Podcasts about event espresso

Watch the video podcast here. A Bit About Garth Garth Koyle has over a decade of experience in business management and internet marketing. Tune in at the 6-minute mark to find out a bit more about his background and what led him to Event Espresso.  Garth joined Seth Shoultes to become the co-founder of Event Espresso in 2012 and has helped the company to grow significantly since they launched. He also co-developed a Saas version of the Event Espresso plugin called Event Smart, which he intends on growing to a $100 million dollar revenue company. Finding Balance We all know the stresses of being an entrepreneur and finding that balance can be so hard especially when you have little ones like Garth does! So he has found that having a healthy and distracting hobby is really important. He lets his hobbies take him away for a few hours a week to recharge his battery and give his mind a break from work stresses. Garth loves bike riding around the mountains where he lives. Riding a bike means that you can't text or use your phone, it increases endorphins and helps energy levels. Customer Focus One of Garth's favourite quotes is:  "Management works within a system, leadership works on a system.” So he says that he is constantly evaluating the system and making changes. The company's core value is to give customers value and control through the systems that they provide. He manages at a higher level rather than focusing on putting out fires. He says he’s learned to think about what the customer really wants. Customers generally don't care about what the technology is, so you need to focus on the solution that will better their lives and their business rather than advertise the features of the product to the client. Building a Team Garth says his strategy for building his team is to have an awareness of the pain being experienced in the company. “You’ll figure out what you need when it becomes painful enough” he explains. If you have support backlog or UI complaints it can become damaging to the company you, therefore, need to: Listen to the pains from the customers and your employees Ask yourself, can we afford to alleviate that pain? Will it increase customer satisfaction? They rarely use job postings to find staff. The staff that they hire has either approached them or they’ve found them by doing business together. Some of their staff were initially customers! The company employs workers from the Ukraine to the West Coast of the United States. Development of the Plugin His company decides future development based on three factors: Feedback from customers Strategic Goals Speed of Development To determine the validity of a new feature, Garth says his team will: List the features Give them scores from 1-5 Rank the importance Rank the ease of development Rank the speed of development The team will then choose the top candidates for development and then they just table the other ones. Measuring Success Garth explains that it is difficult to determine the success of features in a distributed product because if you put a plugin in the WordPress repository, you’re not allowed to communicate with the users and it is, therefore, more difficult to collect data. To combat the problem, Event Espresso uses limited surveys, watches sales, support loads, and attributes those support calls for certain features. They also build queries into the plugin to attempt to build data that will determine the usefulness of particular features in the plugin. Marketing Freemium vs Premium Product Event Espresso offers a free version, called Decaf which plays very little in the marketing mix for the company.  They focus most of their marketing on the fully-featured product. Garth explains that he’s gained more customers from other channels than through the free plugin and that people who are serious about marketing their events will end up using the fully featured product. Competing on Price Everybody has to compete on price eventually. However, in order to compete less often, you have to understand your value proposition: What you deliver to the customer and how you deliver it Understand what your product does and where it fits in the market Leverage those differentiating factors and communicate them well Then the customers will understand how they need you more than they need your competitors and price will be less of an influence. Garth's Secrets to Success Build a good team. Do as much for yourself as possible then when you can’t do it yourself, take the time to find the right people to help you. Content Marketing is a must. Garth says that in the early days the company was growing at 15% per month because of the content they offered through their website and then nurturing those customers over time. Get to know your customers. The more you talk to your customers, the more you understand what’s important to them. Talk to your customers and you will get better at it with practice Stay on track. To keep a project on track, make sure you plan ahead. Planning is expensive, but it can also help you be more profitable and meet expectations down the road. Then you need to follow the project outline as closely as possible. The due diligence up front is really invaluable. Get referred! Make customers happy and ensure that they’re having a good experience. You can then ask them for referrals. They use tools to gauge customer satisfaction and if it is good, they will send the customer a message asking them for referrals. They use Help Scout, surveys and simply by watching support conversations. Differentiate your company. Differentiating yourself is an ongoing task. Garth says that they want to be the lead provider for ticketing and registration, and that can only come as they focus on a complete product for their niche. They focus on what they do and not necessarily what their customers think they should do.  Well, there you have it. Some hot tips from a guy who knows how to do plugins like a boss! Let us know what you think in the comments below. What tips do you have when it comes to growing your business or developing a plugin? We'd love to hear from you.

On today’s episode, Sam and Corey interview Darren Ethier and Garth Koyle the co-founders of Event Espresso and Event Smart. They discuss how to take your successful WordPress plugin and turn it into a SaaS. This is a lively technical discussion about spinning up a SaaS startup using the WordPress framework. (more…)

On today's episode, Sam and Corey interview Darren Ethier and Garth Koyle the co-founders of Event Espresso and Event Smart. They discuss how to take your successful WordPress plugin and turn it into a SaaS. This is a lively technical discussion about spinning up a SaaS startup using the WordPress framework. Listen to the show Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners S5B: E10: Garth Koyle and Darren Ethier - Event Smart Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:58:33 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:58:33 Guests: Garth Koyle is a Co-founder of Event Espresso and has over 15 years of experience in business management and Internet marketing. He competed in the 2011 Utah Entrepreneur Challenge for Event Espresso, taking home the grand prize of 40k for the business plan. Garth has spoken at several WordCamps on entrepreneurship and plugin development. Darren Ethier has been developing websites for over 18 years and has been a fan of WordPress since (WordPress 1.5). Darren is the founder of the WordPress development shop roughsmootheng.in, and creator of the popular WordPress plugin Organize Series. Darren first started working together with the Event Espresso team to help develop the new website and implement things to work with automatic updates. Darren still believes that all things are possible with WordPress. What you will learn from this episode: Event Espresso is a WordPress plugin that specializes in online events for registration and ticketing. (4:51) Event Smart is the SaaS – the online registration product running in a WordPress multisite platform. You sign up, create an event, start selling tickets and get paid directly. This product is more economical and less technical. (5:29) The plugin version is currently Event Espresso EE4. It is a total rewrite of the code and is not backward compatible. (8:11) There is a migration for events from EE3 to EE4. (47:31) There are a lot of add-ons for EE3 which were requested by users that still need to be supported and available for EE4. (9:34) The requested feature sets have been reviewed and decided on before the rewrite of the object-oriented design. (12:26) Users wanted improvements from EE3 so it was decided to improve the framework. (13:09) Supporting EE4 with SaaS (Software as a Service): The SaaS platform was in the future for the growth of the product. (14:27) Developers wanted to work and build a scalable product. (14:54) The original SaaS Event Smart was delivered January 1, 2015. (15:35) It takes awhile (approx. 6 months) to set up and get the processes in place for users, etc. (15:56) You have to believe in the philosophy to launch and manage the issues as they come up. (16:28) The SaaS product needed to be responsive to allow users to sell their tickets quickly. (17:30) The SaaS solution needs to address people that do not know WordPress and Event Smart is not marketed as a WordPress plugin. (19:09) As the user base grew the platform was designed and developed to be platform agnostic. (20:33) When you build in SaaS you need to approach development in modularity. (42:41) The Saas support allows you to improve your customer experience. You can get to the customer's issue right away because you are in the same environment. (43:31)  Challenges With WordPress: The admin panel is not customized for the SaaS model. (23:43) The SaaS product does not necessarily need to have a custom UI to be successful to grow. (24:42) Challenges exist configuring options around the interface. (27:31) Most issues are around payments so most of the support is specific to API keys. (28:00) The SaaS application is looking to focus around a wizard to fit specific types of events with a tailored setup. (28:41) The scheduling service of WPCRON to the WordPress API does not scale well. It does not run in a multisite well. (30:52) Finding a solution for scaling for specific services remains a challenge in WordPress. (30:24) Multisite Challenges of the SaaS product: Isolating services to run is a challenge. (32:44) If you use WPMAIL as your mail server, you need to control that with your hosting. (34:38) Offloading the mail transaction service helps with the multisite product. (35:00) You need to make sure your product is cache friendly. The multisite does not need to load everything. (33:08) When you use multiple servers you need to decide what needs to run quickly. (33:35) When you are hosting a multisite you need to concentrate on monitoring and security along with load balancing for performance. (36:30) You need a good partner for your SaaS that has experienced server and network administrators. (37:30) You also need to be concerned with what type of firewall is in front of your WordPress application. (39:22) Pricing Model: The pricing model was set up as designed bundled plans for a particular use. (50:08) There is a free tier. (49:21) The SaaS model has a paid tier with add-on modules. Event Smart has a personal plan for small events. (49:51) Event Smart has a business plan for mobile tickets, etc. There is an a la carte option that was created to pick the options you need, but it is more cost effective to move to the business plan at some point. (50:34) EPISODE RESOURCES Event Espresso Event Smart Event Espresso plugin WordPress.org 10up/WP-Gears “The Long, Slow, SaaS Ramp of Death” Follow Garth: Twitter Blog Follow Darren: Twitter If you like the show and season so far, please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes Sponsors: Gravity Forms Pagely   ★ Support this podcast ★

We look at event management plugins, what they do, and when you will need specific ones. What if you run recurring events? Say you run a once a year event, and need to sell tickets? What if you're a musician or band posting gigs? We give our recommendations for these scenarios and more.   Our WordPress panel this week:   Sallie Goetsch: https://wpfangirl.com Kim Shivler: https://howtobuildanonlinecourse.com/ Lee Jackson: https://angledcrown.com/ Jonathan Denwood: https://www.wp-tonic.com John Locke: https://www.lockedowndesign.com/   ==================   Our episode this week is sponsored by LiquidWeb. Liquid Web is offering a 33% discount for your first 6 months of managed WordPress hosting. Head over to https://LiquidWeb.com/wordpress and use the code WPTONIC33 at checkout for your discount.   ==================   Table of Contents for Episode 184   0:00 Podcast intros. 3:08 WordPress News Story #1: Advanced WordPress Facebook Group Moves to Curb Low Quality Content with Admin-Approved Posts 11:16 WordPress News Story #2: WordPress Editor Experience Survey Shows 75% of Respondents Don’t Use Distraction-Free Writing Mode WordPress News Story #3: Recommended Reading: Resilient Web Design, a Free e-Book from Jeremy Keith 25:56 Main Topic: Event Management Plugins 26:12 The Events Calendar 31:05 Lee has a clever tip for creating event listings without a plugin. 35:20 Google Calendar Events Event Organiser Event List Events Manager 39:10 Why you might need an events management plugin in the first place. Your blog is not the proper place for upcoming events! 41:09 Lee's thoughts on Event Espresso and Tickera 44:22 Plugins for bands and musicians: GigPress (recommended) and Gigs Calendar (Not actively maintained) 48:01 The competition isn't other plugins, but online services like Eventbrite. 50:18 Tips about buying tickets or registering with WooCommerce. 56:38 Podcast outros.   ==================   Links mentioned during the show:   Grammarly WP-Tonic Episode 162: Jeremy Keith on Resilient Web Design Resilient Web Design The Web is responsive by default

It's that most wonderful time of the year, the time where haunts are opening up and we get to go to a few of our own!  That, however, means buying tickets and, for a lot of the haunts, that means buying tickets online.  Unfortunately though, buying tickets online isn't aways the smoothest experience it can be. In an ecommerce era, we are an industry that often leaves their online ticket sales as an afterthought. So, in this episode, we provide some alternatives that make it easier to get set up with online ticketing and not only improve your customers' experience but, hopefully, make a lot more money in doing so. This week's episode includes: Conference RemindersThings We Have About Online TicketingWhy Haunts Should Want to Encourage Online OrderingOptions for Online TicketingHow to Make the Online Ordering Process a Good OneConclusionsIn this episode we discuss multiple providers including Haunt Pay, Fear Ticket, Ticket Leap, Interactive Ticketing, Flavorus, Tickera, Ticket Tailor and Event Espresso. Check them out and see which one (if any) is right for you! Also, check out our current test site and leave your feedback! 

This week’s feature guest is Garth Koyle of Event Espresso. He says he wants to grow his business into a $100 million dollar revenue company — the largest goal ever announced on WP Elevate. Garth is giving away one Everything License to a lucky listener of the WP Elevation Podcast. Garth earned a Masters of Business Administration and a Masters of Healthcare Administration from the University of Utah. Co-founder pf Event Espresso, Garth joined the company in 2012. He has led the company to grow to 12 employees already, and to found a Saas version of the Event Espresso plugin called Event Smart, which he intends on growing to a $100 million dollar revenue company. Garth has over a decade experience in business management and internet marketing. He competed in the 2011 Utah Entrepreneur Challenge for Event Espresso, taking home a $40,000 Grand Prize for the business plan.  Since that time, in addition to running Event Espresso, Garth speaks at WordCamps across the US, on WordPress Entrepreneurship and Plugin Development.