Podcast appearances and mentions of dave rodenbaugh

In this episode of the Ecommerce Coffee Break Podcast, Dave Rodenbaugh, the founder of Recapture.io, joins us to talk about implementing the standard playbook of emails (and why you don't need all of them at once.)On the Show Today You'll Learn:How to implement the standard playbook of emailsHow to craft the perfect abandoned cart sequenceBest practices for A/B testing in the email flowsUnderstanding the mechanics of post-purchase emailsAnd moreLinks & ResourcesWebsite: https://recapture.ioShopify App Store: https://apps.shopify.com/recapture-abandoned-cart-and-email-marketingLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodenbaugh/Get access to more free resources by visiting the podcast episode page at http://bit.ly/3EFyhPeEpisode SponsorsVL OMNI empowers businesses to accelerate growth. Unique consultative approach to data integration leads to better strategy. VL OMNI works with complex systems and technology stacks, managed service approach allows for faster implementation and scalability across selling channels. Visit https://vlomni.com/ for a technical consultation.Subscribe & Listen Everywhere:Listen On: ​clauslauter.com | Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | Amazon Music/Audible | Stitcher | Deezer | Google PodcastBy rating and reviewing the show in the app that you are listening to, you will enable us to invite bigger and more impactful guests.Please also remember to subscribe to our podcast and switch on the notifications to never miss an episode.Tag the podcast on Instagram @clauslauter and let me know what you like about it.Support the showGet free marketing ideas to help grow your revenue on Shopify. In your inbox for free. Every Thursday. Consumed in 3 minutes or less. Join 3,500+ Ecommerce Merchants, Founders, and Marketers here: newsletter.ecommercecoffeebreak.com

Dave Rodenbaugh, founder of Recapture.io, shares a fascinating anecdote with Angela Bowman, WordPress Meetup organizer and podcaster (Women in WP), about a relatively new WordPress user (Dave's daughter) who had built a WordPress site with Dave's help last year but struggled to get another one launched on her own this summer. Dave's daughter and her boss, who very much wanted to use WordPress, spent five weeks trying to get WordPress to work for them. They finally gave up and gave Wix a try. One week later, they had a finished, professional-looking site. Angela and Dave talk about the reasons behind this not-so-successful WordPress story which led to the $64,000 dollar question, Who is WordPress for Anyway? With different camps forming around WordPress, can we come back together again? Since the announcement of Gutenberg in 2015, the speed at which the page builder plugins have evolved has not slowed down. If anything, they are growing faster and stronger than ever. And it makes sense! The Block Editor can be quite confusing and in Dave's words “janky”. The on-boarding process with WordPress requires a learning curve that is pretty steep. But it's not just about getting hosting set up or being initiated into how to set the Front Page in the Reading Settings. In this use case, simply working with the Block Editor created a major hurdle in getting content laid out without a great deal of frustration. What do you think about who WordPress is for? Please share your thoughts. What will it take to make WordPress easier for DIYers? And in the words of the Beatles, will we ever “Come Together” again?

One important part you should identify in due diligence before buying an online business is the risk it has, which categorizes into controllable and uncontrollable risks.   Once you identify these risks, you can make informed decisions for your business. Dave came back on the show to spill the beans about due diligence so you can spot a great deal! Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of https://Recapture.io, an abandoned cart and SMS/email marketing service for WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro, and more. Founded in 2015, Recapture has processed over 2.0 billion in gross merchant volume (GMV) and recovered over $200,000,000 for stores worldwide. We have discussed the first site mistake that  Dave made, personal brand dependency in business, and risk versus opportunity. Should you buy for opportunity or less risk, which is better and why?  We also talked about long-term games with long-term people. What happens to people who rush? How to put time on your side rather than against you? (which is what most people do, and it squashes their growth) How should you work your way up to Saas business? Ultimately, Dave will share a piece of advice for people wanting to get into buying websites. If you want to buy a business or just earn an income online, this could be the most important podcast episode of ours you'll listen to.Hit the ‘Play” button now!   Episode Highlights 03:30 Early mistakes Dave made 08:30 Risk Vs Opportunity  19:25 It takes a lot of experience 20:43 Hiring great people 25:30 "Fast Burn Fast Churn" 31:01 Opportunity will come! 33:00 If it's not HELL YES then it's a HELL NO! 36:05 What pushed Dave into Saas Business? 40:10 Where should YOU start?   About The GuestDave Rodenbaugh is the founder of https://Recapture.io, an abandoned cart and SMS/email marketing service for WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro, and more. Founded in 2015, Recapture has processed over 2.0 billion in gross merchant volume (GMV) and recovered over $200,000,000 for stores worldwide. Dave started his entrepreneurial journey back in 2011, having built a business directory and classified plugin business from scratch and selling them both in 2020. He's also the co-host of the RogueStartups podcast and the WP Minute Ecommerce show.  He now works exclusively on ecommerce and has a passion for making merchants of all kinds more successful with their stores. He truly loves email, dark beer, lifestyle businesses, and his family. Not necessarily in that order.   Resource Links ➥ Buying Online Businesses Website (https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com)  ➥ Download the Due Diligence Framework (https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com/freeresources/) ➥ Visit Niche Website Builders and get EXCLUSIVE OFFERS as a BOB listener (https://www.nichewebsite.builders/bob/)   Connect with Dave Rodenbaugh: ➥ https://recapture.io/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture.io, an abandoned cart and SMS/email marketing service for Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro and more.  On this bonus episode, Dave Rodenbaugh from Recapture goes back to encourage founders who hesitate to start or continue sending emails: Where to get content when you don't know what to say, how to start when you're busy, why you are sending less than you think, and so much more! To learn more, visit: http://honestecommerce.co Resources: Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube Scale your business with electriceye.io Try out Recapture 60 days for free! recapture.io/honest-ecommerce-special Follow Dave on Twitter @daverodenbaugh If you want help with email strategy, email Dave david@recapture.io Get inspired with the best showcase of email design and resources on the web reallygoodemails.com

In episode 612, Rob Walling chats with longtime friend and repeat podcast guest Dave Rodenbaugh. Dave was even at the very first MicroConf back in 2011.In this episode, we have a candid conversation on our experiences balancing side projects with a day job, struggling with the decision in our own different ways of when to quit, and the surprising habits you have to unlearn once you are finally independent of the day job and consulting work.Topics we cover: [1:27] Dave's thought process behind expanding Recapture [5:34] The...Read the whole entry... »Click the icon below to listen.  

Running an ecommerce business looks so simple, not until you have tried it YOURSELF!  The reality is most start-ups STRUGGLE TO MAKE SALES and don't know how to structure their marketing process properly.  In this exciting episode, Dave Rodenbaugh comes to the BOB podcast to share his insights about the ecom world. Dave is the founder of Recapture.io, an abandoned cart and SMS/email marketing service for WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro and more. Founded in 2015, Recapture has processed over 2.0 billion in gross merchant volume (GMV) and recovered over $200,000,000 for stores worldwide. He's also the co-host of the RogueStartups podcast and the WP Minute Ecommerce show.  He now works exclusively on ecommerce and has a passion for making merchants of all kinds more successful with their stores.   We have discussed who should buy an online business & who shouldn't? What type of questions to ask during due diligence?  We have also talked about what his biggest win was in buying business. How he built his empire over the last 11 years and how you can learn from his mistakes? If you too have an ecommerce business and want to scale it or plan to have one, then watching this episode would be a great HELP! Smash the ‘Play' button now!   Episode Highlights 00:00 What you'll learn in this episode? 03:48 How did Dave get into buying websites? 12:29 Buying vs Starting an Online Business 15:24 Setting Goals! 17:01 Dave shares his experiences in running online businesses  23:46 How many sites Dave bought? 27:16 What opportunity really means? 29:21 What Dave learned the hard way about Due diligence? 35:40 How do RECAPTURE help online entrepreneurs? 38:42 It takes time to grow, be patient! 44:42 Calculations of profits on Abandoned Carts 48:29 Where can you find Dave? About The Guest Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of https://recapture.io/ an abandoned cart and SMS/email marketing service for WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro and more. Founded in 2015, Recapture has processed over 2.0 billion in gross merchant volume (GMV) and recovered over $200,000,000 for stores worldwide. Dave started his entrepreneurial journey back in 2011, having built a business directory and classified plugin business from scratch and selling them both in 2020.  He's also the co-host of the RogueStartups podcast and the WP Minute Ecommerce show.  He now works exclusively on ecommerce and has a passion for making merchants of all kinds more successful with their stores.  He truly loves email, dark beer, lifestyle businesses and his family.  Not necessarily in that order. Resource Links ➥ Buying Online Businesses Website (https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com)  ➥ Download the Due Diligence Framework (https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com/freeresources/) ➥ Visit Niche Website Builders and get EXCLUSIVE OFFERS as a BOB listener (https://www.nichewebsite.builders/bob/)   Connect with Dave Rodenbaugh: ➥ https://recapture.io/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

103 - This week, we're going to dive into a crucial topic: how to make your emails suck less. This is the poetic and straight-to-the-point style of this week's guest, Dave Rodenbaugh!You'll LearnWhy Dr. Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is a must-read for all marketersWhat the Seven Principles of Persuasion are, and how to apply them to email marketing How to maintain brand consistency across channels and messagesHow to use scarcity to your advantage to create a desire for your product

News There is a call for WordPress users to help with the upcoming release of WordPress 6.0. This release is scheduled for May 24, 2022. There have been over 400 updates and 500 bug fixes since the last release and they could really use everybody's help to test. Jump over to make.wordpress.org to join the core slack channel and get involved. WooCommerce The WooCommerce blocks roadmap has been released. There are a lot of cool things happening over at WooCommerce with most of the work taking place right now in the WooCommerce Blocks repository with store editing. Take a look at the ways you can contribute. The plan is to release quarterly updates. From Our Contributors and Producers If you missed it, go check out the latest eCommerce minute, on the WPMinute with Dave Rodenbaugh. He provides additional news and perspective on the owner of FAST, the one-click checkout provider. Jodie Fiorenza wrote a great article on Omnichannel marketing over at WebDevStudios. With an omnichannel strategy, the customer becomes the focus of the campaign. Take a minute to read Jody's article and see if you can consult with a customer using multi-channel marketing in your business. The Admin Bar community created an anonymous WordPress Agency survey for all of their community members to ask them questions about their revenue, and various focuses (including accessibility, SEO, hosting, etc.). The results were very interesting and worth checking out. The first issue of Tiny Press went out this week by our contributor Daniel Schutzsmith. The article covers 3 WordPress design and development links. There is also a great interview of Chris Coyier from css-tricks.com by Nathan Wrigley on the WPTavern podcast about his sale of CSS Tricks to Digital Ocean. This is a great podcast to learn about Chris' journey. Friend of the show Scott Bolinger is seeking a buyer for his pop-up plugin Holler Box. New Members: We would like to thank Courtney Robertson for buying a coffee this week and joining as a monthly member. Next up: Simplified Business Minute with Sam Muñoz “Block Editor Dev Minute” by Aurooba Ahmed Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Lisa Sabin-WilsonBirgit Pauli-HaackDaniel SchutzsmithDave RodenbaughLiam Dempsey

Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture, a SaaS product that provides abandoned cart recovery and email marketing for e-commerce merchants on platforms such as Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce.Show Notes:• https://saasclub.io/314Join Our Email List• Get weekly SaaS learnings, new podcast episodes, and actionable insights right in your inbox: https://saasclub.io/email/Join Our Community for Free• SaaS Club is the community for early-stage SaaS founders and entrepreneurs: https://saasclub.co/join

Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture, a SaaS product that provides abandoned cart recovery and email marketing for e-commerce merchants on platforms such as Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce. Show Notes: • https://saasclub.io/314 Join Our Email List • Get weekly SaaS learnings, new podcast episodes, and actionable insights right in your inbox: https://saasclub.io/email/ Join Our Community for Free • SaaS Club is the community for early-stage SaaS founders and entrepreneurs: https://saasclub.co/join

"Settings expectations, communicating well, and being responsive are the top 3 things you can do to improve your customer support." —Dave RodenbaughIn this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David sits down again with Dave Rodenbaugh, founder of Recapture.io. Dave has been involved with the business of WordPress plugins since 2009 with products like Business Directory Plugin and Another Classified WordPress Plugin.Why This Matters: Dave explains how to set expectations for the support you offer, especially in the WordPress repository where users can download plugins for free and request — or demand — free support too. How you deal with problem customers and discover who has the skills to work effectively in support is important for WordPress product owners. If you have plugins or themes for sale inside and outside the WordPress.org repo, you'll find value in Dave's insights.Every week Post Status Excerpt will bring you important news and insights from guests working in the WordPress space.

“There is always some space [in the WordPress ecosystem] left for developers.” – Dave RodenbaughIn this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David has a conversation with Dave Rodenbaugh, founder of Recapture.io. Dave has been involved with the business of WordPress plugins since 2009 with products like Business Directory Plugin and Another Classified WordPress Plugin.Why This Matters: Dave shares what he's learned while running a business in the WordPress space. Others in this space or looking to enter it will learn when (and what) they should outsource to SaaS and open source.Every week Post Status Excerpt will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash. ⚡You can listen to past episodes of The Excerpt, browse all our podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or by RSS.

In the News State of the Word 2021 happened this week. If you would like to hear the complete audio or read through the transcript from the live event check out the link over on the WPMinute. There is even a mega-thread of our favorite clips over on Twitter. GoDaddy covered the event as well including their own timestamps for the video stream. I have three takeaways from the event that I think are important: WordPress still wants more volunteers and contributorsGutenberg is bigger than WordPress The acquisition train is fueled by the influx of the larger tech economy Speaking of acquisitions: You may want some insight on how to approach selling your company. Check out Freemius' Gamechangers — where videos of some of the largest acquisitions in the WordPress space have occurred. The first interview in the series (from December 8th) is with Syed Balki from Awesome Motive. WPMinute Contributor Kim Coleman, co-founder of Paid Memberships Pro received 27 likes on her Twitter question on the Freemius account when they announced it: Is this the total list or are there any women in your series? I asked Vova for a comment leading into the inclusion of this article in today's episode: We are not happy about it either and take full responsibility for this mistake. We are going to rectify it. We already have Marieke from Yoast to join and are waiting to hear from additional female founders. The growth of WordPress Is Elementor the hero we asked for? Joost de Valk published the sixth iteration of his CMS market share analysis on his blog and found that the W3Techs tracked Elementor. It appears that much of the new growth for WordPress as a CMS is tied to Elementor since they are dependent on each other. Elementor sites cannot exist without WordPress, so they are tied to each other. But I think the conclusion is fair that of all those new sites being built with WordPress, a very large portion of them, is being built with Elementor. Events WordCamp US 2022 will be held in San Diego this September. No dates have been announced but you can sign up to be an organizer now. From Our Contributors and Producers WP Minute ecommerce correspondent Dave Rodenbaugh published his latest ecommerce minute discussing the issues with the supply chain. If you are waiting for products this week and want to understand the crisis better, go check out that episode. Can you still make a living building WordPress sites? This Tweet from Jack Forge got some traction on Twitter and many people responded about how WordPress is great for enabling people to make a decent living. There are some fantastic stories in that thread. Eric Karkovack does a recap of 2021 on SpeckyBoy. He covers the foundational shifts that we have seen in WordPress.

WP Minute producer Dave Rodenbaugh of Recapture.io discusses what the supply chain issue is with eCommerce and why it is still an issue.The US imports over 41% of its consumer goods from China and these imports come in through two ports – Long Beach, CA or Los Angeles, CA. During COVID people were buying online at a skyrocketing rate and those goods were coming in containers and unloaded. However, there was already a shortage of truck drivers and port workers and with the pandemic this problem has escalated. This means that containers stacked up at the ports and ships waited in the harbor. Today, that record is 96 ships waiting. To address this issue, local laws have been modified to allow containers to be stacked higher, but they are not moving quickly enough. About 80,000 jobs are still open and that's why items are still not moving. For example, cars and car parts are sitting in containers and can't get to where they are needed. According to Bloomberg from December 4th the average waiting time for a ship to be unloaded is 20.8 days! It used to be 6 days – pre pandemic. And the cost of shipping containers has also risen dramatically the past two years as well. The freightos index shows that the current cost is about 14K but the goods that may be on that container are impacting small businesses. So this is the issue in a nutshell. Until we can move that freight completely from all points in the journey, we are going to continue to see small shortages and price increases everywhere. This will probably continue for months. If you have other eCommerce topics you would like Dave to talk about, tweet at the WPMinute and he will put it on the show. Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash Episode transcription It’s the WP minute. This episode is brought to you by mind size. If you’re looking for monthly WooCommerce report, check out mind size.com. Today’s episode is written and produced by Dave Rodenbach producer@thewpminuteownerofrecapture.io. It’s his returning episode on the e-commerce minute discussing the. At the supply chain, if you’re out there going, man, am I going to get my presence? This holiday season for my kids? They will kind of give us a little insight into that and, and the impact the supply chain has on the e-commerce world. We really hope you enjoy today’s episode with Dave. If you do thank him on Twitter. If you want to think the WP minute support the WP minute, by going to buy me a coffee.com/matt report, that’s buy me a coffee.com/matt report support WordPress media and independent. Like this. Okay. Let’s get into today’s episode. Hello again, Dave, Rodenburg here with the e-commerce minute. This episode comes to you right after black Friday, cyber Monday 2021. This week. I want it to talk about an ongoing crisis in e-commerce that you’ve probably heard a bit about, but you’re likely confused as to why it’s still a problem. And that would be the supply chain issue. So we’ve been hearing about supply chain delays since the beginning of the pandemic here in the U S. You probably suffered through some shortages

Dave runs Recapture: "Automated Abandoned Cart Recovery, Email Marketing & popups with excellent analytics".We talk about how he acquired Recapture, SaaS multiples, the main differences and similarities between email marketing over the years, and so much more! You can follow Dave on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/daverodenbaugh

A lot of WordPress News this Week After months of talking about the release of WordPress 5.8, it has finally arrived. Matt Mullenweg announced that “Tatum”, our latest and greatest release now available for download or update is in your dashboard. This release is named in honor of Art Tatum, the legendary Jazz pianist.  But if you need a thorough review, I recommend you head over to Kinsta’s blog where Carlo Daniele had time to write an amazing summary that covers all the new features of WordPress 5.8. His full-featured post includes a table of contents along with the videos discussing what has been worked on and added in the latest few months. It is a great source for all of the new things in WordPress 5.8. Speaking of great sources… Birgit Pauli-Haack covers more WordPress Themes for Full-Site Editing along with their Resources in the latest post on Gutenberg Times. Birgit says: “Just remember that themes may be wonky at times until developers have had time to make updates.” Bob over at Do-the-Woo covers the latest WooCommerce updates. These updates cover the Action Scheduler 3.2.0 and 3.2.1. The AS library from 3.1.6 to 3.2.1 has been updated in this latest release. Sounds fascinating. This release comes with several fixes and an additional database index to speed up performance for sites with heavy traffic. We all love that. Lastly, Sarah over at WPTavern reports that Tiny, the makers of TinyMCE, have acquired Setka, a content design and editing platform, for an undisclosed amount of money. TinyMCE is used by millions of WordPress users, most visibly in the Classic Editor plugin as well as the Advanced Editor Tools plugin, previously known as TinyMCE Advanced. Advanced Editor Tools adds a “Classic Paragraph” block to the block editor that gives access to the TinyMCE editor with configurable rows and buttons. It provides a stepping stone for those who are not quite ready to switch to the block editor. Events This is the week folks. Wordfest Live starts on July 23, 2021. It’s the 24-hour festival of WordPress. From the Grabbag Changes are being made to meetup.com, the platform where local WordPress events are based. WPCalendar.io will no longer receive any more updates. If you think we can’t keep up with Acquisitions, join the club. Quite literally, Cory Miller over at Post Status has an Acquisition Tracker and it shows you when a WordPress business was sold and who bought it. Over on the Matt Report, my latest interview is with Dave Rodenbaugh. He shares he was never even working on a part-time basis with his business Recapture.io. In fact, the way he put it, he was only devoting 10% of his energy into the business while being contracted at a corporate gig he recently had the chance to exit from. Go check out the latest episode.

Automattic purchases Pocket Casts, a popular podcast app that was facing an uncertain future. A quote from the creators of the app: “As part of Automattic, Pocket Casts will continue to provide you with the features needed to enjoy your favorite podcasts (or find something new). We will explore building deep integrations with WordPress.com and Pocket Casts, making it easier to distribute and listen to podcasts” Recent installs of WooCommerce were hit with a vulnerability which has since been patched. If you haven’t updated your WooCommerce site, please check that as soon as possible. A quote from the WooCommerce blog: Our investigation into this vulnerability and whether data has been compromised is ongoing. We will be sharing more information with site owners on how to investigate this security vulnerability on their site, which we will publish on our blog when it is ready. Pantheon host, known for WordPress hosting and Drupal hosting has raised 100 Million in a Series E round We were planning to raise in a year or two years down the road. But we have a lot of conviction in where this industry is going and our customers' needs are pretty apparent, so we used this as an opportunity to accelerate our operational plans for the company.” — Zack Rosen, Pantheon CEO, tells TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/13/webops-platform-pantheon-raises-100m-from-softbank-vision-fund/ From the grab bag I found EduPack to be an interesting “Jetpack-like” plugin for higher ed A walk around the search block by Javier Arce depicts how he approaches the design of the Gutenberg search block WordFest Live starts next week, July 22-23 What is headless and why does everyone seem to want it? Hosted by Miriam Schwab of Strattic and team Yoast Over on the Matt Report I interviewed Dave Rodenbaugh of recapture.io on how he took that business from part time to full time That's it for today's episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don't forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list

I appreciate a good side hustle story. Someone slogging away in the cubical but slowly building up an audience on Twitter on the weekends. I'm sure you know all about the “build in open” movement, and today's guest really shocked me with that. See, maybe like you, I've listened to Dave Rodenbaugh on his podcast (with my boss Craig) Rogue Startups, for years now. But what really got me in today's story, is that he was never really even “part-time” into his business Recapture.io. In fact, the way he put it, he was only devoting 10% of his energy into the business while being contracted at a corporate gig he recently had the chance to exit from. There's lots of fun stuff in today's episode covering everything from managing a day job to which marketing skills you need as a developer to kickstart your business. I hope you really enjoy it. Transcription Recapture – Dave and Matt – Matt Report [00:00:00] This episode is brought to you by paid memberships pro well, actually it's their other product. Site-wide sales at site-wide sales.com. It's a complete black Friday cyber Monday and flash sales tool for WooCommerce or paid memberships pro. Before, you know it, the deal day holidays will be fast upon us. And you want to prepare your WooCommerce or paid memberships pro website.  [00:00:20] With the site-wide sales plugin, use it to make custom sale banners, targeted landing pages or apply discounts automatically in the cart. Use it to track the performance of all of these promotional features using the reporting feature, which will paint the picture of your black Friday and holiday shopping sales. I use it to help make your woo commerce or paid memberships pro store more money.  [00:00:43] Get the first 30 days for free. And then it's an easy $49 a year. Check out site-wide sales.com. That's site-wide sales.com to make more money. This holiday sale season.   [00:00:56]Let me tell you about creator courses.com/matt and how you can save 20% off using code mat to grab a hold of the great courses instructed by none other than Joe Casabona. So, what can you get from creator courses.com/matt. Courses to help business owners create stuff with absolutely no code. Learn how to build a website using beaver builder, Gutenberg, or both.   [00:01:23] [00:01:23]And that's not all visit creator courses.com/matt and save 20% off Joe's other courses on PHP, full site editing in my two favorites. Podcasting in automation. I think learning the automation stuff is well worth the ticket in my eyes. Go to creator courses.com/matt. Right now. Seriously, stop the podcast and use code mat at checkout to save 20% off that's creator courses.com/matt and use code mat to save 20% off today.   [00:01:52]I appreciate a good side hustle story. Someone's slogging away in the cubicle, but slowly building up an audience on Twitter on the weekends. I'm sure you know, all about the building open movement and today's guest really shocked me with that. See maybe like you I've listened to Dave Rohde and bond his podcast with my boss, Craig rogue startups for years now.  [00:02:12] But what really got me in today's story is that he was never really even part time into his business. recapture.io. In fact, the way he put it, he was only devoting 10% of his energy into the business. While being contracted at a corporate gig, he recently had the chance to exit from there's a lot of fun stuff in today's episode, covering everything from managing and day job to which marketing skills you need as a developer.  [00:02:38] To kickstart your business. I hope you really enjoy it. You're listening to the Matt report, a podcast for the resilient digital business builder. Subscribe to the newsletter@mattreport.com slash subscribe and follow the podcast on apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Better yet.  [00:02:54] Please share this episode. On your social media. We'd love more listeners around here. And side note, [00:03:00] I had to rerecord with Dave after some Zen caster snafoos so we're picking up from our conversation a little bit, warmed up. Okay. I hope you enjoy.   [00:03:09] Matt: [00:03:09] One of the things that I caught you at a great time last time because you were only, I think like two weeks a free man on your own you get out of that sort of day job slash consultancy that you were in. I had you at an interesting moment where you were like, everything's coming at me. This is exciting. [00:03:28]I, I'm kind of like looking to go to the next chapter of, of running recapture. Is that feeling still here or now that we're like a month into it, things have settled, like, oh my God, you  [00:03:39] Dave: [00:03:39] know, it's kind of funny. It hasn't really, I have not felt that euphoria lift yet. I imagine at some point it probably will. [00:03:48]No, th this is, this is definitely the honeymoon phase, right. And at some point the honeymoon phase will always go. But I still feel it. In fact, I was just having breakfast with my wife this morning. We were sitting outside and, I noted her. I said, Hey, it's been, almost two months since I left the freelance job. [00:04:03] And she went, I know. And I was like, and it's still great. So, I still, I still get up in the morning and we go do our walk and I come back and I have breakfast and coffee and I'm like, I get to spend my day on whatever the hell I want to today, which is of course recapturing my business, but there's something still very energizing about that. [00:04:27] Like, it's all, it's my own experience. I'm not really beholden to anybody other than the customers. I don't have to do. Stupid bullshit meetings and phone calls and status reports and just all of that stuff that I had to deal with in the corporate world. It's just all gone like that lift that sh that weight has still lifted off my shoulders. [00:04:47] And I am just as happy then as I am. One  [00:04:51] Matt: [00:04:51] of the things I think you hide really well. And I don't know if this was intentional or I maybe just never even saw it because I've always been just looking at what you were doing with the recapture. You've been on the show, my podcast, before you have the podcast with Craig, who's a happens to be my boss. [00:05:07] I never knew how much. And then we had our discussion more in depth. I never knew how much that freelance gig. Was sort of like weighing you down or how much it consumed when you and I chatted. I think you, throughout the, the ratio of like, it was 90% day job in 10% recapture, and that was kind of mind blowing, like how you manage that, how did you manage like so much of recapture with only 10% of energy. [00:05:37] Dave: [00:05:37] That's an excellent question. And some days I'm amazed that things were able to progress along as well as they had because of that exact issue. And in fact, that was one of the main things I think that sort of drove me into this direction, like recapture could be doing so much better and here I am barely giving it enough oxygen to survive. [00:06:00] [00:05:59] Why, why can't I do more? So, but it wasn't always this way. The freelance thing, it was probably at one point it was like 40% freelance and 60% everything else. But at the time that 60% was a good chunk of the WordPress plugins. I had that I sold last year and recapture, that was the directory, a business directory plugin that was business directory and AWP PCP. [00:06:25] So. Those were things that all consumed my time. And I think when you said, hiding, I think that's an excellent observation because I. I definitely compartmentalize when it comes to things like here's this chunk of my business, here's this other chunk, here's this other chunk. And, I could operate in each of those worlds fairly separately without letting them bleed into each other. [00:06:52] But there came a point when the freelancing just was such a mentally taxing thing to deal with. I had. Just all kinds of toxic stuff going on in the corporate culture that I was there and the project that I was working on and the direction that it was all going. And it just, at some point I was like, this is too much. [00:07:12] I can't deal with this anymore. I can't keep it in the box. It's bleeding out into everything else. So usually when I got onto podcasts, like the Matt. It would give me an opportunity to express the enthusiasm for that box that I didn't get to really express any other way. So, it was like my brief window into positive energy venting, if you will. [00:07:34] And then it was back to the slog of the corporate world and yeah. So  [00:07:39] Matt: [00:07:39] that's tough. How much of the success of recaptured thus far? Is because you chose, these are my words. These are not your words. So obviously I hope for you to color in the lines here, but how much of the success of recapture is the market and the product that you chose. [00:07:58] And I'll preface that with saying is like abandoned cart problems are or solutions. I should say. There's a lot of them. I feel like it's a big space, which is. Some people might look from the sidelines going, God, I don't want to get into that space. There's so much competition, but I feel like maybe in your case, it is, and was a good thing. [00:08:19]If you look at I think cart hook probably was where you were at and then just matured into a much larger product and solution, I think right on the heels of. Recording that we had Jilt shut down, which was a sort of like another, I guess, benefit to you. How much of the success do you think has, has leaned on, Hey, I picked the right product and the right market, because sometimes I think that could be something that kind of goes under the radar. [00:08:44] That a lot of people aren't aware of.  [00:08:47] Dave: [00:08:47] Well, I talked about this on other podcasts and I'll mention it here as well. I believe very heavily in the notion of luck, surface area. So just quick definition for [00:09:00] somebody who might not be familiar with this, basically. Everyone in business is going to encounter some level of luck and whether you're prepared for that luck or unprepared for that luck has to do with the surface area that you've created. [00:09:17] So in other words, can I capitalize on this lucky opportunity that comes around at this time because. I've made some kind of preparation for it. I'm ready to accept it. I've got the bandwidth to deal with it. Like all of these things have to kind of line up. I've had opportunities that appeared in my space and I wasn't ready to capitalize them. [00:09:37] So they weren't within my luck surface area, but being, being ready for those opportunities makes a huge difference in whether you're successful or not successful. So, there were definitely lots of. We'll call them lucky moments. We all want to think that entrepreneurship is solely about hard work and hard work is a piece of it. [00:09:57] And you can't succeed without the hard work, but at the same time, every element of luck that you encounter that you can capitalize we'll will level up your business. And the more of those that you can do, the better off you will end up. The same thing is true of Castillo's when Craig and I have talked about this on the podcast. [00:10:15] I Craig, you and Craig have encountered many lucky moments in Castro's getting into tiny seed, him having an opportunity to hire you when you were available. Each of these helps build on all of the previous moments that you've had before. And the same thing is true with recapture. So like for example, When I was able to acquire a recapture back in 2016, that was a lucky moment for me because I happened to have the money to do it. [00:10:41] And I was looking specifically for something that was, e-commerce SAS, recurring revenue. And it was in a space that I understood and it was a space that I could be passionate about. So that is a lucky moment where all of those things that kind of I've been preparing for came together in one shot. [00:10:58] And then after that, like the pandemic was another lucky moment. I know this is not lucky for a lot of people that lost loved ones, but if you were in e-commerce. Everything kind of took off in certain verticals and certain services, right? Capture was one of those services. And because we had been spending a lot of time, integrating with woo commerce, integrating with easy digital downloads, integrating with restrict content pro being on Shopify at that point and optimizing our listing all of these things, when that massive uptick in e-commerce store interest went on. [00:11:33] We were there and able to capitalize on it because we were available to people. We, we had enough interest and awareness in the community that people were able to take us and, and use the service at the time that they needed it the most. So that's another lucky opportunity we were able to capitalize on. [00:11:53] And, it's just building on moments like that again and again and again, in your business. [00:12:00] Entails, like I said, a lot of hard work and you've got to get out there and you've got to do the homework. I had to network with, the, I have a relationship with nexus and liquid web, and I think I was trying to, I was badgering poor Chris lemma for life. [00:12:14] 12 months, no joke. Like every two months, I just like ping out and say, Hey, what's going on? Are you guys ready to integrate this yet? And they were like, yeah, no, not talk to me in a little bit. And I just kept doing that and kept doing that and kept doing that. And eventually it turned out. Initial relationship and then Jilt shut down. [00:12:31] And now it's a bigger relationship cause they were relying on Jill. So again, it's about timing and persistence and hard work. And the more you can make that surface area, big, these lucky events that come flying through your space, you can grab a hold of them and, let it ride your busy.  [00:12:49] Matt: [00:12:49] Where do you rank the priority of. [00:12:52]Like developing features versus being. Social and networky and markety in the grand scheme of your luck surface area, like if you were sitting in front of a class of one year WordPress plugin entrepreneurs who are mostly developers, Would you tell them to increase the lung surface area by creating those integrations or, Hey, you got to blog more, you got to outreach more, maybe start a podcast. [00:13:24] Where do you set those priorities to, to increase that luck surface?  [00:13:30] Dave: [00:13:30] I would never prioritize features on that list until I had some understanding of what's out there in the space. Like we didn't integrate with WooCommerce and easy digital downloads because I love those two so much. It happens that I do, but that's not why I integrated with them. [00:13:48] I integrated with them because there was a huge market opportunity and doing that. That I can go after those opportunities and it allows me to be in other spaces. So I understood the market well enough to know that those were good plays, but part of what I would say to that, younger group of plugin authors, is that the reason that I knew those things is that I created relationships first. [00:14:14] So I had attended events, like word camps, and PressNomics where I talked with these others. Hosting companies and plugin authors and agencies and all of these other things to understand what are their concerns, who are the people in the space that are the movers and the shakers that I can learn more from that. [00:14:34] If I connect with it's going to, improve my sphere. Of being able to do better things in the world, right? It's not about, me personally, it's about how can I improve my impact on the world and that, you're not going to get that sitting around typing features out on a keyboard. [00:14:50] So those things matter, but they don't matter first. Like you need to get the other things before you can get. The features, because you won't know the right features [00:15:00] to build until you've talked to people, talk to your customers, talk to other people that are going to use your tool. Talk to hosting providers that might find a way to use you to improve the offerings to their customers. [00:15:10] If you can make somebody better with your product, then they're going to be interested in you, but you're not going to know that unless you get out there and talk to other people and find out what the hell they're doing, right. Podcasting is another great way to do that.  [00:15:22]Matt: [00:15:22] I forget which episode of. Rogue startups. [00:15:24] It was, but it might've been a more recent one when you were talking about the new SMS functionality of the product. And you'll have to remind me of like what the context was, but you said something like here I am working on something else. And like the SMS stuff is just sitting, waiting to go, or at least that's how I kind of remember it. [00:15:45] And you were, you were like, oh God, if I just, I just got to get out there and launch this, like, what am I doing? Spending all this time in this area when I can just, this features almost kind of ready, let me just launch it. I think that that's. Such a common, well, first of all, am I getting that right? [00:16:00] Am I remembering this, this tug of war you had at one point with releasing that feature and other things you were doing?  [00:16:06] Dave: [00:16:06] I think so. So there was a, a combination of forces that were coming in at the time. And we were talking about trying to release SMS first. It was going to be an April, then it was going to be in may and then it was going to be in June. [00:16:16] And it finally got released on July 1st. So I don't have to say that anymore, but thank God. But it. I got distracted by a bunch of other things. And one of the things I think that kills us as entrepreneurs is lacking focus. So you see, and I, I'm as guilty as anybody else. Here's a new shiny object over here. [00:16:34] Ooh, look at that. If we develop that boy, that would really make a move on MRR. Oh wait. But we could be doing this marketing hack right here instead. And all of those things are just constantly coming up in your, your field of view and you've got to, nail it down and say, look, I did this. If I don't shove it out the door now I'm in big trouble. [00:16:54] So, for me, with the SMS stuff, what that came down to was that I was distracted by content marketing. And I spent like a month trying to hire a content marketer. And then the Jilt shutdown came along in June and all of a sudden everything got shuffled. Right. So then it was like, oh, geez well, SMS, isn't going to really move the needle with Jilt customers because Jilt didn't support SMS. [00:17:15] So now what do I need to do to make it. Jilt customers would be better served by recapture. Well, I gotta add marketing emails, broadcast emails. And so we were really close on that one too. So we just bundled it all together. SMS was done. And so we just put these two and said, all right, July 1st is when we're launching. [00:17:32] We finished that up inside of a week in June and then pushed it out the door. But yeah, focus was killing me there and that was totally my bad.  [00:17:42]Matt: [00:17:42] Back to, I guess, the, the luck surface area. And you hinted about this before too, is, you have a plan. And we, everyone says good, create a plan, create a calendar, like have these automations in these processes and everything will be running smoothly. [00:17:56] And then suddenly it's like, okay, well maybe this. [00:18:00] Yeah. And it blows up and you're like, oh, maybe new feature. And then like you start building a new feature, then suddenly Jill shuts down and that's just a matte, like now you have to be like, okay, I literally have to drop all this other stuff because this is just now a massive opportunity. [00:18:16] And, and this is not really a question, but more of a statement just to frame it. Like we went through this, we're going through this at  and I'm only bringing it up because you talked to Craig every week, but it's like, we're doing all of these things where new products, new features, new things are rolling out new enhancements, and then suddenly it's. [00:18:36] There's an opportunity to buy another company. Well, that's pretty big deal. And like, now we do that. So it's just like, there's that? And then there's right. Craig working in is working his butt off to raise money and he raises money for the company. And then it's just like right back to the feature grindstone have finished the migration. [00:18:59] Now we've got this app that just launched literally yesterday. Yesterday. Yep. Monday. And now there's just like right back to the feature grindstone and you're like, wow. Like things move at a pace. That's it's exciting. But also, man, there's no plan for this. There's no playbook, there's nothing, there's nothing. [00:19:17] Dave: [00:19:17] There's no question. Yeah, no. There's, there's a certain chaotic insanity to the whole entrepreneur journey. And in some ways you can do all the planning you want, but no plan survives first contact with the customer. And in many cases, no plan survives first contact. Random events that happen out in the real world, acquiring companies, getting funding, Jilt shutdowns, all of these things, just things happen. [00:19:47] And the speed at which you can react to something is definitely whether your business lives or dies in these events. And it definitely is also whether the business grows or fails in these times as well. Those that were not able to. Advantage of the dynamic nature of the e-commerce, if they weren't pivoting hard during their vertical, like if you were in the travel vertical during COVID shutdown, people were just pounding on you with a sledgehammer into the ground, like six feet deep. [00:20:16] They didn't stop, but if you were in like like a lounge wear sweat pants, hoodies, things like that, you couldn't keep the stuff inside. Your warehouse long enough to sell it. So, you had to be reactive to the act of circumstances there, or it kills your business and, that's what Craig's doing with Castillo's and that's what I've tried to do with  [00:20:36] Matt: [00:20:36] recapture, for sure. [00:20:37] Yeah. I want to go back to talking about partnerships which will eventually segue into word PR into woo commerce versus Shopify. But before we get to that flaming ball of chaos, Navigating partnerships in WordPress. I'm interested to hear just your opinion on it. Sometimes. I think, especially for somebody like you with a product that could [00:21:00] really latch onto a hosting company, those are very tricky waters to now. [00:21:04]I know I used to work at Pagely and it was just like, man, like people wouldn't even say WP engine around me. Like it wasn't like,  [00:21:13] Dave: [00:21:13] like we don't talk about that. No. Yeah.  [00:21:16] Matt: [00:21:16] It wasn't on any of those podcasts where there were other web hosts. Like, it is a very, I feel like in the hosting world, maybe it's getting a little bit better that it was like, you gotta be in a camp and that's the camp you're in and there's isolation there. [00:21:28]Any thoughts around navigating. And also just like critical feedback on products and services in the WordPress space. I feel like doesn't exist in the normal zeitgeists like, I'm looking at my Sony camera right now. And like, if you went online to YouTube and you looked at, or a forum and you went to Sony versus Panasonic and there would be like great debate. [00:21:54] Like critical. Like, but every, at the end of the day, everybody's fine about the two companies. But I feel like in the WordPress space, you don't get that like damn EDD for doing this. And this is why I'm woo commerce. I don't have the right phrase for it, but I feel like that partnership slash criticism in the WordPress space doesn't exist. [00:22:14] Maybe. We're all too friendly with each other. Can I say that like, we're all friendly? I dunno, it's just a weird thing. Like I feel like if you walk down the hall. And talked about your favorite brand of anything else. There could be clear debate, clear, concise, love it, hate it. I could go without it, but in the WordPress space that doesn't exist. [00:22:33] Am I making sense with that? Like, do you feel that thing in the air, like I do. I, I  [00:22:37] Dave: [00:22:37] totally hear what you're saying on that one and I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, there's, there's definitely this weird space where it seems like. You can talk about one hosting company, but you can never say hosting company a versus B, right. [00:22:50] Or if you do like that discussion gets shut down real fast. And I don't think it's a conscious thing, but I've seen it on chats. And just over the years on blog posts, like it's very rare that somebody sits down and truly compares one to the other. Head to head and say, look, if you really like these things, this hosting company makes a lot of sense. [00:23:11] And if you like these things, then this other hosting company is a better fit for you. But yeah. So, you were talking about navigating partnerships. I think it's kind of the same thing. Like as soon as you declare allegiance to one. It's almost like the others kind of look at you with a little side eye and with a little bit of stink-eye on top of it. [00:23:32] And they're like, well, you've already got them in your camp, so we can't be in your camp at the same time. I think that goes to the detriment of all WordPress users. Like there's nothing that says you can't be friendly and competitive in the same thing. And I think when you say that they're overly friendly, I wouldn't characterize it like that. [00:23:55] I would characterize it. Yeah. Unwilling to criticize in general, it's something about the [00:24:00] community. I don't know what it is. If they are looking not to drum up drama and they feel like that's going to create unnecessary drama or unhelpful drama, it probably could. I definitely could see that that could get into some real nasty debates that just degenerate into ad hominem attacks. [00:24:16] And, you suck because you picked oh, well, okay. Yeah. Back off, man. That's it. That's that's not necessary. So yeah, I don't know. I've, I've felt that and it's weird, but the partnership thing.  [00:24:31] Matt: [00:24:31] Because it's farther back now. Like, I'll say, well, you can do, you can define it. Is it a, is it a partnership with nexus? [00:24:38] And if so, like, do you feel like one, maybe you can't because you've signed something or two, like, do you feel like, ah, man, it's gonna be a little bit harder for me to knock on the door, WP engine to do this because they see me over here with nexus and Chris. So like that kind of friction that you think that holds you back. [00:24:55] Dave: [00:24:55] It doesn't hold me back. Let me say that. Okay. To sign because like the stuff that I set up with nexus, it wasn't exclusive anyway. And it was very friendly. Like, look, I've got this thing, your customers can use this thing. You got this offering and it makes it more valuable to your customers. If we say we put this on your dashboard here, like, it was very much like how can we make this a win-win thing and like help. [00:25:15] I will be happy to help create content to make your customers more successful. Like at the end of the day, That story should play well with any hosting company, right? If I can give you something that helps your customers be more successful and you help me bring more customers, and we're both winning in this relationship, it shouldn't matter how many people I've set that deal up with because your customer success should be the foremost thing at the top of your mind. [00:25:42] But, I don't know from if I have this deal going on with nexus, does that make me. A bit of a hot potato with WP engine. I don't really know. I noticed that before I had any deal in place of any hosting company at all, like just getting to the right person who was interested in what I had to say, and that saw the value of it. [00:26:02] Was kind of a non-trivial thing to navigate, especially when, folks are coming and going and coming and going. Even if you have the right contacts at these companies and the network relationships I've made gives me some ins to most of these hosting companies where I can say, Hey, I want to talk to so-and-so. [00:26:20] It still doesn't necessarily mean that that company is interested in your offering or that they're thinking about things the same way that you are. So. It kind of is another thing where it has to all line up. They've got to be thinking about this the same way that you're thinking about this. And that's where I've met. [00:26:39] The most resistance, I think is that, I say, Hey, are you thinking about a managed WooCommerce hosting? And I'm like, okay, well, we're, we're already missing this each other here. And I don't, maybe it's going to be a better fit in a year or two years or something like that. [00:26:53] So with nexus, they were very much like, yep. We've got that. Yep. We want this. All right. Let's make it all happen. [00:27:00] With a little bit of persistence. It's so.  [00:27:02] Matt: [00:27:02] It almost, and really almost makes you appreciate like a bigger business. Right. You kind of have an appreciation for it. And, and again, I'll frame that is when you look at somebody like Austin, like SIADH from awesome motive. [00:27:16] Right. And you see. Well, the, the sheer size, the competency of business and you have a relationship there because that's where you sold the plugins to. Right? So you kind of see there's a trust there. And then you can kind of make sense, because if you're just solo developer, Dave knocking on the door of, big web hosting conglomerate. [00:27:38]They're going to look at you and be like, well, man, we can't, this is way too much of a risk to just take your software, slapping it in front of 30,000 customers potentially. And we are just going to trust you. You start to kind of appreciate, okay. The bigger businesses can kind of win. There's more sustainability, there's better trust. [00:27:56]There's just more invested in the whole thing. And as a small business owner, like you kind of get it once you start going through the throws of, of navigating those, I dunno, corporate waters, enterprise waters whatever you want to call it. Kind of appreciate a little bit more, at least I do anyway. [00:28:10] Yeah,  [00:28:11] Dave: [00:28:11] no, I would agree with that. And it's interesting. These larger companies. Because they're so big, like, it's the difference between moving like a cheetah and moving like an elephant. You're the small start-ups. So you can navigate pretty quickly make the fast sprints and turn quickly. They're kind of plotting along in a very straight direction and they're not going to change their direction very quickly. [00:28:34] So it takes them awhile to get going in a direction. And then once they're going in that direction, it takes them a while to change directions. And the bigger the company gets, the bigger the elephant gets, right? Yeah. So by bringing in small companies, I think a lot of them want to increase their agility in that sense. [00:28:53] But of course, there's that whole trust aspect. Like we know you're smaller than us, but are you big enough that you can handle what we hand the hand over to you? And if that trust isn't there, then yeah. That's, that's all gone. So again, this is part of the networking aspect. If you can have that relationship with another person and that they get to know your business and they're like, oh yeah, you've been around for awhile. [00:29:13] Oh, look, you've got some customers. Oh, look, you served a lot of customers. Oh, you've done a pretty decent volume. Hey, maybe you not, might not be a fly by night. Business and we might be able to trust you like that. Trust isn't something that just happens overnight. Right? You got to build it slowly over years. [00:29:28] Matt: [00:29:28] Yeah. Shopify versus a woo commerce when we chatted. Yeah. Forget  [00:29:33] Dave: [00:29:33] it. We're done. Now. I have a lot to say about this. Go ahead.  [00:29:37] Matt: [00:29:37] We chatted last time. I think one of the things now, look, I have only set up a handful of Shopify. Generally out of just helping some friends and some local entrepreneurs in my area do it. [00:29:47]I think one of the things I'll try to make this a quick question. Like one of the things I really appreciate from Shopify is. On the outside anyway, like their partnership program looks more mature. Like the way they work with [00:30:00] agencies looks more mature. And generally, I feel like they're willing to work with the freelancers of the world versus. [00:30:07] WordPress and WooCommerce is kind of just like, see you later. Bye. Like, we'll see it at the end of the road, by the way, we'll sell $5,000 websites@wordpress.com. Right. And to me, that's like, man, like I look at it Shopify and I'm like, yeah woo commerce, WordPress should have something like this. But I guess at the end of the day, it's not all roses and rainbows from the outside because Shopify is going to. [00:30:35] I guess watch like a watchful eye of, what you're doing as an, as an app, as an integrator, as an agency. And if they see something that's super profitable, I guess they could just go. Yeah, we'll just do that. We'll just do that in house and just demolish your app, I guess in the matter of seconds is what they could do. [00:30:52] So again, sharp road to navigate. I like it from the outset. Like it's an opportunity for a freelancer or a small agency to get more work. But curious on your thoughts on partnership program in generally working with a Shopify versus a WooCommerce.  [00:31:09] Dave: [00:31:09] Yeah. So you wanted a short answer, right? Well, I  [00:31:14] Matt: [00:31:14] was, I was trying to make a short question,  [00:31:16] Dave: [00:31:16] which is okay, so I can have a long answer. [00:31:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Let me talk about the platforms first in general. So I think when you're picking Shopify versus woo, there's a lot of things that go into that decision in general, that should make you, focus on what are the strengths of each of those platforms. So with Shopify very easy to get started, low tech threshold, to understand there's lots of stuff that you can do without being a full stack developer. [00:31:47] Integrate apps and just basically get a store up and running. So if you aren't sure, like you're doing it drop shipping or it's a new product and you're trying to find product market fit or product audience bit or whatever it is. I think Shopify gets you up and running quicker to something that's pretty polished that comes at a y'all are costs. [00:32:10] So, the hosting that Shopify, the apps that you're adding on and all of that, but. That can be managed and I think it's simplifies things and gets you going pretty well to where you want be. With that said, once you reach a certain point and you're like, now I want my store to do this. And I want my checkout to have this in it. [00:32:32] And I want to use these payment methods, but not these other ones. And I also want this post purchase, checkout flow to be going on. And I want these kind of abandoned cart emails, and I want this, and I want that like for somebody who knows exactly what they want, Shopify can be incredibly expensive and very frustrating because it has been traditionally difficult to cut it. [00:32:53] So, this is where Woo's strength comes to play. In my opinion, is that, if you're on the right hosting provider [00:33:00] and you have a good agency that you can work with, that knows what they're doing with Boone. These are out there. You can do a nice build and you can customize the hell out of it. [00:33:08] Yeah. And get exactly what you want. And if you've got a good developer on Wu, you can make it run as fast or faster than a Shopify store. So performance, isn't an issue necessarily if you've done the right things and you've done your homework. And, there are plenty of smart wound stores that do that. [00:33:25] The downside to that, of course is complexity. And you got to have a higher threshold of technical knowledge either for yourself or a team to put that together. And, you've got to find the right agencies and the right developers. And if you're talking about the energy and the Wu space and the energy. [00:33:43] Shopify space. They're pretty different. And there's a lot of energy in Shopify and it's hard to ignore that and there's energy and Wu too, but to like sort out the wheat from the chaff is a little more challenging because those really good Wu developers aren't necessarily out there trumpeting themselves, talking about how great their agency is. [00:34:04] I can tell you the top five shops. Development agencies right off the top of my head because of what I see on Twitter, because of what I see in their blogs and just general social media activity, I would have a harder time doing that for woo commerce based on those factors. I know a few of them, but they're harder to pick out. [00:34:21] Matt: [00:34:21] Right. So do you think that's because Shopify helps prop those agencies up to part of their marketing and sales?  [00:34:28] Dave: [00:34:28] Yes. So WooCommerce as a platform, doesn't do enough for partners and agencies, not the way that Shopify does, like here at Shopify at unite announced that they were abolishing the 20% at a revenue share on all of their partner apps up to your first million dollars a year. [00:34:49] So basically it's like everybody on the platform got a 25% raise, including recapture, which I was thrilled about. WooCommerce. If you want to go to their store, there was this discussion in post status that I was contributing to. If you are exclusive to the woo commerce store, 40% revenue share. If you're non-exclusive it's 60%. [00:35:09]I understand why WooCommerce didn't want. To just let every person possible onto the platform and turn it into the repo, like the repo turned out to, it's kind of a, we'll call it a mixed bag. I think that's the, the most politically correct way I could say it. Yeah. There's a lot of garbage out there and there's a lot of good stuff and it does take some time to sort through it and figure out, I think they were trying to curate the woo commerce store experience to be a little higher quality than that. [00:35:41] But I think they went about it wrong. And it's  [00:35:43] Matt: [00:35:43] been it's 60% to automatic  [00:35:45] Dave: [00:35:45] or 60, 60% to automatic. Yes. Wow. Which is, like, come on really. You're taking more than half of my business. How am I supposed to be profitable at that point? It's not this isn't a charity to you. So these numbers are just [00:36:00] wrong in my, like, they don't encourage  [00:36:02] Matt: [00:36:02] catches a lot of flack for 30%, right? [00:36:05]Dave: [00:36:05] Come on, apple, apple at 30 bucks percent is considered untenable and you all at WooCommerce that are doing 40 and 60%. Come on, give me a break. That's why my plugins are never going to be on the WooCommerce repository. I know I'm not alone in this. So, there are some plugins that are there, but guess what? [00:36:23] They're all free. 40% of zero is still zero. So you're good. They're, they're asking for me to share my revenue 60% a month. You just killed my profitability to the point where I can't run my business anymore. So it's that sort of mentality. That I think is hurting the Wu commerce ecosystem. Like there isn't an agency support program. [00:36:44] There isn't a big conference every year. That has the energy of Shopify unite. There isn't a partner program that really nurtures everybody along. Like with Shopify partners. Like you sign up, you're getting an email a day for like 30 days telling you here's some partner tips. Here's this development thing. [00:37:01] Here's this resource. Here's this? Here's this here's this guess how many times we got from WooCommerce? Zero. Yeah. Yeah. I, it they're very different ecosystems and I think it's to the detriment of WooCommerce, that they are not putting more energy into that, that piece of it, because that is a big part of why Shopify has been successful. [00:37:23] Matt: [00:37:23] Yeah. I agree a hundred percent. And again, I have very little experience from the Shopify side. I just know from what I don't receive from support from WordPress and seeing what everything else is happening. And I guess look at when you. Zoom out and take a look at the sheer size of WordPress compared to Shopify just I'm talking like installed platform based like that kind of thing. [00:37:46] Yeah. The, the, the play for WordPress and automatic is when it comes to open source. How are you going to monetize it? It has to be done through like that trust factor. So it's open source. It's super flexible. It's the same message. Automatic and you and I can go out and tell a customer and they'll just win by having the most trusted plugin, a jet pack or a premium ad-ons from woocommerce.com or something like that. [00:38:17] And they'll win. On that trust level where Shopify, you're just going to go there and spend money. Like you're choosing that platform. So you're you, you've made the decision to go there and they're telling you, the whole platform is trusted with WordPress it's. Hey, it's great. It's open source. Do whatever you want. [00:38:34]But by the way, Jetpack is the most trusted way to secure and manage your site. And that also comes with whatever WooCommerce add ons that you buy for those bundles that they have for like 2 99, 3 99 or whatever. And their argument will be you trust it because it comes from ashore. You can go get Dave's go ahead and get Dave's. [00:38:53] But you know, you're going to trust us better because we're the, the company behind it kind of thing. So I can't fault them [00:39:00] for it. It's just, one of those things. So many people have pushed towards jet pack or excuse me, to WooCommerce and WordPress because they love the software and there's no, there's that love doesn't come back to us. [00:39:15] What are we going to do?  [00:39:16] Dave: [00:39:16] Nothing we can do. There's nothing we can do, unfortunately. And the other thing. I, I don't like, is that w well, so to contrast this, let me say, oh, Shopify does this. So Shopify does do acquisitions on things, but not like, not at the same level that I've seen automatic do it, where they pull in things like mail poet, right. [00:39:35] Or there pull all this stuff in and turn it into Jetpack. Like Shopify is not doing that. They build stuff and they'll build it to a level like, there was a year, I think it was like the first unite I went to and it was me. Two years after I'd acquired recapture and they released the abandoned cart emails. [00:39:52] And those that knew me at the conference were like, so how do you feel about abandoned cart emails on Shopify now is like, I feel okay about it because they're just, they're 60% solution and I'm a hundred percent solution. And I can tell you like all the shortcomings, it's great for people getting started out and it gives you those tools to get going and get your store off the ground. [00:40:14] It's never serious enough to like take you to the next level. So it'll get you to like the 5,000 a month rate. But after that, it's going to break down pretty quickly. Cause you're just not doing as good of a job as you could be with other apps that are more professional. And I've seen this a little bit in big commerce, too, where they build in these features and then know they're okay, but they're not great. [00:40:35] And you build your store up to a certain level and then you get these other things and you use them instead. I don't see that with WooCommerce. They're trying to pull in everything and say, okay, we're going to be really good at email. We've got mail poet now, but are you really the best at email? Because you got all these other things you're doing too. [00:40:54] And you've got this team, that's doing mail poet, and I don't want them to fault the male poet folks. They're a great plugin and they do a lot. It's just, your priorities are going to be driven by the platform, not the customers that are using it. So. Is that going to make it the best it could possibly be and truly drive be driven by the needs of the customers on the platform, as opposed to the benevolent dictator for  [00:41:18] Matt: [00:41:18] life. [00:41:19] Yeah. What's next from, is there a next platform play for you to integrate with? I think I was looking at another W3C techs report the other day and it for specifically for, e-commerce and. I would have to go back and dig this report out. Maybe, I saw woo commerce and in the Squarespace, e-commerce almost like neck and neck. [00:41:41] Is that true? Is there square? I was like, suddenly like what Squarespace e-commerce is this big and even realize it is that like an area you're going into or another platform? That's interesting.  [00:41:50]Dave: [00:41:50] We've, I've taken a quick look at Wix and Weebly and Squarespace, all kind of in the same breath. [00:41:57]There is definitely a. [00:42:00] We'll call it an economic shift on this platform where it is. It is aiming for a tier of store that doesn't want to pay as much as you get in Shopify, or you want to get in Wu. And it's difficult for me to convince a customer who's paying $4 a month for their e-commerce website to pay 29 for mine. [00:42:23] And I know this because of how the pricing worked in Shopify, like the base level in Shopify as 29. And the fact that I aligned with that. It makes it easier for me to sell my product because they've already made that mental commitment for 29. They're getting another 29. Isn't that bad. But when you're at four and you jumped to 29, that's too big and that's not a, that's not a battle I want to fight. [00:42:45] That's not a set of customers that I think are easy to deal with in that regard. So, I've looked at other platforms where we can head up markets. So our other e-commerce spaces. So things like Salesforce, cloud commerce. Things like that, but it's a little trickier to get into that because you kind of need to know some stores to have the testability. [00:43:09] Cause it's not like you're just downloading this, installing it and testing it out. You kind of have to work in tandem with somebody else. So, I I've got some plans. We're kind of cooking that up right now. I don't see, I'm keeping an eye on Squarespace and Wix and Weebly. And if they start moving up market. [00:43:25] Mid tiers, which is quite possible. They could, then it would make a lot of sense to integrate because there's going to be a large customer base there, but right now it doesn't look economically viable. Yeah, yeah.  [00:43:37] Matt: [00:43:37] Yeah. That makes, that makes total sense. I guess that's probably why I was so shocked at the footprint of the Squarespace. [00:43:42] Cause I was like, yeah, it makes sense. Because then you're like, well, what are these people selling? They're really seriously. Probably something like photo prints, and a couple of handmade things. That's probably about it, certainly not an apparel line or kayaks, which you'll probably find on Shopify, right? [00:44:00] People who are manufacturing, things, stuff like that. Very cool. Dave wrote ball, recapture.io. Congrats on being a free man than the last time I talked to you running the business day to day. Where else can folks find you? What else can they look forward to from.  [00:44:15] Dave: [00:44:15] Well, we just did our big release the 1st of July for SMS card abandonment and order notifications on recapture. [00:44:23] So if you've been itching to try that out or see what that's like, come to recapture.io and check that out. We also have broadcast emails out after Jill announced their shutdown, we had to make sure that was working to be able to seamlessly migrate folks over. So if you're. A former Jilt customer and you're looking for a place to land. [00:44:41] We'd love to talk to you at recapture and see if we can make things work for you. If somebody is looking to get a hold of me, you can find me on Twitter at Dave.  [00:44:51] Matt: [00:44:51] I heard you're actually making phone calls too. Right? You're calling people up, doing it the old fashioned way  [00:45:00] [00:45:00] Dave: [00:45:00] because your cell phone fashioned way, I would like, knock on their doors and press the flashes as it were, but that's not happening. [00:45:08] Matt: [00:45:08] Everyone else. Matt report.com maryport.com/subscribe. Join the mailing list. Don't forget to tune in to your weekly dose of five minute WordPress news every week@thewpminute.com. Thanks for listening. We'll see you. In the next episode. ★ Support this podcast ★

I appreciate a good side hustle story. Someone slogging away in the cubical but slowly building up an audience on Twitter on the weekends. I’m sure you know all about the “build in open” movement, and today’s guest really shocked me with that. See, maybe like you, I’ve listened to Dave Rodenbaugh on his podcast (with my boss Craig) Rogue Startups, for years now. But what really got me in today’s story, is that he was never really even “part-time” into his business Recapture.io. In fact, the way he put it, he was only devoting 10% of his energy into the business while being contracted at a corporate gig he recently had the chance to exit from. There’s lots of fun stuff in today’s episode covering everything from managing a day job to which marketing skills you need as a developer to kickstart your business. I hope you really enjoy it. Transcription Recapture – Dave and Matt – Matt Report [00:00:00] This episode is brought to you by paid memberships pro well, actually it’s their other product. Site-wide sales at site-wide sales.com. It’s a complete black Friday cyber Monday and flash sales tool for WooCommerce or paid memberships pro. Before, you know it, the deal day holidays will be fast upon us. And you want to prepare your WooCommerce or paid memberships pro website. [00:00:20] With the site-wide sales plugin, use it to make custom sale banners, targeted landing pages or apply discounts automatically in the cart. Use it to track the performance of all of these promotional features using the reporting feature, which will paint the picture of your black Friday and holiday shopping sales. I use it to help make your woo commerce or paid memberships pro store more money. [00:00:43] Get the first 30 days for free. And then it’s an easy $49 a year. Check out site-wide sales.com. That’s site-wide sales.com to make more money. This holiday sale season. [00:00:56]Let me tell you about creator courses.com/matt and how you can save 20% off using code mat to grab a hold of the great courses instructed by none other than Joe Casabona. So, what can you get from creator courses.com/matt. Courses to help business owners create stuff with absolutely no code. Learn how to build a website using beaver builder, Gutenberg, or both. [00:01:23] [00:01:23]And that’s not all visit creator courses.com/matt and save 20% off Joe’s other courses on PHP, full site editing in my two favorites. Podcasting in automation. I think learning the automation stuff is well worth the ticket in my eyes. Go to creator courses.com/matt. Right now. Seriously, stop the podcast and use code mat at checkout to save 20% off that’s creator courses.com/matt and use code mat to save 20% off today. [00:01:52]I appreciate a good side hustle story. Someone’s slogging away in the cubicle, but slowly building up an audience on Twitter on the weekends. I’m sure you know, all about the building open movement and today’s guest really shocked me with that. See maybe like you I’ve listened to Dave Rohde and bond his podcast with my boss, Craig rogue startups for years now. [00:02:12] But what really got me in today’s story is that he was never really even part time into his business. recapture.io. In fact, the way he put it, he was only devoting 10% of his energy into the business. While being contracted at a corporate gig, he recently had the chance to exit from there’s a lot of fun stuff in today’s episode, covering everything from managing and day job to which marketing skills you need as a developer. [00:02:38] To kickstart your business. I hope you really enjoy it. You’re listening to the Matt report, a podcast for the resilient digital business builder. Subscribe to the newsletter@mattreport.com slash subscribe and follow the podcast on apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Better yet. [00:02:54] Please share this episode. On your social media. We’d love more listeners around here. And side note, [00:03:00] I had to rerecord with Dave after some Zen caster snafoos so we’re picking up from our conversation a little bit, warmed up. Okay. I hope you enjoy. [00:03:09] Matt: [00:03:09] One of the things that I caught you at a great time last time because you were only, I think like two weeks a free man on your own you get out of that sort of day job slash consultancy that you were in. I had you at an interesting moment where you were like, everything’s coming at me. This is exciting. [00:03:28]I, I’m kind of like looking to go to the next chapter of, of running recapture. Is that feeling still here or now that we’re like a month into it, things have settled, like, oh my God, you [00:03:39] Dave: [00:03:39] know, it’s kind of funny. It hasn’t really, I have not felt that euphoria lift yet. I imagine at some point it probably will. [00:03:48]No, th this is, this is definitely the honeymoon phase, right. And at some point the honeymoon phase will always go. But I still feel it. In fact, I was just having breakfast with my wife this morning. We were sitting outside and, I noted her. I said, Hey, it’s been, almost two months since I left the freelance job. [00:04:03] And she went, I know. And I was like, and it’s still great. So, I still, I still get up in the morning and we go do our walk and I come back and I have breakfast and coffee and I’m like, I get to spend my day on whatever the hell I want to today, which is of course recapturing my business, but there’s something still very energizing about that. [00:04:27] Like, it’s all, it’s my own experience. I’m not really beholden to anybody other than the customers. I don’t have to do. Stupid bullshit meetings and phone calls and status reports and just all of that stuff that I had to deal with in the corporate world. It’s just all gone like that lift that sh that weight has still lifted off my shoulders. [00:04:47] And I am just as happy then as I am. One [00:04:51] Matt: [00:04:51] of the things I think you hide really well. And I don’t know if this was intentional or I maybe just never even saw it because I’ve always been just looking at what you were doing with the recapture. You’ve been on the show, my podcast, before you have the podcast with Craig, who’s a happens to be my boss. [00:05:07] I never knew how much. And then we had our discussion more in depth. I never knew how much that freelance gig. Was sort of like weighing you down or how much it consumed when you and I chatted. I think you, throughout the, the ratio of like, it was 90% day job in 10% recapture, and that was kind of mind blowing, like how you manage that, how did you manage like so much of recapture with only 10% of energy. [00:05:37] Dave: [00:05:37] That’s an excellent question. And some days I’m amazed that things were able to progress along as well as they had because of that exact issue. And in fact, that was one of the main things I think that sort of drove me into this direction, like recapture could be doing so much better and here I am barely giving it enough oxygen to survive. [00:06:00] [00:05:59] Why, why can’t I do more? So, but it wasn’t always this way. The freelance thing, it was probably at one point it was like 40% freelance and 60% everything else. But at the time that 60% was a good chunk of the WordPress plugins. I had that I sold last year and recapture, that was the directory, a business directory plugin that was business directory and AWP PCP. [00:06:25] So. Those were things that all consumed my time. And I think when you said, hiding, I think that’s an excellent observation because I. I definitely compartmentalize when it comes to things like here’s this chunk of my business, here’s this other chunk, here’s this other chunk. And, I could operate in each of those worlds fairly separately without letting them bleed into each other. [00:06:52] But there came a point when the freelancing just was such a mentally taxing thing to deal with. I had. Just all kinds of toxic stuff going on in the corporate culture that I was there and the project that I was working on and the direction that it was all going. And it just, at some point I was like, this is too much. [00:07:12] I can’t deal with this anymore. I can’t keep it in the box. It’s bleeding out into everything else. So usually when I got onto podcasts, like the Matt. It would give me an opportunity to express the enthusiasm for that box that I didn’t get to really express any other way. So, it was like my brief window into positive energy venting, if you will. [00:07:34] And then it was back to the slog of the corporate world and yeah. So [00:07:39] Matt: [00:07:39] that’s tough. How much of the success of recaptured thus far? Is because you chose, these are my words. These are not your words. So obviously I hope for you to color in the lines here, but how much of the success of recapture is the market and the product that you chose. [00:07:58] And I’ll preface that with saying is like abandoned cart problems are or solutions. I should say. There’s a lot of them. I feel like it’s a big space, which is. Some people might look from the sidelines going, God, I don’t want to get into that space. There’s so much competition, but I feel like maybe in your case, it is, and was a good thing. [00:08:19]If you look at I think cart hook probably was where you were at and then just matured into a much larger product and solution, I think right on the heels of. Recording that we had Jilt shut down, which was a sort of like another, I guess, benefit to you. How much of the success do you think has, has leaned on, Hey, I picked the right product and the right market, because sometimes I think that could be something that kind of goes under the radar. [00:08:44] That a lot of people aren’t aware of. [00:08:47] Dave: [00:08:47] Well, I talked about this on other podcasts and I’ll mention it here as well. I believe very heavily in the notion of luck, surface area. So just quick definition for [00:09:00] somebody who might not be familiar with this, basically. Everyone in business is going to encounter some level of luck and whether you’re prepared for that luck or unprepared for that luck has to do with the surface area that you’ve created. [00:09:17] So in other words, can I capitalize on this lucky opportunity that comes around at this time because. I’ve made some kind of preparation for it. I’m ready to accept it. I’ve got the bandwidth to deal with it. Like all of these things have to kind of line up. I’ve had opportunities that appeared in my space and I wasn’t ready to capitalize them. [00:09:37] So they weren’t within my luck surface area, but being, being ready for those opportunities makes a huge difference in whether you’re successful or not successful. So, there were definitely lots of. We’ll call them lucky moments. We all want to think that entrepreneurship is solely about hard work and hard work is a piece of it. [00:09:57] And you can’t succeed without the hard work, but at the same time, every element of luck that you encounter that you can capitalize we’ll will level up your business. And the more of those that you can do, the better off you will end up. The same thing is true of Castillo’s when Craig and I have talked about this on the podcast. [00:10:15] I Craig, you and Craig have encountered many lucky moments in Castro’s getting into tiny seed, him having an opportunity to hire you when you were available. Each of these helps build on all of the previous moments that you’ve had before. And the same thing is true with recapture. So like for example, When I was able to acquire a recapture back in 2016, that was a lucky moment for me because I happened to have the money to do it. [00:10:41] And I was looking specifically for something that was, e-commerce SAS, recurring revenue. And it was in a space that I understood and it was a space that I could be passionate about. So that is a lucky moment where all of those things that kind of I’ve been preparing for came together in one shot. [00:10:58] And then after that, like the pandemic was another lucky moment. I know this is not lucky for a lot of people that lost loved ones, but if you were in e-commerce. Everything kind of took off in certain verticals and certain services, right? Capture was one of those services. And because we had been spending a lot of time, integrating with woo commerce, integrating with easy digital downloads, integrating with restrict content pro being on Shopify at that point and optimizing our listing all of these things, when that massive uptick in e-commerce store interest went on. [00:11:33] We were there and able to capitalize on it because we were available to people. We, we had enough interest and awareness in the community that people were able to take us and, and use the service at the time that they needed it the most. So that’s another lucky opportunity we were able to capitalize on. [00:11:53] And, it’s just building on moments like that again and again and again, in your business. [00:12:00] Entails, like I said, a lot of hard work and you’ve got to get out there and you’ve got to do the homework. I had to network with, the, I have a relationship with nexus and liquid web, and I think I was trying to, I was badgering poor Chris lemma for life. [00:12:14] 12 months, no joke. Like every two months, I just like ping out and say, Hey, what’s going on? Are you guys ready to integrate this yet? And they were like, yeah, no, not talk to me in a little bit. And I just kept doing that and kept doing that and kept doing that. And eventually it turned out. Initial relationship and then Jilt shut down. [00:12:31] And now it’s a bigger relationship cause they were relying on Jill. So again, it’s about timing and persistence and hard work. And the more you can make that surface area, big, these lucky events that come flying through your space, you can grab a hold of them and, let it ride your busy. [00:12:49] Matt: [00:12:49] Where do you rank the priority of. [00:12:52]Like developing features versus being. Social and networky and markety in the grand scheme of your luck surface area, like if you were sitting in front of a class of one year WordPress plugin entrepreneurs who are mostly developers, Would you tell them to increase the lung surface area by creating those integrations or, Hey, you got to blog more, you got to outreach more, maybe start a podcast. [00:13:24] Where do you set those priorities to, to increase that luck surface? [00:13:30] Dave: [00:13:30] I would never prioritize features on that list until I had some understanding of what’s out there in the space. Like we didn’t integrate with WooCommerce and easy digital downloads because I love those two so much. It happens that I do, but that’s not why I integrated with them. [00:13:48] I integrated with them because there was a huge market opportunity and doing that. That I can go after those opportunities and it allows me to be in other spaces. So I understood the market well enough to know that those were good plays, but part of what I would say to that, younger group of plugin authors, is that the reason that I knew those things is that I created relationships first. [00:14:14] So I had attended events, like word camps, and PressNomics where I talked with these others. Hosting companies and plugin authors and agencies and all of these other things to understand what are their concerns, who are the people in the space that are the movers and the shakers that I can learn more from that. [00:14:34] If I connect with it’s going to, improve my sphere. Of being able to do better things in the world, right? It’s not about, me personally, it’s about how can I improve my impact on the world and that, you’re not going to get that sitting around typing features out on a keyboard. [00:14:50] So those things matter, but they don’t matter first. Like you need to get the other things before you can get. The features, because you won’t know the right features [00:15:00] to build until you’ve talked to people, talk to your customers, talk to other people that are going to use your tool. Talk to hosting providers that might find a way to use you to improve the offerings to their customers. [00:15:10] If you can make somebody better with your product, then they’re going to be interested in you, but you’re not going to know that unless you get out there and talk to other people and find out what the hell they’re doing, right. Podcasting is another great way to do that. [00:15:22]Matt: [00:15:22] I forget which episode of. Rogue startups. [00:15:24] It was, but it might’ve been a more recent one when you were talking about the new SMS functionality of the product. And you’ll have to remind me of like what the context was, but you said something like here I am working on something else. And like the SMS stuff is just sitting, waiting to go, or at least that’s how I kind of remember it. [00:15:45] And you were, you were like, oh God, if I just, I just got to get out there and launch this, like, what am I doing? Spending all this time in this area when I can just, this features almost kind of ready, let me just launch it. I think that that’s. Such a common, well, first of all, am I getting that right? [00:16:00] Am I remembering this, this tug of war you had at one point with releasing that feature and other things you were doing? [00:16:06] Dave: [00:16:06] I think so. So there was a, a combination of forces that were coming in at the time. And we were talking about trying to release SMS first. It was going to be an April, then it was going to be in may and then it was going to be in June. [00:16:16] And it finally got released on July 1st. So I don’t have to say that anymore, but thank God. But it. I got distracted by a bunch of other things. And one of the things I think that kills us as entrepreneurs is lacking focus. So you see, and I, I’m as guilty as anybody else. Here’s a new shiny object over here. [00:16:34] Ooh, look at that. If we develop that boy, that would really make a move on MRR. Oh wait. But we could be doing this marketing hack right here instead. And all of those things are just constantly coming up in your, your field of view and you’ve got to, nail it down and say, look, I did this. If I don’t shove it out the door now I’m in big trouble. [00:16:54] So, for me, with the SMS stuff, what that came down to was that I was distracted by content marketing. And I spent like a month trying to hire a content marketer. And then the Jilt shutdown came along in June and all of a sudden everything got shuffled. Right. So then it was like, oh, geez well, SMS, isn’t going to really move the needle with Jilt customers because Jilt didn’t support SMS. [00:17:15] So now what do I need to do to make it. Jilt customers would be better served by recapture. Well, I gotta add marketing emails, broadcast emails. And so we were really close on that one too. So we just bundled it all together. SMS was done. And so we just put these two and said, all right, July 1st is when we’re launching. [00:17:32] We finished that up inside of a week in June and then pushed it out the door. But yeah, focus was killing me there and that was totally my bad. [00:17:42]Matt: [00:17:42] Back to, I guess, the, the luck surface area. And you hinted about this before too, is, you have a plan. And we, everyone says good, create a plan, create a calendar, like have these automations in these processes and everything will be running smoothly. [00:17:56] And then suddenly it’s like, okay, well maybe this. [00:18:00] Yeah. And it blows up and you’re like, oh, maybe new feature. And then like you start building a new feature, then suddenly Jill shuts down and that’s just a matte, like now you have to be like, okay, I literally have to drop all this other stuff because this is just now a massive opportunity. [00:18:16] And, and this is not really a question, but more of a statement just to frame it. Like we went through this, we’re going through this at and I’m only bringing it up because you talked to Craig every week, but it’s like, we’re doing all of these things where new products, new features, new things are rolling out new enhancements, and then suddenly it’s. [00:18:36] There’s an opportunity to buy another company. Well, that’s pretty big deal. And like, now we do that. So it’s just like, there’s that? And then there’s right. Craig working in is working his butt off to raise money and he raises money for the company. And then it’s just like right back to the feature grindstone have finished the migration. [00:18:59] Now we’ve got this app that just launched literally yesterday. Yesterday. Yep. Monday. And now there’s just like right back to the feature grindstone and you’re like, wow. Like things move at a pace. That’s it’s exciting. But also, man, there’s no plan for this. There’s no playbook, there’s nothing, there’s nothing. [00:19:17] Dave: [00:19:17] There’s no question. Yeah, no. There’s, there’s a certain chaotic insanity to the whole entrepreneur journey. And in some ways you can do all the planning you want, but no plan survives first contact with the customer. And in many cases, no plan survives first contact. Random events that happen out in the real world, acquiring companies, getting funding, Jilt shutdowns, all of these things, just things happen. [00:19:47] And the speed at which you can react to something is definitely whether your business lives or dies in these events. And it definitely is also whether the business grows or fails in these times as well. Those that were not able to. Advantage of the dynamic nature of the e-commerce, if they weren’t pivoting hard during their vertical, like if you were in the travel vertical during COVID shutdown, people were just pounding on you with a sledgehammer into the ground, like six feet deep. [00:20:16] They didn’t stop, but if you were in like like a lounge wear sweat pants, hoodies, things like that, you couldn’t keep the stuff inside. Your warehouse long enough to sell it. So, you had to be reactive to the act of circumstances there, or it kills your business and, that’s what Craig’s doing with Castillo’s and that’s what I’ve tried to do with [00:20:36] Matt: [00:20:36] recapture, for sure. [00:20:37] Yeah. I want to go back to talking about partnerships which will eventually segue into word PR into woo commerce versus Shopify. But before we get to that flaming ball of chaos, Navigating partnerships in WordPress. I’m interested to hear just your opinion on it. Sometimes. I think, especially for somebody like you with a product that could [00:21:00] really latch onto a hosting company, those are very tricky waters to now. [00:21:04]I know I used to work at Pagely and it was just like, man, like people wouldn’t even say WP engine around me. Like it wasn’t like, [00:21:13] Dave: [00:21:13] like we don’t talk about that. No. Yeah. [00:21:16] Matt: [00:21:16] It wasn’t on any of those podcasts where there were other web hosts. Like, it is a very, I feel like in the hosting world, maybe it’s getting a little bit better that it was like, you gotta be in a camp and that’s the camp you’re in and there’s isolation there. [00:21:28]Any thoughts around navigating. And also just like critical feedback on products and services in the WordPress space. I feel like doesn’t exist in the normal zeitgeists like, I’m looking at my Sony camera right now. And like, if you went online to YouTube and you looked at, or a forum and you went to Sony versus Panasonic and there would be like great debate. [00:21:54] Like critical. Like, but every, at the end of the day, everybody’s fine about the two companies. But I feel like in the WordPress space, you don’t get that like damn EDD for doing this. And this is why I’m woo commerce. I don’t have the right phrase for it, but I feel like that partnership slash criticism in the WordPress space doesn’t exist. [00:22:14] Maybe. We’re all too friendly with each other. Can I say that like, we’re all friendly? I dunno, it’s just a weird thing. Like I feel like if you walk down the hall. And talked about your favorite brand of anything else. There could be clear debate, clear, concise, love it, hate it. I could go without it, but in the WordPress space that doesn’t exist. [00:22:33] Am I making sense with that? Like, do you feel that thing in the air, like I do. I, I [00:22:37] Dave: [00:22:37] totally hear what you’re saying on that one and I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, there’s, there’s definitely this weird space where it seems like. You can talk about one hosting company, but you can never say hosting company a versus B, right. [00:22:50] Or if you do like that discussion gets shut down real fast. And I don’t think it’s a conscious thing, but I’ve seen it on chats. And just over the years on blog posts, like it’s very rare that somebody sits down and truly compares one to the other. Head to head and say, look, if you really like these things, this hosting company makes a lot of sense. [00:23:11] And if you like these things, then this other hosting company is a better fit for you. But yeah. So, you were talking about navigating partnerships. I think it’s kind of the same thing. Like as soon as you declare allegiance to one. It’s almost like the others kind of look at you with a little side eye and with a little bit of stink-eye on top of it. [00:23:32] And they’re like, well, you’ve already got them in your camp, so we can’t be in your camp at the same time. I think that goes to the detriment of all WordPress users. Like there’s nothing that says you can’t be friendly and competitive in the same thing. And I think when you say that they’re overly friendly, I wouldn’t characterize it like that. [00:23:55] I would characterize it. Yeah. Unwilling to criticize in general, it’s something about the [00:24:00] community. I don’t know what it is. If they are looking not to drum up drama and they feel like that’s going to create unnecessary drama or unhelpful drama, it probably could. I definitely could see that that could get into some real nasty debates that just degenerate into ad hominem attacks. [00:24:16] And, you suck because you picked oh, well, okay. Yeah. Back off, man. That’s it. That’s that’s not necessary. So yeah, I don’t know. I’ve, I’ve felt that and it’s weird, but the partnership thing. [00:24:31] Matt: [00:24:31] Because it’s farther back now. Like, I’ll say, well, you can do, you can define it. Is it a, is it a partnership with nexus? [00:24:38] And if so, like, do you feel like one, maybe you can’t because you’ve signed something or two, like, do you feel like, ah, man, it’s gonna be a little bit harder for me to knock on the door, WP engine to do this because they see me over here with nexus and Chris. So like that kind of friction that you think that holds you back. [00:24:55] Dave: [00:24:55] It doesn’t hold me back. Let me say that. Okay. To sign because like the stuff that I set up with nexus, it wasn’t exclusive anyway. And it was very friendly. Like, look, I’ve got this thing, your customers can use this thing. You got this offering and it makes it more valuable to your customers. If we say we put this on your dashboard here, like, it was very much like how can we make this a win-win thing and like help. [00:25:15] I will be happy to help create content to make your customers more successful. Like at the end of the day, That story should play well with any hosting company, right? If I can give you something that helps your customers be more successful and you help me bring more customers, and we’re both winning in this relationship, it shouldn’t matter how many people I’ve set that deal up with because your customer success should be the foremost thing at the top of your mind. [00:25:42] But, I don’t know from if I have this deal going on with nexus, does that make me. A bit of a hot potato with WP engine. I don’t really know. I noticed that before I had any deal in place of any hosting company at all, like just getting to the right person who was interested in what I had to say, and that saw the value of it. [00:26:02] Was kind of a non-trivial thing to navigate, especially when, folks are coming and going and coming and going. Even if you have the right contacts at these companies and the network relationships I’ve made gives me some ins to most of these hosting companies where I can say, Hey, I want to talk to so-and-so. [00:26:20] It still doesn’t necessarily mean that that company is interested in your offering or that they’re thinking about things the same way that you are. So. It kind of is another thing where it has to all line up. They’ve got to be thinking about this the same way that you’re thinking about this. And that’s where I’ve met. [00:26:39] The most resistance, I think is that, I say, Hey, are you thinking about a managed WooCommerce hosting? And I’m like, okay, well, we’re, we’re already missing this each other here. And I don’t, maybe it’s going to be a better fit in a year or two years or something like that. [00:26:53] So with nexus, they were very much like, yep. We’ve got that. Yep. We want this. All right. Let’s make it all happen. [00:27:00] With a little bit of persistence. It’s so. [00:27:02] Matt: [00:27:02] It almost, and really almost makes you appreciate like a bigger business. Right. You kind of have an appreciation for it. And, and again, I’ll frame that is when you look at somebody like Austin, like SIADH from awesome motive. [00:27:16] Right. And you see. Well, the, the sheer size, the competency of business and you have a relationship there because that’s where you sold the plugins to. Right? So you kind of see there’s a trust there. And then you can kind of make sense, because if you’re just solo developer, Dave knocking on the door of, big web hosting conglomerate. [00:27:38]They’re going to look at you and be like, well, man, we can’t, this is way too much of a risk to just take your software, slapping it in front of 30,000 customers potentially. And we are just going to trust you. You start to kind of appreciate, okay. The bigger businesses can kind of win. There’s more sustainability, there’s better trust. [00:27:56]There’s just more invested in the whole thing. And as a small business owner, like you kind of get it once you start going through the throws of, of navigating those, I dunno, corporate waters, enterprise waters whatever you want to call it. Kind of appreciate a little bit more, at least I do anyway. [00:28:10] Yeah, [00:28:11] Dave: [00:28:11] no, I would agree with that. And it’s interesting. These larger companies. Because they’re so big, like, it’s the difference between moving like a cheetah and moving like an elephant. You’re the small start-ups. So you can navigate pretty quickly make the fast sprints and turn quickly. They’re kind of plotting along in a very straight direction and they’re not going to change their direction very quickly. [00:28:34] So it takes them awhile to get going in a direction. And then once they’re going in that direction, it takes them a while to change directions. And the bigger the company gets, the bigger the elephant gets, right? Yeah. So by bringing in small companies, I think a lot of them want to increase their agility in that sense. [00:28:53] But of course, there’s that whole trust aspect. Like we know you’re smaller than us, but are you big enough that you can handle what we hand the hand over to you? And if that trust isn’t there, then yeah. That’s, that’s all gone. So again, this is part of the networking aspect. If you can have that relationship with another person and that they get to know your business and they’re like, oh yeah, you’ve been around for awhile. [00:29:13] Oh, look, you’ve got some customers. Oh, look, you served a lot of customers. Oh, you’ve done a pretty decent volume. Hey, maybe you not, might not be a fly by night. Business and we might be able to trust you like that. Trust isn’t something that just happens overnight. Right? You got to build it slowly over years. [00:29:28] Matt: [00:29:28] Yeah. Shopify versus a woo commerce when we chatted. Yeah. Forget [00:29:33] Dave: [00:29:33] it. We’re done. Now. I have a lot to say about this. Go ahead. [00:29:37] Matt: [00:29:37] We chatted last time. I think one of the things now, look, I have only set up a handful of Shopify. Generally out of just helping some friends and some local entrepreneurs in my area do it. [00:29:47]I think one of the things I’ll try to make this a quick question. Like one of the things I really appreciate from Shopify is. On the outside anyway, like their partnership program looks more mature. Like the way they work with [00:30:00] agencies looks more mature. And generally, I feel like they’re willing to work with the freelancers of the world versus. [00:30:07] WordPress and WooCommerce is kind of just like, see you later. Bye. Like, we’ll see it at the end of the road, by the way, we’ll sell $5,000 websites@wordpress.com. Right. And to me, that’s like, man, like I look at it Shopify and I’m like, yeah woo commerce, WordPress should have something like this. But I guess at the end of the day, it’s not all roses and rainbows from the outside because Shopify is going to. [00:30:35] I guess watch like a watchful eye of, what you’re doing as an, as an app, as an integrator, as an agency. And if they see something that’s super profitable, I guess they could just go. Yeah, we’ll just do that. We’ll just do that in house and just demolish your app, I guess in the matter of seconds is what they could do. [00:30:52] So again, sharp road to navigate. I like it from the outset. Like it’s an opportunity for a freelancer or a small agency to get more work. But curious on your thoughts on partnership program in generally working with a Shopify versus a WooCommerce. [00:31:09] Dave: [00:31:09] Yeah. So you wanted a short answer, right? Well, I [00:31:14] Matt: [00:31:14] was, I was trying to make a short question, [00:31:16] Dave: [00:31:16] which is okay, so I can have a long answer. [00:31:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Let me talk about the platforms first in general. So I think when you’re picking Shopify versus woo, there’s a lot of things that go into that decision in general, that should make you, focus on what are the strengths of each of those platforms. So with Shopify very easy to get started, low tech threshold, to understand there’s lots of stuff that you can do without being a full stack developer. [00:31:47] Integrate apps and just basically get a store up and running. So if you aren’t sure, like you’re doing it drop shipping or it’s a new product and you’re trying to find product market fit or product audience bit or whatever it is. I think Shopify gets you up and running quicker to something that’s pretty polished that comes at a y’all are costs. [00:32:10] So, the hosting that Shopify, the apps that you’re adding on and all of that, but. That can be managed and I think it’s simplifies things and gets you going pretty well to where you want be. With that said, once you reach a certain point and you’re like, now I want my store to do this. And I want my checkout to have this in it. [00:32:32] And I want to use these payment methods, but not these other ones. And I also want this post purchase, checkout flow to be going on. And I want these kind of abandoned cart emails, and I want this, and I want that like for somebody who knows exactly what they want, Shopify can be incredibly expensive and very frustrating because it has been traditionally difficult to cut it. [00:32:53] So, this is where Woo’s strength comes to play. In my opinion, is that, if you’re on the right hosting provider [00:33:00] and you have a good agency that you can work with, that knows what they’re doing with Boone. These are out there. You can do a nice build and you can customize the hell out of it. [00:33:08] Yeah. And get exactly what you want. And if you’ve got a good developer on Wu, you can make it run as fast or faster than a Shopify store. So performance, isn’t an issue necessarily if you’ve done the right things and you’ve done your homework. And, there are plenty of smart wound stores that do that. [00:33:25] The downside to that, of course is complexity. And you got to have a higher threshold of technical knowledge either for yourself or a team to put that together. And, you’ve got to find the right agencies and the right developers. And if you’re talking about the energy and the Wu space and the energy. [00:33:43] Shopify space. They’re pretty different. And there’s a lot of energy in Shopify and it’s hard to ignore that and there’s energy and Wu too, but to like sort out the wheat from the chaff is a little more challenging because those really good Wu developers aren’t necessarily out there trumpeting themselves, talking about how great their agency is. [00:34:04] I can tell you the top five shops. Development agencies right off the top of my head because of what I see on Twitter, because of what I see in their blogs and just general social media activity, I would have a harder time doing that for woo commerce based on those factors. I know a few of them, but they’re harder to pick out. [00:34:21] Matt: [00:34:21] Right. So do you think that’s because Shopify helps prop those agencies up to part of their marketing and sales? [00:34:28] Dave: [00:34:28] Yes. So WooCommerce as a platform, doesn’t do enough for partners and agencies, not the way that Shopify does, like here at Shopify at unite announced that they were abolishing the 20% at a revenue share on all of their partner apps up to your first million dollars a year. [00:34:49] So basically it’s like everybody on the platform got a 25% raise, including recapture, which I was thrilled about. WooCommerce. If you want to go to their store, there was this discussion in post status that I was contributing to. If you are exclusive to the woo commerce store, 40% revenue share. If you’re non-exclusive it’s 60%. [00:35:09]I understand why WooCommerce didn’t want. To just let every person possible onto the platform and turn it into the repo, like the repo turned out to, it’s kind of a, we’ll call it a mixed bag. I think that’s the, the most politically correct way I could say it. Yeah. There’s a lot of garbage out there and there’s a lot of good stuff and it does take some time to sort through it and figure out, I think they were trying to curate the woo commerce store experience to be a little higher quality than that. [00:35:41] But I think they went about it wrong. And it’s [00:35:43] Matt: [00:35:43] been it’s 60% to automatic [00:35:45] Dave: [00:35:45] or 60, 60% to automatic. Yes. Wow. Which is, like, come on really. You’re taking more than half of my business. How am I supposed to be profitable at that point? It’s not this isn’t a charity to you. So these numbers are just [00:36:00] wrong in my, like, they don’t encourage [00:36:02] Matt: [00:36:02] catches a lot of flack for 30%, right? [00:36:05]Dave: [00:36:05] Come on, apple, apple at 30 bucks percent is considered untenable and you all at WooCommerce that are doing 40 and 60%. Come on, give me a break. That’s why my plugins are never going to be on the WooCommerce repository. I know I’m not alone in this. So, there are some plugins that are there, but guess what? [00:36:23] They’re all free. 40% of zero is still zero. So you’re good. They’re, they’re asking for me to share my revenue 60% a month. You just killed my profitability to the point where I can’t run my business anymore. So it’s that sort of mentality. That I think is hurting the Wu commerce ecosystem. Like there isn’t an agency support program. [00:36:44] There isn’t a big conference every year. That has the energy of Shopify unite. There isn’t a partner program that really nurtures everybody along. Like with Shopify partners. Like you sign up, you’re getting an email a day for like 30 days telling you here’s some partner tips. Here’s this development thing. [00:37:01] Here’s this resource. Here’s this? Here’s this here’s this guess how many times we got from WooCommerce? Zero. Yeah. Yeah. I, it they’re very different ecosystems and I think it’s to the detriment of WooCommerce, that they are not putting more energy into that, that piece of it, because that is a big part of why Shopify has been successful. [00:37:23] Matt: [00:37:23] Yeah. I agree a hundred percent. And again, I have very little experience from the Shopify side. I just know from what I don’t receive from support from WordPress and seeing what everything else is happening. And I guess look at when you. Zoom out and take a look at the sheer size of WordPress compared to Shopify just I’m talking like installed platform based like that kind of thing. [00:37:46] Yeah. The, the, the play for WordPress and automatic is when it comes to open source. How are you going to monetize it? It has to be done through like that trust factor. So it’s open source. It’s super flexible. It’s the same message. Automatic and you and I can go out and tell a customer and they’ll just win by having the most trusted plugin, a jet pack or a premium ad-ons from woocommerce.com or something like that. [00:38:17] And they’ll win. On that trust level where Shopify, you’re just going to go there and spend money. Like you’re choosing that platform. So you’re you, you’ve made the decision to go there and they’re telling you, the whole platform is trusted with WordPress it’s. Hey, it’s great. It’s open source. Do whatever you want. [00:38:34]But by the way, Jetpack is the most trusted way to secure and manage your site. And that also comes with whatever WooCommerce add ons that you buy for those bundles that they have for like 2 99, 3 99 or whatever. And their argument will be you trust it because it comes from ashore. You can go get Dave’s go ahead and get Dave’s. [00:38:53] But you know, you’re going to trust us better because we’re the, the company behind it kind of thing. So I can’t fault them [00:39:00] for it. It’s just, one of those things. So many people have pushed towards jet pack or excuse me, to WooCommerce and WordPress because they love the software and there’s no, there’s that love doesn’t come back to us. [00:39:15] What are we going to do? [00:39:16] Dave: [00:39:16] Nothing we can do. There’s nothing we can do, unfortunately. And the other thing. I, I don’t like, is that w well, so to contrast this, let me say, oh, Shopify does this. So Shopify does do acquisitions on things, but not like, not at the same level that I’ve seen automatic do it, where they pull in things like mail poet, right. [00:39:35] Or there pull all this stuff in and turn it into Jetpack. Like Shopify is not doing that. They build stuff and they’ll build it to a level like, there was a year, I think it was like the first unite I went to and it was me. Two years after I’d acquired recapture and they released the abandoned cart emails. [00:39:52] And those that knew me at the conference were like, so how do you feel about abandoned cart emails on Shopify now is like, I feel okay about it because they’re just, they’re 60% solution and I’m a hundred percent solution. And I can tell you like all the shortcomings, it’s great for people getting started out and it gives you those tools to get going and get your store off the ground. [00:40:14] It’s never serious enough to like take you to the next level. So it’ll get you to like the 5,000 a month rate. But after that, it’s going to break down pretty quickly. Cause you’re just not doing as good of a job as you could be with other apps that are more professional. And I’ve seen this a little bit in big commerce, too, where they build in these features and then know they’re okay, but they’re not great. [00:40:35] And you build your store up to a certain level and then you get these other things and you use them instead. I don’t see that with WooCommerce. They’re trying to pull in everything and say, okay, we’re going to be really good at email. We’ve got mail poet now, but are you really the best at email? Because you got all these other things you’re doing too. [00:40:54] And you’ve got this team, that’s doing mail poet, and I don’t want them to fault the male poet folks. They’re a great plugin and they do a lot. It’s just, your priorities are going to be driven by the platform, not the customers that are using it. So. Is that going to make it the best it could possibly be and truly drive be driven by the needs of the customers on the platform, as opposed to the benevolent dictator for [00:41:18] Matt: [00:41:18] life. [00:41:19] Yeah. What’s next from, is there a next platform play for you to integrate with? I think I was looking at another W3C techs report the other day and it for specifically for, e-commerce and. I would have to go back and dig this report out. Maybe, I saw woo commerce and in the Squarespace, e-commerce almost like neck and neck. [00:41:41] Is that true? Is there square? I was like, suddenly like what Squarespace e-commerce is this big and even realize it is that like an area you’re going into or another platform? That’s interesting. [00:41:50]Dave: [00:41:50] We’ve, I’ve taken a quick look at Wix and Weebly and Squarespace, all kind of in the same breath. [00:41:57]There is definitely a. [00:42:00] We’ll call it an economic shift on this platform where it is. It is aiming for a tier of store that doesn’t want to pay as much as you get in Shopify, or you want to get in Wu. And it’s difficult for me to convince a customer who’s paying $4 a month for their e-commerce website to pay 29 for mine. [00:42:23] And I know this because of how the pricing worked in Shopify, like the base level in Shopify as 29. And the fact that I aligned with that. It makes it easier for me to sell my product because they’ve already made that mental commitment for 29. They’re getting another 29. Isn’t that bad. But when you’re at four and you jumped to 29, that’s too big and that’s not a, that’s not a battle I want to fight. [00:42:45] That’s not a set of customers that I think are easy to deal with in that regard. So, I’ve looked at other platforms where we can head up markets. So our other e-commerce spaces. So things like Salesforce, cloud commerce. Things like that, but it’s a little trickier to get into that because you kind of need to know some stores to have the testability. [00:43:09] Cause it’s not like you’re just downloading this, installing it and testing it out. You kind of have to work in tandem with somebody else. So, I I’ve got some plans. We’re kind of cooking that up right now. I don’t see, I’m keeping an eye on Squarespace and Wix and Weebly. And if they start moving up market. [00:43:25] Mid tiers, which is quite possible. They could, then it would make a lot of sense to integrate because there’s going to be a large customer base there, but right now it doesn’t look economically viable. Yeah, yeah. [00:43:37] Matt: [00:43:37] Yeah. That makes, that makes total sense. I guess that’s probably why I was so shocked at the footprint of the Squarespace. [00:43:42] Cause I was like, yeah, it makes sense. Because then you’re like, well, what are these people selling? They’re really seriously. Probably something like photo prints, and a couple of handmade things. That’s probably about it, certainly not an apparel line or kayaks, which you’ll probably find on Shopify, right? [00:44:00] People who are manufacturing, things, stuff like that. Very cool. Dave wrote ball, recapture.io. Congrats on being a free man than the last time I talked to you running the business day to day. Where else can folks find you? What else can they look forward to from. [00:44:15] Dave: [00:44:15] Well, we just did our big release the 1st of July for SMS card abandonment and order notifications on recapture. [00:44:23] So if you’ve been itching to try that out or see what that’s like, come to recapture.io and check that out. We also have broadcast emails out after Jill announced their shutdown, we had to make sure that was working to be able to seamlessly migrate folks over. So if you’re. A former Jilt customer and you’re looking for a place to land. [00:44:41] We’d love to talk to you at recapture and see if we can make things work for you. If somebody is looking to get a hold of me, you can find me on Twitter at Dave. [00:44:51] Matt: [00:44:51] I heard you’re actually making phone calls too. Right? You’re calling people up, doing it the old fashioned way [00:45:00] [00:45:00] Dave: [00:45:00] because your cell phone fashioned way, I would like, knock on their doors and press the flashes as it were, but that’s not happening. [00:45:08] Matt: [00:45:08] Everyone else. Matt report.com maryport.com/subscribe. Join the mailing list. Don’t forget to tune in to your weekly dose of five minute WordPress news every week@thewpminute.com. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you. In the next episode.

From the powers of cart abandonment solutions to a story about when one of your largest competitors closes their doors unexpectedly.

Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture.io, an email marketing and abandoned cart recovery service for Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce. He's been working in Ecommerce since 2016 and email marketing since 2012. On this podcast, we talk about email marketing misconceptions, Dave’s “111” 3-Email Sequence Follow-up Strategy, the benefits of getting honest reviews, improving LTV through win-back emails, and much more! To learn more, visit: http://honestecommerce.co Resources: Dave’s Twitter handle: @daverodenbaugh Recapture.io’s website: recapture.io Recapture’s Shopify app apps.shopify.com/recapture-abandoned-cart-and-email-marketing  Dave’s Podcast with Craig Hewitt: roguestartups.com Recapture’s special offer to Honest Ecommerce listeners: recapture.io/honest-ecommerce-special  Visit klaviyo.com to schedule a demo! Visit postscript.io/install for a free 30-day trial! To get updates on our new episodes and exclusive deals from our partners, text HONESTVIP to 72599 and join our VIP texting list!

When Dave Rodenbaugh wanted to run a software business, he decided to buy an existing one. He tells me why he did this, how he chose the business, and what he did right and wrong along the way.He also shares - painfully - his embarrassing $50K mistake.Dave runs Recapture and is co-host of the Rogue Startups podcast.Thanks to EmailToolTester who sponsored this episode.  Find which email newsletter service actually reaches your customers with EmailToolTester's deliverability report.Discuss this episode and more on our discussion forum for Bootstrappers. 

When Dave Rodenbaugh wanted to run a software business, he decided to buy an existing one. He tells me why he did this, how he chose the business, and what he did right and wrong along the way. He also shares – painfully – his embarrassing $50K mistake. Dave runs Recapture and is co-host of the Rogue Startups […] The post #126: Why Dave Rodenbaugh acquired an existing business instead of starting from scratch appeared first on Bootstrapped.fm.

I love getting new perspectives on our “little” WordPress business world we live in. Today, I'm happy to bring you Craig Hewitt and Dave Rodenbaugh of RogueStartups fame to help us distill the differences between the WordCamp go'ers and MicroConf business builders. How do two business owners living with one hand in the WordPress ecosystem and the other in the SaaS world look at the economy of plugins vs hosted software solutions? From podcasting to freemium business models, to ideal customer acquisition channels this is a MUST LISTEN episode if you're in the WordPress business space! Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners SaaS vs WordPress vs MicroConf vs WordCamp with RogueStartups Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:35:28 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:35:28 Craig's businesses: Podcast Motor Castos SalesCamp Dave's businesses: Business Directory Plugin Recapture.io ★ Support this podcast ★

I love getting new perspectives on our “little” WordPress business world we live in. Today, I’m happy to bring you Craig Hewitt and Dave Rodenbaugh of RogueStartups fame to help us distill the differences between the WordCamp go’ers and MicroConf business builders. How do two business owners living with one hand in the WordPress ecosystem…

I love getting new perspectives on our “little” WordPress business world we live in. Today, I’m happy to bring you Craig Hewitt and Dave Rodenbaugh of RogueStartups fame to help us distill the differences between the WordCamp go’ers and MicroConf business builders. How do two business owners living with one hand in the WordPress ecosystem…

GUEST BIO: Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture.io an automated abandoned cart recovery for Magento & Shopify. Dave started his entrepreneurial career by acquiring businesses and making the developmental changes that turned them into profitable companies. Dave is the host of the Rogue Startups Podcast alongside his co-host Craig Hewitt where they have weekly conversations about entrepreneurship, eCommerce, and marketing. SHOW SUMMARY: Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture.io and the host of the Rogue Startups Podcast. His provides an automated abandoned cart recovery for Magento & Shopify businesses. Dave initially started his career acquiring small businesses, where he learned where businesses needed the most help to create profitability. In this episode, we talk about how much Dave acquired his first companies for, where to find those same deals today, and how he acquires new customers for Recapture.io. This is The Lean Commerce Podcast. TOPICS: How did you get started in business acquisition? 1:46 I joined a group of micro-entrepreneurs over a decade ago. What we all had was a skill to build something but we didn't have an understanding of how to sell it and how to sustainably set up a business that can scale. Overtime, the founders of this group created a conference, called Micro Conf, which is now held in Miami. 4:42 I spent time looking around at various marketplaces, such as eBay, and found smaller businesses with potential and bought them at a low costs. Then I started figuring out what parts could be outsourced and how to scale these businesses. How much did you initially acquire these companies for? 5:46 I had a $2,000 budget. Now a days, you could do it for under $5,000. I bought a small business making $100 a month, tried to grow it and make it legit but it turned out there were a lot of fraudulent users on there. I cleaned up the platform, marketing, and sales page and then sold it for the same price. What I came out of it with was knowledge and experience. The second time I did that I found a bunch of Wordpress plugins and a business that was drowning in support. The women in charge wasn't systemizing it or funneling it, so I spent time setting up a pricing page, making a free version vs. premium version, and created a support forum and turned it into a $3,000 a month business from a $300 a month business in three years. Where would you find these smaller deals today? 15:00 I'm on a lot of little lists. Side Projectors is one for example. You'll find a lot of good businesses and some really bad ones. For example, people will rewrite Slack and want you to pay for it. 16:19 The only thing that truly adds value to a business if it's make money. If it's not generating money, it's not worth anything. In some cases, you might be able to say that it can be monetized. For example, a Shopify app that needs another distribution channel. Now, you can use that to cross promote your other Shopify app and use it to make the other one more money. How many acquisitions have you made? 29:50 I think I'm somewhere around eight or nine done deals, not including the ones that haven't worked out. What does it look like to acquire new customers for Recapture.io? 31:20 I won't lie, it can definitely be a struggle. We also have a high LTV. You have to find the right channel. You can try cold emails, pitch to agencies or store owners, etc. All of this takes time and money and as an individual founder there is no way I can do all of it by myself. I have to hire out to get it all done. 36:58 The hardest thing to overcome is trust. You need to show people that you know what you're doing and they can account for your services. Where are the distribution channels to get in touch with store owners today? 38:19 The problem is that there is no one answer to that. Even if you had an answer, it could change in 6-12 months and then change again. Communities come and go. I compare the l

GUEST BIO: Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture.io an automated abandoned cart recovery for Magento & Shopify. Dave started his entrepreneurial career by acquiring businesses and making the developmental changes that turned them into profitable companies. Dave is the host of the Rogue Startups Podcast alongside his co-host Craig Hewitt where they have weekly conversations about entrepreneurship, eCommerce, and marketing. SHOW SUMMARY: Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture.io and the host of the Rogue Startups Podcast. His provides an automated abandoned cart recovery for Magento & Shopify businesses. Dave initially started his career acquiring small businesses, where he learned where businesses needed the most help to create profitability. In this episode, we talk about how much Dave acquired his first companies for, where to find those same deals today, and how he acquires new customers for Recapture.io. This is The Lean Commerce Podcast. TOPICS: How did you get started in business acquisition? 1:46 I joined a group of micro-entrepreneurs over a decade ago. What we all had was a skill to build something but we didn’t have an understanding of how to sell it and how to sustainably set up a business that can scale. Overtime, the founders of this group created a conference, called Micro Conf, which is now held in Miami. 4:42 I spent time looking around at various marketplaces, such as eBay, and found smaller businesses with potential and bought them at a low costs. Then I started figuring out what parts could be outsourced and how to scale these businesses. How much did you initially acquire these companies for? 5:46 I had a $2,000 budget. Now a days, you could do it for under $5,000. I bought a small business making $100 a month, tried to grow it and make it legit but it turned out there were a lot of fraudulent users on there. I cleaned up the platform, marketing, and sales page and then sold it for the same price. What I came out of it with was knowledge and experience. The second time I did that I found a bunch of Wordpress plugins and a business that was drowning in support. The women in charge wasn’t systemizing it or funneling it, so I spent time setting up a pricing page, making a free version vs. premium version, and created a support forum and turned it into a $3,000 a month business from a $300 a month business in three years. Where would you find these smaller deals today? 15:00 I’m on a lot of little lists. Side Projectors is one for example. You’ll find a lot of good businesses and some really bad ones. For example, people will rewrite Slack and want you to pay for it. 16:19 The only thing that truly adds value to a business if it’s make money. If it’s not generating money, it’s not worth anything. In some cases, you might be able to say that it can be monetized. For example, a Shopify app that needs another distribution channel. Now, you can use that to cross promote your other Shopify app and use it to make the other one more money. How many acquisitions have you made? 29:50 I think I’m somewhere around eight or nine done deals, not including the ones that haven’t worked out. What does it look like to acquire new customers for Recapture.io? 31:20 I won’t lie, it can definitely be a struggle. We also have a high LTV. You have to find the right channel. You can try cold emails, pitch to agencies or store owners, etc. All of this takes time and money and as an individual founder there is no way I can do all of it by myself. I have to hire out to get it all done. 36:58 The hardest thing to overcome is trust. You need to show people that you know what you’re doing and they can account for your services. Where are the distribution channels to get in touch with store owners today? 38:19 The problem is that there is no one answer to that. Even if you had an answer, it could change in 6-12 months and then change again. Communities come and go. I compare the level of interaction and engagement within groups to see if it’s hit or miss. Sometimes the moderators are cutting off the users and shifting groups, it doesn’t seem like they are ever sitting still. What eCommerce solutions are out there for businesses? 48:35 It’s the time of the No Code Movement, you can build something without having to be a programmer. All you have to do is assemble a bunch of things, like what Shopify has created and what WooCommerce attempted to do. Resources Mentioned in the Podcast: Recapture.io Rogue Startups Podcast Micro Conf Side Projectors Contact Dave: Dave on LinkedIn Dave on Twitter

Dave Rodenbaugh of Recapture.io by Kalen Jordan

As of May 25th, 2018, the European Union requires companies of all sizes to take steps to help secure personal data rights and more generally protect that data. (And if you don't comply, that'll be a 20 million euro fine.) But what does it mean for US stores? You will hear about it, and it will impact you, but to what degree? Joining us to decipher the law's impact on US merchants is Dave Rodenbaugh. Dave runs an email marketing service with European customers who necessitated he figure out GDPR fast or risk losing them. Dave is the founder of Recapture, an abandoned cart and email marketing solution for Shopify and Magento. He's also the co-host of Rogue Startups podcast (https://roguestartups.com) talking about his entrepreneurial journey, and he runs Big Snow Tiny Conf West (https://bigsnowtinyconfwest.com), a small web business mastermind-style conference with skiing. You'll Learn What is GDPR? How is GDPR going to impact my store? Why should I care if I'm from the US? What are the biggest things that I need to change about my store to get ready? Tune in for more details! Resources Shopify's GDPR overview Recapture in the app store Twitter: @daverodenbaugh Recapture.io Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn't?”

In this episode, we're talking customer service. Great customer service can make or break your brand, and your sanity. Joining us to discuss it is a self-proclaimed provider of excellent customer service for the past 20 years, fellow podcast host Dave Rodenbaugh. Dave is the founder of Recapture, an email marketing and abandoned cart solution for Shopify and Magento. He's also the co-host of the Rogue Startups podcast chronicling his journey as a single-founder startup. As if that weren't enough, Dave even runs BigSnow TinyConf West, a business mastermind and ski getaway for small web businesses. Passionate about customer service, eCommerce and small business. You'll Learn How is everyone doing support wrong today? Live chat-- is it worth it? What are the worst things we can say to customers when they contact us for support? What's the most important thing we can do to improve customer support? How to deal with toxic customers Tune in for more details! Resources [Recapture]https://recapture.io) - Mention The Unofficial Shopify Podcast for a free 60-day trial Recapture in the Shopify app store Rogue Startups podcast BigSnow TinyConf West Gorgias.io Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn't?”

GDPR becomes enforceable starting May 25th. And if you're not compliant, you face a potential fine of up to 20 million euros. If you have any customers based in the EU, this episode is a must listen. Dave Rodenbaugh from Recapture and I dive into GDPR and how it affects your Shopify store. Learn: What GDPR is and why you should care How GDPR affects all Shopify stores (not just stores based in Europe) How GDPR is changing email marketing and ecommerce What you need to do to make your Shopify store compliant Links: GDPR Website Recapture Recapture Shopify App Dave's Twitter Listen on iTunes Get new episodes via email Learn more about Wavebreak Is bad email marketing holding your store back? Summer is coming in hot and for a lot of Shopify stores it's a busy time of the year. With bad email marketing, you're leaving tens of thousands of dollars on the table this summer. With good email marketing, you could generate an extra 15-30% in revenue. What would that do for your business? At Wavebreak, we've got proven frameworks to make those gains happen. Get your email marketing right before summer hits. Click here to request your free consultation.

Today we have part two of our conversation with Dave Rodenbaugh, a self-funded entrepreneur who has been selling WordPress plugins since 2009. He’s also one half of the Rogue Startups podcast. Today we talk about his experience with the WordPress plugin repository – the WordPress equivalent of the App Store, content marketing, Automattic as the […]

We’re joined today by Dave Rodenbaugh, a self-funded entrepreneur who has been selling WordPress plugins since 2009. He’s also one half of the Rogue Startups podcast. Dave talks to us today about how he got his start in entrepreneurship, a few hard won lessons in pricing, and some of the challenges of building a business […]

Guest hosting this episode is Dave Rodenbaugh. Owner of Business Directory Plugin, AWPCP, and Recapture.io. Dave has been a developer for 20 years, and has been working in the Wordpress ecosystem since 2009. He also cohosts the Rogue Startups Podcast with Craig Hewitt, the man behind Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin and Podcaster Motor. Topics Include: James & Dave talk the how, when, and why of podcasting. Rogue Startups Podcast anticipates their 1 year anniversary. What makes a good podcast stand out against competition. Why would you start/maintain multiple podcasts? Weighing verbal communication vs written. Why Dave believes podcasting has made him a “better business person.” James and his mischief bringing. Dave’s acquisition of Recaptured.io Moving outside of WordPress. Brief talk on Magento. Comparing and contrasting running a WordPress business and running a SAAS (Software as a Service). What lead Dave to the SAAS model. How the search and acquisition process happened for Dave. How dealing with legacy customers can be tricky. Playing the numbers game, and veritably gambling on business. Business is always risky. Be smart about making the financial decisions that set you up for success. How Dave balances managing plugins and his SAAS. Spoiler: Believe it, or not, he’s not a wizard. The key: a great team with diverse capabilities and tasks. “As support goes, so does sales.” - James Making sure your team isn’t bottled-necked by something they need from you, or someone else. Juggling…in the literal and business sense. Adjusting for when things go awry. “As a CEO, I ask myself, how do I set my team up for success?” - James Looking forward, Dave’s short-mid term focuses. You can find Dave on Twitter @daverodenbaugh. Featured on the Show: Business Directory Plugin AWPCP Recapture.io Rogue Startups Podcast Seriously Simple Podcasting Podcaster Motor Magento

We're are having a “party” episode with some special guests today. We've got Dave Rodenbaugh, Craig Hewitt, and later on Brad Touesnard joining us. We are all involved with Big Snow Tiny Conf. Brian is head of the Vermont event, Dave is head of the West event (Colorado.) Craig is taking care of our European event in France. Today we talk about the conference and why we love it. [tweetthis]It's [Big Snow Tiny Conf] half retreat, half mastermind. -  Dave Rodenbaugh[/tweetthis] We also discuss living abroad and working remote and with remote teams. The startup world is going global and we want Big Snow Tiny Conf to reflect that. Here are today's topics: What is Big Snow Tiny Conf Big Snow Tiny Conf East Big Snow Tiny Conf West Big Snow Tiny Conf Europe Why the events are awesome! Jordan's meetup with his team Why traveling is a perk to the Bootstrapped lifestyle If you have an interest in Big Snow Tiny Conf tickets go on sale Oct. 10th. Remember these events are meant to be small so space is limited. Big Snow Tiny Confs East and West (Vermont and Colorado)  are scheduled for Feb. 6-9.  Big Snow Tiny Conf Europe (France) is scheduled for Jan. 16-19. [tweetthis]I think travel specifically is one of the big drivers of why I do this for a living. - Brian Casel[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Big Snow Tiny Conf Bootstrapped Web Sponsor Indeed Prime - Get a $5,000 bonus when you get hired through Indeed Prime using Bootstrapped Web's link.   As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review in iTunes.

Dave Rodenbaugh is the Founder of SupportVine, a customer support software for small businesses, and owner of two wordpress plugin businesses. Dave is truly a master at providing awesome customer experiences at scale and he’s used this ability to acquire and dramatically increase the revenue of wordpress plugin businesses. In this episode: Why Dave chose […] The post 1,000% Revenue Increase By Creating Awesome Customer Experiences With Dave Rodenbaugh (Podcast 009) appeared first on RhodiumWeekend.com | Buying And Selling Websites Event.

Hi there! To help Chasing Product grow, please take a moment to visit iTunes and give the show a 5-star rating. Thanks! This episode of Chasing Product features Dave Rodenbaugh, giving a master class on outsourcing product development. Bootstrapped Product Talking Points What things you must *not* outsource if you want to be successful How Read More The post Episode 18: Outsourcing Product Development w/Dave Rodenbaugh appeared first on Chasing Product.

Hi there! To help Chasing Product grow, please take a moment to visit iTunes and give the show a 5-star rating. Thanks! This episode of Chasing Product features Dave Rodenbaugh, giving a master class on outsourcing product development. Bootstrapped Product Talking Points What things you must *not* outsource if you want to be successful How Read More The post Episode 18: Outsourcing Product Development w/Dave Rodenbaugh appeared first on Chasing Product.