sometimes is a little bit slow on email as he should be … I’m sure he gets thousands of emails a day and from probably people way more important than me. I reached out to Matt Mullenweg to talk about WordPress and making money. He wrote back within like a day or two. I was very surprised and very pleased that he was very open to talking to us about that. It was a great episode. We talked almost an hour, I think, on that one, and probably could have kept going. The premise of that show was very obviously how to make and that it’s okay to make money with WordPress open source community. We did a couple of episodes on that. Also I remember we did one with Carrie Dils. With Matt, we talked about just the WordPress ecosystem and different ways that we can make money with WordPress, that it’s okay to make money with WordPress, and the fact that he even endorses the fact that it’s okay to make money with WordPress because I think at this point, the community as a whole has identified that WordPress is a business in a sense. Even though there’s a free version of it, even though it’s an open source piece of software, there’s a full blown ecosystem, as we talked at the beginning of the show, just all the different ways that people use WordPress and can offer WordPress as a business, either as a service or like what we do with commoditized type things with selling themes and plug-ins and so on. It was fun to talk to the guy, right? The guy who founded all of it. I was a little bit star struck, as I always am every time I talk to him. It’s a little bit difficult to … I don’t know. Feel like we were pulling our weight in that conversation, but what did you think about that show? Lauren Mancke: Oh, we’re totally BFFs now, so it’s all good. Brian Gardner: You guys on HipChat or Slack together? You just ping each other with ideas and whatnot. I like to think of Matt as like the mini Richard Branson because he’s always … At this point in his life, he’s probably got tons of money and he’s out travelling around. He’s out in Bali or in Antarctica. I forget that he’s probably 30-something now or late 20s or whatever, but to me he’s always going to be a kid. I don’t know. The whole thing is a great story. Just imagine how many people, their lives have been changed by what he’s done. Mine, yours, everybody who listens to the show, everyone in our company. It’s kind of crazy if you think about that. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. I think he’s around my age, but yeah, he’s definitely prolific and I too am a little envious of his schedule. He gets to go everywhere and do all sorts of fun, cool things. Brian Gardner: Again, I think that goes back to the point of, if you have some crazy idea, sometimes you just need to execute it. Like, what if he never decided to fork b2 back in the day. We all have that question in our life. What if I never left my job or what if I never asked people if they would buy a WordPress theme or any of that stuff? I think the moral of the story here is that sometimes you do need to take that risk and just do that thing, as George Costanza did in Seinfeld back in the day. Do the opposite, right? Because if what you’re doing isn’t working, maybe the opposite will. That was a great episode, by the way. Lauren Mancke: I always get tuna on toast. Brian Gardner: Ah, there you go. Seinfeld, one of the best shows ever, if not the best show ever. What They re Looking Forward to in Season Two Brian Gardner: All right, so moving forward, we are going to take break here. We ran that through our guy in charge of the podcast network and said, “Hey, we’ve got a lot of things we’re working on.” We will not be discussing any of those here on the show because they’re just fun, internal projects that will make a big splash and a big difference next year to everyone listening to the show. What are the types of things you want to do as we probably open back up in January of next year, after the holidays? Who are the types of people we want to have? Anything specific you want to see happen? Lauren Mancke: Well, I know we have Dan from Dribbble lined up, Dan Cederholm. I’m excited about that one. He actually came up to the Northbound office a few years ago when ConvergeSE was going on. That’s a conference in Columbia, where I live. It was great to meet him and Rich, and spend time with him. It’ll be fun to have him on the show. Brian Gardner: Now one of the things I want to do and throw out there is, we would love to hear from you guys, those who are listening to the show. At the bottom of the show notes, we’re going to put mine and Lauren’s Twitter handle. If you have any ideas or suggestions or people, if you want to nominate people, we are definitely open to hearing from the community. I know you and I are both creatives and designers, and so we err a little bit more on the side of that, in terms of show. I do want to make sure that we don’t forget our nerdy friends who are developers and programmers, and bring those types of people in as well, and talk to them because I’m sure they have a ton of wisdom to share with our audience. I’m trying to think of who else I would want to have on the show. I know that we have a little Google doc where we keep track. I want to get outside a little bit of just the general WordPress space and just find some really big entrepreneur type people who happen to use WordPress, but it’s not their business. I know people like Paul Jarvis is a guy that I want to bring on the show, possibly Jeff Goins. From my perspective, those are a few of the people that I plan to hit up. Maybe we’ll see if we can get a guy like Chris Brogan on just to talk some sense into us all and whatnot. We’ll have to think about that over the coming weeks, who else we want to have on the show. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. We’d love to hear from the audience, of suggestions. That’s a great idea, Brian. Brian Gardner: Hit us up on Twitter, @laurenmancke or @bgardner. We’ll put the link in the show notes. Even if you don’t even have a suggestion for the show and just want to say, “Hi. Thanks for putting together the podcast,” we would love to hear some of that feedback as well, good or bad. Let us know. We will wrap the show up. This is our 17th episode, I believe, which still amazes me. Sorry for those who really like the show and want to hear next week. We won’t be here because that will be Thanksgiving week. Actually, you know what? This will air the day before Thanksgiving. Nonetheless, people will be out shopping. No one wants to listen to us anyway. December is really a time for that family and stuff that we talked about. We will be back in January of 2017 with Season Two of StudioPress FM. On behalf of Lauren and I and all of us within our company who touch the StudioPress brand, we thank you very much for your support as customers, as listeners and those who spread the gospel of StudioPress. Thank you very much and we will talk to you next year.
SEO is something we all know we're supposed to do. So we get the Yoast SEO plugin, name our images with relevant keywords, follow some of the tips from Yoast and aim for the 'green light' from Yoast (I won't get into readability right now, because as I've been testing posting my emails as posts and those never get a decent readability score, but we'll leave that for another conversation). Deciding to re-focus my efforts on a solid content strategy led me back to looking at SEO and what I can do to improve what I'm doing (or simply do it correctly... no shame here, it is what it is). If you're going to take the time to create content, share it and go so far as to do content upgrades (again, that's for another conversation), then isn't it worth it to make sure your content continues to work for you after you've hit publish? Needless to say when I started diving into all of this I knew who I wanted to talk with. Rebecca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing I've been following Rebecca and her team at Web Savvy Marketing (full service agency that also sells their own Genesis child themes) and have had the good fortune of connecting with Rebecca through a mutual friend, Carrie Dils. Not only is Rebecca wicked smart when it comes to SEO but she's pretty fun too (and I've only connected with her through Skype calls. I have no doubt she'd be a blast in person). I'm going to be jumping into Rebecca's DIY SEO Course soon and will be blogging the journey (what I'm learning, data beforehand, etc.). I've been holding off jumping into the course because I know I need to set a certain amount of time aside to implement everything (mind you... the longer I wait the less optimized my site is, right? #assbackwards). Regardless, that will be happening this month (November, 2016). Questions I Asked Rebecca What were you doing before you launched Web Savvy Marketing? Can you share what Web Savvy Marketing is with the listeners? What does your agency do? What made you decide to create a DIY SEO course? We've all heard "SEO is dead"... what's your take on this? If you could recommend people do one thing with SEO, what would that be? You've got an SEO even coming up in January with Cory Miller of iThemes and our lovely friend, Carrie Dils: Is this your first event? What made you decide to host a live event? What's going to be covered? What can people expect? What's coming for you & Web Savvy Marketing in the next year? What You're Going to Learn Why SEO isn't just about getting a 'green dot' on your content (or a green 'Y') Where you should start if you're new to SEO Why SEO & content should be a primary focus for your website What free tools Google gives you and why you should use them ( nothing like a little free data, right?) What SEO can do for conversions on your site and in your business Why you should attend the live SEO event (O.K., this was more me plugging than Rebecca) Where to Connect with Rebecca Website | Twitter | Facebook
This week we’re joined by Chris Lema. Chris is a Product Strategist, a people manager, a speaker, and a blogger. He also works with companies to help them build better software products, run better software development teams, improve their marketing messages, and bring their products to market. Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By Discover why 201,344 website owners trust StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Launch your new site today! In this episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Chris Lema discuss: Aligning your work with your areas of expertise Making a course correction in your career Defining leadership by difficult decisions Leveraging WordPress in your business Leadership that requires a move beyond good Taking the leap to achieving success Being sold on yourself to become the leader you were meant to be Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Follow Chris on Twitter Visit ChrisLema.com Chris’ Online Courses Chris’ Books and Products Beyond Good CaboPress The Transcript How to Be a Great Community Leader, with Chris Lema Voiceover: Rainmaker.FM. StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Chris Lema to discuss how to be a good and effective community leader. Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner, and I’m joined, as always, with the vice president of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke. Lauren Mancke: Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us this week. We are continuing our series on talking to members of the WordPress community. Brian Gardner: Now, when we refer to them as ‘members,’ we also refer to them as ‘experts’ because, in fact, these people are. I’m very happy today. We are joined by Chris Lema. Chris is a product strategist, people manager, a speaker, and a blogger. He also works with companies to help them build better software products, run better software development teams, improve their marketing messages, and bring their products to market. Chris, it’s a huge pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome. Chris Lema: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. Brian Gardner: You’re one of those guys who I knew for a fact, even back when we were first talking about StudioPress FM, I said, “We have to have Chris on the show.” It was just a matter of trying to figure out what topic in particular. There’s probably about 10 that I could’ve approached you with. I’m glad that you decided to talk to us. We are talking about leadership and how to be a good and effective community leader. We oversee a pretty big community ourselves in our little world here at StudioPress. We are close to 200,000 strong. A lot of them are active in the community as developers, designers, and users. I thought it would be a great fit to have you on the show, so let’s kick this off. I know you’re a humble guy, right? From what I’ve seen on your website and the experiences I’ve personally had with you, you don’t love to talk about yourself. In fact, we had an email exchange just over the weekend, and you made a joke and said, “Oh, gosh. This is all about me.” I know you were sort of kidding. This is our interview and our show, so I’m calling the shots here. Give us the skinny on who you are, what you do, and how you came about. The Skinny on Chris Chris Lema: I am a guy who’s had the privilege of doing, roughly speaking, the same thing for more than 20 years. If you are a travel agent or a photographer and your world got pulled out from under you, through no fault of your own, because technology changed, then that’s a bummer, right? For me, I started working with the web in ’94 and started building applications, websites that were functional verses just kind of brochure-ware, back then. That has taken off, and we’ve changed the name of what those applications are from ASP to SaaS. That has also gone up and to the right. I’m a guy who’s just been in a really lucky place where there’s been just tremendous growth, and I’ve been given the opportunity to build software, lead people, and do that for a whole bunch of years. In the midst of that, about 10 years ago, 11 years ago, I started working with WordPress and about five and a half years ago started trying to get involved in the community. Lauren Mancke: On the front page of your website you have a section that says, “I speak. I coach. I write.” Such a simple, great breakdown. Which of those, though, is your favorite and why? Also, touch on which one of those is maybe your least favorite. Public Speaking vs. Writing Chris Lema: My favorite is public speaking. When I get to stand on a stage, when I get to speak and tell stories, and watch people engage, watch the aha moment when they realize you’re telling a story, but the story has a point — “I’m trying to predict what the point is. Then I’m trying to figure out how it relates to me, and then, aha, now I saw it. I get it, and this means so many things for me” — that’s my all-time favorite. Probably the hardest one for me is writing. When I first started writing, it was hard to figure out how to use my everyday voice and my storytelling voice in writing. I felt like, “Okay, I am not a writer,” and so you’d sit down to write and feel like, “Okay. That’s probably not the right words, or that’s not the right sentence structure.” Writing is harder. Public speaking is a lot easier for me. I love doing it. Thankfully, I get the opportunity to do it. It’s a lot of fun. Brian Gardner: Now, it’s funny and, Lauren, I think you can probably side with me on this one. You know where I’m going with this one. It’s funny, Chris, to hear you say, “I love public speaking. It comes easy to me. I enjoy that, but the writing thing … ” As a person who much prefers to write over public speak, and I’m sure Lauren’s the same way, it’s interesting. It shows two different types of minds, skillsets, and all of that. In my mind, I’m thinking to myself, “Oh, my gosh. You put me on stage. I’m going to freeze,” but I can control the mood, control what I say and how I say it when I write. I can prepare it all ahead of time, and then I can kind of caress it. Yes, I don’t get the aha moment, necessarily, that you might get, and there are people like you who I have envy for, sure, who can go up on stage and speak. Jerod Morris from our company is another one of those guys where I just want to walk out of the room when I see him talk. It’s funny because I’m sure Lauren and I resonate. I’m sure others resonate as well with that. It’s just interesting to hear you say that. Chris Lema: Well, part of it is I’m just very comfortable adjusting and connecting as I’m speaking. I’m doing this constant calculus of where to take it, how far to go — do I veer off course or not — based on the feedback I’m getting from an audience, or at least the first set of rows of an audience. In writing, that feedback is only in your head. There’s no one reading it as you’re writing and giving you the, “Yeah. I’m with you,” or, “I think you lost me,” or, “Go deeper into that.” It’s harder for me to do that. Brian Gardner: Well, different strokes for different folks, right? We’re all wired differently. If we were all writers and no one could speak, we’d live in a pretty bad world. All right. Speaking of speaking — ha-ha, pun intended — I think of you as a guy who’s all over the place all the time. About five years ago, there was this movie that came out. My wife dragged me to it. It was with Sarah Jessica Parker. I think it was called something like I Don’t Know How She Does it. It was about this mom who had a job, kids, and all of these responsibilities. She was everywhere, all over the place. It was fine. We got through the movie and all that, but it makes me think of you. Before we go any further, I have to just ask, Chris. As a person who writes, speaks, blogs, coaches, and travels almost as much as Brian and Jennifer Bourn seem to, although they’re more local, but you fly everywhere, man. How do you do it? How do you do all the things that you do? — and you do them well. You’re always traveling, whether it be at conferences, vacations with your family, or combinations of the two. You’re blogging. You’re teaching. You’re consulting. You’re everywhere. How do you do it? Aligning Your Work with Your Areas of Expertise Chris Lema: I think it goes back to I try and do a few things, and then do them more often than not and try and leverage the benefit of them a lot. Let me explain what I’m talking about. I gave a talk this last week in Fargo, North Dakota, but the talk that I gave to a group, the Association of Advertising, that talk I gave had a lot of material that is going into a new book. I’m re-purposing both bits of that, but it comes out of having spent three years consulting and coaching people on some of the same material. I think part of the issue is because I don’t have to change what I do over and over again. Because my industry, what I do, and the way I work is consistent and constant, I get the benefit of being able to just leverage a lot of what I’m doing in a lot of different ways. If I had to come up with brand-new research for every talk I was giving, brand-new research for every post I was writing, and brand-new research for every bit of coaching or consulting I was doing, it would blow up the amount of work I had to do. I try and keep everything … maybe the word we’re talking about here is ‘alignment.’ By keeping strong alignment around two or three areas that I focus on, I get to benefit from that when I go to do all the different stuff I’m doing. Brian Gardner: That’s interesting. You’re speaking to something that we talk about a lot on the blog at Copyblogger and us as a company at Rainmaker Digital, which is re-purposing content — whether it be taking podcast interviews and re-purposing that into blog posts or, in your case, experience with consulting and then taking that and putting it into blog posts, but maybe extracting some of that and using that in keynote speeches and stuff like that. From a content standpoint, re-purposing would be the way that you move efficiently, right? Is that what you’re saying? Chris Lema: Yup. Brian Gardner: Interesting. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. That sounds really smart. Let’s talk a little bit about WordPress specifically. You touched on it a little bit earlier. Let’s talk about how it pertains to you and what you’re doing. How did you get involved with WordPress, and where do you see your current role in the community? Making a Course Correction in Your Career Chris Lema: I started using the product 11 years ago. It was mostly to save work. In those days, either you were using pure HTML or … I was playing with both websites that were pure HTML and others that were CMSs like PHP-Nuke or other solutions. The whole point was to try and give a website to a client and let them manage their content without calling you back — again, to make your life far more efficient and aligned. I chanced upon WordPress one weekend, and that changed it up for me. I just started doing everything with WordPress. I was coaching a lot of startups in the time. Mostly, I was doing product strategy, but every now and then startups would need a website. I would help them get that site up, so WordPress was really great. About five and a half years ago, we moved from Northern California in Silicon Valley. We moved to San Diego, and I had no coaching clients down here. I had no consulting gigs down here. I had no places that asked me to speak because I was a non-known entity down here. I said, “Oh. Why don’t I blog?” I thought, “What would I blog about?” It took a couple weeks and months to figure out. I said, “You know what? Maybe I can help in the WordPress space, but with something different.” I’m constantly someone who says, “Try and take a corner that isn’t congested and doesn’t have someone taking it because it’s a lot easier to take that corner than if you’re writing the same posts that 40 other people are writing.” For me, the business side of WordPress was an easy corner to take. Other than Bill Erickson giving a talk here or there, which always was fantastic and phenomenal, nobody else was really talking about the business side. I said, “Well, I have a lot of business expertise in the software space. Maybe I can help there.” I started writing about that and started writing about some of the more complex notions of WordPress that people weren’t spending a lot of time on. It blossomed from there. Brian Gardner: It’s funny you say that ¬– there weren’t a lot of people writing about business and WordPress. From my perspective, there’s probably a degree of fear, fear of, “I don’t want to share my secrets,” the trade secrets that brought me from a guy sitting at a desk job to making six figures a month in selling WordPress themes. There’s a lot of business expertise I could have shared, but of course, there’s a part of me that was like, “Why would I want to share that?” As un-open source as that might seem, that’s just the reality of it. It’s nice to see that you come in at it from the perspective of a guy with business knowledge and bringing it to the WordPress community — rather than just someone who’s talking about their success within WordPress. What took you so long, though? You said that you started WordPress 10 or 11 years ago, but you only got into the community five or six years. What happened in that first five or six years, and then what changed? What made you decide now it’s time to jump in and really just become ultimately what you are now, which is a leader? Chris Lema: I don’t ever really predict where it’s going to end up. I want to be clear about that. A lot of people I think try and be the next ______, the next Brian Gardner, the next Brian Clark, the next whoever — whatever name you put in there. You’re like, “I want to be the next Carrie Dils.” You’re like, “Hold on, I can’t be those things. I can be me.” I think part of the transition was figuring out what I knew, what I liked, what I felt like I could give, and what was comfortable and easy in that context. Part of it was moving to a new place, not knowing anyone, and saying, “I’m going to have to resort to a different skill,” which is writing versus public speaking. Part of it was saying, “I have a prediction about this WordPress thing. I have a feeling that, over the course of time, marketing companies will stop wanting to use their IT departments and want to do it themselves. I think I found a tool that they will like, but as they do that big companies will start using WordPress. Currently, the ecosystem that’s here is not mature enough to understand how to work with big companies, but I have that background. Maybe I can help them start thinking through what they’re doing and also in the long run help WordPress grow into something that can be adopted and worked with in the enterprise level. That’s where I bring some value.” I think it’s a lot of those things coming together and saying, “All right. Let’s give this a shot.” You take little risks, you invest in little bits, and then you see, “Am I getting any positive feedback?” The feedback takes a little while. Then, over time, it starts building on. Then you go, “Oh. Hey, look. It’s all working out.” Defining Leadership by Difficult Decisions Brian Gardner: That’s great perspective. I like that, a lot actually. That’s really good food for thought, even for me, just moving forward in what I want to continue to do and thinking about just the legacy I want to leave and so forth. So a few years ago, you were invited by the folks and some of your friends over at Crowd Favorite, a big WordPress company, to serve on their board of directors. Not even two years later — I think it was, what, 19 months I think your bog post said — 19 months later you stepped down. In your words, you said, “I love WordPress. Nothing about that is changing. I love all of my friends at Crowd Favorite. That’s not changing either, but professionally, it’s time to make a course correction.” Interesting phrase that you used there. I think a good leader really shines when he or she has to make a difficult decision. It’s easy to be a leader when things are going great, but when it’s time to say, “We have to shift, to adjust, or what not,” and to then have to communicate that to the people who are in your world at that point, and that was a difficult decision for you. That I know. With so many people looking up to you in the community and the risk of letting some of them down, walk us through the decision and how you made that. It just seems like it would have been easier to just stay on. You disrupted your life and, in a way, probably much more beneficially than I can imagine, by making the decision, but I think it’s just helpful to know, hey, what do people think of when they make these bigger decisions? Chris Lema: I had been on the board for about a year before I joined the company. I joined the company for about 18 months, a year and a half, 19 months, I think. Then it was time to go. It was probably two or three months before that where several different things came to a head. When I first joined Crowd Favorite, one of the things we talked about was, “Let’s clean this up and tighten it up, and get it really running full steam ahead,” which is the stuff that I know how to do professionally. The blogging and those things are all nice. They’ve been on the side. My day job has been managing software engineers. They’re like, “Come in. Let’s clean this up and tighten it up. Then we can look at building a product side.” My background is in products, not in services, not consulting. I’ve worked with and helped lead consulting organizations, but only in the context that they are consultants for our product. I’m a product guy. I went in, and I started doing it. The first six months, we did a lot of stuff. At the 12-month mark, we had a lot more done, and everything was going really well. Somewhere after that, we were more shifting into what I call for my life ‘maintenance mode,’ where you’re just keeping things running. That’s not really my style. I’m not that guy, and it was a service company. I didn’t wake up in the morning going, “Oh, my god. This is going to be amazing because I’m building a product.” It was, “Okay. Let’s lead these people well.” I think there was a part of me that was itching. But I’ll be honest. Maybe there are other folks like me. After 10 months of doing anything, I get an itch. Like, “Oh. I should go do something else.” I’ve had to develop the discipline to not jump when that itch comes because staying power teaches you something else about yourself. It helps you go deeper in certain areas that you wouldn’t if you just keep jumping. I recognize, “Oh, yeah. It’s a little after 12, 13 months. I’m getting a little itch, but you know what? That’s not something we act on, and just focus in, get some stuff done, and lead well.” On top of that, we get to this point where my wife had some emergency surgery. It was very scary. I sat there I’m a kind of person who can think in a lot of different directions and then think through what happens after that and what happens after that. But in this particular case, as she went into surgery, I couldn’t think past the next step. Like, “What happens if this doesn’t work out?” I fell asleep. It was four or five in the morning, and I fell asleep. By seven, they were waking me up and telling me she was okay, which was great news, but I was sitting in the spot where I went, “What am I … ?” I think everyone goes through that. You go through some hard part, and then you go, “What am I doing in life? Am I just sitting in a mode where I’m just doing all the same routine without focus, without drive, without energy, and without alignment to the rest of my life?” We sat down. We talked about it a little. She’s like, “Well, don’t make any rash decisions,” because we were literally right at January one. She’s like, “Don’t make any rash decisions.” I said, “No. I’m going to just work this through.” It took a little bit of time. Then, finally, in April I said, “Okay. It really is time to move on.” Part of the lesson out of that is you should always be willing to sit, even when you get fidgety, for a little bit because you don’t know what is there for you to grow and develop by not jumping every time something doesn’t work out or something is a little boring. When hard times come, I think it’s important to figure out what’s really important. I think ultimately even when you know you’re going to make a decision, timing is critical. If you just bolt and you just walk out I could have left a lot of damage at Crowd Favorite by stepping out at the wrong time. You wait a few months. You try and get some things in place. You try and make sure that when you leave it will be better than when you got there and that you leave in a way that leaves that community whole, leaves that company fine, and allows you to step out. I did all that and have spent the last several months doing some consulting and other things, but hoping to hold off making the next major choice through the rest of this year. Then in 2017, you start looking at, “Okay, what’s the next big thing?” Lauren Mancke: Anyone who’s heard you speak knows you’re a leader. You just have that way about you. You’ve got that power to compel people to follow you. Have you always felt this? Have you always felt that you were a leader? When you were younger, did you know it? Are there any examples of when you were a kid maybe where you led or you had an instance where you took the reins? Maybe not. Maybe it was when you were older. At what point in your life did you realize you had this gift? Chris Lema: I was horrible in junior high — like you’d try out for ASB. You run a campaign, and I lost, badly. I don’t even think I was trying for VP or president. I was I think maybe for treasurer. There was definitely not one of those things where you realize at a young age, “I’m a leader.” You’re like, “I suck.” Part of that was, I think, the way I thought about leadership. I thought about it as an important title that makes you important, and that is not leadership at all. It wasn’t until probably in the middle of high school, as I started learning to serve and take care of others, that I felt like, “Okay. The leadership is happening without me wanting it. It’s happening because I’m developing trust and rapport with people who want my say — but it’s because I’m in their corner.” I leaned into that in college and spent a lot of time figuring out what kind of leader and how I led. By that point in college, it was a really clear juxtaposition when you see someone who’s leading for the title versus someone who’s leading for the impact. Those two people look different. They act different. For me, I think it was somewhere around being 20 and middle of college. I felt like, “Okay. I have a couple tools in my tool belt. I can align both public speaking with some one-on-one coaching, with some professional empathy, with a vision, being able to see for other people where they could go, see what’s best for them, or see things in them that was there, but they weren’t willing to own or accept themselves simply out of insecurity.” So I lean into it, and I’ve leaned into it ever since. I actually have a master’s degree in leadership because I, in the middle of working at Emphasis, I was a little bored. Instead of jumping ship I said, “I think I want to go back and study.” The company said, “Hey, we’ll pay for your masters if you stick around longer.” I said, “Okay.” I went back and studied even more about leadership. Brian Gardner: There you go. Chris Lema definitely has the right to say he’s a leader. He’s got the master’s degree in leadership, so we certainly chose the right person to have on the show. Okay. We’ve talked about you and your experience in the business world. We’ve talked about you and your experience in WordPress a little bit. As we all know, there’s many types of leaders all over the place. Let’s talk about WordPress specifically. Who would you consider to be some of the best leaders in the WordPress community? I’m not talking specifically about financially successful and things like that, but just things that you’ve seen people do either that you resonate with or you do that, “Yes. I’m so glad they did that,” type of thing.” Give us a few names and maybe just a sentence or two on why you think each of those people are demonstrations of a good leader. Good Leadership Exemplified Chris Lema: Sure. Steve Zehngut is a friend of mine down here in Orange County. He runs a company called Zeek. They do a bunch of WordPress and mobile stuff. He started a meetup so that he could build this community of WordPress people. Then he started showing other people how he did it and giving them the opportunity to use his physical space for their own meetups. I think Steve’s meetup has birthed something like 12 other meetups in the whole area. They all start by using his space, and then they eventually branch out into other spaces. That is a leader — someone who says, “I can have an impact here. Let me help out. Let me help other people. Then let me give them the space to grow into themselves.” I think he’s a fantastic example. Jennifer Bourn is a good friend of mine who is up in Sacramento. Her ability to connect and help people around branding in the WordPress ecosystem is fantastic. Where most people get up and they do a talk at a conference, and they rattle off stories, like I do — rattle off stories, have a main point, get off stage. You go, “Hey, that was entertaining.” Jennifer shows up with a whole packet of worksheets, hands it to you, and walks you through how to get yourself better. Anyone who’s committing their time, without necessarily getting paid, to help you be a better you, they’re my idol. I think they’re fantastic. Another guy, Jason Cohen, is the CTO over at WP Engine. He’s a guy that is consistently helping people think better about what they’re doing. He does that at work. He does that in WP Engine, but he does that outside of it. You hang out and talk with him, and every conversation I walk away with something additional. All of these people are leading in a way that helps the other people they interact with get better. Some people do it through writing, obviously. You guys know Brian Clark. These are some of the people that I’ve invited to my own conference that I run for WordPress businesses, products, and service companies, an event called CaboPress. I go to these leaders, and I say, “Come join me in Cabo and have these discussions with other people who want to get better.” They say, “Yes.” Those are the people that I look up to and say, “These are great people. I want to hang out with them.” Being Sold on Yourself to Become the Leader You Were Meant to Be Brian Gardner: I’m going to jump ahead to the question I had for you a little bit further on because it piggy backs on exactly what you were just talking about. When I go to your website, the first thing I see at the top of it is a quote or a testimonial. It says, “Chris Lema doesn’t sell you on himself. He sells you on yourself.” Now, basically everything you’ve said up to this point on our interview — talking about leadership by serving, leadership by example, and leadership in the form of putting the emphasis on teaching people, enabling people, all of that other stuff. Your form of leadership, which I really, really love and appreciate, is not about building yourself up, but building others up, and maybe, as a byproduct of that, that helps with your brand and all that kind of stuff. I actually remember our conversation. We sat down and had breakfast last summer in Denver. I wanted to pick your brain about some things. I came away from that conversation almost feeling selfish and saying, “Man, this was all about me.” Then I realized, to some degree, that was what you wanted that conversation to be about, right? It’s not about Chris. It’s about those that he’s with. Just speak to that just in general. My guess is that you do the same sort of thing when you lead your family. It’s always about your wife, your kids, or stuff like that. Is that just who you are? Chris Lema: I think it’s who I’m trying to be. I think that quote on my website is as much to center and ground me as it is to share that with others. I really appreciate Mika’s statement. I wasn’t even in the room when she shared it in Chicago several years ago, but I got all the Tweets and heard about it. I went, “That is amazing and wonderful. I’m going to cherish that.” At the core of it, I think you need to constantly ground yourself — especially if you’re getting any level of popularity. At least for me, I have consistently tried to take action that says, “Remind yourself that you put your pants on the same way every day.” When Silicon Valley was getting hot, startups were growing, and I was selling companies, I moved out to the East Bay to say, “I’m going to live in a normal town with normal people, drive a normal car, so that I am grounded in the fact that I don’t need the very next thing.” The same thing happens to the WordPress community. I think it’s a tactic, a habit I use to say, “You stay grounded by remembering that you’re here to help other people, not just to aggrandize yourself,” but I think what I’ve discovered over the years is, it works. When you focus on someone else and you help them get better, especially if what’s holding them back is just insecurity. It’s not a certain skillset they’re missing. It’s not something they can’t do anything about. It’s really just the fact that they are insecure — and so many of us walk around with that insecurity that holds people back — and you just go, “Let me just break that open for you a little bit. Let me just show you that, no, you actually have what you need. You can take this next step,” or, “Let me show you a step you didn’t know you could take and take it.” I think it ends up being incredibly helpful. The phrase that runs in my head all the time is “comfort, come alongside.” Leading for me is, how do you come alongside someone in their journey — not the journey you have for them, but the journey they have for themselves? Then how do you comfort them when they have the insecurity to encourage them to take next steps? Most of us, we have a special puzzle piece in our pocket, and we think, “Yeah. I found this puzzle piece. This is mine,” and we stick it in our pocket. You’re like, “No, no, no. The piece has to go on the broad. That’s what makes it awesome is when the whole picture comes together.” That’s what I spend my time doing. Lauren Mancke: Speaking of helping others, let’s talk a little bit more about your website, ChrisLema.com. You’ve got a tagline on there, “Helping businesses leverage WordPress, and helping WordPress businesses find leverage.” How are you writing on your blog to successfully do that? What else would you write about that also helps with this? Leveraging WordPress in Your Business Chris Lema: Part of the thing is I bring companies to WordPress. Companies that are like, “I don’t know if WordPress can do this,” I write posts that say, “WordPress can. You can use WordPress to do these things you want to do.” That’s bringing small businesses and big businesses who are trying to figure out, “Can this really work this way?” Then, I work with WordPress companies, products and service companies to help them with their marketing and to get their message out better. Often, I am writing posts about them and redirecting some sunlight to them, or I am highlighting what they’re doing in a way that causes people to go, “Oh, that’s interesting.” Then, of course, consulting and coaching is to help them with their segmentation, their marketing strategy, their communication, and all that kind of stuff. The blog is a key part of it, so yes, I think it’s successful in doing what I want it to do. I think just so I don’t get bored, I write about a couple other things here and there. There are some posts on public speaking. There’s a couple other posts in there that are personal, but predominantly, that blog is about WordPress and that attempt to help different groups of people connect to it on the site. Lauren Mancke: Speaking of connecting people, what is your favorite part of leading and community building? Leadership That Requires a Move Beyond Good Chris Lema: I think my all-time favorite part is shining a light on someone that you didn’t know or a product that you had never heard of, a company that you weren’t aware of, and what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. When I get to do that and when it works, it’s a wonderful component and incredibly exciting for me to see the result when that happens. It doesn’t always happen, but if I can say, “Hey, check out this company. Look what they’re doing, or look at what they just released in a product.” Then they contact me a couple weeks later and they go, “Oh my god. You don’t even know what just happened over here,” I’m like, “That’s awesome.” That’s my favorite part. Brian Gardner: All right. ChrisLema.com is all about WordPress and business. Just recently you just launched a blog called Beyond Good. It’s on one of our themes, which of course we’re thankful that you’re using. You use that one specifically to teach about leadership and how you can encourage folks and teach them how to take their leadership to a new level. You say, “Leadership is hard. Most of the time we settle for good enough. Leading people requires more, requires that we move beyond good.” That reminds me a lot about the book Jim Collins wrote called Good to Great, where he writes about why some companies make the leap and others don’t. What do you think stands in the way — whether it be individuals as entrepreneurs, small businesses, or even bigger businesses — from taking the leap to achieving that success from good to great? Taking the Leap to Achieving Success Chris Lema: Insecurity. Insecurity I think everything boils down to. When a person doesn’t have the courage to take a step that is different than what they’ve done before, when a company doesn’t have the courage to hire someone that is different than what they’ve hired before — whatever it is that they’re doing — and they don’t have the temerity or the courage to step into it, more often than not, when you dig into, it’s not the numbers. It’s not the prediction. It is insecurity. It is a fear of, “What if I do this wrong? What if this turns out wrong? What will other people think of me?” A lot of what holds people back is that insecurity. I spend a lot of time personally, one-on-one, doing the work of trying to mitigate that. Now, that said, there’s a lot of little reasons why companies just don’t lead well, that it’s just because they don’t know better. The blog tries to solve that problem. I can’t really solve insecurity just on a blog. When I’m coaching, I will work that through, but when I’m writing, I’m mostly trying to give some of the other tips, the other ways to think about things, the other questions to answer on the blog Beyond Good. Lauren Mancke: Let’s get into a little bit of recommendations. Do you have any favorite blogs or books that you can recommend to the StudioPress FM audience? Chris’ Reading Recommendations Chris Lema: I always have book recommendations because I’m always reading. There’s a meaty book that I like called Learn or Die. I find that it’s quite good. There’s another one called Peak, which is focusing on the new science of expertise, which I’m also reading. There’s another book called Strategic Storytelling, which I would recommend only because my storytelling book isn’t done yet. All of those I’d say are really great. Brian Gardner: Does that go along with your ‘cool story, bro’ thing? Chris Lema: Yeah. Exactly. I love stories and the power of stories. Brian Gardner: Okay. What about blogs? You gave us a few books. Just people that digest better reading individual blog posts or what not, whether it be on leadership, WordPress-type stuff, who’s blogs do you frequent that you just get a lot out of and like to share from? Chris Lema: Well, let me caveat that for one quick second to say, if you’re not reading books, you should. The reality is, when you’re writing a blog post, normally that’s a five-minute investment. When you read a book, it may be several hours of investment. Part of the dynamic is, if you’re not making the investment to read depth, I think your leadership thoughts and your leadership understanding are all still pretty shallow. That’s not to say you can’t read good blogs. I’m just saying you should make time and build the habit of reading books because they’re worth doing. Now, that said, Michael Hyatt is a fantastic guy to read if you want to read a blog. John Maxwell is another guy whose blog is awesome. Dan Rockwell, who I’m pretty sure Dan’s writing a WordPress blog. Actually, I think Michael Hyatt’s is well. Dan’s is Something.WordPress.com I think, Leadership Freak. Those are definitely ones that I would point to and say, “Hey, check those out because I think you’ll dig them.” Brian Gardner: As we wrap this up, if we were to give you the opportunity to do a 60-second speech right here on the show, what is the one piece of advice to anyone listening regarding the topic of leadership that you would want to give? Chris’ Epic Advice on Leadership: Lead As Only You Can Lead Chris Lema: Sixty seconds on leadership. Asking me to do anything in 60 seconds is hard. Brian Gardner: Loaded question. Chris Lema: Let’s try it. Here we go. In your pursuit to lead others well, in your pursuit to be someone who is considered a leader, never make the mistake of looking to someone else to determine who you are. Never look at someone else to tell you who you should be. Never look at someone else’s journey and say, “That’s the journey I need to have,” because the reality is, you’re unique. You are completely unique. To that end, your journey will be unique, and the way you lead and help others will be unique. So figure out you. My one piece of advice is, figure out what motivates you. Figure out how you work best. Figure out what is easy for you and, at the same time, aligns with your passion, your interest in helping others. When you figure all that out, when you figure out how to be you, then find the leadership route that works best for that. In that way, you’re leading as only you can lead. Brian Gardner: That was brilliance in 48 seconds. Lauren Mancke: Wow. Brian Gardner: Man, we got to clip that out and use that or put it in a blog. I’m going to re-purpose that. Chris, do I have your permission? Chris Lema: You totally have my permission. Brian Gardner: Of course, we will link to you. I will link to you when I do that. I’m almost speechless. I honestly don’t know what I should say next — other than the call to action, which I have here on my script. This is great. It’s a great segue. If you are convinced that Chris is the right guy for you, whether it be to hire — I know you make available yourself via phone calls, also various ways to be consulted with and so on — or if you just want to read Chris’ stuff. All of it’s good. Do you want to be sold on yourself or become the leader you were meant to be? Chris obviously has a ton of knowledge, shares his wealth with that knowledge in the form of articles, books, courses, videos. Pretty much any media you can imagine, he’s done it. For more of that information, you can check him out at ChrisLema.com and his leadership blog at BeyondGood.com. Lauren Mancke: If you liked what you heard on today’s show, you can find more episodes of StudioPress FM at StudioPress.FM. You can also help Brian and I hit the main stage by subscribing to the show in iTunes. It’s a great way to never ever miss an episode. We want to thank Chris for coming on the show. It’s been great. Chris Lema: Thanks, guys.
Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners
Have you been planning to launch that brandy new online course of yours? Who better than Carrie Dils, WordPress podcaster and Lynda trainer, to teach us the ins and outs of setting up your first course. She'll take us through the mindset of planning, all the way through production of our educational material. I've invited her to “takeover” my show, steering the audience to online course production success. I hope you enjoy this episode, and can't wait to be back in Season 4! Welcome to the GAP! Carrie Dils on Creating an Online Course Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Creating an online course 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 ★ Support this podcast ★
Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners
Have you been planning to launch that brandy new online course of yours? Who better than Carrie Dils, WordPress podcaster and Lynda trainer, to teach us the ins and outs of setting up your first course. She’ll take us through the mindset of planning, all the way through production of our educational material. I’ve invited her to “takeover” my show, steering the audience to online course production success. I hope you enjoy this episode, and can’t wait to be back in Season 4! (more…)
Welcome to the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and via RSS for your favorite podcatcher. Post Status Draft is hosted by Brian Krogsgard and this week's special guest host, Diane Kinney. Diane is a web professional and solo practitioner based in Florida. She’s writing a book with Carrie Dils called Real World Freelancing, and I thought it’d be fun to chat with her about freelancing. Links and Topics Real World Freelancing The Versatility Group, Diane's primary business How much should a website cost? DianeKinney.com, a blog in development. It will focus on business topics, WordPress, and beyond Sponsor: Yoast Yoast SEO Premium gives you 24/7 support from a dedicated support team and extra features such as a redirect manager, tutorial videos and integration with Google Webmaster Tools! Go to yoast.com for more information, and thanks to Yoast for being a Post Status partner
On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Bill Erickson. Bill is a WordPress Developer, an entrepreneur, a husband, a father, a skier, an avid reader, a gardener, and a winemaker living in Georgetown, TX. He s been developing with WordPress and contributing to the community since 2006. Bill has written 20 WordPress plugins, which have been downloaded 668,661 times and has spoken at 13 conferences regarding WordPress. Last, but certainly not least, Bill is a core contributor to our very own Genesis Framework project. In this 40-minute episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Bill Erickson discuss: Bill’s decision to become a freelancer Transitioning from Thesis to the Genesis Framework Building your brand and your business with shareable content Using your website to prequalify potential clients Scaling your business through efficiency The importance of contracts Building a work/life balance that works for you Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes This episode is brought to you by Digital Commerce Summit Follow Bill on Twitter Visit BillErickson.net Bill’s WordPress Plugins Bill’s Code Snippets Matt Report: Systemizing Your Way to More Revenue Freelance WordPress Developer Bill Erickson The Transcript Jerod Morris: Hey, Jerod Morris here. If you know anything about Rainmaker Digital and Copyblogger, you may know that we produce incredible live events. Well, some would say that we produce incredible live events as an excuse to throw great parties, but that’s another story. We’ve got another one coming up this October in Denver. It’s called Digital Commerce Summit and it is entirely focused on giving you the smartest ways to create and sell digital products and services. You can find out more at Rainmaker.FM/Summit. That’s Rainmaker.FM/Summit. We’ll be talking about Digital Commerce Summit in more detail as it gets closer. For now, I’d like to let a few attendees from our past events speak for us: Attendee 1: For me, it’s just hearing from the experts. This is my first industry event, so it’s awesome to learn new stuff and also get confirmation that we’re not doing it completely wrong where I work. Attendee 2: The best part of the conference, for me, is being able to mingle with people and realize that you have connections with everyone here. It feels like LinkedIn Live. I also love the parties after each day, being able to talk to the speakers, talk to other people who are here for the first time, people who have been here before. Attendee 3: I think the best part of the conference, for me, is understanding how I can service my customers a little more easily. Seeing all the different facets and components of various enterprises then helps them pick the best tools. Jerod Morris: Hey, we agree. One of the biggest reasons we host the conference every year is so that we can learn how to service our customers people like you more easily. Here are just a few more words from folks who have come to our past live events. Attendee 4: It’s really fun. I think it’s a great mix of beginner information and advanced information. I’m really learning a lot and having a lot of fun. Attendee 5: The conference is great, especially because it’s a single-track conference where you don’t get distracted by, “Which session should I go to?” and, “Am I missing something?” Attendee 6: The training and everything the speakers have been awesome but I think the coolest aspect for me has been connecting with both people who are putting it on and the other attendees. Jerod Morris: That’s it for now. There’s a lot more to come on Digital Commerce Summit. I really hope to see you there in October. Again, to get all the details and the very best deal on tickets, head over to Rainmaker.FM/Summit. That’s Rainmaker.FM/Summit. Voiceover: StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner, and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, Brian and I are joined by Bill Erickson to discuss how freelancers can scale their businesses. Brian Gardner: Hey everyone, welcome back to StudioPress FM. I am your host Brian Gardner, and I am joined as usual with my cohost, vice president of StudioPress Lauren Mancke. Today we are, as always, very excited about the show, because we get to continue our series with members of the Genesis community, and that’s always been fun so far. Today we are joined by Bill Erickson. Bill is a WordPress developer, an entrepreneur, a husband, a father, a skier, an avid reader, a gardener, and a winemaker, living in Georgetown, Texas, which I think is just north of Austin. He’s been developing with WordPress and contributing to the community since 2006. Bill has written 20 plugins, which has been downloaded almost 700,000 times, and has spoken at 13 conferences regarding WordPress. Last but certainly not least, Bill is a core contributor to our very own Genesis Framework project. Bill, it is a huge pleasure to have you on StudioPress FM. Welcome to the show. Bill Erickson: It’s great to be here, thanks for having me. Beginnings in the Development World Brian Gardner: When I decided to have this series Lauren and I spoke about who we wanted to have on the show, and without a doubt you were on the top of that list, and so I’m thankful you took that invitation to heart and you’re here. I want to start here with a very obvious question, one that helps set the foundation of what the rest of the stuff that we’ll be talking about will be. Tell us how you got into development, and have you always been a nerd? Bill Erickson: Well yes, I’ve always been a nerd, but my past in development’s been a bit of a roundabout approach. In high school I got a summer job working at a print shop where we made brochures, business cards, basically all the print materials for a business. Then some of the businesses will come in wanting websites too, and they didn’t do that. I figured, It can’t be that much more difficult than designing a brochure, so I decided to do it on the side and partner with a friend who knew how to code HTML and CSS. Then a little later on I decided I wanted to figure out the HTML and CSS part myself and realized I’m a much better coder than I am a designer, so I made the switch. Brian Gardner: A lot of people can do one really well. Lauren happens to be one of those people. I knew she was a great designer when she first came around, and as I realized that she was also capable of coding, that’s when the light bulb went off. I was like, “I can let her take over a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing, because she can do it all! Like the Renaissance woman, you know? Lauren Mancke: Sometimes you just want to design, your brain is on fire, and you’re creative. Sometimes development is a good switch, for me, anyway. I like to just, A to B, do exactly what I need to do. Bill, why did you start building your business around WordPress? What is it about CMS that you find so appealing? Bill Erickson: I had been building sites, like I said, with just static HTML and CSS, and then I got into the business of having to do text changes for clients. It was very boring for me, and I’m sure my clients didn’t appreciate paying me to make small text changes. This is about 2006, and I started looking around for what CMS tool I can use. WordPress, at that time, and it still is, one of the easiest tools to use for end user, for the client, but it’s also really easy for a beginner developer to learn. That’s one thing a lot of the professional developers discount, is they say WordPress is messy in its procedural code, but I think it’s one of the keys to its success. It has a low barrier to entry, so if you want to just get started you can find a filter to change Read More text, and then once you accomplish that it’s very easy to work your way up to something more complex, rather than having to grasp a deep knowledge of something. I got into it both because it was something that I could grasp when I was first learning, but also because it was really easy for my customers to use, and it has only become more so. Brian Gardner: The good thing about WordPress, and even Genesis now as a whole, is that there’s so many people who have understood how to do it hands-on by themselves, and then have written about it, that there’s so much documentation. You can go to Google and figure out anything, pretty much, how to do this in WordPress, or how to do that in Genesis. People like yourself who’ve written tutorials, and Jerod and I and other people who’ve done code snippets, it’s very easy for someone who’s new to go in and, kind of behind the scenes because no one knows they’re doing it, they Google, they learn … There’s not just a book you have to read, or a class or a course you have to take, you can Google your way into the community from the development side. That’s one thing I like about it. Bill Erickson: Yeah, and a lot of us got started that way. I know I got started by Googling and searching for code snippets, and that’s how I learned. As I progressed I was developing these code snippets, so I put them out to help others, but also to help myself so I’d be able to find those later. It’s sort of a community where we’re all sort of learning together, and just the knowledge gets documented, so everyone can jump in at any point. Transitioning from Thesis to the Genesis Framework Brian Gardner: We spoke last week with Carrie Dils about just the open source community, and just how that sort of pay it forward mentality really helps grow the product, grow the software and the communities around it. Typically what we do is ask our guests how they got started in Genesis specifically, but your story’s a good one, and something I want to tell, because I was directly involved with that. Before Genesis, or before you knew better for that matter, Bill was working on Thesis, and he was a Thesis developer and had done a lot of client work around Thesis. About six years ago … I can’t believe it’s been that long, Chris Pearson, the developer of Thesis, had a falling out with my current business partner, Brian Clarke. The too-long-don’t-read version of that whole story is that their partnership fell apart. Brian reached out to me and a couple others, and we formed the company that we have now, which is Rainmaker Digital. Bill, you saw the writing on the wall as this was all going down back then, and reached out to me. I think it was on Twitter DM, and asked about Genesis. I knew you as a Thesis developer, so as the opportunist in me, I jumped on that right away. I think we got on a Skype call within five minutes of when you sent that. Is that, how I remember, how you got into the Genesis community? Am I missing anything here? Bill Erickson: No, that pretty much covers it. I just want to say thanks again for all the help you provided in that transition. I’d been building with Thesis for years at that point I think, like two or three years, and every single one of my leads was coming from them. We had this symbiotic relationship where I’d build a really cool site, you get featured on their website, which would then generate more leads coming to me, which worked well, but as Thesis was going one direction and the rest of WordPress was going a different, it was sort of getting stuck in an area where I wasn’t having the freedom to move where I wanted. That’s what I was talking to you about, is I wanted to make the transition to something that was more WordPress based, where it followed more of the WordPress standards. My problem was, all of my work was coming from Thesis, and you really helped me through that transition by sending me a lot of great leads. I think it was about a six-month period from when I was 100% Thesis-based work to 100% Genesis-based work. I never could have bridged that gap if it wasn’t for you sending me all those great leads. Brian Gardner: That’s good to hear. Bill s Decision to Become a Freelancer Lauren Mancke: Okay, so let’s talk freelancing. I think you and I, our paths crossed when you did make the switch to Genesis, so go back a little bit before that and tell us about at what point you decided to branch out on your own and start freelancing. Bill Erickson: It was all about timing for me. I was actually in college getting a finance degree, and building WordPress websites on the side. I was a student worker making about $10 an hour on university websites, but it was something I enjoyed doing. Then the 2008 financial crisis happened, and all the finance internships disappeared, and I figured it’d be a good time to focus on my other passion, WordPress. Right as I graduated college, my goal was just, I was going to experiment for a year and see if I could cover my living costs for a year. Luckily I was a poor college student so those costs were fairly low, and I was able to just make it. Then it worked out, and I just kept going, and got a little better and a little better, and now we’re about 10 years into me being a freelancer, so that worked out pretty well. Or, seven years I think now, full time. Brian Gardner: A few years ago you did an interview with our friends over at iThemes about freelancing. I love how they open up the post. They say, “Bill Erickson is a freelance WordPress developer who gives back.” We just talked about that, and we’ll talk to it a little bit later also in the show. First off, it’s true, as I’ve witnessed first hand just how much you help, both in the Genesis and the WordPress community. You have code snippets on your site, and you publish tutorials and stuff like that, but you also, I see you in Slack, and on our Genesis GitHub repository, and just within the general community, just helping where you can. I know you’re busy, and I know you realize that it’s important, even still, to give back, and I appreciate that. You’re also a busy guy, which of course means you’ve got a pretty long lead time in case somebody wants to hire you as a freelancer, and you’re pretty selective now at this point, which is a good place to be, right? Bill Erickson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Building Your Brand and Your Business with Shareable Content Brian Gardner: It seems like a lot of freelancers these days are kind of in that starving artist mode, where everyone’s starting up and there’s saturated markets and so forth. I guess they’re trying to fight for their food. What’s your secret at this point, to being so busy as a freelancer? Bill Erickson: At this point a lot of it came down to luck and timing. I got started in WordPress, like I said, about 10 years ago, and in that time the freelance WordPress development space was nowhere near as competitive as it is now. There just weren’t that many of them, so I was able to make a name for myself a lot easier. Now that I’ve been doing it for so long, I have a long client list and a lot of those clients really enjoyed working with me, so they keep coming back. About 50% of my work right now is either past clients or people who have directly recommended from past clients. A lot of it is establishing your business, establishing your name, and building that reputation. And I built my reputation by giving back, by writing blog posts and code snippets, and contributing to Genesis and writing plugins. I don’t want to stop what was working, so I do make a point of, even when I’m busy, doing what I can to give back. I find that finding where your … Look at what you produce, and see what you can easily turn into a shareable thing. For me a lot of it revolves around plugins and code snippets, so as I’m building out a project, they need some specific feature, I’ll put in a little bit more time really cleaning up and extending this feature a bit more than a client actually needs so that I can turn it into a plugin that I can then share. I’m going to put in 20 hours building this feature, maybe I could put in 30 and make it something that I can release, and will help others, and will also promote myself, because then people will find it and want to hire me. Right now a lot of my work is based on my past reputation and my past experience with clients, because a lot of past clients are coming back, but I got to that point by giving back, and that’s why I still do it. Brian Gardner: That’s pretty funny. The last couple weeks I have published two different blog posts on my blog, tutorials on how to do something in Genesis, and I was literally in the process of developing a theme and adding that feature. As soon as I would add that and had the code ready, instead of just finishing the theme and so on and going back to it, I stopped right then and there, that evening, one night, and just wrote the tutorial. Because I had just implemented it, it was fresh on my mind, it was something that I knew somebody was going to want. I hear what you’re saying there, which is, it’s kind of cool to document the stuff that you’re doing for something else, and then use that to benefit, a) the community, but also yourself, in that now you have shareable content, yet another thing that could get your name out there. For anyone out there freelancing, that’s kind of unsolicited advice there, how to help build your brand and how to move forward your business by doing things in that kind of way. Bill Erickson: It’s not purely a marketing tool or a self-promotion tool. It’s actually really useful in your business, because I spend a lot of time thinking about a problem and what’s the best way to solve it, so I create that solution. Six months down the line I might need that again. Instead of spending the hours trying to figure out what it is and finding the right hooks and filters, if I’m in that mindset right after I solve the problem, if I document it, I can look back at that so that I know that’s how I do it. I don’t have to keep it in my mind, I just have to remember, yeah, I wrote about it on my blog, so I can scroll through and find it. That’s how it all started for me. It was just documenting what I was doing so that I could find that information later on. The side effect was, other people started using that information and it helped my SEO. Brian Gardner: So you’re your own reader, blogger. Bill Erickson: Yes. Brian Gardner: You bookmark your own pages, how narcissistic. No I’m kidding, I do the same thing with my code snippets too. I put them on my site just so I have a place for me to go back to and say, “Hey, check out this greatly designed site. Oh look, it’s mine.” Stuff like that. Definitely wise there. Using Your Website to Prequalify Potential Clients Lauren Mancke: I want to follow up on Brian’s question from before. We have a page dedicated on StudioPress where we recommend Genesis developers and designers to the community. You’re on that page and you have been for a while. What impact, if any, has that source been for you in terms of acquiring leads and getting new business? Bill Erickson: I still get a ton of great leads from StudioPress. Even though there’s a ton of people on there, it used to be only two or three other developers on the recommended list. Even now that you have such a larger community, and a lot of other great resources, I still get a lot of excellent clients from there. The StudioPress recommended developers page, it’s like a fire hose of leads, and it’s up to you to qualify them. Because the StudioPress community and your customers, they have such a wide range of needs. Some just need tiny minor tweaks like changing some colors, or adding a small feature. Some hear about the benefits of the SEO of Genesis and don’t want to do anything themselves, and they want a custom theme and everything built for them. There’s a wide range of what someone might want, so you need to make sure you’re not just getting a ton of emails and having to filter that. You want to use your website to describe what it is you do, what your expertise is, so that the incoming leads can self-select, and select a person who is best fitted for that job. What I’ve found is, there is a need to qualify your leads, and that’s something you can do with your website. Just review your emails, and if you see that you’re doing a lot of responses saying, “I’m not a good fit for this,” whether it’s for the type of work, or your timeline, or your budget, just make a note to include that information on your site. Because if you’re getting emails about that, that means you haven’t educated the prospect. Lauren Mancke: We had a form on our Northbound site that led people, basically them thinking about their project. A lot of people contact you that haven’t really thought through what they need, so our contact form had different areas that they needed to figure out before they even contacted us, or have answers to. That way we could review those before we got back in touch with the person. Bill Erickson: Yeah, definitely, like a client onboarding process. Because the average person who needs a website, they’ve never done this before, or if they did it was five or six years ago. You do it all the time. They don’t know what the process is. They don’t even know what questions they should be asking or what information to provide, so whatever you can do to help their job of finding someone to help them will definitely help. Brian Gardner: We’ve been asked probably a number of times if there’s a way that we can assist in that process by somehow categorizing people on the developers list, especially since the list has gotten longer and the skills that are on that page vary from technical programming to straight up graphic design. Yes, to some degree that’s our responsibility, to see if we can try to tag that a little bit better. But I like what you said, though, with prequalifying the leads. A lot of people just have a contact form on their website, which is basically, in my opinion, an advertisement to just copy and paste a request for a job, or a submittal or something like that. Then it’s not a great fit. With all the forms out there these days, gravity forms and ninja forms, you have the ability to build a complex form that prequalifies these inquiries, and saves A, you a lot of time, and B, them time too. Bill Erickson: Yeah, it would be nice if StudioPress had some sort of layers of filters to help qualify them, but at the end of the day, every service provider on that page has different requirements, different services they offer, different budgets and timelines. There’s not a one size fits all categorical system that could apply. The easiest thing to do is just give all their information, and then allow those providers to do their own qualifications on their website. Brian Gardner: Aside from the fact that it would take us a little bit of time to do that, that’s kind of what I come down to. Because I realize there’s also a vibe thing, that when you land on someone’s site you get a vibe whether or not, “Hey, this is a person I could do work with. They’re my style or they’re not. I don’t want to qualify anybody out of that by some sort of check system that, Oh, well, I’m looking for a project under $5,000, so immediately Bill Erickson doesn’t show up. Whereas maybe it would have been a good fit, and maybe you’re slow a little bit, and you would pick up a job that might be less than $5,000. I don’t want to take that away from you either. Lauren Mancke: I also, when I was redesigning that page, I wanted to include on the actual page the screen captures of some of the recent projects that they’ve done. Because I think visually that tells someone the types of projects that that developer has experience with, that they can visually scan that and see what might be a good fit in that way as well. Bill Erickson: That’s a great idea. That’s what a lot of people, when they’re shopping, looking for a developer to build their website, they’re just going straight to portfolios. To be able to have that in one spot so they don’t have to open all the sites would be a useful tool. Brian Gardner: I didn’t like that decision at the very beginning, Lauren, because when I first saw the page it was really, really long. Then as I thought through it I’m like, “Okay, this is not above the fold mentality from 10 years ago. This is more about doing what you said, providing little snapshots. Even if it’s just the most recent four or whatever. At least you can just scroll up and down the page and get that vibe sort of thing that I was talking about. Now speaking of people on the page and whatnot, Bill, I know that part of your strategy at this point, because you are so busy, are somewhat selective on the stuff that you take on, you have kind of a … sort of like a little referral system. Not necessarily in exchange for money, but just people who you pass referrals on to that are, a) that you know and respect and feel comfortable passing those along to. Jared Atchison is a good friend of yours and ours. He’s the first person that comes to mind there as an example of a developer you might send client inquiry to. Scaling Your Business Through Efficiency This leads to a bigger question in situations within the freelance world. How do you scale your business? I know you take your projects and pass them on to other people, but how do you scale your business specifically to make more money? Because there’s only so many hours in a day. What have you done over the last couple years, or what have you learned as a more efficient way to do business, so that you can become more profitable? Bill Erickson: There’s a lot of ways you can scale your business. One that I’m particularly fond of is through efficiency. You can build websites a lot faster using Genesis because it does a lot of it for you, and then you can focus only on the custom features. Then the code you build can be reused on future projects, so when I build a great events calendar I can then, six months later, reapply that to a new project and then change the styling. There’s some code efficiencies you can do, and Genesis really helps with that. Another one is moving yourself up the value chain. When I got started I was basically doing just markup. I was doing PSD to Genesis websites. Most of them were $500 to $1,000, and I’d turn them around in a week. As I got more experienced I did work on more complex websites, and built more custom features, and charge more. Now I’m no longer doing just the development aspect. When someone comes to me we offer sort of a full package, so we have a $12,000 project minimum. It’s a team of three: a content strategist, a designer, and a developer, and we typically spend at least 12 weeks on a project. We’re really just working with the client to understand their needs, and design and implement it all in one house. Rather than, a lot of times when I was working with, saying I was just doing development, clients would go off to 99designs and get a design that doesn’t really serve their needs very well. I’d build it for them, but it’s not the best use of my time and the resources they have, so I’ve actually gone out and partnered with designers that I know do a great job of turning that around. Combining our services together we provide a much more valuable service. Brian Gardner: Is that why you took down the PSD to Genesis page? Bill Erickson: Yes and no. PSD to Genesis, it was a fun business to problem. Like I said, it’s the value. As I start charging more for my time, there’s less value that can be got out of that. There was a lot of people who do PSD to Genesis, and if I’m charging three or four times not many people are going to want to come to me, because at the end of the day I’m just converting a design into a website. I’m not providing as much value there. I saw that we could do better in a different direction. I found a designer that I really like working with, and a content strategist that I really like working with. I still do some sites where a design is provided for me, but I’m a bit more selective on that, because I really do enjoy being able to start from the beginning and identify what problems need solving. The change from that start to finish is so much larger than, they hand me a design and then the only measure of quality at that time is, Did you do what we told you to do? Does the design match? Is the site loading fast? It’s a lot more fun to do that problem solving stuff. Lauren Mancke: It’s probably a lot more fun to work with a good design too, than something that might not look very good. Bill Erickson: That’s the other thing, yeah, when you don’t know the design. Especially when you’re trying to provide a quote and the design hasn’t been done yet, and you don’t know who the designer is. You really leave yourself open to some uncomfortable weeks where you’re just plowing through a design that’s horrible. That’s another reason why I stick with one designer for the most part. Brian Gardner: I wasn’t setting you up for anything there, I just noticed. As I was preparing for the show I was actually going to link to that page, and then I kept Googling and I’m like, “Where is it?” I went to your site, I tried searching, and then I figured that at some point you kind of outgrew that. It is sort of like an entry into a community type of play, and I think there’s a need for it to some degree. What that basically does at this point, it frees that up for a few other people in the community to offer that service, which I know they’ve done. Yeah, I wasn’t mad or anything like that. Bill Erickson: No, and I took it down, I think, with the most recent redesign, where I was focusing more on this integration with my current designer. I took it down mostly because I’m no longer focusing on it, but also because I was getting very few projects that actually utilize that. Because like you said, there’s a lot of great people in the community who are providing it, I was charging a bit more for that than anyone else was, and so yeah, I was getting maybe one every two or three months. It didn’t seem like a good reason to focus my sight on that. Tools that Allow You to be More Efficient with Your Time Lauren Mancke: Bill, let’s talk about workflow. This is obviously something that really goes along with scaling your business, you kind of touched on, and it’s something in particular that you have spent a lot of time perfecting, and you’ve taken time to share your processes with others. I know we’ve had a few conversations about it. Can you give our listeners some insight to some of the tools that you use, and some that you’ve built yourself, which allow you to be more efficient with your time? Bill Erickson: Yeah, so like I was talking about growing your business with efficiency. There’s code efficiency, technical efficiency, but then there’s also business efficiency. A lot of your time is spent actually just running your business. Whether that’s responding to emails, or trying to manage projects, if you can find ways to optimize that process you’ll just open more time up for profitable activities. My website is really focused on qualifying leads so I don’t have to spend a lot of time responding to emails that aren’t a good fit. I’m always iterating it, adding or changing features. One that I added in the past year or two that’s been really helpful is the, When I can start, because I’ve found that most of the emails where I just immediately say “Sorry, I’m not a good fit” are the ones where they say, “We need a site live in the next three weeks,” and I wouldn’t be able to start for two months. Things like that, where you can give them the information they need to know you’re not a good fit. Then once I do get a quality lead, a lead that would fit well with me, they fill out the form, it comes to me, and I provide a nice detailed response. The email also shows up in a custom CRM that me and Jared Atchison developed, and we use it for all sorts of things. We use it for tracking lead data, so, Where are we getting sources of leads? Where are we getting sources of projects? You might find that 90% of your leads are coming from Google, but those aren’t really good leads, and that 80% of your work is coming from past clients. Having that knowledge can help you decide where to direct your marketing efforts. We also use the CRM to manage the projects, our active projects, and to track data on completed projects, like overall profitability. Put in the amount we build, what we estimate it would take us to build it out, how much time we actually spent on initial development and changes. Come up with the effective hourly rate, just so we could track how well our estimates are doing. Then on the design side, my team, we use Sketch exclusively, which works out really well. My content strategist uses it for the sitemaps and wireframes, then when we get to the design stage, the designer uses those same files and converts the wireframes into finalized designs, and then I take the finalized designs and turn them into a website. We save quite a bit of time by using the same tool throughout the entire process. We used to use Sketch for wire frames and then rebuild everything in Photoshop, but switching to Sketch has really helped out. Then finally, from a code perspective, I have a base child theme that I’ve developed. It’s very similar to the starter theme from StudioPress, but it just has some of my own style and code tweaks that I like in there. Then I have my code snippets where I keep useful bits and some plugins that I’ve developed. I try my best to, when I build something, build it once really well, and then put it somewhere where I know so that I can access it later. Brian Gardner: That speaks back to the efficiency thing, to have your own starter theme. Because when I start with stuff I pull something down, do all the Brian-isms in it, which takes anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes to knock things out and do things and rearrange things a different way. At some point, I don’t even have my own starter theme, believe it or not, at this point, because we iterate so much through StudioPress, and things get tested and added and whatever, and I’m like, okay, usually I just grab the latest theme that we’ve done, because I know that it’s probably the most currently coded well and tested, and go from there. Lauren Mancke: You start it with the one that I made. I made a starter theme for us to use. Brian Gardner: Like I said, I don’t have my own starter theme. But yes, I did I’m working on two themes right now. One is a free theme that I’ll probably be releasing within the next week or so called 27 Pro, and that was based off of the Genesis sample’s child theme. Then the other one, which will be on StudioPress for sale, and I haven’t named it yet because I’m pondering that, but that one was based off of the base theme that you have developed internally for us in house. The Importance of Contracts Brian Gardner: Bill, you talked a little bit about the data there in your last segment, and you also did another interview with Matt Medeiros over at Matt Report. This was a little bit more on the technical side of business and being a freelancer, talking about systems and data and contracts and stuff like that. Let’s talk about contracts, because you mentioned in the interview that you live and die by them. I thought I would ask you to speak to that, because I think a lot of people get themselves into trouble and become inefficient because contracts aren’t clear and things like that. Is there anything that you want to elaborate on what you mean by that, and why that’s so important? Bill Erickson: Yeah, a good contract is incredibly important. The goal is it lays out what each party is expected to do. You should have a lawyer look it over because it is a legal document, but I also highly recommend you make it not overly complex, because your client needs to be able to read and understand it. It really should be a distillation of all your communication expectations. When there are questions throughout the project you’ll both refer to that document. Refer back to all the phone calls, and your notes, and the emails, take all that information that’s been provided, and come up with a single document that describes exactly what you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it, how much you’re going to charge, and then have the client agree to it. That’s basically what the contract is. The key sections that I include are the scope of work, which is where I say what it is I’m going to do, payment schedule, timeline, licensing of code. I like to be able to reuse my code, and so I make sure I note it that I’m never going to sell their site in whole to someone else, but unique pieces of functionality that I might develop I might reuse. The governing law, which is a legal thing, so that you could say, If we do get in a legal fight, this is where we’re going to do it. And then, any other aspects that you think are important to clarify. I include notes about migrations and phone calls and acceptable file types for designs, because those have all been areas of issues and past projects and I don’t want to repeat them. That’s why I use a contract. I use it as a way to guide the client through what we’re going to do, what he’s responsible for, what I’m responsible for, what we’re building together, so that throughout this three-month process or however long it is, we can all go back to that document and know what we’re talking about. Brian Gardner: Do you have any examples of, authenticity moment here, of an instance or a circumstance, one of the reasons why it became so important to you? Bill Erickson: Yeah, that’s the key of what the scope of work is. A lot of times I’ll get a design, I’ll provide a quote on it. Let’s say someone emails you a PSD file and you’re like, “Yeah, I think it’ll take me X many hours to build it, I’ll charge you $3,000 for this.” Then you’re like, Great, and so you start building it, and then when you send the site for review, the client comes back and was like, “Well, this isn’t working at all as I expected, because I thought this was going to do this, and that’s going to do that.” You might have seen the picture, but you didn’t really fully understand the functionality, or both of your understandings were different. The scope of work really just describes every key piece of functionality in the site, so then when a client comes back and says, “This is missing,” or, “This isn’t working right,” we look at that document and say, “Yeah, it doesn’t match what we describe here? Yes? Then it’s done right. If not, then let’s fix it.” That’s the most common area, is just not describing the functionality as well. The design is usually not a question. We’re both looking at the same designs, and if they don’t look the same then there’s something wrong. But functionality-wise, that’s a key area of issues. Then also just little things, like the acceptable file type. I don’t like working with Illustrator. I just don’t enjoy it at all. So when I get Someone who ll send me JPEG files of a design and I’m like, “Oh, it looks great,” and then I quote on it, and then they send me the final assets as Illustrator files, and I’m like, “Oh, this is going to take me so much longer.” Stuff like that. Specifying what you need. I’ve gotten design files in PowerPoint before, which is not an acceptable format for me. So yeah, it s stuff like that. It’s just, every time you finish a product, do a quick post-mortem of it, see how things went well, what didn’t go well, what could you have done to prevent it, and a lot of that is stuff that should’ve been communicated earlier on, like what is the migration process? How are you going to deal with, it takes four months to build the site, and our content is now out of date because the live site’s been updated, what’s going to happen? You should clarify these things ahead of time. Lauren Mancke: I think from my personal experience, any time a project doesn’t go smoothly it comes down to communication, like you said. It’s usually related to expectations, either from you as the developer expecting the client to do certain things, or the client expecting you to do certain things. Having that on the forefront of the project of communication, and defining the project’s scope before you begin, is really, really key. Bill Erickson: Yeah, I completely agree. Basically, I like contracts because it’s a communication tool. It forces you to verbalize all the things you’re assuming and the client’s assuming. Bill s Favorite Types of Projects Lauren Mancke: I also know from personal experience that you probably have too much work coming in, and so with that I know you have the luxury of being selective in choosing clients that you think would be enjoyable, or you can wait on larger projects like you’ve discussed that might have a bigger budget. What are some of your favorite clients, and what are some of the favorite types of projects you like to work on? Bill Erickson: My favorite projects are the ones where the clients trust our expertise. We have this whole process that works really well, and you’re hiring a great developer, a great designer. Trust them to do their work. Don’t redesign it. My designer will give you a great initial mockup, and then you go through and change up the design in a ton of different ways, which affects the usability, especially on mobile. The ones where they really just sit back and say, “I’m hiring the experts, I trust what you’re doing here, I’ll give you all the information, but let’s see where you can take it.” Those always come out the best. Some examples of that, The Kerouac Project. It’s a nonprofit for writers. It’s basically a place where writers can go for a few months and hone their craft. They gave us, basically, freedom to do what we thought would be best, and we came up with a beautiful design on that one that really emphasizes what they do. It’s like a design based around typography. Another one is Down Home Ranch. It’s a working ranch for Down syndrome people in the Austin area. That’s another one where we had a lot of fun with, and we were really able to capture the essence of the ranch, and provide them a beautiful design that’s really easy to use. Building a Work/Life Balance that Works for You Brian Gardner: You and I met six years ago, as we talked about, and a lot has happened since you and I met. You married Tara, a lovely person who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. You guys have since then had a baby. What impact have both of these milestones had, for better or worse, on your freelance business? Because when you started out it was just you. Like you said, even a long time ago, it was just you in college, and you had little responsibilities and didn’t require a lot of money and stuff like that. As your career has progressed, and I’m not going to say complicated because that’s completely wrong word, you’ve enlarged the scope of your responsibilities by getting married and having kids. How does that affect things now? Because I’m sure it’s different, your workflow and your responsibilities and the way you do things now, is different than it was maybe five years ago. Bill Erickson: Tara and I actually met just months after I started freelancing, so she’s been with me from the very start all the way to where we are here. Yeah, we started with poor college kids who were just having fun and making by, and now we work our own, and we have a family, and we have a house and a baby, and we have a lot of fun. Earlier we were talking about how … different ways to scale your businesses, and I said a focus on efficiency. That’s one way to grow your business, but you can also use it to maintain a certain level of income and work less. That’s one of the things that I’ve found. As my family’s grown I value my time a lot more, and so I focus on work life balance. I’ve found over the past few years, the amount of time I spend working goes down bit by bit, so I’m working a lot less now than I was a few years ago, because I’m able to spend more time with my family. I have to value my time in that way so I raise my rates, because my time is if I’m going to spend this time away from my family I’d better be getting compensated for it. On the negative side, I actually had to move my home office. I was downstairs, and now we have a baby running around, and she’d run, bang on the door yelling “Da-da,” wanting to play, so now I’m upstairs in a small guest room so that they have free range downstairs. Brian Gardner: Hey Lauren, do you know anything about that? Kids running around? With two buns in the oven and one running around already, your life’s about to get … You may need a separate building. Lauren Mancke: I have a plan for that. At our old house we built this really cool workshop in the back yard. It’s got skylights, it’s got everything. I want to bring it over to his house, because we’re renting that house out. I want to bring it over to this house and use it as my office, so I will be in a separate building. But it’s still here, so I can come back if needed. But yes, it is very difficult to focus with little people that don’t understand that the door means that you’re working. Brian Gardner: A great example of that kind of a space is Jason Schuller, a good friend of ours from back in the day. He ran Press75 and sold that, and he’s still doing some stuff online, but he built and refurbished his office on top of his garage. He does have his sort of own space. Back to the work life balance thing, if there’s anybody who I’m friends with online that I’ve seen so intentional about, not necessarily working more, but charging more to have more time for family, it’s Jason, because he’s put so much emphasis on his daughter. Every time I see an Instagram shot, it’s him, they’re there on a trail, or on a beach. Bill, you also spoke to that work life balancing, because I think it’s intuitive to want to just work more to make more money, instead of working more to then actually get to, “All I need is X amount,” and then start working back, and it s freeing up more time to have balance. Because as we know, we can work 24 hours a day if we want online, and sometimes we do, but also, to be respectful enough of your own family and the commitments you have to say, “I don’t need to make more money, I just need to make this money.” Then to become more efficient and charge more and whatnot, so that you can then spend more time with your family, is so refreshing to hear. Bill Erickson: That’s basically my approach. I don t work I enjoy what I do, but the reason I work is so that I can provide for my family and spend time with my family. The more I can make, the less I have to work, and then I can enjoy the fruits of my labor more. Advice for Aspiring Freelancers Lauren Mancke: Okay, so last but not least, what advice can you give a person who’s got some training and experience in development, and they’re trying to branch out as a freelancer? Any pro tips that you think they should hear before we go? Bill Erickson: Network with other freelancers, especially those that compliment your services. As a developer you’re always looking for good designers and copywriters, and on the reverse it’s the same, so just get out there and know people who you might partner with on projects, and who might recommend you. If you’re a developer, contribute to open source projects. When I’m looking for Genesis developers to recommend, I look to those who contribute to Genesis who have written patches or extensions to my personal Genesis plugins, or who’re writing their own Genesis plugins. I like to see their code, but I also like to see how they interact with other developers and users reporting issues. That gives you a little insight on their communication abilities in addition to their coding abilities. Brian Gardner: That’s good stuff, good stuff Bill. Normally we do a little call to action here at the end, and because there’s no PSD to Genesis for me to pitch for you, I’m just going to tell anybody who’s listening, if you’re looking to redesign your website, or start a website, or do something of the sort, we have all of Bill’s links, all the things that you would need to access and contact Bill, down in the show notes. BillErickson.net is his domain name. Bill comes highly recommended by us, all of us here at StudioPress. It’s been a pleasure working with him over the years. If you need anything, Bill is there and he’s the right guy, and if he’s not, he’ll set you up with the right person as well. I just want to thank you, Bill, for being on the show, taking the time out. I know, as we talked about, you’re busy, but I also know that this is your way of giving back, as well as marketing yourself a little bit, and that’s why we’re having you on the show. Hopefully, we can send you some business through this episode. For those listening, if you liked what you heard on today’s show, you can find more episodes of StudioPress FM over at, you guessed it, StudioPress.FM. You can also help us hit the main stage by subscribing to the show on iTunes. It’s a great way to never ever miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next week.
This episode is sponsored by Sitelock Yes folks, she's back. Holy moly though... a lot has changed with Carrie since she was on the show last (she was episode 7! One of my first guests and I was/am super appreciative of that). Fast forward a few years and knew I needed to have Carrie back on. Her business has exploded (my words) since we spoke last. She's created more products, creates Genesis tutorials for Lynda.com (how awesome is that?), runs the OfficeHours.FM podcast and spent some time working with Crowd Favorite. Oh... and she has added speaker to her list of accomplishments (I haven't had the pleasure of seeing/hearing her speak but I can only imagine it would be awesome). We talked about the disconnect that happens when you want to shift from freelancing to something else. Carrie had some great insight as to why this happens (which tends not to be for one reason only) and of course I had to get a little esoteric with her (I don't know what my obsession with that word is lately). This conversation went in a whole bunch of different directions with this conversation... and let me just tell you... you will be laughing. Carrie is not only uber smart, but she's pretty damn funny (I was laughing throughout the interview and again when writing the show notes). Questions I Asked Carrie Since we last spoke you had gone over to Crowd Favorite and are back working for yourself again. I have a couple questions regarding that shift for you. First, what brought about the decision to work for Crowd Favorite and then what made you decide to go back to working for yourself? When I was on your show last, we talked about changing directions and shifting gears with business. Obviously WordPress isn't going anywhere... where do you see opportunities for people in this space? What do you fee are some challenges with running a profitable business in the WP space? Where do you think the disconnect happens for people who are freelancing and decide they are DONE? Since you've been online for a while, how do you think the landscape has changed and is changing? Where do you want to take your business? Anything you'd go back and tell yourself, say 5 years ago if you wanted to dispel a little wisdom? What You're Going to Learn Where the landscape is headed for opportunities in WordPress How to pick your own space within WordPress How funny Carrie is (yes, I thought that was worth adding here) Carrie's thoughts on marketing and where she can step it up How Carrie's podcast, OfficeHours.FM has helped her business The struggle of keeping sponsorship going with a podcast To say I adore Carrie would be an understatement. I'm sure you can tell by listening to this show that it was a ton of fun and Carrie is a wealth of knowledge. Where to Connect with Carrie Website | Podcast | Twitter
On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Carrie Dils. Carrie has been around the Genesis community for a number of years. She s a WordPress developer, consultant, speaker, and teacher. She loves sharing what she s learned with others to help them be more successful in their business. She hosts a weekly WordPress podcast at OfficeHours.fm and is a course instructor for Lynda.com. In this 29-minute episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Carrie Dils discuss: What open-source means How open-source projects can be attractive to developers The pros and cons of open-source Using helpfulness to build authority The benefits of an open-source ecosystem The expansion of the Office Hours podcast Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Follow Carrie on Twitter Visit CarrieDils.com The Office Hours Podcast Carrie on Lynda.com The Utility Pro Theme The Genesis Facebook Group The Transcript Why Open-Source-Based Communities Are So Powerful Jerod Morris: Hey, Jerod Morris here. If you know anything about Rainmaker Digital and Copyblogger, you may know that we produce incredible live events. Well, some would say that we produce incredible live events as an excuse to throw great parties, but that’s another story. We’ve got another one coming up this October in Denver. It’s called Digital Commerce Summit, and it is entirely focused on giving you the smartest ways to create and sell digital products and services. You can find out more at Rainmaker.FM/Summit. We’ll be talking about Digital Commerce Summit in more detail as it gets closer, but for now, I’d like to let a few attendees from our past events speak for us. Attendee 1: For me, it’s just hearing from the experts. This is my first industry event, so it’s awesome to learn new stuff and also get confirmation that we’re not doing it completely wrong where I work. Attendee 2: The best part of the conference for me is being able to mingle with people and realize that you have connections with everyone here. It feels like LinkedIn Live. I also love the parties after each day, being able to talk to the speakers, talk to other people who are here for the first time, people who have been here before. Attendee 3: I think the best part of the conference for me is understanding how I can service my customers a little more easily. Seeing all the different facets and components of various enterprises then helps me pick the best tools. Jerod Morris: Hey, we agree — one of the biggest reasons we host a conference every year is so that we can learn how to service our customers, people like you, more easily. Here are just a few more words from folks who have come to our past live events. Attendee 4: It’s really fun. I think it’s a great mix of beginner information and advanced information. I’m really learning a lot and having a lot of fun. Attendee 5: The conference is great, especially because it’s a single-track conference where you don’t get distracted by, “Which session should I go to?” and, “Am I missing something?” Attendee 6: The training and everything, the speakers have been awesome, but I think the coolest aspect has been connecting with both people who are putting it on and then other attendees. Jerod Morris: That’s it for now. There’s a lot more to come on Digital Commerce Summit, and I really hope to see you there in October. Again, to get all the details and the very best deal on tickets, head over to Rainmaker.FM/Summit. Voiceover: StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, Brian and I are joined by Carrie Dils to discuss why an open-source-based community is so powerful. Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host Brian Gardner, and I’m joined, as usual, with the Vice President of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke. We are very excited about today’s show because we are continuing the series where we talk to members of the Genesis community. Today, we’re joined by Carrie Dils. Carrie has been around the genesis community for a number of years. She’s a WordPress developer, a consultant, a speaker, a teacher, among many other things. She loves sharing what she’s learned with others, and she wants to help them be more successful in their business. She hosts a weekly WordPress podcast called OfficeHours.fm and is a course instructor over at Lynda.com. Carrie, it’s a huge pleasure to have you on StudioPress FM. Welcome to the show. Carrie Dils: Hey, Brian and Lauren. It’s so great to be here. Brian Gardner: Now this is full circle for us both as we’ve both been individually guests on your show, and now we get to come back to the point where you are a guest on our show. Carrie Dils: Yeah, and just to be clear, there’s no money swapping hands there for the podcast swapping. Brian Gardner: This is like a weird version of linking back and forth, reciprocal linking, right? Carrie Dils: I’ll link to you if you link to me. Brian Gardner: I’ll have you on my show if you’ll have me on your show, that kind of thing. All right, let’s get this going. Carrie Dils: Let’s do it. Brian Gardner: Carrie, you’ve been developing websites for many years, almost 20 to be exact. We won’t ask how old you are, but you built your first site back in 1997. Some of our listeners may not have even been born then. That’s funny, but give us the low down on your career path — how you became a developer, when WordPress came into the picture, and also what got you involved with Genesis. How Open-Source Projects Can Be Attractive to Developers Carrie Dils: Just to be clear, I was a toddler when I started developing websites. That’s how I started in 1997 and still have this great youth about me. I started working with websites back when it was plain old basic HTML days, working with FrontPage and other cringe-worthy tools at that time. My career has taken many winding roads, but five years ago, I discovered WordPress and was in love with it and the power of what it could do right out of the box, started tinkering with the code base, and got into starting to customizing themes. As I was getting into the theme space, I tried out a bunch of different themes and eventually stumbled on Genesis. What I liked about Genesis, for some reason it clicked. It clicked to me the way that it’s built around action hooks and filters. I felt at home with that and started to dig in there. I think that was four, five years ago. Feels like forever. Lauren Mancke: I also built my first website 20 years ago. I was in middle school, so toddler is very impressive to me. Brian Gardner: Now you guys are making me feel old because, 20 years ago, I was out of high school, out of college, and a grown adult so let’s move on. Lauren Mancke: Anyone who’s listened to your podcast knows you are from Texas, and you’re a fan of craft beer. You actually picked a pretty good one out when I was down in Texas last. Another little fact about you is that you worked at Starbucks as a barista. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that experience? Carrie Dils: Yeah. First of all, when I found out that Brian Gardner loves Starbucks as much as he did, I immediately started to bribe him with coffee. I had this wild hair in my mid-20s. I thought, “I want to open up a coffee shop,” but I didn’t know a thing about business or running, specifically, a café for that matter. So I decided to go learn on somebody else’s dime. That somebody was Starbucks. I was with them almost nine years in various capacities. At the end of that career, I’ve decided that under no circumstances do I want to own a coffee shop. Brian Gardner: Now the beauty of being an online entrepreneur is that a) you can work in your underwear and b) work whenever you want. As I know, I worked in a convenience store, retail really is the pits if you’re not overly passionate or making a ton of money from it because then you’re working for someone else, the holidays, weekends and nights, and things like that. I’m sure with you at Starbucks that probably was the same way. Carrie Dils: Oh yeah. No pun intended, but the grind of it was tough. My weekends happened on a Tuesday and a Wednesday. The hours were odd. Sometimes I would be there at five in the morning, and other times I wouldn’t be leaving until close to midnight. It’s just a weird … it’s for young people. I’m too old for it now. Brian Gardner: Its for people who were not 20 in 1997. Carrie Dils: Just to come clean, I’m in the plus-40 crowd now. I lied about the toddler thing. Brian Gardner: Lauren’s the one drinking Similac these days, right? All right, back to nerd talk. WordPress open source, Genesis open source — coincidence? Or are you someone who truly believes in the open-source community? In other words, did you choose these platforms which happen to be open source, or did you choose them because they are open source? Carrie Dils: That did not even enter my thought process. I can’t say when I started that I fully even understood what open-source software meant, so it turns out that it’s a happy coincidence. Having now worked in an open-source community, there’s so many things that I love about it. Not just the community of people, but the actual process of developing open-source software, it’s cool. Of course, Genesis, too, you guys wisely or unwisely gave me access to the repo, and I’ve gotten to contribute a couple lines of code to the Genesis project. It’s fun. It’s fun to have your name on something bigger than yourself, and I think open-source software lets you do that. Lauren Mancke: Speaking of WordPress and open source, there seems to be a lot of drama involved when it comes to the word ‘open source’ because it could be the interpretation of what it actually means, but it seems like there are a lot of people who point fingers of other people misusing it. Would you agree or disagree with that sort of thing? Carrie Dils: I try to steer clear of all DramaPress, as WordPress drama is lovingly called. I think there is a misunderstanding of what open source means and maybe what the ‘rights,’ big ol’ air quotes there, are of people being able to contribute to a project. I think the misunderstanding there is that, yes, while anyone can contribute, it’s not a free for all. There’s process. There are ultimately decision makers deciding what goes into a code base and what doesn’t. I think there’s disagreement there about whether the decision makers are either the right decision makers or making the right decisions. That’s the drama I just try to steer clear of. What Open-Source Means Brian Gardner: I’m going to jump ahead to a question I have because I realize there’s a good chance some of our listeners don’t know what open source actually is. I don’t want to assume that they do, so I’m going to actually read the definition from the website. “Open-source software is software that can be freely used, changed, and shared in modified or unmodified form by anyone. Open-source software is made by many people and distributed under licenses that comply with the open-source definition.” Basically, you can inherit the code base of any project and do what you want with it — and this is the big thing — as long as you also then release whatever derivative you do or come up with, with the same license. Basically, it’s a kumbaya-ish feel where opportunists have a tendency to come in, and this is where the drama starts, to try to selfishly monetize and then close off pieces and parts of their business. The phrase that we use is the ‘spirit of the GPL,’ which is the General Public License. That’s more or less open source and what WordPress is released under. You have a good thing. You have someone with some bad motives come in. Then all of a sudden drama starts. The hope is that everyone really freely … it’s an open community. They help each other. They take code from somebody. Then they better it, or they use it to build something else. Both WordPress and Genesis work within that ecosystem. There’s clearly some perceived downsides in an open-source community, but at the core of it all are some values that we all share, as I just mentioned. WordPress has grown tremendously, as has StudioPress and our Genesis community. Do you think the growth of all of that, as a whole, would be less if the software that we’re working with was proprietary? The Benefits of an Open-Source Ecosystem Carrie Dils: I think so. I don’t have any solid data to actually back that up, but my gut is that because of that spirit you mentioned it, kind of that helpful spirit of, “Hey even if you’re my competitor, let me show you my code and how I fixed this problem.” That pushes the software forward more quickly than if that was not the case. Again, just conjecture, but I think definitely the fact that it’s open source has made it as popular as it is. Brian Gardner: What was that noise? Carrie Dils: That was my dog shaking. Lauren Mancke: That’s a big dog. Brian Gardner: No kidding. That was an earthquake. Carrie Dils: Actually, you mentioned I was in Texas. I have a couple of horses in the house. Brian Gardner: Horses, armadillos, rattlesnakes. Genesis, the community that we’ve built, for sure has grown, at least in my opinion, because of the fact that it’s open source, and we’ve basically given the license or the ability of people to build off of that in any way that they want — whether that’s taking code and teaching and training around that or whether it’s taking our themes and developing other themes as derivative works of our themes. There’s been, as you know, with your Utility Pro Theme, a lot of work that has gone into it from our end, but the community has given back so much. I just got 20 emails overnight from Gary Jones, committing to the core project of Genesis. The good thing is, when it is working the way it should, I realize Gary has incentive to help build Genesis the framework. He has a business built around that, and if he can contribute code back to the main project, that helps benefit him and helps expedite and speed up processes by which he uses our work to then make money off of it by doing free-lance projects and so on. I’m totally cool with that. It’s win-win. He helps us with his work and his code, as you have, Carrie. Then you get the benefit of that. Bill Erickson and Jared Atchison, two other guys I know that have come to us and said, “Hey, happy to help because this will help me and my freelance business.” Carrie Dils: That’s where the beauty of it comes in. People are giving and taking, and we’re all benefiting from it. You mentioned even sharing code with competitors. We call that ‘co-opetition,’ where we’re going up against each other, but also helping. The hope is that 1+1 really becomes three. A lot of times your competitors are the ones who get too busy and then have to refer work even to you then because they just can’t take it all. It’s really a great system when it’s working properly. Carrie Dils: Yeah, it’s an interesting ecosystem. You’re so right, that co-opetition term is an interesting one, one I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about and won’t ramble on here on your show. But I think there is certainly a ‘you get back what you give,’ and even if you’re giving with some ulterior motive. Ulterior motive doesn’t have to be negative. It could be somewhat self-serving, but you’re still contributing and giving and doing that. One of the things that folks that are new to WordPress, or even new specifically to Genesis, I always encourage them to dive in, start getting involved in the community. The best way to do that is through forums, just answering questions. Even if you’ve been around WordPress one week, then you know more than somebody who’s only been around it one day. You have the knowledge to start contributing back by just helping somebody else. Lauren Mancke: We talk a lot about all the good things of the Genesis community, the WordPress community. That’s only natural for this show to do that. But what are some things that you’d like to see differently in the Genesis community? The Pros and Cons of Open-Source Carrie Dils: This isn’t going to be specific to Genesis, but I see it a lot in Genesis because that’s one of the communities I’m more heavily involved in, but there’s this disparity between … let me just get down to the point. I hope that I’m not going to offend anyone. No names mentioned, but I had a support request come through — and this is not a one-time deal, it’s happened multiple times — where someone is being paid as a web developer or a web designer to deliver a website for a client, and what they’re asking for in support forums is for the work to be done for them. I realize I’m painting in broad strokes. That’s not everyone. What I would love to see is that, if people are going to take this on professionally, that they actually are professional about it and take the time, invest the time to learn the skills to do that. I think that type of individual can devalue what a lot of people are doing legitimately and well, if that makes sense. Brian Gardner: I know you’re not referring specifically to the people who really just don’t know how to do something and are really asking for help on how to accomplish a task. Rather, you’re addressing more the people who I guess ‘lazy’ would be the right word. “Oh, will you just do all this work for me, so I don’t have to do it for my client?” That’s one of the downsides, then, of this open-source community — and this gets into that dark side — is that there’s a tendency for certain behaviors or patterns for people to come in and, to some degree, can be toxic. There’s an expectation that, “All of a sudden I’m going to start mooching off of and expecting … ” I think of the TV show Survivor. We’re huge fans of survivor. Once in a while, you get somebody who comes in there, and he starts eating more rice than he should. He’s drinking more water than he should, and he’s not playing fair. He’s sort of disrupting that community by being self-serving and selfish. The open-source community is more of a servant-first mentality, and everything in life, not everything is perfect. And I’ve seen it, and I try to address it and encourage behaviors to change or otherwise. A lot of times the community corrects itself, which is good. I can see what you’re saying, that there are people who have a tendency to come in and take more than they give. I guess we all go through seasons that we have to, but the hope is, at some point, that person says, “I’ve taken enough. I’ve built a business around this with the help of a lot of other people. Now it’s my turn to give back.” Carrie Dils: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been that person asking questions in support forums when I was first starting out — so certainly not at all. To your point, being clear about I’m not talking about people who genuinely don’t know and want to understand. It’s, I guess, maybe a difference in attitude. I wish I could attribute this quote to the right person because I just heard it, and I don’t remember who said it, but in regards to seeking help in an open-source community. It was, “For every question you ask, answer another question” — that idea of balance and being reciprocal with your knowledge. Rather than just showing up and taking, to also give back. People that are new to WordPress or new to open source, I don’t think they maybe even know that conceptually that’s a thing they ought to be doing. Maybe we have to teach other people how to be good stewards of open-source relationships. Giving Back to the WordPress Community Brian Gardner: We speak about this in terms of Genesis, but also, to some small degree, I do feel a bit of conviction myself just with StudioPress and our company as a whole that we’ve benefited so much from the creation of WordPress, what Matt did back in the day, and all of that. I feel like over the last few years we’ve been so busy and doing our thing that we’ve probably taken a little bit more than we’ve given. So we’ve tried to do our best. Maybe it’s come out in just by providing opportunities for people like you and others in the community, just a way to monetize and build a business around it. I know that, as we move forward, there’s a few things we’re doing within our company to help give back to the big project of WordPress. One of those things is we’re going to take some of Nathan’s time — Nathan Rice, our lead developer — and earmark some of his time throughout the week to give back to WordPress, the big project, as a way to pay that back. There’s a few other things. I’ve actually tried to spend a little more time on the support forums at WordPress just to help people out because I forget. It’s easy to get complacent, on cruise control, and say, “Thanks, WordPress, for helping us kick start our business,” and then to go back and remember that there’s so many people who are new and just need help. Their questions aren’t dumb and things like that. Moving forward, I’m trying to go out of my way to help bring back a communal sense that I felt years ago that I’ve lost over the last couple of years. Carrie Dils: That’s awesome. That’s really exciting to hear about Nathan. Brian Gardner: So going along with what we just talked about, by far, in my opinion, the best thing about the Genesis community is the Genesis community. There are so many folks out there willing to lend a hand, whether it be, like you said, in the forums, or the Genesis Facebook Group, even the Twitter hashtag. That’s a great place for people to ask questions and to give back, like we talked about. No question here really. I just wanted to thank you as a member of that community. I’ve seen you on a number of occasions go out of your way to help people. You write tutorials, and you do all of this stuff for people. I know a lot of people have helped you along the way, too. No question here, really — just a way of saying thank you for your participation and helping build our ecosystem. I know that you have your own incentives for that. You’re building a business, which is great, and I hope that that continues to grow and to flourish. Just wanted to say thank you for what you’ve done. Carrie Dils: I appreciate that. Right back at you. You guys have had an incredible way of supporting the developers and people in the Genesis community that want to build businesses around it. It’s kind of great. StudioPress can make money off of WordPress, and StudioPress customers can make money off of StudioPress. It’s a giant circle of life. Brian Gardner: Yes, we love it. Lauren Mancke: So speaking of making money off of a wonderful community, is there a strategy involved for how being helpful and having the gift of teaching can affect your business? Using Helpfulness to Build Authority Carrie Dils: Absolutely! It wasn’t something I started out with in mind. Really, giving back to the community was something I started doing just as a thanks for all the community had given me. As I started to blog tutorials and that sort of thing and grow an audience that needed help with WordPress or Genesis, I saw opportunity there. Definitely, Brian, I can’t remember the exact phrase you used, but yes, there is an incentive for me to continue giving back to the community. I guess it comes back to me in indirect ways, but certainly helps to build authority and teaching courses. Helping other people just lends back to the credibility and my personal brand. As always, even now in my 40s, I’m not sure what my personal brand is, but I know that it’s a good thing for it. Brian Gardner: We talked about your podcast, OfficeHours.fm. A lot of people may not know this — it started out as a Genesis podcast, one that I was on a number of times, as was Lauren. Midway through, you switched to just Office Hours. In other words, you ditched the Genesis name, which I am completely okay with. In fact, I don’t know if I ever told you this, but I applauded that move. I realized that, to some degree, Genesis within the context of the whole Internet is a very small piece of the pie. WordPress, in and of itself, is a bigger piece of the pie, and there’s even more outside of that. So I commended you for that in my head. I think it’s a smart move. I completely understand that. Just talk to our audience a little bit about why you made that transition and how that’s been for you since then. The Expansion of the Office Hours Podcast Carrie Dils: First, thank you for that. I appreciate that. I started realizing that the topics that we were talking about, they could apply to broader WordPress principles. We’re talking about development tools, or hosting environments, or process and things that would apply to anyone working with WordPress. I was limiting my audience to people who thought we were just talking about Genesis all the time, so if someone wasn’t familiar with Genesis or wasn’t using Genesis, they were never ever going to tune into the show. By dropping the name Genesis and just going with OfficeHours.fm, I felt like that was my opportunity to stretch my legs a little bit and invite other people within the WordPress community on to share their knowledge. Even since that transition from Genesis to just plain Office Hours, the show has shifted. It’s still somewhat techy, but it’s not super techy. It’s really been more focused around the business of WordPress and those of who either provide services or products based around WordPress, what are some of the business skills and things that we can do to be more successful. That’s more the recent direction of the podcast, and that’s kind of a sweet spot for me. I’m going to go ramble again. Brian Gardner: Ramble away. Carrie Dils: As web developers or designers, we’re technicians, right? We like to get in code. We like to solve problems — whether we’re solving it with code or with a beautiful user interface. Those are the things that we’re good at, but actually running a business is not a skill that is inherent to most people. Unless you grew up as a kid working in a family business or unless, Brian, like you did, working in a convenient store, and just being around business, you don’t know that. You just get stuck. Here, you’re a technician and you want to be successful and make money doing web development and doing the thing you do, but if you don’t have the right business skills, then you kind of stagnant there. When I say my ‘sweet spot,’ I really enjoy business. That sounds nerdy, but I like the numbers. I like everything that goes along with the mechanics of running a business. To be able to take that knowledge and share it with people who are like me, other technical people like me, my hope is that they can be more successful in their business just by doing things a little smarter. Brian Gardner: When Lauren and I were heavily asked by those in our company to come up with StudioPress FM, one of the big concerns I had would’ve been the same thing you felt with that Genesis name, in that people would think we’re only going to talk about StudioPress stuff or Genesis stuff, try to sell our products, or whatever. This series is the first step in trying to go outside of just that perception. I didn’t want the same 30 people to be listening to our show, and I wanted to open it up to topics and things that, even though they pertain to Genesis and our ecosystem, can go well outside of that. For instance, we had Rebecca Gill talking about SEO, and that’s clearly not a Genesis thing. It’s not even necessarily a WordPress thing. It’s something that a general business owner, or someone who’s online trying to become an entrepreneur, that’s something that they can take away. The hope is, I’m sure this is the same case for you, when you shed that and go more ambiguous, you turn it from a ‘I’m just going to talk to my people’ to a potential lead generator, right? Getting people from the outside who don’t even know who you are, what products you build, or any of that. The hope is they’ll say, “Wow, I like what these people are doing or what Carrie’s saying,” and it’s an authority opportunity where you can teach somebody something they may not know, then bring them in. The podcast for you, now that you shed the name of Genesis, really, I think there’s a lot of opportunities, especially Office Hours. That’s a very broad term, and you could do all kinds of things with that. I look forward to seeing where you go. Carrie Dils: Thank you. Lauren Mancke: What does the future hold for Carrie Dils? What are some things that you’re working on, and what should we expect to see from you in the next year or two? What to Expect in the Future From Carrie Carrie Dils: Well, you mentioned Rebecca Gill and SEO. I’m not sure what all you guys talked about, but I’m actually partnering with her to do an SEO Bootcamp in early 2017 that I’m very excited about. I’ve always admired Rebecca, professionally and personally, and this is an opportunity to get to work with her and partner with her on something. Super excited about that. The podcast season two comes to an end with tomorrow’s show. Then I’m going to take a little break and revamp, redo some things under the hood, and then the launch season three of the podcast later this fall. I can’t tell you what all it is going to be, but it’s going to be awesome. Also, it’s on my bucket list in 2016 to write a book, so I don’t know. Brian Gardner: You’ve got three months to do that. Carrie Dils: I’ve got three months. I’ve been told that, that might be a little ambitious, but we’ll see. Lauren Mancke: You can do it. Brian Gardner: If you’re looking for something to do, in five or 10 minutes when we’re off this, you can go listen to the episode of StudioPress FM with Rebecca because it’s being published probably as we speak. And yes, we did promote the SEO Bootcamp conference on that, so hopefully that will, at the very least, bring a few people interested over there to you guys. Hopefully, that will work out. Carrie Dils: Thanks! Much appreciated. Where (and) When to Catch Carrie’s Show Brian Gardner: So everybody listening, are you looking for success through leveraging WordPress as both a tool and a platform? If so, we heavily encourage you to check out Office Hours, Carrie’s podcast, especially with season three coming up. You can tune in live every Thursday at 2 o’clock Eastern as she interviews a variety of folks within the WordPress ecosystem — from plugin developers to marketers, to business owners. For more information on that, visit OfficeHours.fm. And if you like what you heard on today’s show, StudioPress FM, you can of course find us there at StudioPress.FM. You can also help us hit the main stage by subscribing to this show in iTunes. It’s a great way to never ever miss an episode. Carrie, we want to thank you so much for being on the show. As we look forward to doing more episodes, we’d love to have you back to talk more specifically about some of things that you’re doing as a way to take that expertise you have and bring that to our audience. Carrie Dils: Thanks, guys. I always enjoy chatting with y’all.
On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Rebecca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing. She is a WordPress developer, an SEO consultant, and a general business consultant. She s an active member of the WordPress community, participating as a WordCamp speaker, podcast guest, and SEO educator. Her company, Web Savvy Marketing, was founded in 2009 and is a creative agency based in Southeastern Michigan. They work with clients across the globe who range from bloggers and small businesses to large enterprises and universities. The Web Savvy online store offers more than 20 professionally designed Genesis themes ideal for businesses, marketers, educational institutions, and bloggers. In this 39-minute episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Rebecca Gill discuss: The accidental entrepreneur Empowerment in training others A holistic approach to SEO How to avoid risky black hat tactics The 3 most important elements of SEO Long-term SEO strategies Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Follow Rebecca on Twitter RebeccaGill.com Web Savvy Marketing Web Savvy Marketing Themes SEO Consulting DIY SEO Courses SEO Bootcamp The Transcript A Beginner’s Guide to SEO that Works Jerod Morris: Hey, Jerod Morris here. If you know anything about Rainmaker Digital and Copyblogger, you may know that we produce incredible live events. Some would say that we produce incredible live events as an excuse to throw great parties, but that’s another story. We’ve got another one coming up this October in Denver. It’s called Digital Commerce Summit, and it is entirely focused on giving you the smartest ways to create and sell digital products and services. You can find out more at Rainmaker.FM/summit. That’s Rainmaker.FM/summit. We’ll be talking about Digital Commerce Summit in more detail as it gets closer, but for now, I’d like to let a few attendees from our past events speak for us. Attendee 1: For me, it s just hearing from the experts. This is my first industry event, so it s awesome to learn new stuff and also get confirmation that we’re not doing it completely wrong where I work. Attendee 2: The best part of the conference, for me, is the being able to mingle with people and realize that you have connections with everyone here. It feels like LinkedIn live. I also love the parties after each day, being able to talk to the speakers, talk to the people who are here for the first time, people who ve been here before. Attendee 3: I think the best part of the conference, for, me is understanding how I can service my customers a little more easily and seeing all the different facets and components of various enterprises then helps me pick the best tools. Jerod Morris: Hey, we agree. One of the biggest reasons we host the conference every year is so that we can learn how to service our customers — people like you — more easily. Here are just a few more words from folks who have come to our past live events. Attendee 4: It s really fun. I think it s a great mix of beginner information and advanced information. I m really learning a lot and having a lot of fun. Attendee 5: The conference is great, especially because it s a single-track conference where you don t get distracted by, Which sessions should I go to? Am I missing something?” Attendee 6: The training and everything — the speakers have been awesome — but I think the coolest aspect, for me, has been connecting with both people who are putting it on and then other attendees. Jerod Morris: That s it for now. There is a lot more to come on Digital Commerce Summit. I really hope to see you there in October. Again, to get all the details and the very best deal on tickets, head over to Rainmaker.FM/summit. That s Rainmaker.FM/summit. Voiceover: StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder, Brian Gardner, and VP of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke, share their expertise on web design, strategy and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On today s episode, we are talking search engine optimization with Rebeca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing. We ll cover this topic from all angles, so listen in. Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone, welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner. I m joined, as usual, with the VP of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke. We are very excited about the show because right now we are starting a new series where we are talking to members and experts, mind you, of the Genesis Community. Lauren, what do you think about that? Lauren Mancke: Very excited to have everyone on. Brian Gardner: We could probably go 30 or 40 episodes deep easily with people that I want to talk to. We ll break them up into little compartments. But it s going to definitely be fun for us. Today we’re joined by Rebecca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing. Rebecca is a WordPress developer, an SEO consultant, and a general business consultant as well. She s an active member of the WordPress community with a variety of participation as WordCamp speaker, podcast guest, and SEO educator. Her company, Web Savvy Marketing, was founded in 2009 and is a creative agency based in Southeastern Michigan. They work with clients across the globe who range from bloggers and small businesses to large enterprises and universities. The Web Savvy online store offers more than 20 professionally designed Genesis themes, ideal for businesses, marketers, educational institutions, and bloggers. Rebecca, it s our pleasure to welcome you to the show. How are you? Rebecca Gill: I m great. Thanks so much for having me here. Brian Gardner: Yeah, it s funny. When I sat down to think of the people who I wanted to have on the show there were a few names that instantly popped up, and yours was one of them. I was kind of hoping at some point, and maybe … I know down the road we have another series that I m going to talk to Chris Cree who worked with you very closely and just recently left. We ll be able to tackle both sides of your business where he also was involved. Let s kick this off. I ve known you for a number of years. You’ve been around the WordPress space for some time. Walk us through the early years of how you got started as an online entrepreneur and how you created Web Savvy? The Accidental Entrepreneur Rebecca Gill: I didn t set out to be an entrepreneur. I was at a small company and I was their VP of Marketing. I was with them for about 10 years in total. The company dynamic shifted and it was evident that I really needed to leave, but it was the heart of the recession and there were no jobs in the Detroit area. The situation in the company got so bad that I was so distraught and distracted from it I actually mixed up my medication, put myself on the ER for eight hours, and ended up on the couch for a week recovering. It was at that point my husband and I were like, You know what? It doesn t matter what s going on with the economy, you need to leave It just it was affecting our personal life more than we could tolerate, so I quit. I was going to go into SEO consulting and I started to do that. I actually had some initial success, but I quickly realized that the companies I was working with didn t have access to their websites. Everything was in HTML and nobody could actually go in and make implementations of my SEO recommendations. I went back to my experience with Joomla and WordPress and started to work on web development. That was just a means to be able to get the SEO out there that I needed to for the small businesses. I quickly fell in love with the WordPress community and dove in. We started creating custom themes and development, and then when Genesis came out we jumped on the Genesis bandwagon and it s been a great ride ever since. Brian Gardner: It s funny how many stories start with, “How I became an entrepreneur online more out of need than want.” Not many people have the luxury of saying, I just think I m going to wake up and one day I m going to start this. It s really, “I got fired,” or “I had to leave my job,” or, “My husband lost a job and so I had to basically figure out how to make money online.” It sounds like your story is somewhat that way. Sometimes it s also health-related and things like that. thank you for sharing that. It s encouraging to other people to hear how that type of thing gets started. Rebecca Gill: I always joke that I m the accidental entrepreneur. My husband jokes that I can usually slip and fall but I always end up smelling like roses at the end, and I think this is a good example of that. Lauren Mancke: Running a small business isn t always easy, what are some of the things that you struggle with? Rebecca Gill: I think, for me, my biggest struggle is a mental struggle, because I now have an agency and I hadn t planned in having an agency. I spend a lot of time on operations and worrying about payroll and receivables and things like that, checking on projects. That s all things that I don t like. I would rather be doing SEO consulting and training and marketing and sales, because that s really what makes me happy. I think if I were to say what is my struggle, that s the biggest struggle. That I don t get to focus on what I really want to focus on and where I know I m really good. I have to focus on these other things. That can be a mental challenge that you just have to overcome and push through daily. Brian Gardner: For me in StudioPress back in the day — I think at the core that all comes down to that struggle and how it affects us mentally. It’s sometimes related to our inabilities to let go off control. When we as independent people start something and do it all on our own, obviously it comes to a point where we need to scale and get bigger. With that comes the pain of doing things that we don t want to do. For me it was support — as much as I love working with people, it just got to a point where I couldn t work 85 hours a week. You have to entrust people — as you have, and have done successfully. Start to grow the company and entrust those responsibilities to other people so that you don t become a nut case. That s what I had to do. You know what I mean? Rebecca Gill: That s so true. Brian Gardner: Genesis — let s go right into this because you were one of the big, popular, most known Genesis agencies, along with Brian and Jennifer Bourn. Talk us through how Genesis came into your picture. Rebecca Gill: I actually tried the beta version of it. When it didn t have trial themes. I created a website that is still out there today, that is using that original version. That was me going in –that was still when it was me hacking themes and customizing myself, which I shouldn t be doing. I m not allowed to do that anymore. I had a familiarity with it, but then Chris Cree, who you mentioned earlier — when you came out with the real Genesis framework and the trial themes, he said, We need to start using this. He explained to me how we can have a base trial theme of the things that I like and we can use that as our box that we are going to play in. We started with it and I quickly found that it was just such a good path for us. Not only do you all produce really good code and a great framework for us to work within, it creates a box for my team where we have a set of best practices and standards. We’re all beating at the same drum. I think that from agency owner’s perspective that s really invaluable to me. Plus, I just know that my clients — somebody has got their back besides me. If I get hit by a train — or whatever reason Web Savvy goes away — I know they have you and they ve got the Genesis community that can pick right up where we left off. That makes me really happy. We made that decision early on, jointly with me and Chris. We ve never strayed from it and I ve never regretted it. Brian Gardner: That s music to our ears, right, Lauren? Lauren Mancke: Definitely. Rebecca Gill: I m a Genesis cheerleader, I can t help it. Brian Gardner: We like those. Empowerment in Training Others Lauren Mancke: Aside from the general services you offer. I heard you ve gotten recently into training. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Rebecca Gill: I ve actually been doing group training since 1995. First it was an operational training. My first job out of college I was an Operations Manager. Then, when I worked for the ERP Software Company, I was doing training for the user base. I d go onsite for five days and walk people through the setup of the system and talk about everything from bill of materials and manufacturing production lines through the general ledger and accounting. That s been in my blood. I haven t done it for years because I ve been so busy building up the agency, just with the daily to-dos. We ve got a really good project manager now who manages all of our custom developments. That s freed me up so that I could go back to training and start really using my SEO education and sharing that. The reason I ve been doing it is because, from an SEO standpoint, it s a lot of labor. There is only so much of me to go around and I only have so many hours in the week. I don t want to be working those 85 hours that Brian mentioned. I ve been starting to do more and more training — both in the course and then with the boot camp — so we can really spread that education and empower people. Let them have that education so they can have a long-term path. Honestly, I love it. It s like Chris creating the support forum, he loves that and I love training. You just empower people and you make them happy. The light bulb goes off and they are thrilled with that. Then you know that you ve given them a foundation that they’re taking forward with them. Brian Gardner: When I started StudioPress, training was definitely not something on my radar. Only because — like I said earlier — I was so busy trying to keep up with the creation, the ideas. This even was before Genesis, back in the days of Revolution. I was just creating the product and micro-training in the sense of writing tutorials and things like that. For me it never clicked, there was never that, Hey, you should do paid training. That s basically a way to scale your time because you can create something and then charge for it and then build that out. Not until StudioPress merged into Copyblogger did I really understand. Back then, Teaching Sells was our big training thing. I realized very quickly that there was a lot of opportunity, just in general, across the Internet space for training. You see places like Lynda.com and stuff like that now. It seems like everyone’s doing training. That s interesting. On your website, you have a dedicated section to SEO consulting. As you mentioned, you like to teach, you like to do SEO, and folks can hire you to do SEO consultant. In fact, I just recommended you within the Genesis Facebook group. Someone asked about SEO. They lost their SEO person. I don t know if they contacted you or not, hopefully they did. Let s talk about what got you interested in SEO. From a web standpoint, from a design and development it’s less appealing. It s that almost taboo word where people are too afraid to even mess with it because they’re not sure what it is or how to do it. It s easy to make something pretty and put it online, but as I ve always said, a well-designed website without traffic is a well-designed website without traffic. Talk to us about SEO and how that came into your life from an important standpoint, and just a little bit about the consulting that you do. Rebecca Gill: My background with SEO was at my prior job where I was the head of marketing. We didn t have a big marketing budget, and I taught myself SEO because I was in the marketing department. I competed against people like SAP, Microsoft, and Oracle — really large organizations that had teams of marketing people and teams of SEO people. I quickly learned that that team environment was very fragmented and they didn t have a good structure. If I could just learn and apply I could beat them and get on page one. I grew the sales that we brought in from the Internet — it became our lead source and the majority of our sales. We grew the company 400% in two years. When you are selling a $100,000 product, that s a lot, that s a huge shift. To me that was empowerment. I really fell in love with SEO then, because I realized how much control you have over things and how much good you can do when you just work hard and do the right thing in the right path. That really got me set. I had SEO on our website for a while but then I pulled it back because I didn t have time to do it. I was so busy with custom work that I didn t have time to work on the projects. Again, bringing Mary back on with project management — it’s freed some of my time up so that I can do consulting projects with people. Now we do a mix of both. From an SEO project standpoint, I will work through the project with you — keyword research, sitemapping, down to optimizing your content. We also do customized boot camps on-site for SEO, blogging, and social media. Now we ve got the courses that we re offering at diyseocourses.com, as well as the seobootcamp.com, which is our new in-person training in a group setting in Dallas. We ve evolved it, and it s really my effort of trying to help as many people as I can and teach them the right way to do things. I don t want to everything for everybody because I don t think that that s good for them long term, but I want to teach and I want to train. That s the heart of our SEO. Even when we’re doing a project with somebody, I m not going to just do everything for you. I m educating you along the way with best practices and the right way to do things, so when I m gone you can take that forward and continue on your path and have good success. Brian Gardner: That s like the whole “teach a man to fish and he eats forever” type of thing. The Facebook group — when someone says, I lost my SEO, if they’re not taught good SEO or at the very least, the fundamentals of what the person that hired them to do has done, then they feel completely lost. Like this person probably says, Oh my gosh, my person fell off the radar,” or they closed their business or whatever, “What will I do? The services that you offer — it s great that you teach them at least the basics. That way, if something would happen to you, God forbid, they don t feel completely in the dark. They can at least take that and try to apply it towards the stuff that they produce there in the future. Rebecca Gill: One of the questions that I ask people — it s an onboarding question when I first get an inquiry in about SEO — I always ask them, “Have you hired an SEO consultant in the past and what did they do for you?” You would be surprised at how many people have hired somebody and it s not just one, it s two or four or five at different stages through their business, but they have no idea what the SEO company did. They don t know what they were doing behind the scenes, if they were doing anything. Every time I hear that — and it s like 80% of the time I get that response — it makes me sick to my stomach. That s like the guy in Facebook. He may not even know what his SEO person was doing, if they were doing anything. It s tainted the SEO industry and the consultants. There’s a lot of really good SEO consultants, but there’s a lot of less aboveground people that are really doing high-quality work, telling their client what they are doing, and showing them what they are doing and educating along the way, which is the way it really should be. Lauren Mancke: That s true, that there’s a lot of stereotypes in the SEO world. You say on your website that you have a more holistic approach. What does that mean? A Holistic Approach to SEO Rebecca Gill: For us, I m not going to just do for you. We’re going to take you in the process from start to finish and you’re going to learn along the way. Whether I m doing a consulting project, whether you’re taking my course — which is 8 hours and, I think, 65 lessons — or whether you are doing our boot camp. Holistic, to me, is we first start with your target market, we define who that is and who you are selling to, and what are their pain points and what solution you offer. That kind of information. We look at your competitors. You do research. From that research, now you ve got some data that you can start to plan and start to strategize. Then as you work through that, now it s under education. Then you look at analysis to see what worked and what didn t work. You go back and you rinse and you repeat. That s about keyword research and sitemapping and investigating competitors, auditing your content in your existing site, down to writing the really good content that s going to be good for the user and optimizing it. Then, off page, link building and things like that. Unfortunately, a lot of old-school SEO consultants still focus on link building. That s their primary focus because they can control that themselves and they don t need the client involved. They can do it all on their own, so they say, That s what you’re paying me for. That s the wrong approach in today s world of Google and Bing. You have to have holistic. You have to have the user, the website visitor at the forefront of your objectives and goals to make sure that they’re happy. Because if they’re happy, that makes the search engines happy, and the search engines will reward you with more traffic. When I say holistic, it s a full circle from start to finish. With, again, education along the way, because I want people empowered. Brian Gardner: Before I get to my next question, I want to go back. You ve said these phrases a couple of times now, and I want our listeners to understand. You said, keyword research and sitemapping in particular. Let s do a quick definition of a what each of those are just to give them an idea, for those who don t know. Rebecca Gill: A lot of people, when you talk to them they will write a piece of content and throw it up in the web, which is great. I wrote the rant I had the other day about SEO, but before I actually posted that I did some keyword research to see what phrases would relate to that so I could utilize that within the post and optimize it. That s one form of keyword research, and that s the shortest version. The other version is really doing a full plan to say, “What is a phrase or multiple phrases that people might search to reach my site or my blog?” What are they searching for, whether it s their pain points or it s solutions or it s people — going through analysis. You start with a seed list. You generate your seed list. You come up with all of your potential possibilities that you think. Then you look at your competitors and you learn from them. You do things like you look at Google auto-suggest and related searches and you add that. Now you go to keyword tools to see what volumes and what other variations you can have. Then you look at that and you compare that to your existing site and what your future content may hold. You start mapping one keyword or phrase to a particular piece of content. That s the sitemapping part. That part is not a quick process. It takes weeks to do it if you are doing it right, because it s data, it s analysis, and it s research. That s the part everybody skips. They just go and they jump to content, and they may or may not have a keyword for the content. Or, worse yet — and I hear this from mid-market companies, which is a dagger through my heart — they say, We look at the website as a whole. Our website is optimized for X, Y and Z. But they never actually assign it to content. What the problem with that is, is when you’re doing that you’re asking the search engines to decide which piece of content is the best one for a given phrase. That s the wrong approach. Keep a simple form, don t make them think. Make it easy for the search engines to find the exact right page or post or product for a given phrase. There is no question if they know this piece of content on your website is the best piece of content for this phrase. That s the whole purpose of keyword research and sitemapping, is to do that. Once you get yourself into that process you ll never leave it, because you ll realize it just makes common sense. You’re doing what s right for the visitor as well as the search engines and it helps you win in the end. Brian Gardner: Not only does it make common sense, it s probably something that bears fruit, too. I think the way you explained SEO probably resembles to some degree the idea of — and this is a great time for us to talk about it because the Olympics are going on — it sounds like SEO … There is a lot of training in a lot of endurance in things like that where you have to do the right steps. You can t just hop off a couch and run. You have to eat well. You have to sleep well. You have to train well. To some degree, it sounds like you can cut corners in SEO but then you just won t run as far and things like that. Rebecca Gill: Correct, and it s short-lived. The one problem that I see all the time on people s website is you ask them and they say, My focus keyword is X, Y, and Z.” You say, Okay, tell me what piece of content on your website is reflective of that. They either give you 10 or they have no idea. That s the same problem with the search engines. They are not going to know either. If you do and it s short term — you’re trying to build a long-term plan for yourself, your visitors, and the search engines. The more research and planning you put into that and more due diligence at the front of the process, the more results you have and the longer your results are going to sustain. There are still people sitting on page one of Google for highly competitive phrases that I helped optimize eight years ago. That s because they did it the right way and they had the planning before the actual execution. Brian Gardner: House built on solid rock versus house built on sand? Rebecca Gill: Yes. It s hard to get people to do that because they want to rush ahead. They want to see that end fruit and they want to just plow ahead. It’s like, No, no, no. You’re pulling the reins back and not letting them do it. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got to lock them in a cage and say, No we’re not doing that. Lauren Mancke: I had a client one time ask us to call Google. They wanted us to call them and get them on the front page. Rebecca Gill: Isn t that funny? There is consultants that promise that. That say, I know Google, I know exactly what the algorithm is. That s BS, you don t. You don t know people at Google. Just because Matt Cutts may have tweeted you five years ago doesn t mean you know people. You surely don t know the algorithms. You may suspect elements of the algorithms and what factors are, and you may have learned something through trial-and-error, but you don t know precisely every single algorithm, and you’re supposed to because the search engines don t want you to. The 3 Most Important Elements of SEO Lauren Mancke: For people that are a little bit overwhelmed when it comes to SEO — they hear the phrase and they are just like, I don t even know where to begin. Can you break it down into the three most important elements of SEO? Rebecca Gill: My three most important would be keyword research, sitemapping, and then high-quality content. Granted, there is a lot that falls underneath each of those, but those are the buckets. I ve structured my online course to have that. You start with basics, then you go to keyword research, the next segment is sitemapping, the next segment is content, and then you have the gravy that is the offsite stuff. If you skip those three blocks you are going to never succeed. Because the offsite activity that people want to do is pointing to a bunch of garbage that s gobbledygook that the search engines can t understand. The offsite that you’re doing will never help unless you ve got that core foundation set. Brian Gardner: We talked about keyword research, and you also mentioned how you got your clients on page one of Google eight years ago. It reminds me back to eight years ago — remember the shoe money days and all of that stuff? I want to be very specific , keyword research is not the same thing as keyword stuffing, which is something that back in the day — people don t even know what that is anymore because it s so archaic in a sense. This was back when Google actually cared about the keywords that you would put into the post meta that would show up in the source heading. Google finally said, People are obviously stuffing keywords by trying to cram them in and make every other word ‘jewelry,’ ‘diamonds,’ and stuff like that, to try to whatever. Even back in the day — Rebecca and Lauren, you guys probably both remember — I think I even tried this at one point, where at the bottom of your page you would write a bunch of keywords and then change the font color to white so no one would see it. Google finally got smart enough to realize that that would — and they would then penalize you. There was actually a non-benefit to doing something like that. It reminds of all of the black hat tactics that would be used by either people who didn t know any better or people who were just following like sheep the people who said, Hey, this black hat stuff works. How to Avoid Risky Black Hat Tactics Brian Gardner: You, Rebecca, you’re stand up. You certainly prefer to keep your hat white. What are the points of establishing a I guess this goes along with the three most important elements of SEO that we just talked about. The encouragement to do it the right way. To keep your hat white, which is what s called white hat SEO, which basically means you are just doing it the right way. You are not trying to trick the system. I m assuming you are an advocate of that and you would encourage anyone who is trying to really invest in SEO to do that, right? Rebecca Gill: Yes. First, your point of the hidden keywords at the bottom and the meta keywords in the source code stuffed with just a bunch of words — I still encounter that every single week with prospects or clients. You called it old school. You know it s old school, I know it s old school, but people still do it today. There’s still that philosophy that that s what works, but it doesn t. If you break down white hat SEO to this: to be successful in search you have to make the search engines happy. Let s take Google, for example. What is their goal? Their goal is to make money. They are a for-profit company. They sell ads, they have other products, but that s their goal. The only way they’re going to do that is if they keep people happy. People come to the search engines, they search for something, they get good results that take them to a good website or blog that answers their question. If you veer off from that and you don t pay attention to the actual user and the visitor to your website and keeping them happy, you are not going to be successful with the search engines because you are not helping them be successful. That s white hat. It s focusing on your visitor. Writing content for the visitor. Making sure that it s fast, it got great performance, it s designed well so it s easier to read and the site flows. Keeping that visitor happy will make the search engines happy, because that visitor will come back to the search engines and use them again. White hat is focusing on that. That s your primary goal. When you start to look at any of the cheats — any time you start to want to manipulate the search engines with quick link building or hiding that text or keyword stuffing or having five pages of the same content with just slightly varied keyword-focused phrases — none of that s going to work. That s all black hat, and the search engines are way too smart for that today. They’re putting more emphasis on bounce rates and click-through rates. That tells us that they are moving even further ahead with a focus on the user experience. Brian Gardner: One thing we didn t talk about with black hat SEO is — I m sure you ve encountered this too — some of these SEO consultants that we ll call black hat, not only are they trying to trick Google and the search engines into stuff that benefits the client. They actually go — I don t even know if it s a blacker SEO or blacker hat SEO, where they would actually go in and try to manipulate the results so that it benefits them as the SEO consultant. In other words, they are stuffing these words at the bottom of the page that may link to their website, which is even worse than trying to do it for the client. They are actually trying to mooch off of that themselves. That s just definitely not a thing that should be happening. It s obviously something that when folks hire SEO consultants like you they really should find someone that they can trust, find someone that has been referred to by them as a successful, holistic, white hat SEO type of consultant. Even if that means pay the extra money, because you do go get what you pay for at times. Let s shift this a little bit away from the technicalities of SEO. For our listeners, who many of which are just starting out on the web. Maybe we call them the DIY-types where they are just trying to get online and just start. They’re not ready yet to hire an SEO consultant in all of that. You believe that great SEO begins well before the website goes live, right? Which means you have to plan before you even just launch? Rebecca Gill: Yes. If we’re doing a custom development project with a small urban market company, for example, and the project includes both SEO and design and then the buildout in WordPress, we don t even start design until we work first on SEO. Going through research, planning and sitemapping and talking about their website personas and mapping the paths for the website that the users are going to take. Then, after we go through all of that, now is when we actually start the design process with the graphic designer. After the things are built out and content is going in, we come back and optimize again, but that design phase doesn t even start yet. I think that that s a mistake that a lot of people make. They look for a theme that makes them happy as opposed to saying, What do I need? What does my visitor need? What kind of content do I need to display? What visitor paths do they have? Then looking for a theme that matches that. They jump ahead. So you get those questions from people and email all the time, and I m sure you guys do too is, “What theme should I pick?” I don t know what theme you should pick. I don t know enough about your content and your personas and your visitor flows and your paths and your objectives to be able to pick a theme for you. That s a process. It should be a process. I think that those are the steps that you need to do before a launch, as opposed to launching a pretty site and then adding in SEO after the fact. That s the wrong path and it creates extra work and a lot of delays and a lot of frustration. Lauren Mancke: I definitely agree with the content-first mentality when it comes to design. I run into that issue all the time with people of stressing how we need to go through the content first because they think that that s just an afterthought, which is definitely not the case. What are some other common mistakes you see businesses and bloggers making? Long-term SEO Strategies Rebecca Gill: I think a big one with SEO is expecting immediate results. It doesn t happen. Can you get immediate results within a week or two for a long tail keyword? Yes. Can you get it for something that s competitive with 20,000 searches per month? No. That s going to take time to work up and build and you have to be really focused. I encourage people to have a couple of those, three to five of those high value phrases and know that it s going to take time to build up. That s definitely one mistake. Skipping the research and the planning phase is a huge mistake as well because, like I said, people want to jump ahead and they’re eager. That s just the wrong way to go. I think the last one, I would say, is outsourcing everything. Don t outsource everything, educate yourself. Read high-quality blogs. Take an online course. Educate yourself on the process and then hire someone to help you execute that. In that way, you are knowledgeable, you know who you’re hiring and whether or not they have a good approach to SEO and whether they are solid. That way you ll have success today and success five years from now. Like I said, eight years from now they are still sitting on Google, even though they may not even be doing anything. Brian Gardner: Dictionary Brian jumping back in. You mentioned a phrase that I want to go over because this is huge. I think another one of the mistakes is people focus on these keyword phrases that are just too broad. You brought up the term “long tail search.” I know what means and I ve gone into my own analytics and seen the effect of long tail search. It s changed the way I — whether it s on StudioPress or the Copyblogger stuff that I write or even my own blog — I try to change how I m trying to write and which words I m trying to write for because I see the benefit of long tail search. Can you explain to our listeners what long tail search is? Rebecca Gill: Sure. When you look at the keywords, you ve got really broad, which in our case would be design. You could be designing anything. You could be designing diapers, or a car, or a website, it s too broad. Now you go into the next category which is more focused, which is website design. Much more focused, although that is still kind of broad because it could be website design in Joomla or Drupal or small business or enterprise. Now go a little bit more focused, which is WordPress website design. Now, from a service page that s a great keyword, because it is your target market, it s what you do. It s going to drive conversions when they actually hit the website. A long tail, which would be more usually focused on a blogpost, could be a problem that someone is having and it could relate to a plugin for a specific function. That s a long tail search. It s very precise, it s very focused. Those are much easier to win on and have success with than something that s very broad like design or web design. What people usually forget is you don t want design. You don t want web design because a lot of those aren t going to convert. You want specific to what you do so the traffic you are getting is precisely focused on your offering and how you can help them. That s really going after that long tail and making sure that you’re providing very focused value to your visitors. That s what leads to success with conversions. Brian Gardner: Not that I particularly care for conversions, especially with this blogpost that I wrote. But an example of the difference between a broad term and more of a long tail search term is a post on my blog where I wrote about my experience buying a MacBook Pro — how I returned my thirteen inch MacBook Air for a Mac Book Pro with retina display. I certainly don t get traffic when people type in “MacBook Pro.” I get a ton of traffic when people search derivatives of how much does a MacBook Pro weigh, which is a much longer term. I will get zero hits. In fact, I probably won t even be on the first 100 pages of Google for something as generic as “MacBook Pro.” But when you write something, and again, there was no intention here. I had no intention of trying to capture traffic or do anything with it. It was just to share a story. When you write something that s a little bit more — maybe answers a question. When you think of writing something, write out in your mind, “What would people Google for?” When you type in, “How much does a MacBook Pro weigh?” I come out, I think I m number one in Google. I might even be in the snippet that shows up at the very top now for that particular question. Start to think about that when you write your content, unless your site is extremely authoritative and gets a lot of Google juice. You may have to bank on the fact that the long tail search type of thing will bring more traffic in the long run. Rebecca Gill: It really adds up. People always want to go after that high volume, that 20,000 searches a month. Guess what? You end up sitting on page 100 in Google and no one ever sees you. Even if you’re on page 3 people rarely see you. But if you take 10 long tail phrases that each have 50 searches per month, that adds up quickly. Now, not only do you have 500 visitors coming, they are very targeted to what you do. It s in your benefit to focus on the long tail. It s easier for you. It converts better. It s easier to win. And it overall will make everybody happy. Brian Gardner: Rebecca, you mentioned a little bit earlier in passing, SEO boot camp. It s something that you just recently that came out with. I m going to do a direct pitch for our audience. I have a question: Have you ever wondered why your online marketing efforts haven t been successful? Learn the right way to do SEO with Rebecca from Web Savvy Marketing, along with other friends of ours, Carrie Dils who will be on a future episode, as well as Coy Miller of iThemes, who is a friend of mine and also will be on a future episode here at StudioPress FM. Jumpstart your website by attending their SEO boot camp conference on January 11th through 13th, 2017 in Dallas, Texas. If you want more information on that you can check it out at seobootcamp.com. If you like what you heard on today’s show, you can find more episodes of StudioPress FM at — you guessed it — StudioPress.FM. You can also help Lauren and I hit the main stage by subscribing to our show on iTunes. It s a great way to never ever miss an episode. Thanks for listening, and we ll see you next week.
In this episode the interviewer becomes the interviewee! Join as special guest host Tom McFarlin interviews Carrie Dils.
Carrie Dils shares her journey using Lynda.com, from taking classes to teaching her own courses … and what it’s done for her business. Carrie Dils started out taking classes on Lynda.com and eventually became a trainer. Listen in to learn … What Lynda.com is The benefits of using Lynda.com The three categories you can learn... Listen to episode
Plugins, Products, and Pricing, Episode 105 by Carrie Dils
Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners
With so many WordPress themes available on the market, it might sound crazy to even try and start a business selling your own. There are super-huge, multi-purpose themes selling $100k worth a week with option panels the size of their revenue charts, others with big passionate communities supporting them, and countless other shops just as successful in their own right. How can you compete? What would make someone choose you over anyone else? And that's the rub, isn't it? What makes you different? As you will find out in this episode with Mike McAlister of Array.is, that's the key ingredient in today's theme market. It's not just your theme's code, your support, or even your price point — give your customer a new reason to choose you over their never ending suite of choices. If I haven't scared you off by now, let's dive into how to start a theme business. Interview with Mike McAlister of Array.is Subscribe and rate us 5-stars on iTunes! Mike McAlister of Array.is I've been a big fan of Mike's work for a long time. In fact, I'm using one of his themes for my new podcast, PluggedIn Radio — but more on that later. There's a short list of theme companies I recommend, given that I own one myself, and Array.is is in the top of that list. When it comes to someone that cares about every pixel, I let his portfolio speak for itself. Mike and I chat about his experience building the Array.is business and how it's taken shape over the years. If you're thinking of launching your own theme shop, this interview and my guide below should be a great kickstarter. If you enjoyed this episode and the launch of Season 3, “Getting back to the roots,” I'd love a review on iTunes. I'll read new reviews on the next episode. How to start a WordPress theme busines I've created the following guide as an overview of sorts to starting your WordPress theme business. I'm sure there are some finer details that you might consider, but consider this your bootcamp style guide to launching. Step 1: Decide on your theme type Multi-purpose. Food blog. Photography focused. E-commerce. The daily blogger. Decide on what vertical you plan on tackling with your new theme. Once you define that, you set yourself up to build a workflow or blueprint taking you from concept to promotion. Knowing what kind of theme you want to produce helps you answer the following: How big is my audience? What kind of developer experience do I need? What kind of design experience do I need? How many options will this theme need? Will this theme need to work with other plugins on the market? Does this theme need to integrate with third party services? How much support will this theme require? At what price can I sell this theme? Will I be able to craft a solid marketing and promotion plan for this theme? Should I use a theme framework? These questions may be the tip of the iceberg, but they are certainly questions I would ask myself if I were to develop a new theme. A multi-purpose theme may have a larger audience than the photography theme, but it's much harder to support and go to market. Similarly, the photography theme would face said challenges compared to a theme made for food trucks selling tacos — but way easier to find a direct audience. What type of theme will you build? Step 2: Define your development skill I am not a developer, but I play one on TV. Many of you starting WordPress product companies are developers and designers by trade, so finding a developer isn't necessarily a challenge, until you want to start offloading some of the work. One issue that might crop up for you, if you answered some of the questions above, is the amount of options your theme might support. It's at this point you might realize you do need an extra pair of hands or that your goals are more lofty than your strengths. Other technical challenges might be supporting a plugin like WooCommerce or GravityForms. Sure there's accounting for basic styling, but are you comfortable extending them into new aspects of your theme or generally supporting the future revisions plugin developers release? Do you really have the developer chops to handle third party code? Think big picture when it comes to accounting for your developer skills. Remember, there's a lot more to running a theme shop than shipping the code, I hope you're ready for it. Find a good developer to help. There's a bunch of places one could start with: Tap into your existing network. A no brainer, but often overlooked. Post Status club. If you're a member great, if not, not a bad reason to fork over $99 to Brian. OfficeHours.fm community. Especially if you're headed in the Genesis direction, a good way to support Carrie Dils. WordPress jobs board. StackOverflow jobs board. oDesk virtual worker. Codeable. Google. Attend a WordCamp and talk to people. These will all come with their varying degrees of success, but you need a place to start, so why not give them a go? Step 3: Define your design skills Designer: Another thing I am not. I've seen a lot of developers pretend to be one too — it's not pretty. Based on the the type of theme you're producing, ask yourself, how important is the design? Very important — let me just answer that for you right now. ★ Support this podcast ★
Making the Leap to Self-Employment, Episode 99 by Carrie Dils
Carrie Dills is our guest today. Carrie is currently doing web development with Crowd Favorite by day and dabbling in a variety of things tech by nite. She has been working around computers her whole life, and began freelancing straight out of college. About five years ago was introduced to WordPress and that was the beginning of her present story. She is currently a team lead and software developer at Crowd Favorite. The post Episode 54: Carrie Dils on Genesis Theme Development appeared first on Apply Filters.
Carrie Dills is our guest today. Carrie is currently doing web development with Crowd Favorite by day and dabbling in a variety of things tech by nite. She has been working around computers her whole life, and began freelancing straight out of college. About five years ago was introduced to WordPress and that was the beginning of her present story. She is currently a team lead and software developer at Crowd Favorite. The post Episode 54: Carrie Dils on Genesis Theme Development appeared first on Apply Filters.
A special Christmas episode featuring a panel of podcast hosts including Jeff Chandler, Carrie Dils, Matt Medeiros, Jason Tucker, and Brian Krogsgard. We discuss the big stories of 2015, early 2015 predictions, predictions for the new year, and a fun new segment HO HO NO! The post Episode 087: A Very DradCast Christmas appeared first on DradCast.
CLICK THIS LINK FOR YOUTUBE 90 MINUTE VERSION ===================== WP-Tonic is not only a WordPress support and maintenance service, but we publish a twice weekly, top-rated WordPress podcast where we talk with some of the brightest minds in WordPress development, web design, business, and online marketing.
Meet The Beaver Builders, Episode 84 by Carrie Dils
From Government to Self-Employed to CTO, Episode 76 by Carrie Dils
Team WPShout, Episode 74 by Carrie Dils
Tonya & the WordPress Developer's Club by Carrie Dils
Art of Value Show - Discover Value | Create Options | Start Pricing
Carrie Dils is a WordPress developer and business consultant, a recommended Genesis developer by StudioPress, and an author of WordPress training courses at Lynda.com. Personally, she is a lover of rescue dogs and a craft beer connoisseur. Getting Started in Web Development What is the most important thing you can share about pricing? Every time she […] The post The Story of My Pricing Journey with Carrie Dils – 054 appeared first on Art Of Value.
Launching a product isn't easy. I announced a new plugin called, Julep, which is going to help make your WordPress images more fun and engaging. Unlike my other digital products, Julep was born from a nagging frustration I have with manipulating my own blog post images. No market research, no client pain ponts — just my own. I'm sick of uploading my featured images to another service or into Pixelmator to embed headlines or quotes to make my posts a bit more — fun. It becomes clumsy and my desktop ends up being cluttered with cropped images and duplicate files. Why can't we do this right in native WordPress? With Julep, you can. That's the challenge I'm tackling. I expect it won't be easy. Journaling every step of the way — just for you. I've been fascinated with Justin Jackson's Build & Launch podcast, a commentary about the many phases of launching something new. Providing listeners with enormous value through a raw look into product creation and exposing the emotions throughout the process. Value, not just for the listener, but for the creator as well. Transparency can be a killer. We (creators & onlookers) can become so overwhelmed with success as it translates to money, that it could manifest itself as depression. I'd like to explore journaling as a form of education. A way that is useful for the reader/listener and useful to keep the creator (me) grounded. You won't find boastful revenue charts or encouraging “entreprenurial quotes” in this story. Just the now and where we're going next. Let's begin. Launching Julep Episode Listen on iTunes and leave a review! Here's what went into building and launching the first iteration of Julep. The idea As I mentioned earlier, I was looking for a native WordPress solution for embedding text into a featured image. Part of our content marketing plan for Conductor, is to create relevant content for our target audience. With so much content fighting for reader's attention, you have to get as creative as possible to earn that click. One strategy, is to embed the post title or alternative title into your featured image. That often means I'm uploading photos to an external service, making my images there, downloading and then uploading to WordPress. It's fine if you don't blog a lot, but when you're running multiple blogs and posting multiple times a week — it can get clumsy fast. Give me that power power natively to WordPress. The name Julep – Cost: $9 I feel like people put too much thought in naming. In fact, a few people pinged me when I launched and said, “I don't really get the name.” That's fine and you don't have to. Too many creators in the WP world give their plugins a static name. Some spin on “wp” or “press” and that's fine, I get it. Sometimes it makes sense to align with that for marketing purposes. For instance our Custom Post Type plugin is called, Custom Post Type Maker. Our child theme plugin is called, One-Click Child Theme. Names just come to me. Julep is, in my context, a tasty summer drink primarily made with my favorite Bourbon. GetJulep.com was registered. Fun. Light. Refreshing. It's how I envision manipulating your images to make them more engaging. It's also not WP'ish and I think there can be some fun things done with branding. If it grows. Design Mockups – Cost: $0 It was time to get the idea sourced to a developer. Remember when I said transparency can be scary? Let's take a look at the wireframes/workflow I made: I used Skitch app to create the concept workflow Trying to stay as lean as possible and not create some overwhelming new UI for the user. Once the image was saved, it was sure to show the text in the media portions of WordPress. Armed with these awesome wireframes, I was off to hire a developer. Hiring a developer – Cost: $500 We've been very busy at Slocum Studio building our client projects and with the continued development of Conductor and Slocum Themes. I dipped into my pool of freelancer developers and hired someone I had worked with before. I sent over the wireframes and he quoted me $500 to build the concept. Within a week and a half, I had the working model ready to test. Launch strategy – Cost: $0 There wasn't one, really. I just got lucky to have Carrie Dils ask me to be on her podcast a few weeks back. She didn't know I was launching anything new and it wasn't until we initiated the call, did I mention it. In fact, it was so close, that I built the website and produced the demo video seen on GetJulep.com just 30 minutes before the show started. A scramble to get some features highlighted and a MailChimp optin list setup. What went wrong? I spelled the name ‘Julep' as ‘Juelp' on the main site header. Whoops. I also didn't have the site in full working order. Some of it was slightly off on mobile devices and I had used an iframe Wistia embed of the video — which never looks good on a phone. With that, I managed to secure 17 beta opt-ins from the podcast and over the weekend. Earth shattering, right? Where do we go from here? There's still some work to be done on the initial alpha version of the plugin. We're running into a few bugs now which we need to address. I suspect I will need to shell out some additional cash to get it beta-ready. By the time I go to beta, I'm hoping to triple that subscriber list. I'd like to have 50 or so people to reach out to. Knowing what I know from my last launch, I will probably find a few folks willing to provide some good feedback. The dilemma – free or paid? I'd like to prove that the plugin has some value. I would also like to recoup some of the initial investment. When I launched Conductor, I sold a beta version and made $4,000 in 1 hour. Today, folks who paid $97 for the Conductor beta were grandfathered into a Developer pack license. I could go the same route here. Offer up a “Founder's” edition that scores them a granted ticket to the luxury seats when the time comes. I haven't decided yet. Small goals for now. I feel Julep will go straight to the freemium model. Maybe I put it up in WordPress.org and see how it does. I'm not sure if that makes the most sense yet, or not. What would you do if you were me? ★ Support this podcast ★
Making Money Online with Amy Lynn Andrews, Episode #62 by Carrie Dils
WP-Tonic is not only a WordPress maintenance and support service, but we publish a twice weekly WordPress business podcast where we talk with some of the brightest minds in WordPress development and online marketing.
Gravity Forms and Stripe with Naomi Bush, Episode 59 by Carrie Dils
Speed Matters with Andy Adams, Episode 56 by Carrie Dils
Are you a hobbyist or a business owner? by Carrie Dils
Throwback Thursday - a Year of Podcasting with Friend, Episode 51 by Carrie Dils
The Brown Bag Inception - Episode #32 by Carrie Dils
Live with Carrie Dils and various folks from the GOH Community!
This week on Genesis Office Hours, your host Carrie Dils chats with WooCommerce expert Daniel Espinoza about his family and work as a digital nomad.
Talking this week with Genesis Framework UK stars Gary Jones and Jo Waltham. Join your host Carrie Dils as we take your questions and answer them on the show.
Guests Rob Neu and Jesse Petersen joined me to talk about Sass, developing with Genesis, website security, and other random stuff.
Your host, Carrie Dils, with guests Mickey Kay and Ozzy Rodriguez
Genesis Office Hours #11 by Carrie Dils
Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners
Fan favorite Carrie Dils joins the show today to talk about GiggleSnort — I mean WordPress freelancing. Carrie brings us through some amazing stories, from bootstrapping a greeting card service to working at StarBucks and how both experiences impacted her career. If you're just starting out or working a day to day that you're trying to get out of, this episode is for you! Carrie Dils Genesis Developer Listen to the audio Lessons from GiggleSnort I love stories about people beating the street to earn a living. I'm a solid believer in learning the “cold call” before launching yourself into the entrepreneurial journey. Carrie ran a greeting card company called GiggleSnort that quickly exposed her to the hard lessons of small business. Failure is great. You learn from it, get thicker skin, and find new opportunities. Fail fast, if you can. Finding Genesis Once Carrie found StudioPress & Genesis there was no looking back. She has leveraged the product to build custom solutions for her clients, while continuing to elevate her expertise over the years. You can find her as one of the recommended Genesis developers and recently launched two commercial themes. Utility can be found in her store and Winning Agent over at StudioPress. Aside from all of the great WordPress code Carrie develops, she's also an awesome person. I've been a fan for quite a while and wish her the best of luck in her business. Matt Report Pro It just so happens that Carrie and Tom McFarlin taught a course about starting and running a WordPress theme business in the Pro forum of the site. Become a member and get access to that and a lot more! Join Matt Report Pro (updated for iTunes) ★ Support this podcast ★
Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners
Fan favorite Carrie Dils joins the show today to talk about GiggleSnort — I mean WordPress freelancing. Carrie brings us through some amazing stories, from bootstrapping a greeting card service to working at StarBucks and how both experiences impacted her career. If you’re just starting out or working a day to day that you’re trying to get out of, this episode is for you! (more…)
Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners
I've had the chance to talk to some really smart and down to earth people lately. Today's guest, Marcus Couch of WordPress podcasting fame (though don't say that around him), joins us to chat about the ups and downs of running your own business. From landing large national client's with hundreds of websites, to losing ten's of thousands of dollars betting on the wrong partner. This episode is about as real as it gets, narrated by a guy who knows his stuff. Enjoy! Interview with Marcus Couch Listen to the audio version I'm just a member of the community. ~ Marcus Couch I wanted to open up with that quote, as it paints the picture really well about our friend Marcus. I joked at the top of the show (as we WordPress podcasters do) and mentioned that he was the Simon Cowell of WordPress podcasting. Marcus parried and stated he was just a member of the community — not a celebrity. He's doing things for the love of the software and for the love of the job. It inspires him, allows him to create and he can do all this while making a living. I relate to this very well , as I'm sure you do too. So many of us get caught up in the money and the “fame” of a startup that we burn out or find ourselves not loving what it is we do. Curtis McHale recently wrote a post about this that you should read. Hard lesson learned There's a point in the episode that things get real. Really real. This is another lesson I sorely relate to — as I fear some of you have learned as well. I couldn't write about it on this post to do it justice, so you'll just have to listen. I can say, pick the right partners and hire the right people for the job — it could cost you more than you think. You can find Marcus Couch at his website, marcuscouch.com Join the Pro community! Last week Carrie Dils posted a great article and at the end, we're offering up a chance to win a free year of Matt Report Pro. Go on over and leave a comment for your chance to win. Want to dive right into the fun? Members-only content Free Lesson Friday Private forums Free “stuff” monthly much more Join Matt Report Pro! ★ Support this podcast ★
Genesis Office Hours #1 by Carrie Dils
Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners
What do you get when you combine 3 awesome WordPress startups with 3 awesome WordPress proven entrepreneurs? The Matt Report WordPress Startup Challenge of course! This is one of my favorite events that I do and I hope you enjoy it just the same. This episode is FULL of awesome WordPress goodness. Tune in to see 3 great startups trying to make it in this crazy world and the advice our judges panel has to offer. Startup Challenge 2 Listen to the audio version Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Episode 2: WordPress startup challenge 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 [one_half][/one_half][one_half_last] [/one_half_last] An international affair I'm pumped to release episode 2 of the startup challenge and this time it went global! Five different countries were represented in this hour long show of entertainment, education and WordPress goodness. Congrats to everyone who took part in the episode and I wish them the best in their entrepreneurial journey. Startups in this episode Jordi Cabot of WP-abtesting.com Jordan Gillman of Churchsites.co David Locke of FreelanceWP.com Thank the sponsors! [full_width] [one_half] [/one_half] [one_half_last] Carrie Dils Brought to you by Carrie Dils and the Institution of Supporting the Things You Enjoy Twitter: @cdils Website: CarrieDils.com [/one_half_last] [/full_width] [full_width] [one_half] Louis Reingold Sponsored by Louis Reingold & Soflyy . We actually make money instead of just listening to people talk about it. Get back to work! Twitter: @soflyy Website: wpallimport.com [/one_half] [one_half_last] [/one_half_last] [/full_width] [full_width] [one_half] [one_half_last] WP Sitecare WP Site Care provides proactive updates, backups, security, and support from real people to keep WordPress websites and their users happy Twitter: @ryandonsullivan Website: wpsitecare.com [/one_half_last] [/full_width] Honorable sponsors vesbyte Joel Eade Joan Boluda Kevin McKernan Warren Croce Nate Dave Pippin Williamson Jonathan Kay Scott Bolinger Phil Derksen Just 5 bucks (or name your price) If you're a fan of the show and you want to see it continue, that's all I'm asking for. What will that $5 score you? In the credits of the next episode Membership access to the uncut version of the pilot episode Access to the the contestants “biggest challenge” questions and the judges response Sponsorship Want to sponsor the next episode? Contribute $200 for… Same access as above a 140 character ad read in the episode Banner placement on the show page Questions? Contact me. ★ Support this podcast ★
Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners
Running a WordPress business? Of course you are! If you're not, you can use these services for any form of online business. In part 1, we'll briefly cover WordPress hosting, a few plugins, and a couple or my choice productivity tools. There's some cross compatibility from the blogging tips post, but I've wrapped some new context around the areas that apply. This post was inspired by Carrie Dils and her review of SaaS software for her own WordPress business. I hope this helps you make some new decisions and enables you to run a better WordPress business. Tools of the WordPress trade Listen to the audio version Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners WordPress business toolkit part 1 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 Some of the following links are affiliate links. They help pay for the show and put food on the table for my family. Thank you! WordPress hosting As I stated in the podcast and in the video, this is not an in-depth review of WordPress hosts. This is a quick fly-by of hosts I've use and how you can use them too. I do plan on discussing WordPress hosts more in depth in another post. Linode Visit website Linode is a great VPS service if you're looking to get your hands dirty. Their offerings are powerful and affordable. If you're looking to host many WordPress websites and you know your way around Linux security give these guys a shot. In terms of uptime and performance I've had great results. Their support is also fast and friendly which is very important. Pros: Affordable Powerful features Great support Cons: Support is not WordPress specific You have to know how to configure your own linux instance Your on the line for major performance or security issues Digital Ocean Visit website A $5 a month stomping ground. There's a handful of localhost development environments, but there's nothing quite like the real thing. Digital Ocean provides little droplets for running various flavors of Linux. Like Linode, you will need to be up to speed on setting up a Linux environment and locking down anything you don't want the bad guys to get. I think this is a great solution for testing plugins or running dev environments. Pros: $5 a month Fast Easy Cons: Not sure how their product will scale compared to a Linode You still have to configure/support yourself SiteGround Visit website Support. Support. Super fast support. This is the most important factor for me. Period. This site has run on SG for the last 3 – 4 months and I've been blown away by their level of support. I'm not just talking talking level 1 “we got your message and we'll work on this” SOP responses – I'm talking full blown, in-depth responses. Backups, staging servers, and WordPress specific optimization plans are also available. Pros: Awesome support Affordable Feature rich Cons: Still a shared environment Not your typical “managed WordPress” host Namecheap Visit website Not much to say here other than it's my go to source for registering domains. Easy to use control panel with zero fluff or complexity. They also have an awesome API to tap into if you're into that kind of thing. Pros: Unadulterated domain registration Affordable Cons They don't give me free domains Plugins SearchWP + FacetWP Visit SearchWP Visit FacetWP I love the combination of these two plugins for building search rich sites. We build a lot of sites for travel and tourism that end up needing a directory of content. I'm also working on a podcast search function for this site leveraging both that I'll do a write up on. If you need to extend your search capability, look no further! Pros Better search Faceted search Cons You need to know how to build some basic template files for search output WPTouch Visit website Do't get me wrong, I love responsive design but sometimes it's not the best for every situation. Further, if you're selling your client on the ability to manage mobile content and the layout of it — this plugin is for you. Their latest version is awesome and I don't think it gets enough credit. Pros Super simple mobile website development Awesome add-on features Great looking themes Cons Not for the purist web developer Unsure how it will handle scale or truly unique layouts Advanced Custom Fields Visit website 9 out of 10 custom WordPress projects I've done require some type custom post type and group of custom fields. ACF is a plugin I can say I absolutely enjoy using. The admin UI is buttery smooth and intuitive which makes for a a great combo when handing the keys over to a client. Pros Awesome UI Great for rapid prototyping Add-ons Cons I'd love to see more powerful add-ons You still have to know how to build templates for output Productivity Trello Visit website I love lists. I also love boards and cards thanks to Trello. I didn't make the switch form Basecamp to Trello just because it's free either. It's simply a more productive environment for collaborating with my team and the tasks/projects we have at hand. The fact that it's super reactive and real time doesn't hurt either. Looking for a great productivity tacker? Try Trello. Pros Free Super easy Share files, tasks and more with teammates Cons It's not a place for clients Upload limits on free plan. (seriously, just pay) Screenflow Visit website If you're training clients or documenting custom features do it with Screenflow. If you want to start your very own podcast, do it with Screenflow. Want to make product demonstrations? You guessed it. Do it with Screenflow. Pros Best screen recording software on the market. (Mac) Easy to use Export directly to YouTube or Vimeo Cons Premium price tag I'd like to see more effects I'd like to see more editing capabilities for audio & video That's a wrap First, I want you to let us know what tools you're using in the comments section. Second, if you're just starting out with your new WordPress business shoot me an e-mail if you have a question about any of these services or apps. I'm happy to help anyway I can. Don't forget to subscribe to the mailing list to stay up to date. ★ Support this podcast ★
Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners
Running a WordPress business? Of course you are! If you’re not, you can use these services for any form of online business. In part 1, we’ll briefly cover WordPress hosting, a few plugins, and a couple or my choice productivity tools. There’s some cross compatibility from the blogging tips post, but I’ve wrapped some new context around the areas that apply. This post was inspired by Carrie Dils and her review of SaaS software for her own WordPress business. I hope this helps you make some new decisions and enables you to run a better WordPress business. (more…)
Have you ever come across something or had an experience that has completely shifted the way you look at something? That's what happened for me this past week, with WordCamp SF, my "a-ha" I had about Training (a completely different model) and my Challenge (that I'm going to share). A little re-cap from San Francisco WordCamp ... and why I'll probably not attend again. I know, that's a pretty bold statement. BUT.. before I get into the nitty gritty of why let me say that I had a ball connecting with people I've only met online (@cdils, @bobWP, @OzzyR, @ChrisWiegman and had the pleasure of meeting many more awesome people). That being said... the tracks that were offered seemed to be one extreme or the other. Very developer oriented or very newbie oriented (except of course for Carrie Dils talk on Saturday, which unfortunately I couldn't attend on Collaboration vs. Competition) with not a whole lot in between and even the newbie tracks seemed to be lacking "something" as well. There was VERY little in terms of the marketing and business side of WordPress. Which, when it comes to the WordPress community I feel is still lacking. You have people like Chris Lema who seems to have a firm grasp on it and is talking about it MUCH more often (pricing and marketing for WordPress products), but beyond Chris I don't see a whole lot of dialogue happening around this piece. I was listening to another podcast yesterday (I'm really becoming obsessed with these!), The Fizzle Show, and they were talking about douchebaggery in online business. Literally. I have to remember to think about where I am when I'm listening to this show because I find myself laughing out loud... often. As I did yesterday in the grocery store. Anyways... The conversation around douchebaggery was that: 1) It's really hard to define (douchebaggery that is) and 2) We're all probably a douchebag to someone. And my point in sharing this with you is that I think there is this fear within the WordPress community that if you charge for things that you're a douchebag (or charge too much). Which is kind of why I think we don't see much of this at WordCamp San Francisco. Because it's where Auttomatic has offices and Matt Mullenweg gives his official "State Of The Word" address there's a certain level of perceived expectation around what type of speakers present. The only other WordCamp I've been to was WordCamp Reno (a few years ago), and it was great too. But outside of networking with people in the community, my audience isn't really at WordCamp. And I haven't really seen any tracks that focus on the things I need to work on in my business... so for now, I'm just not sure where I stand with WordCamp. [sws_divider_basic] FINALLY! WordPress 3.6 is OUT! WOO HOO! Which means... that Genesis 2.0 is on it's way too. Brian Gardner posted on Google+ yesterday that it will be out next week, they have a few final tweaks to make (we've waited this long, what's a few more days, right?). Which ALSO means that I'm going to be releasing WordPress Genesis for Beginners: A User's Guide 2.0 SOON! This is a complete overhaul to the product with new videos, some interviews and a couple of other surprises.. but you'll just have to wait and see what those are. This is not going to be some smarmy internet marketing launch... I so don't have the stomach for that. I came across something last week that completely turned my perspective upside down on marketing training products. I'm not trying to be sneaky by not sharing this with you (promise), because what I am going to do is track EVERY step of this new process. I'm approaching this totally different and will share what worked, what didn't, etc. after it's done (which will be in a few weeks). Let's just say that this training is going WAY beyond the basics of using Genesis for the everyday user. You'll see how and why I use Genesis for everything I do,
This is the first "official" WordPress interview for the podcast (in terms of interviewing someone who uses WordPress for their business) and it was a TON of fun! I connected with Carrie sometime last year online (I'm thinking maybe it was twitter?) and knew instantly she was someone I wanted to get to know better. Not only was she sharing valuable Genesis tips but you could also tell that she was a down to earth person (I gauge this by how someone writes, what they share and how they share... I'm wise like that! ;-) ). Then we exchanged a few emails discussing possible ways we could collaborate (which I'll share more of at the end of this post) and once I had the podcast up and running I thought she would be a perfect guest to interview. Yep... I was right. She was great. I'm not kidding when I say I was laughing out loud when listening back to our conversation for editing, it really was that fun. Carrie shares her journey of how she ended up creating her business CarrieDils.com, (the question of "how did you get here" is absolutely one of my favorite pieces of the interviews I'm doing). There's something powerful in hearing other peoples stories. The decisions they made that took them down a completely different path than the one they had intended, the lessons they've learned along the way and what that means for their business today. You'll love the story of the indoor s'mores cafe' that turned into a 9 year detour with a huge company, which also became an invaluable resource for learning about business (and why she knew she did NOT want to open the brick & mortar business that inspired this detour). She awarded me 1000 internet points. You'll just have to listen to the interview to find out what that's all about, but my vocabulary surprised even me (she still hasn't told me where I can redeem my points... maybe it's like Chuck E. Cheese and I can turn them in for a Whoopee Cushion or giant Pixie Stick?). I think one of my favorite questions for Carrie was when I asked her how she markets her business. Her answer is such a testament to everything I've been talking about these past few months (and one of those lessons that we all hear and when we finally implement just "get it"). Her big secret to marketing? She doesn't have one. She gives the best service possible, connects with her clients, creates great work and is simply herself. Aah... Music to my ears. ;-) I think a common fear among a LOT of people with online businesses is that you don't want to come across smarmy or sales pitchy (pretty sure pitchy isn't a word). There's a learning curve when it comes to putting yourself out there, sharing what you do and promoting your products and/or services. What Carrie is doing is the ideal way to step into that space. At some point you have to 'feel the fear and do it anyways' and ask for the sale or make the offer. My biggest recommendation is that you do it sooner rather than later (asking for the sale or making the offer). Often times the longer you wait the harder it is and you don't want to set a precedent that what you're doing is just a hobby (unless in fact it is just a hobby). Collaboration Time! Off the record I asked Carrie if she would be interested in doing a live Genesis class with me that helps those of you who are past the 'beginner' stage and she said absolutely! ;-) So you can keep your eyes peeled for a "Beyond Beginners" Genesis class! And I'm sure after you listen to the podcast with her you'll be that much more interested in taking the class because not only is she wicked smart but I'm sure the class will be a lot of fun too. Make sure to check out her site and connect with her via social media. *Note* The product I mentioned (but couldn't remember the name) where you can get digital signatures on invoices (the free account gets you 5 a month) is EchoSign by Adobe. The link is in the 'Links from this episode' below. Links from this episode
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