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Real impact starts when you simplify—streamlining isn't just efficient; it's transformative. In this episode, Joe Casabona, podcaster, educator, and host of Streamlined Solopreneur, shares how his 20 years of web development experience shaped his mission to help solopreneurs simplify their workflows and reclaim their time. With nearly 600 podcast episodes under his belt, Joe reveals why he pivoted from How I Built It to focus on actionable strategies for solopreneurs, including automating tasks, leveraging solo episodes to showcase expertise, and refining podcast production with low-effort, high-value solutions. Tune in for Joe's insights on creating systems that work for you, embracing change, and finding freedom through efficiency.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!Here's How »Join the Binge Factor community today:FacebookInstagramLinkedInPinterestYouTubeTikTok
After 8 years, I'm changing the name of this podcast from How I Built It to Streamlined Solopreneur. Here's why. You can learn more at https://streamlined.fm ★ Support this podcast ★
The Creator's Adventure - Course Creation, Entrepreneurship & Mindset tips for Creators
Do you want to level up your podcasting game and learn how to automate and start monetizing your podcast? In this episode, Joe Casabona uncovers the secrets behind his success, including how automation saved him 12 hours per week and allowed him to achieve the freedom to pursue his passions. Learn how he launched and monetized multiple successful podcasts, including "How I Built It," and hear his tips for new podcasters seeking to make money and grow their audience. Joe Casabona is a podcast systems coach who helps busy solopreneurs "take back their time". Joe's strategies come from his many years of experience: over 10 years creating podcasts, more than 15 years teaching, and over 20 years as a web developer. Learn more about Joe: https://casabona.org/
I've decided – with a push from my new video editor, Zach – to create short-form videos for episodes. This required me to do a couple of things.The first is actually recording video. I've toyed with this in the past, and with other podcasts, but I've never done it consistently for How I Built It.Part of it was that I never thought straight interviews were compelling videos. But the other part was I didn't think the effort for short form was worth it.It still might not be. But now I'm willing to try. More on that in a minute.The other thing I needed to do was update my guest notes. I made it pretty clear in the notes that it was an audio-only podcast – so I updated that to say “Video will be recorded, but only for social media.”This wasn't crucial, but courteous, as some folks want to make sure they're camera-ready.So what's my strategy?Right now, I'm mostly testing. I'll post 3-4 videos per week on TikTok, X (neé Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube Shorts and see what happens.I also made a discovery about TikTok as it relates to podcasting. I've added a new video for members of the Foundry and will be more open about my experiments there.For now, I'd love to know if you have a short-form video strategy. If so, respond to this email and let me know! Get your free Podcast Process Templates at https://podcastworkflows.com/templates ★ Support this podcast ★
Does anyone know you so well, they can describe you in a single sentence?When I was at Craft + Commerce, Mike Pacchione gave some great advice for when you tell stories:When describing someone, use a single sentence that instantly tells the listener who they are. Here's an example:My dad always told people, “Joe would argue with Jesus Christ if he came off the cross.”You probably think I'm…opinionated, to put it nicely.You should do the same thing with your podcast, and episodes.What would that look like?If I'm describing my show How I Built It , I might say, “You get free coaching sessions from the best creators.”I can then extend that out to specific episodes. “You get one coaching session from Mike on Public Speaking,” for example.For this show, I can say, "Bite-sized tips to help you improve your podcast process."As you figure out the best one-liner for your podcast, keep your show's mission in mind.The one-liner can be based on the mission, or even define it. Get your free Podcast Process Templates at https://podcastworkflows.com/templates ★ Support this podcast ★
First Class Founders: Creators | Solopreneurs | Personal HoldCo
E55: Many content creators struggle with building a dedicated audience and effectively monetizing their content. Despite having quality content, they often lack the strategic framework to captivate and monetize an audience in a landscape saturated with creators.So, how do you sift through the noise?On today's episode, host Yong-Soo (@YongSooChung) has a very special guest, Joe Casabona (@jcasabona) , the host of the popular podcast 'How I Built It.' Joe talks about his S.M.A.S.H. framework for creators, which highlights all the monetization channels a creator has at their disposal. On today's episode, you'll learn:- Creator Monetization Strategies- Why Sponsorships Don't Always Work- S.M.A.S.H. Framework and its Components- How to Master the Art of Audience Building If you're a content creator looking for ways of monetizing your content, this episode is a must-listen!***SPONSORS: Castmagic - Enjoy an exclusive 30% discount for your first 3 months with the code FOUNDERS30.GrowthJet - Work with a boutique third-party logistics provider (3PL) for your e-commerce brand that'll pick, pack, and ship your orders hassle-free.***EXCERPTS:Premium Content: "What I tell people for this is you don't need a big audience, but you need a loyal audience. People who are really love your content or conversely really hate ads, like, I know people who pay for my show just because they hate ads, the value proposition for them is that you're providing them with a little extra." — Joe Casabona (17:43)The Power of Podcasting: "A podcast can be a great way to get people to know, like, and trust you faster." — Joe Casabona (28:23)*** LINKS: How I Built It PodcastPodcast LiftoffJOIN: First Class Founders Premium MembershipDOWNLOAD: Hyper-Visuals For Our Episodes (Free)***FOLLOW / REVIEW:- Follow - Leave 5-star review***CONNECT W/ YONG-SOO:- X- Threads- LinkedIn- Newsletter***First Class Founders is a show for indie hackers, bootstrapped founders, CEOs, solopreneurs, content creators, startup entrepreneurs, and SaaS startups covering topics like build in public, audience growth, product marketing, scaling up, side hustles, holding company, etc. Past guests include Arvid Kahl, Tyler Denk, Noah Kagan, Clint Murphy, Jay Abraham, Andrew Gazdecki, Matt McGarry, Nick Huber, Khe Hy, and more. Episode you might like:Future of Newsletters with Tyler Denk, Founder & CEO at BeehiivFrom Zero to 100K Subscribers: How to Grow Your Newsletter like a Pro with Newsletter Growth Expert Matt McGarry...
Adam welcomes Mark Fleming Jr, Managing Partner of MEMM Capital for another episode in the How I Built It series. A Columbus resident for most of his life, Mark is an entrepreneur that bootstrapped his company (Signature Closers LLC) to over $65 million in annual revenue and an eventual sale to Fortune 800 company, Stewart Title Company, in Feb '21. He recently founded Arena Technology Solutions with agroup of entrepreneurs that have started, scaled, and exited businessescombined with technology partners to offer solutions to middle marketcompanies and corporate innovation groups at largecompanies. MEMMCapital is his holding company that acquires and invests in established,operating businesses and he isalso a Co-Founder of TalentShare, a companythat connects collegiate athletes with the parents of youth athletes forcoaching and lessons through a marketplace and app. Adam and Mark chat about how Mark became an accidental serial entrepreneur after finding a niche and strong network in being a notary for real estate closings. Mark shares how he built Signature Closers, including the risk to simply salary himself at $40k per year (with a young family at home) in order to continue to grow his business. After partnering with an amazing Chief Technology Officer, Mark and his team built their business to over 62,000 signings per month, but still considered their accountability to their clients as one of their biggest assets, despite the number of deals in their queue. Adam and Mark also talk about transitioning out of the business and knowing when it was time to sell. Libertas Wealth: https://bit.ly/3HpmN2o Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/3NQHjeO Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3aTTCse Subscribe on Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3QmGmMU For more VIDEO podcasts like this one: https://bit.ly/3OagYrw For more AUDIO podcasts: https://bit.ly/3PHXHzo For educational VIDEOS and Stock Market Updates: https://bit.ly/3O8Yo3u For general financial educational ARTICLES: https://bit.ly/3aP0Ldn For more Real-Time Updates on the Economy and State of the Markets Follow Adam Koós on Twitter @AdamKoos: https://bit.ly/3tzccwk Or follow Adam on Instagram @FinancialSurgeon: https://bit.ly/3QobpIy --- Adam Koos, CFP®, CMT® is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER and one of only 2,600+ Chartered Market Technicians (CMT) worldwide, as well as a Certified Financial Technician (CFTe®) thru the International Federation of Technical Analysts (IFTA). He's been named by Columbus Business First as one of their 20 People to Know in Finance, was a recipient of the Forty Under 40 award, is ranked by Investopedia as one of America's top 100 Most Influential Advisers, and is the winner of the coveted Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Ethical Enterprising. Adam serves his clients as the president and portfolio manager at Libertas Wealth Management Group, Inc., a Fee-Only Registered Investment Advisory (RIA) firm, located in Columbus, Ohio. ******* The audio and video contained herein is intended for those interested in finance, searching for a financial advisor, wealth manager, financial planner, and/or retirement planning. While we are CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERS (through the College for Financial Planning) and work with clients all over the country, our business is run out of Columbus / Central Ohio. If you are looking for wealth management, financial planning, a financial counselor, wealth advisor, or financial consultant – especially a fee-only, Fiduciary Registered Investment Advisor – we provide money management and financial services for individuals and couples (i.e. – a 401k rollover), as well as business owners (i.e. – 401k, SIMPLE, SEP IRA's, as well as cash balance and other various retirement plans).
Adam welcomes Corbin Schlatter, Owner of Weed Man Columbus for another episode in the "How I Built It" series. Corbin talks about how he found himself in lawn care initially, and how he and his wife Audrey built their business to a point where they could sell the business in order to focus on building a successful Weed Man franchise in Central Ohio. After relocating from Defiance, OH to the Columbus area with 4 children under the age of 6 and zero customers Corbin and Audrey had a tall order before them in order to make their business work. Thankfully the married couple knew the business and knew how to do the work in order to attract and retain customers for their Weed Man franchise quickly. Listen now to learn more about the struggles they faced as young business owners with young children including an unfortunate incident product adopted for their services nearly ended their business and cost it's parent company $1 billion in damages and what ultimately saved the company. If you're an entrepreneur looking for inspiration and insight into building a successful business, this is an episode you don't want to miss. Don't forget to rate our show 5 stars and subscribe so you never miss an episode of The Cash Podcast. https://columbus-north.weedman.com/ Please be sure to check out this episode on YouTube! https://bit.ly/3OagYrw Libertas Wealth: https://bit.ly/3HpmN2o Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/3NQHjeO Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3aTTCse Subscribe on Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3QmGmMU For more VIDEO podcasts like this one: https://bit.ly/3OagYrw For more AUDIO podcasts: https://bit.ly/3PHXHzo For educational VIDEOS and Stock Market Updates: https://bit.ly/3O8Yo3u For general financial educational ARTICLES: https://bit.ly/3aP0Ldn For more Real-Time Updates on the Economy and State of the Markets Follow Adam Koós on Twitter @AdamKoos: https://bit.ly/3tzccwk Or follow Adam on Instagram @FinancialSurgeon: https://bit.ly/3QobpIy --- Adam Koos, CFP®, CMT® is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER and one of only 2,600+ Chartered Market Technicians (CMT) worldwide, as well as a Certified Financial Technician (CFTe®) thru the International Federation of Technical Analysts (IFTA). He's been named by Columbus Business First as one of their 20 People to Know in Finance, was a recipient of the Forty Under 40 award, is ranked by Investopedia as one of America's top 100 Most Influential Advisers, and is the winner of the coveted Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Ethical Enterprising. Adam serves his clients as the president and portfolio manager at Libertas Wealth Management Group, Inc., a Fee-Only Registered Investment Advisory (RIA) firm, located in Columbus, Ohio. ******* The audio and video contained herein is intended for those interested in finance, searching for a financial advisor, wealth manager, financial planner, and/or retirement planning. While we are CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERS (through the College for Financial Planning) and work with clients all over the country, our business is run out of Columbus / Central Ohio. If you are looking for wealth management, financial planning, a financial counselor, wealth advisor, or financial consultant – especially a fee-only, Fiduciary Registered Investment Advisor – we provide money management and financial services for individuals and couples (i.e. – a 401k rollover), as well as business owners (i.e. – 401k, SIMPLE, SEP IRA's, as well as cash balance and other various retirement plans).
Adam welcomes Tim Rink, Founder of HTI Inc. for another episode in the "How I Built It" series. Tim's passion for audiology and hearing loss was sparked by a loud car he had as a young man. He talks about how this experience led him on his path to learning more about hearing loss and audiology, and eventually led him to start his own company. We dive into how OSHA adopting the "Hearing Conservation" approach opened up new opportunities for HTI, and how Tim set up a mobile hearing testing business. Eventually, Tim found that information management was a key to success for his business. Tim also shares his decision to sell a piece of his business early on, and why it paid off for him in the end. If you're an entrepreneur looking for inspiration and insight into building a successful business, this is an episode you don't want to miss. Don't forget to rate our show 5 stars and subscribe so you never miss an episode of The Cash Podcast. Please be sure to check out this episode on YouTube! https://bit.ly/3OagYrw Libertas Wealth: https://bit.ly/3HpmN2o Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/3NQHjeO Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3aTTCse Subscribe on Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3QmGmMU For more VIDEO podcasts like this one: https://bit.ly/3OagYrw For more AUDIO podcasts: https://bit.ly/3PHXHzo For educational VIDEOS and Stock Market Updates: https://bit.ly/3O8Yo3u For general financial educational ARTICLES: https://bit.ly/3aP0Ldn For more Real-Time Updates on the Economy and State of the Markets Follow Adam Koós on Twitter @AdamKoos: https://bit.ly/3tzccwk Or follow Adam on Instagram @FinancialSurgeon: https://bit.ly/3QobpIy --- Adam Koos, CFP®, CMT® is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER and one of only 2,600+ Chartered Market Technicians (CMT) worldwide, as well as a Certified Financial Technician (CFTe®) thru the International Federation of Technical Analysts (IFTA). He's been named by Columbus Business First as one of their 20 People to Know in Finance, was a recipient of the Forty Under 40 award, is ranked by Investopedia as one of America's top 100 Most Influential Advisers, and is the winner of the coveted Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Ethical Enterprising. Adam serves his clients as the president and portfolio manager at Libertas Wealth Management Group, Inc., a Fee-Only Registered Investment Advisory (RIA) firm, located in Columbus, Ohio. ******* The audio and video contained herein is intended for those interested in finance, searching for a financial advisor, wealth manager, financial planner, and/or retirement planning. While we are CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERS (through the College for Financial Planning) and work with clients all over the country, our business is run out of Columbus / Central Ohio. If you are looking for wealth management, financial planning, a financial counselor, wealth advisor, or financial consultant – especially a fee-only, Fiduciary Registered Investment Advisor – we provide money management and financial services for individuals and couples (i.e. – a 401k rollover), as well as business owners (i.e. – 401k, SIMPLE, SEP IRA's, as well as cash balance and other various retirement plans).
Adam welcomes his friend John Haas, Owner and Operator of Haas Painting Company in Dublin, Ohio for another installment of the "How I Built It" series. John shares more about what led him down the path to starting his own business, and what steps he took to make it a reality (not realizing he accidentally started taking those steps in high school). Now coming up on ten years as a business owner, John and Adam talk more about what helped John to become successful. From how long it took him to feel like he was able to breathe again financially, to initial struggles with delegation, and his one piece of advice for aspiring business owners, this deep dive into business building is not one to miss! https://haaspaintingcompany.com/ Please be sure to check out this episode on YouTube! https://bit.ly/3OagYrw Libertas Wealth: https://bit.ly/3HpmN2o Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/3NQHjeO Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3aTTCse Subscribe on Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3QmGmMU For more VIDEO podcasts like this one: https://bit.ly/3OagYrw For more AUDIO podcasts: https://bit.ly/3PHXHzo For educational VIDEOS and Stock Market Updates: https://bit.ly/3O8Yo3u For general financial educational ARTICLES: https://bit.ly/3aP0Ldn For more Real-Time Updates on the Economy and State of the Markets Follow Adam Koós on Twitter @AdamKoos: https://bit.ly/3tzccwk Or follow Adam on Instagram @FinancialSurgeon: https://bit.ly/3QobpIy --- Adam Koos, CFP®, CMT® is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER and one of only 2,600+ Chartered Market Technicians (CMT) worldwide, as well as a Certified Financial Technician (CFTe®) thru the International Federation of Technical Analysts (IFTA). He's been named by Columbus Business First as one of their 20 People to Know in Finance, was a recipient of the Forty Under 40 award, is ranked by Investopedia as one of America's top 100 Most Influential Advisers, and is the winner of the coveted Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Ethical Enterprising. Adam serves his clients as the president and portfolio manager at Libertas Wealth Management Group, Inc., a Fee-Only Registered Investment Advisory (RIA) firm, located in Columbus, Ohio. ******* The audio and video contained herein is intended for those interested in finance, searching for a financial advisor, wealth manager, financial planner, and/or retirement planning. While we are CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERS (through the College for Financial Planning) and work with clients all over the country, our business is run out of Columbus / Central Ohio. If you are looking for wealth management, financial planning, a financial counselor, wealth advisor, or financial consultant – especially a fee-only, Fiduciary Registered Investment Advisor – we provide money management and financial services for individuals and couples (i.e. – a 401k rollover), as well as business owners (i.e. – 401k, SIMPLE, SEP IRA's, as well as cash balance and other various retirement plans).
It's episode 300! I thought I'd wax poetic on the top 10 things I've learned from both running this show, and the guests I've had on. After that, I talk a little bit about what's in store for How I Built It, and where I'd like it to go in the future. Plus, in the PRO show, I talk about what life without Twitter has been like. Become a Pro Top 10 Lessons Build Your Email List Talk to your customers Experiment Niche/Specialize/Focus Don't be afraid to say no People care about the problem you're solving. Not you, not the tech you used. The problem Tell Good Stories Do things that don't scale at first Ship what you have and iterate Don't be afraid to ask Show Notes ConvertKit Podcast Liftoff Learning Management and WordPress: LearnDash with Justin Ferriman Making Better Leaders with Chris Lema Designing the Profitable Project Plan with Jennifer Bourn The Best Way to Build Community is Easier Than You Think with Drew Dillon The Most Important Thing You Can Do as a Creator with Marie Poulin Turning WordPress Sites into iPhone Apps with Scott Bolinger and AppPresser Join How I Built It Pro Sponsored by: Groundhogg | Ahrefs | LearnDash
Last year, I more than doubled my monthly downloads for my already popular podcast, How I Built It, from 34,000 downloads per month to 71,000 downloads per month. Today, I want to give you 6+ ways you can do the same thing. 1/ Podcast promo swaps. Easily the best way to do it. I saw a marked increase in the number of downloads on weeks I swapped promos with another podcaster. Why do you think Wonder, iHeart, and the other big networks do it? 2/ Feed drops. If you want to give an audience a taste of what they can get by subscribing, trade episodes with another podcaster and put them in your feed on an off-day. You could even go the extra mile and create a custom CTA to subscribe to your show. 3/ Podcast guesting. Borrowing audiences is a tale as old as time, and that's exactly what you do when you go on other podcasts. Provide a TON of value then make your CTA to check out your podcast. They can do it from the same app. 4/ Promote your podcast in your newsletter. It can be dedicated broadcasts just for the episode, or a feature in your weekly newsletter, but make sure you're telling your own audience about it. Don't just assume they know. 5/ Create better titles. You want episode titles that stoke the need to listen through curiosity. Don't just use your guest's name. Open a thread that can only be closed by listened. If you need ideas, check out the incredible Creator Hooks by Jake Thomas. 6/ Know who you serve! When you clearly define the problem your podcast solves, it makes your episodes more shareable. Define your mission statement and who you help. Then serve them! Show Notes Podcast Swaps Grew my Show by 21% Podcast Liftoff Playbook Creator Hooks Ways to get in touch Don't burn out trying to create content for your podcast! Create your own content flywheel through my free webinar. Register today.Support the show--------------------------------------------------------Send Feedback | LinkedIn | Facebook Group Learn the tools and processes used by top podcasters and reclaim hours of your life every week. https://podcastworkflows.com/ ★ Support this podcast ★
Last year, I more than doubled my monthly downloads for my already popular podcast, How I Built It, from 34,000 downloads per month to 71,000 downloads per month. Today, I want to give you 6+ ways you can do the same thing. 1/ Podcast promo swaps. Easily the best way to do it. I saw a marked increase in the number of downloads on weeks I swapped promos with another podcaster. Why do you think Wonder, iHeart, and the other big networks do it? 2/ Feed drops. If you want to give an audience a taste of what they can get by subscribing, trade episodes with another podcaster and put them in your feed on an off-day. You could even go the extra mile and create a custom CTA to subscribe to your show. 3/ Podcast guesting. Borrowing audiences is a tale as old as time, and that's exactly what you do when you go on other podcasts. Provide a TON of value then make your CTA to check out your podcast. They can do it from the same app. 4/ Promote your podcast in your newsletter. It can be dedicated broadcasts just for the episode, or a feature in your weekly newsletter, but make sure you're telling your own audience about it. Don't just assume they know. 5/ Create better titles. You want episode titles that stoke the need to listen through curiosity. Don't just use your guest's name. Open a thread that can only be closed by listened. If you need ideas, check out the incredible Creator Hooks by Jake Thomas. 6/ Know who you serve! When you clearly define the problem your podcast solves, it makes your episodes more shareable. Define your mission statement and who you help. Then serve them! Show NotesPodcast Swaps Grew my Show by 21%Podcast Liftoff PlaybookCreator HooksWays to get in touchGet the Podcast Booster Blueprint for free at https://profitablepodcaster.fm/blueprintWant to become a Profitable Podcaster faster? Join the Podcast Liftoff Playbook. Use the code PL071220 for $60 off.
Welcome to a classic podcast swap! I'm sharing an episode from Joe Casabona over at How I Built It because it's incredibly useful for you in your business and brand-building journey. In this sneak peek episode, Joe chats with Dr. Shanté Cofield on a ton of helpful stuff. Let's peep the highlights: On imposter syndrome: We need to get objective and trust the data. It's easy to get down on yourself, not want to brag, and feel like you're not the real deal. But you need to listen to what people are telling you. If you help them, you are helping. It's easy to want to talk implementation of your new business or content because that's concrete. But you need to define your values first. Without values, you are directionless. On values: value-based marketing is not shouting your opinion on Twitter. Values are verbs. They are things you do, vs. the things they say. They are how you build your best life, and they need to be at the core of your business. Enjoy this conversation and check out How I Built It for even more cool conversations with business owners doing great things (hmm...sounds very fitting for this show!). We'll be back to episodes of Good People, Cool Things next week!
Joe Casabona started his career over 20 years ago as a freelance web developer. He later realized his true passion was helping podcasts of any size make money, so they could turn their hobby into a business. In 2016, he started the How I Built It podcast, which interviews other web developers about how they built their plugin, theme, or other WordPress-related product. The podcast quickly gained popularity, reaching 50,000 downloads in just nine months. Since then, Joe has monetized the podcast in several ways, including sponsorship, membership, affiliates, and selling products and services. In this episode, you will learn the following: 1. Joe Casabona's background in web development and how he got into podcasting 2. The process of securing sponsorships for a new podcast 3. The various ways that a podcast can be monetized Resources: https://casabona.org/ https://podcastliftoff.com/freebie/sarah/ https://www.podseam.com/freebies Chapter Summaries: [00:00:00] - Joe Casabona started his career over 20 years ago as a freelance web developer before realizing his true passion. The podcast has made over $250,000 [00:00:46] - In high school and grammar school. He did drama club and he loved presenting. He has a master's degree in software engineering and he's been working remotely since 2013. He started podcasting because he wanted to talk to people about how they were building things. It's a way for him to be the extrovert while still working from home. [00:02:47] - Joe started a podcast in 2016. The name came from a domain he bought while he and his wife were on their honeymoon in Italy. Chris Coyer, a big name in the web development space, was his 6th guest and it started getting a lot of downloads from there. He had 50,000 downloads in nine months. He got it sponsored before he even started. [00:07:58] - There are five ways to make money podcasting. The first one is sponsorship. The second one is membership. The third one is affiliate links. The fourth and gift is products and services. [00:18:02] - It's important to choose the right sponsors for your podcast. Manscaped approached him earlier this year about sponsoring his podcast. He didn't think their products were in alignment with his audience. Some brands wanted exclusivity for an extended amount of time, or they wanted him to guarantee downloads upfront. [00:19:33] - Baked in ads give the most value to podcasters. CPM is probably not going to work for most podcasters who aren't in the top 2%. [00:28:30] - How I Built Bits is going to be a five or ten-minute episode with a short read at the beginning. People can sponsor the episode for $99 until the end. It's a way to increase the number of sponsors in an episode and make money. [00:30:53] - Make Money Podcasting is a 20-minute-long mini podcast. It's geared towards creators and small business owners. [00:34:20] - Joe makes about $30,000 to $50,000 per year on podcast sponsorship alone. He has locked in about $6,000 worth of sponsorships this week. He's considering scaling back the number of sponsors to two in 2023. [00:37:26] - Workflow: Airtable, Calendly, Zapier
Joe Casabona started his career over 20 years ago as a freelance web developer. He later realized his true passion was helping podcasts of any size make money, so they could turn their hobby into a business. In 2016, he started the How I Built It podcast, which interviews other web developers about how they built their plugin, theme, or other WordPress-related product. The podcast quickly gained popularity, reaching 50,000 downloads in just nine months. Since then, Joe has monetized the podcast in several ways, including sponsorship, membership, affiliates, and selling products and services. In this episode, you will learn the following: 1. Joe Casabona's background in web development and how he got into podcasting 2. The process of securing sponsorships for a new podcast 3. The various ways that a podcast can be monetized Resources: https://casabona.org/ https://podcastliftoff.com/freebie/sarah/ https://www.podseam.com/freebies Chapter Summaries: [00:00:00] - Joe Casabona started his career over 20 years ago as a freelance web developer before realizing his true passion. The podcast has made over $250,000 [00:00:46] - In high school and grammar school. He did drama club and he loved presenting. He has a master's degree in software engineering and he's been working remotely since 2013. He started podcasting because he wanted to talk to people about how they were building things. It's a way for him to be the extrovert while still working from home. [00:02:47] - Joe started a podcast in 2016. The name came from a domain he bought while he and his wife were on their honeymoon in Italy. Chris Coyer, a big name in the web development space, was his 6th guest and it started getting a lot of downloads from there. He had 50,000 downloads in nine months. He got it sponsored before he even started. [00:07:58] - There are five ways to make money podcasting. The first one is sponsorship. The second one is membership. The third one is affiliate links. The fourth and gift is products and services. [00:18:02] - It's important to choose the right sponsors for your podcast. Manscaped approached him earlier this year about sponsoring his podcast. He didn't think their products were in alignment with his audience. Some brands wanted exclusivity for an extended amount of time, or they wanted him to guarantee downloads upfront. [00:19:33] - Baked in ads give the most value to podcasters. CPM is probably not going to work for most podcasters who aren't in the top 2%. [00:28:30] - How I Built Bits is going to be a five or ten-minute episode with a short read at the beginning. People can sponsor the episode for $99 until the end. It's a way to increase the number of sponsors in an episode and make money. [00:30:53] - Make Money Podcasting is a 20-minute-long mini podcast. It's geared towards creators and small business owners. [00:34:20] - Joe makes about $30,000 to $50,000 per year on podcast sponsorship alone. He has locked in about $6,000 worth of sponsorships this week. He's considering scaling back the number of sponsors to two in 2023. [00:37:26] - Workflow: Airtable, Calendly, Zapier
Adam welcomes Helen Yee, co-founder and CFO of the American Institute of Alternative Medicine (AIAM) for another installment of How I Built It. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Columbus, Helen knew she wanted to be a business owner from a young age having grown up in her family's Chinese restaurant. While becoming a Licensed Massage Therapist and founding AIAM 1990, Helen also had great success as a martial artist. A third-degree black belt in Taekwondo, Helen competed nationally and internationally, and is a two-time National gold medalist, and was selected as an alternate for the 1988 US Olympic Team. She competed on the U.S. Taekwondo team in 1990, earning a silver medal in the 1st Women's World Cup Taekwondo in Madrid, Spain. Learn more about her martial arts training has impacted her perspective on her business and her life, including things like: - What ignited her entrepreneurial fire - The transition to becoming a business owner and the challenges she face getting started - The best and worst parts about running and growing her business - What has kept her from failing during tough times Learn more about Helen at https://www.helenhyee.com/ Libertas Wealth: https://bit.ly/3HpmN2o Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/3NQHjeO Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3aTTCse Subscribe on Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3QmGmMU For more VIDEO podcasts like this one: https://bit.ly/3OagYrw For more AUDIO podcasts: https://bit.ly/3PHXHzo For educational VIDEOS and Stock Market Updates: https://bit.ly/3O8Yo3u For general financial educational ARTICLES: https://bit.ly/3aP0Ldn For more Real-Time Updates on the Economy and State of the Markets Follow Adam Koós on Twitter @AdamKoos: https://bit.ly/3tzccwk Or follow Adam on Instagram @FinancialSurgeon: https://bit.ly/3QobpIy --- Adam Koos, CFP®, CMT® is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER and one of only 2,600+ Chartered Market Technicians (CMT) worldwide, as well as a Certified Financial Technician (CFTe®) thru the International Federation of Technical Analysts (IFTA). He's been named by Columbus Business First as one of their 20 People to Know in Finance, was a recipient of the Forty Under 40 award, is ranked by Investopedia as one of America's top 100 Most Influential Advisers, and is the winner of the coveted Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Ethical Enterprising. Adam serves his clients as the president and portfolio manager at Libertas Wealth Management Group, Inc., a Fee-Only Registered Investment Advisory (RIA) firm, located in Columbus, Ohio. ******* The audio and video contained herein is intended for those interested in finance, searching for a financial advisor, wealth manager, financial planner, and/or retirement planning. While we are CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERS (through the College for Financial Planning) and work with clients all over the country, our business is run out of Columbus / Central Ohio. If you are looking for wealth management, financial planning, a financial counselor, wealth advisor, or financial consultant – especially a fee-only, Fiduciary Registered Investment Advisor – we provide money management and financial services for individuals and couples (i.e. – a 401k rollover), as well as business owners (i.e. – 401k, SIMPLE, SEP IRA's, as well as cash balance and other various retirement plans).
Joe Casabona is an entrepreneur who struggled during the pandemic. You'll learn about how he figured out a way forward with therapy and help from his wife. One of my favorite parts of this interview is how he uses a journal to grow his self-awareness. Highlights from the interview: How he built his patience from helping his mom with her computer issues.How he developed his empathy.What his routine is around building self-awareness has helped him grow as a father and build his business.Being the person that isn't surprised that someone hasn't seen an amazing movie.How he describes his inner voice.Being a better parent though working with your emotions.Growing up in the 80's and how parenting has changed.How his daughter helped him when he was having an anxiety attack.Why he sought therapy to help him with his relationship with his kids.How the culture of boys is different from 30 years ago.Pulling away the layers and seeing that we are all messed up.Building our empathy to help build better relationships.Struggles during the pandemic.How others perceive us is not how we perceive ourselves.The importance of self awareness in life.How he reduced his propensity to make snap judgements about others.Debunking our biases and how it helps us in our careers.Why negative stories are more fun, but we need to break this habit.Why parenting can feel like a total nightmare.Why he is so curious about things in his life.The importance of building something the “right way”, from his values.How he uses his journal to help him grow.How his journal helps him keep his life in proper perspective.How gratitude plays a big part in his life.We often forget the hard things, but it's important to remember these things to help remind us of how good we have it now.How a gratitudeMost impactful book, podcast and tool that he uses to stay focused. You can learn more about Joe over at Casabona.org. You can also subscribe and listen to his “How I Built It” podcast. If you want to connect with him on LinkedIn. And as always if you have any questions or want to submit a guest for the podcast that you think would be amazing just reach out on Dig to Fly and I'll do my best to get them on. If you love the interview please take 30 seconds to rate the Dig to Fly podcast on your favorite platform. Thanks!
At the end of every episode of How I Built It, host Guy Raz asks extremely successful founders whether hard work and smarts played as much of a role as luck. Andy Nairn is the founder of Lucky Generals. He's been paying attention to the role that luck plays in life and brand success, since before stumbling on that name almost ten years ago. Now he's written a book, Go Luck Yourself, to put the stories in context and explaining how to recognize and take advantage when luck smiles on your business and brand. Proceeds from the book are going to support Commercial Break, which creates job opportunities in the creative industries for young, working class talent: https://www.amazon.com/Go-Luck-Yourself-brands-favour/dp/0857198882 Find Andy Nairn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andynairn?lang=en Andy's shop, Lucky Generals: https://www.luckygenerals.com/ The Strategy Inside Everything is the podcast for people who think for a living. If you have an idea, a question or you want to push back on something you hear in this episode, go to https://thatsnotaninsight.com and leave a message or a voicemail for me. The best and most interesting messages will be added to future episodes, and I can't wait to hear from you. Music for The Strategy Inside Everything is by Sawsquarenoise. Host Adam Pierno is an author, speaker and strategy consultant. Learn more at adampierno.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/adam-pierno/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/adam-pierno/support
Jason Coleman was the very first guest on How I Built It, and he started the show strong with a ton of fantastic advice. Here's my favorite: a bit about why charging monthly might not align with the value you deliver, as well as how to handle negative reviews.Listen to the entire episode at https://howibuilt.it/001Be sure to subscribe at https://howibuilt.it/subscribeThis clip is brought to you by WP Wallet ★ Support this podcast ★
Jason Coleman was the very first guest on How I Built It, and he started the show strong with a ton of fantastic advice. Here's my favorite: a bit about why charging monthly might not align with the value you deliver, as well as how to handle negative reviews. Listen to the entire episode at https://howibuilt.it/001 Be sure to subscribe at https://howibuilt.it/subscribe This clip is brought to you by WP Wallet
Jason Coleman was the very first guest on How I Built It, and he started the show strong with a ton of fantastic advice. Here's my favorite: a bit about why charging monthly might not align with the value you deliver, as well as how to handle negative reviews.Listen to the entire episode at https://howibuilt.it/001Be sure to subscribe at https://howibuilt.it/subscribeThis clip is brought to you by WP Wallet Get your FREE copy of my Automations Library ★ Support this podcast ★
Jason Coleman was the very first guest on How I Built It, and he started the show strong with a ton of fantastic advice. Here's my favorite: a bit about why charging monthly might not align with the value you deliver, as well as how to handle negative reviews. Listen to the entire episode at https://howibuilt.it/001 Be sure to subscribe at https://howibuilt.it/subscribe This clip is brought to you by WP Wallet
Have you ever seen a great talk, video, or even podcast episode that dolled out some fantastic advice, only for you to forget it before you implement it? Maybe that feeling is amplified when you go to a conference. There are so many great takeaways...how can you remember it all? It's almost like you need a TL;DR for when that happens. And How I Built It has been going pretty much weekly for nearly 7 years! As we approach 300 episodes, I wanted to surface some of the best advice from asking "how did you build that" over all that time. So I'd like to introduce How I Built Bits, a weekly clip show that aims to be around 15 mins, replaying some of the best clips from How I Built It. New episodes come out on Saturday mornings. If you'd like to learn more, head over to https://howibuilt.it/clips. And of course, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. ★ Support this podcast ★
Have you ever seen a great talk, video, or even podcast episode that dolled out some fantastic advice, only for you to forget it before you implement it? Maybe that feeling is amplified when you go to a conference. There are so many great takeaways...how can you remember it all? It's almost like you need a TL;DR for when that happens. And How I Built It has been going pretty much weekly for nearly 7 years! As we approach 300 episodes, I wanted to surface some of the best advice from asking "how did you build that" over all that time. So I'd like to introduce How I Built Bits, a weekly clip show that aims to be around 15 mins, replaying some of the best clips from How I Built It. New episodes come out on Saturday mornings. If you'd like to learn more, head over to https://howibuilt.it/clips. And of course, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
Have you ever seen a great talk, video, or even podcast episode that dolled out some fantastic advice, only for you to forget it before you implement it? Maybe that feeling is amplified when you go to a conference. There are so many great takeaways...how can you remember it all? It's almost like you need a TL;DR for when that happens. And How I Built It has been going pretty much weekly for nearly 7 years! As we approach 300 episodes, I wanted to surface some of the best advice from asking "how did you build that" over all that time. So I'd like to introduce How I Built Bits, a weekly clip show that aims to be around 15 mins, replaying some of the best clips from How I Built It. New episodes come out on Saturday mornings. If you'd like to learn more, head over to https://howibuilt.it/clips. And of course, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. ★ Support this podcast ★
Have you ever seen a great talk, video, or even podcast episode that dolled out some fantastic advice, only for you to forget it before you implement it? Maybe that feeling is amplified when you go to a conference. There are so many great takeaways...how can you remember it all? It's almost like you need a TL;DR for when that happens. And How I Built It has been going pretty much weekly for nearly 7 years! As we approach 300 episodes, I wanted to surface some of the best advice from asking "how did you build that" over all that time. So I'd like to introduce How I Built Bits, a weekly clip show that aims to be around 15 mins, replaying some of the best clips from How I Built It. New episodes come out on Saturday mornings. If you'd like to learn more, head over to https://howibuilt.it/clips. And of course, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
Joe Casabona is probably one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. I've known Joe for more than 5 years. He's been in the WordPress space since the beginning of the project and has now pivoted to teaching online course is both WordPress and Podcasting. Joe is a recovering university educator (University of Scranton) and now resides in the Western Suburbs of Philadelphia with his wife and soon to be 3 kids. He is an avid podcaster and not only does podcast production for clients, but also hosts to popular shows as well. How I Built It and WP Review. He also runs an online community and listeners of this show can get 33% off of a membership for life by using the code enigma at https://casabona.org/engima. Find Joe Online:
Adrian Tobey is a foundr of a multi-award winning tech start up and great story to share. Adrian Tobey has been featured on WP Builds, Authority Magazine, WP Founders, MixErgy, WPTonic, Atarim Summit, WPMayor, WP Watercooler, LMScast, WP Plugins A-Z, Automation Rehab, Mastermind.fm, Trailblazer, How I Built It, and many more! As the son of entrepreneurs, he credits his parents for giving him the thirst of entrepreneurship. His parents deployed an Internet marketing training business way back in 2001. Adrian tagged along to those training sessions and learned quite a bit about marketing during his formative years. By the age of 16, he worked as an assistant trainer in some of the marketing sessions. And when he wasn't training people on how to succeed, he built WordPress sites and integrated CRMs. At 18, he became an InfusionSoft Certified Partner and Certified Trainer. He used that skill set to produce hundreds of sales funnels for his parents' clients. It was during that time that he also built and monetized his first WordPress plugin: Formlift.net. It still sells “form styling” to more than 1,000 InfusionSoft (now Keap) customers. At the age of 21, he dropped out of University to launch his own venture in 2018: Groundhogg. The Groundhogg plugin is a CRM (customer relationship management) and marketing automation tool built for WordPress websites. Groundhogg currently serves 2700 customers world-wide and has won numerous awards including: 2020 Gold Stevie Award for Tech Start Up of the Year 2021 Gold Stevie Award for Sales & Customer Service in CRM small business suite category 2021 Nominee for Young Entrepreneur of the Year Canadian SME National Business Award 2021 Nominee for Small Business of the Year Canadian SME National Business Award Connect With Adrian Tobey: https://adriantobey.com/ https://trainingbusinesspros.com/ https://formlift.net/ https://www.groundhogg.io/ What is Journey with Christian D Evans Podcast and Why is Everyone Talking About it? __________ Get Mentored by Christian D Evans: www.christiandevans.com __________ You've probably heard about Journey with Christian D Evans Podcast by now. It seems like everyone is talking about it. So what exactly is Christian D Evans Podcast? And is it even worth the hype? Well friends, I'm answering all of your questions in this Podcast Section. I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about Journey with Christian D Evans Podcast, so be sure to check it out! __________ RESOURCES & LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO: How to GAIN a positively Unfair Advantage to become a TOP EARNER as a Side Hustler & Business Owner over the next 90 days!: https://www.todaysidegig.com/side-hustle1602595337044 __________ BUSINESS/SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS: “How to impact the world as a Missionary? Ben & Colette Interview”: https://youtu.be/glfpJpL2oaA Are Your Limiting Beliefs Stopping You from Achieving Your Goals?”: https://youtu.be/ZnNiZGU5YoA “How To Unleash your Potential with Carol Edwards”: https://youtu.be/ZfrIySHr2jA __________ CONNECT WITH ME: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evansandfamily/ Journey with Christian Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5BecmOVFSTLB1J08P3INSB?si=rUDkdD4EQ4yGyi9baaKwbQ #adriantobey #christiandevans #journeywithchristiandevans #groundhogg.io #marketingskills #youngentrepreneur
Harry welcomes to the show, educator, author and podcast consultant, Joe Casabona. Joe is the host of How I Built It, a podcast that provides insight from tech savvy small business owners and developers on how they built their products, from idea to execution.In this episode, Harry and Joe talk about Joe's circuitous route to entrepreneurship, from a stint teaching at the collegiate level to eventually reaching self-employment and launching his own podcasting company. Joe opens up about his prior role at an agency and the decision to leave to pursue his passion. He shares lessons he's learned throughout the years, including why curiosity is a major key success factor in life. Finally, Joe shares something he's changed his mind about recently and speaks to why his inquisitive nature has made him a naturally gifted podcast host. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! Focusrite | FullCast KEY TAKEAWAYS 06:35 – Harry welcomes back to the show Joe Casabona, who speaks to the inspiration to start his podcast, How I Built It11:45 – Joe's Tech journey14:11 – Structuring a podcast22:50 – Joe's experience teaching at the collegiate level32:28 – Joe's entrepreneurial journey and what he learned working for an agency45:33 – Joe and Harry talk about their shared love of the New York Yankees50:31 – Lessons Joe learned throughout his journey of self-employment and running his own business57:30 – Joe's growth as a podcast host59:09 – Something Joe has changed his mind about recently1:05:46 – Harry thanks Joe for joining the show and let's listeners know where they can connect with him TWEETABLE QUOTES “Free customers are the meanest because they have the highest expectations and the most entitlement.” (16:51) (Joe)“I joke that if computers didn't exist I would be completely unemployable.” (23:33) (Joe)“People think, ‘Oh, I'm not gonna say anything because things aren't going to change.' Well things definitely won't change if you don't say anything.” (42:38) (Joe)“When my daughter asks me a question I try so hard, no matter how I'm feeling, to tell myself to not crush her curiosity.” (45:56) (Joe)“I've always been inquisitive. I think that's what made me a good host in the beginning is that I asked a lot of questions. I'm a lot more confident to deviate from the format, so I'm experimenting a lot more now.” (57:41) (Joe) RESOURCES MENTIONED FullCast WebsitePodcast Junkies Junkies Facebook GroupLink to Podfest Expo Virtual SummitJoe's LinkedInJoe's Podcast WebsiteJoe's WebsiteJoe's TwitterJoe's InstagramJoe's GitHubJoe's YouTube ChannelJoe's Podcast Books Mentioned: Soundtracks Podcasts Mentioned: The Pen AddictUpgradeConnectedSerial
Hey everybody and welcome to episode 234 of How I Built It, the podcast that offers actionable tech tips for small business owners. Today's sponsors are TextExpander, and Nexcess. Jason How knows a thing or two about ads, start with this: don't start with Ads. Jason gives us a couple of important aspects of running ads you think to think about before actually running the ads - like how to get your offer to a place that will compel people to actually click on ads. Top Takeaways BEFORE you run any ads, you need to get your offer right. Figure our whom you serve and do the research to make sure your offer is a good one. The messaging will be completely based on the offer. Get people into your funnel with a clear CTA, and have a good confirmation page. Show Notes: Jason HowJason on Linkedin Jason on FacebookJason on TwitterAgency J on LinkedinZipMessageS.I.N. Offer by Todd BrownHyrosBuild Something Club
In this episode, Seth and Shannon talk with a podcasting maverick and educator Joe Casabona. Joe has a very popular show called “How I Built It” as well as the “WP Review”. Both shows can be subscribed to in your podcast player of choice. He is also a college-level educator and author of “Responsive Design with WordPress” and 3 other books. Intro: Seth: Hey, Everyone, and welcome to season two, episode twenty-four of the Digital Marketing Dive Podcast. I'm Seth with Goldstein Media, and usually with me is the always amazing and talented Shannon of DIAM Business Consulting. Today we have Joe Casabona on the show. Joe has a very popular show called “How I Built It” as well as the “WP Review”. Both shows can be subscribed to in your podcast player of choice. He is also a college level educator, and author of “Responsive Design with WordPress”. I've known Joe for quite a few years. He's very active in the WordPress community. Topics & Links What's your origin story? Who is Joe Casabona?When did you get started in the WordPress community?You taught college level computer science classes, how was that?How did you go from WordPress to podcasting?You now mix the two mediums with your shows WP Review and How I Built It. Though the latter is more than just WordPress. How do you find time to do it all?You also have a very active How I Built It Community with online courses and an online forum. Tell us about that.Do you suggest small business owners investigate doing a podcast for their business?What do you think of Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces? Special Discount on Joe's Podcast Liftoff course: https://Casabona.org/dmd Check out Castos: https://socl.bz/castos Outro: Well, that was so much fun Joe. Reach out to us on DMD's social media channels and let us know what challenges you are having with digital marketing. If you're enjoying the season, please feel free to give us a review in Apple Podcasts or the podcast directory of your choice. We appreciate all the support. If you feel so inclined check out PodChaser and give us a review there! That's it for this episode, but we want to hear from you. Drop us an email at hello@digitalmarketingdive.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode, Seth and Shannon talk with a podcasting maverick and educator Joe Casabona. Joe has a very popular show called “How I Built It” as well as the “WP Review”. Both shows can be subscribed to in your podcast player of choice. He is also a college-level educator and author of “Responsive Design with WordPress” and 3 other books. Intro: Seth: Hey, Everyone, and welcome to season two, episode twenty-four of the Digital Marketing Dive Podcast. I'm Seth with Goldstein Media, and usually with me is the always amazing and talented Shannon of DIAM Business Consulting. Today we have Joe Casabona on the show. Joe has a very popular show called “How I Built It” as well as the “WP Review”. Both shows can be subscribed to in your podcast player of choice. He is also a college level educator, and author of “Responsive Design with WordPress”. I've known Joe for quite a few years. He's very active in the WordPress community. Topics & Links What's your origin story? Who is Joe Casabona?When did you get started in the WordPress community?You taught college level computer science classes, how was that?How did you go from WordPress to podcasting?You now mix the two mediums with your shows WP Review and How I Built It. Though the latter is more than just WordPress. How do you find time to do it all?You also have a very active How I Built It Community with online courses and an online forum. Tell us about that.Do you suggest small business owners investigate doing a podcast for their business?What do you think of Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces? Special Discount on Joe's Podcast Liftoff course: https://Casabona.org/dmd Check out Castos: https://socl.bz/castos Outro: Well, that was so much fun Joe. Reach out to us on DMD's social media channels and let us know what challenges you are having with digital marketing. If you're enjoying the season, please feel free to give us a review in Apple Podcasts or the podcast directory of your choice. We appreciate all the support. If you feel so inclined check out PodChaser and give us a review there! That's it for this episode, but we want to hear from you. Drop us an email at hello@digitalmarketingdive.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode, Seth and Shannon talk with a podcasting maverick and educator Joe Casabona. Joe has a very popular show called “How I Built It” as well as the “WP Review”. Both shows can be subscribed to in your podcast player of choice. He is also a college-level educator and author of “Responsive Design with WordPress” and 3 other books. Seth: Hey, Everyone, and welcome to season two, episode twenty-four of the Digital Marketing Dive Podcast. I'm Seth with Goldstein Media, and usually with me is the always amazing and talented Shannon of DIAM Business Consulting. Today we have Joe Casabona on the show. Joe has a very popular show called “How I Built It” as well as the “WP Review”. Both shows can be subscribed to in your podcast player of choice. He is also a college level educator, and author of “Responsive Design with WordPress”. I've known Joe for quite a few years. He's very active in the WordPress community. What's your origin story? Who is Joe Casabona?When did you get started in the WordPress community?You taught college level computer science classes, how was that?How did you go from WordPress to podcasting?You now mix the two mediums with your shows WP Review and How I Built It. Though the latter is more than just WordPress. How do you find time to do it all?You also have a very active How I Built It Community with online courses and an online forum. Tell us about that.Do you suggest small business owners investigate doing a podcast for their business?What do you think of Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces? Special Discount on Joe's Podcast Liftoff course: https://Casabona.org/dmd Check out Castos: https://socl.bz/castos Outro: Well, that was so much fun Joe. Reach out to us on DMD's social media channels and let us know what challenges you are having with digital marketing. If you're enjoying the season, please feel free to give us a review in Apple Podcasts or the podcast directory of your choice. We appreciate all the support. If you feel so inclined check out PodChaser and give us a review there! That's it for this episode, but we want to hear from you. Drop us an email at hello@digitalmarketingdive.com.
New to the show? Start here. … Welcome to How I Built It [2021]Read More » Source
Adrian Tobey is the founder of the multi-award-winning CRM & Marketing Automation platform Groundhogg. Having been featured in Authority Magazine, Mixergy, Mastermind.fm, Trailblazer, How I Built It, and many more Adrian shares his journey, marketing insights, and business growth mindset with those looking to create better results for themselves and their customers.Brought to you by: https://senditrising.com
Podcasting can be like your own personal stage. If you’re a speaker, you have the opportunity to create your own portfolio of work, allowing potential event organizers and audience members to see what you know and you speak. This can lead to more paid speaking gigs and a following. But that’s not the only reason speakers should start a podcast. … Why Speakers Should Start a PodcastRead More » Transcript Joe Casabona: Hey, everybody. Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about the Build Something Club. If you want ad free extended episodes of this podcast in the form of a podcast called Build Something More, as well as access to a community, live streams, bonus episodes, and deals, check out buildsomething.club and sign up for just $5 a month. You’ll get a bunch of great content and you get to support the show directly. Today on build something more, it’s a solo episode. So I will be telling you all about how I put my own talks together because today we’re talking about why speakers should start a podcast. I’m also going to be telling you about the tools I use for speaking, and I’ll ponder a little bit about if speakers should always be paid. So again, that is buildsomething.club. You can sign up for $5 a month, or you can get two months for free at 50 bucks a year. And every member gets an exclusive member chip in the mail. Head over to buildsomething.club today. All right. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 221 of How I Built It. Today’s sponsors are TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and The Events Calendar. You’ll be hearing about them a little later on in the show. But today we’re going to be talking about why speakers should start a podcast. This is a continuation of a series that I’ve been doing that started with course creators and then authors. And so now if you are a speaker, or you want to be a speaker, or you want to be a paid speaker, well, this episode is for you. Because I think a podcast can really help you. Now, of course, as usual, I’ll start off by saying that I covered the more general points of why anyone should start a podcast in Episode 154. You can go to Howibuilt.it/154 for that. Again, it’s up and coming medium. Lots and lots of people are discovering podcasting, both as audience and as creators. So it’s a great way for you to get ahead of the curve, and get out there and create your own podcast with your own niche. It’s a great way to establish trust. And it’s quickly growing. The latest Edison Research has shown that over 50% of American adults listen to at least one podcast episode a week, or at least one podcast. So it’s a growing audience. It’s grown considerably, especially over the last couple of years. And with Spotify, and Apple, and Amazon all throwing their hats into the ring and putting a ton of money behind podcasting, it’s going to get even bigger. It’s the next great content plane, it’s a great way to grow your business. And it’s easier than ever. But if you’re a speaker, why should you specifically start a podcast? Well, I think that there are a few reasons. And of course, we’ll break this down by why you should do it personally, and then how it can help you, all of the ways that you can help you. So first of all, if you’re a speaker, everybody I’ve been speaking to you lately on these episodes, these targeted episodes need to establish trust of some kind. And yes, that’s true in general if you’re a business owner, but I think it’s even more important if you are a… we’ll say a knowledge worker, if you are selling knowledge or selling a process, if you’re teaching people how to do something, which is what course creators do, which is what authors do, which is what speakers do. So I truly believe that a podcast is instrumental in helping you establish trust with people who will potentially be in your audience, but also with people who will potentially hire you for speaking gigs. And speaking of that, a podcast helps you create your own portfolio, one that you could send to potential events where you might want to be the keynote speaker or just a speaker. You can say, “Hey, don’t just take my word for it. I have a podcast where I talk into a microphone regularly. I’ve got the skills. Here’s my style. If you like it, hire me.” Plus, this portfolio that gets created doesn’t rely on other events providing the video or audio for your talk. Because that’s another thing. Maybe you’re on the speaker circuit all the time but maybe the events don’t make the recordings publicly available. So, now you need to figure out another way to show people what you really know, what your process is, and if you’re actually a good public speaker. You can establish trust by creating this portfolio of you talking about whatever it is you talk about. So if you’re a business coach, talk about things that you’ve coached people through. Heck, maybe even make some of your coaching calls public, with the permission of the person you’re coaching, of course. If you are a web developer, talk about the things that you’re doing at your job that you would repurpose into a talk or that you’ve talked about. What things are you doing to make your website faster or more accessible? What new CSS things are out now that you’re trying? If you own a coffee shop and you are hitting the speaker circuit about what it’s like owning a coffee shop, get on the mic and talk about different blends, and the terminology, and what it all means, and how you choose your blends. What’s the best grind for an AeroPress? What’s the best grind for iced coffee? Seriously, what is the best grind for iced coffee? So talk about things like that. And if you need content, you can also repurpose older talks into episodes or an episode series. If you give a talk for an hour, then you can break that down into three episodes. Part one, you set it up; part two, you solve the problem; part three, you give the actionable advice: go forth and do this. Maybe you can even have a Q&A where you invite your listeners to submit questions about your talk and then you answer them in the fourth episode of that series. Or you could just do the whole talk in one episode if you want to go for an hour. And then invite listeners to ask questions later or ask some questions you’ve gotten at that talk and answer them there. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Restrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than the Restrict Content Pro WordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. You can create any number of subscription packages, including free levels and free trials. But that’s not all. Their extensive add-ons library allows you to do even more, like drip out content, connect with any number of CRMs and newsletter tools, including ConvertKit and Mailchimp and integrate with other WordPress plugins like bbPress. Since the Build Something Club rolled out earlier this year, you can bet it’s using Restrict Content Pro. And I have used all of the things mentioned here in this ad read. I have created free levels. I’ve created coupons. I use ConvertKit and I’m using it with bbPress for the forums. I’m a big fan of the team, and I know they do fantastic work. The plugin has worked extremely well for me and I was able to get memberships up and running very quickly. Right now, they are offering a rare discount for how I built it listeners only: 20% off your purchase when you use RCPHOWIBUILTIT at checkout. That’s RCPHOWIBUILTIT, all one word. If you want to learn more about Restrict Content Pro and start making money with your own membership site, head on over to howibuilt.it/rcp. That’s howibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks to Restrict Content Pro for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: You can also test concepts for new talks. What are some ideas you’ve got kicking around but you haven’t fully fleshed out? I did that just recently, as I record this, with a podcast episode for a talk that I’m going to give at a WordCamp later. Now, those ideas are out there. Now, I’m getting feedback. “Well, what about this? What about that? Maybe they should think about that, too. How do I do this?” Great. That 15-minute episode now will let me not only take what I thought about and the questions that I think people will be asking, but now we’ll be able to get actual listener feedback and integrate that, include that in the talk. And it’ll make the talk better because now I’m inoculating the listeners, the audience against questions that they would have had that I wouldn’t have thought to ask. And now people feel even better coming away from my talk. I understand the problem better. So you can test out new concepts, things you’re thinking about, see how they land, see how well they’re received. If they’re not that well received, great, don’t spend the hours that you would spend putting a talk together with the slide deck, with the rehearsing. Speaking of, you can rehearse new talks as well. Maybe hear you have a members-only feed or a Patreon feed, where you give the dress rehearsal version of your talk, for people to listen to. You can work on the delivery. You can read through it. I’m a speaker myself. And let me tell you, the amount of times I’ve talked to my computer or my camera as if they were real people because I was rehearsing a talk. If my family didn’t know what I was doing, they’d think I was crazy. I was just talking to myself. So this gives you the opportunity to not… I’m not going to say waste, because rehearsing a talk is not a waste of time, it’s very, very important. This is why you should rehearse and you should have your sides done before you go up on stage. I know a lot of people, at least in my field, in my circles, are working on their slides right before they go up on stage. I don’t do that. Maybe I’ll add a slide… This is a tangent, but that’s okay. Maybe I’ll add a slide based on an earlier talk because then you get to do that pro move of like, “Blah, blah said in their talk earlier…” and then continue to make their point and your point. It’s a good move. But my talks are usually done and dusted before I go up on stage because I’ve made the slides, I’ve rehearsed, I’ve told the story that I want to tell without checking the notes. So you can rehearse your talks. You can rehearse the stories too. Maybe you just have a few stories that you’re telling story episodes, see which ones land, see which ones do well, and then tell those during your talks. Or wait till after you give the talk and just tell the stories later if you want the stories to be a surprise. Aside from your talks, though, where you can create your portfolio, repurpose older talks, test new concepts in your hearse, behind-the-scenes content kills. People love going behind the scenes to learn how things are built. That’s why this show does so well. And that’s why it did so well in the beginning. I feel like I discovered before a lot of people that behind-the-scenes stuff does really well. And I told those stories of behind-the-scenes stuff. So behind the scenes stuff kills. Talk about how you came up with the concept and how you put it all together. Talk about your favorite speaking engagements. Talk about times when it went wrong. I should really save this for the members episode and just tease that. But gosh, when I was giving my master’s thesis, when I was defending my master’s thesis, I made a point incorrectly and my advisor corrected me tight then in there. He stopped me and he said, “That’s not really how it works.” I was very embarrassed. I had a lot of friends in the audience, too. And I saw their faces and they looked mortified. And I said, “Well, if anybody has any questions about anything I’ve talked about, besides the bounding box algorithm…” I said, “If anybody has any questions for me, let me know. I’m happy to answer them. Unless it’s about the bounding box and you can ask Dr. Bishop.” And I kind of recovered. That’s happened to me a few times on stage before. If you speak a lot, it’s bound to happen. But people love hearing those stories because that relaxes them a little bit too. You know, I’ve had people correct me about… I told a story about the Empire State Building one time and this person was like, “Well, actually, the Empire State Building was done in this,” and I’m like, “That’s not really the point of my talk…” But, you know, you learn how to deal with that stuff. And people love hearing stories like that. And then again, your favorite speaking engagements, right? Where did you absolutely kill it? What was a really good talk? Maybe what was a talk that you didn’t think would do well that went really well, and vice versa? Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by TextExpander. In our fast-paced world, things change constantly, and errors in messaging often have significant consequences. With TextExpander, you can save time by converting any text you type into keyboard shortcut called a snippet. Say goodbye to repetitive text entry, spelling and message errors, and trying to remember the right thing to say. When you use TextExpander, you can say the right thing in just a few keystrokes. TextExpander lets you make new approved messaging available to every team member instantly with just a few keystrokes, ensuring your team remains consistent, current, and accurate. TextExpander can also be used in any platform, any app and anywhere you type. So take back your time and increase your productivity. But that’s not all it does. With its advanced snippets, you can create fill-ins, pop-up fields, and more. You can even use JavaScript or AppleScript. I can type out full instructions for my podcast editor, hi, Joel, in just a few keystrokes. Another one of my favorite and most used snippets is PPT. This will take whatever text I have on my keyboard and convert it to plain text. No more fighting formatting is I’m copying from Word or anyplace else. Last month I saved over two hours in typing alone. That doesn’t even take into the account the time I saved by not having to search for the right link, text, address, or number. You have no idea how many times I want to type out a link to a blog post or an affiliate link and I can’t remember it and then I have to go searching for it. That generally takes minutes. But since I have a TextExpander snippet, it takes seconds. TextExpander is available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. I’ve been using it a lot more on my iPhone lately because I’ve been working from my iPhone more because there are days when I’m just not in front of my computer right now. If you’ve been curious about trying TextExpander or simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visit textexpander.com/podcast and let them know that I sent you. Thanks so much to TextExpander for sponsoring the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: So we’ve got how you can integrate your talks into your podcast, how you can build up your portfolio, how you can use behind-the-scenes content to give people a peek behind the curtain of your talks. But you can also become a coach for other speakers. So you can invite aspiring speakers on maybe. I kind of said this from the beginning. How do you get a paid speaking gig? Other common speaking questions. Again, ask listeners to submit questions for you around speaking, then you’re established not only as an expert in your field, but also as an expert speaker. That can open a whole bunch of other doors that we’re going to talk about in a minute. A podcast also shows potential event planners that you’re consistent that you show up and that you know you’re talking about. I’ll tell you, one of my friends was planning a virtual event. And virtual events are hard. He did like a double blind selection of speakers. So he just looked at the ideas and he kind of picked what he thought would be good, and he looked at proposals. And he had one that didn’t work out at all the way he thought it would. And luckily this was an online event. So the talk came in before the actual event and he was able to provide feedback and coaching and things like that. But that’s a risk that that event planners take. They don’t necessarily know how good their speakers are going to be. But if you have a podcast, you’re showing them, “Hey, you can believe in me, you can trust me and you can relax a little bit.” Then finally, on this kind of grab bag of other benefits for starting a podcast for speakers, you can build an audience and eventually sell products or services based on your speaking gigs. A lot of times people who are speakers are already authors or teachers, or they have some product or new method. But those people are building the audience through the products, or they’re building the audience through the speaking gigs. What if you had a built-in fandom for your speaking gigs? You can do that with a podcast. Now you have people who are going to come to the event just to see you speak. And you’ll be able to build those products and services based on your gigs. Plus, again, if event planners find out that people are going to attend their event just because you’re going to be there, it’ll be a lot easier for you to get gigs. And that is how the podcast can help you in more ways than one. We talked about the benefit of your content and you getting your content out there. But a podcast also helps you engage with your audience more. It helps you engage with your audience when you’re not on stage or just offstage asking questions. It’ll give you more stories to tell. It’ll help you book more speaking gigs. Because again, if you already have a built-in audience and you know that you’ll get butts in seats at these events, event planners love that. That’s why they want the big names to be the keynotes because they know people will come. That also means you’ll get more paid speaking gigs. Again, I’ll talk about paid speaking gigs in Build Something More. But you put a lot of work into these talks, you should get paid most of the time. And if you offer a lot of paid speaking gigs, you can provide a membership for your podcast for our listeners to gain access to those pay talks without attending the events. Because I mean, I’ve ever signed a contract saying that my talk is exclusive to the event. Just make sure you don’t do that, I guess. But yeah, if I’m giving a talk, a paid gig, I’m going to put it on the Build Something More feed too for my members as a benefit. And if you have a lot of fans, a lot of people who love your talks, who can’t go to every events because they’re not going to follow you around the country, it’ll be great for you to get those talks up there for them to consume. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by The Events Calendar, the original calendar for WordPress. This free plugin helps you with calendaring, ticketing, and more powerful tools to help you manage your events from start to finish. Whether you run school events, concert at a venue, or fundraisers for nonprofits, The Events Calendar gives you the tools you need to make it your own. And with The Events Calendar, you can create custom views, recurring events, add your own custom fields to events, and much more. Run virtual events? No problem. With the Virtual Events add on you can quickly and easily manage your online-only or hybrid events. With deep Zoom integration, custom virtual event coding for search engine optimization, and the ability to embed video feeds directly on your website, The Events Calendar makes putting virtual and hybrid events together easier. And I can’t stress this one enough. Let me tell you, I have tried to roll my own webinar software, my own live stream event software, and it is difficult. And I have 20 years’ experience making websites. The Events Calendar is the tool that you need to make virtual events a lot easier. You can even sell tickets and only show the stream to ticket holders. If you run events, whether in-person or online, you need The Events Calendar. Head on over to howibuilt.it/events to learn more. That’s howibuilt.it/events to start running your events more efficiently today. Thanks so much to The Events Calendar for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: So there you have it. There we have it. lots of reasons for a speaker to start a podcast. That potentially gives you a clear path to other ways to make money. Not only is podcasting the next great content plane, not only is it easier than ever to start a podcast, and not only are you as a speaker already equipped to talk into a microphone for some amount of time, but it’s going to open more doors for you because people are going to see the work that you do. They’re going to see that you know what you’re talking about, they’re going to see that you’re consistent and that you show up and that you’re good at what you do. And you’re going to create your own audience and build fans. And you can tell them how you put those talks together, give them behind the scenes access. Maybe they’re willing to pay you a membership to get access to more of your content and access to you. And it can lead to more speaking gigs. So, if you are a speaker and you need a little bit more convincing, feel free to reach out. I’m at @Jcasabona, you can email me Joe@casabona.org. But I think podcasting is the perfect medium for a speaker. And you know why else I think that? Because especially in the pandemic, we’ve seen lots of stand-up comedians turn to podcasting. Even before that. Dax Shepherd with Armchair Experts, Conan O’Brien, Bill Burr. Lots of… I just named like three white guys. But stand-up comedy is a good content for the podcast medium because it gives… for the all the same reasons I talked about with speaking, right? It gives people the ability to workshop some stuff, flesh out some jokes, talk about things they might not talk about on stage. All reasons that you should start a podcast as a speaker. All right, that’s it for this episode. If you want to find the show notes for this episode, you can head over to howibuilt.it/221. If you want to get the bonus extended episode that is ad-free, you can become a member at buildsomething.club. But I do want to thank TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and The Events Calendar, three plugins that will help you manage a membership or your speaking events, for supporting this show. This podcast would not help happen without them. If you liked this episode, share it with a friend. You’ll find all the calls to action over and howibuilt.it/221, the ability to share it, the ability to support the sponsor, sign up for the membership. Just head over to howibuilt.it/221. Thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate it. And until next time, get out there and build something. Sponsored by:Restrict Content Pro: Launch your membership site TextExpander: Get 20% off your first year by visiting the this link. The Events Calendar Source
#GenZ #Entrepreneurship AMA With Adrian TobeyConnect with Adrian:https://www.groundhogg.io/ https://adriantobey.com/ https://twitter.com/adriantobey Connect with EMS: Need some help? http://ethicalmarketingservice.com Books: http://ethicalmarketingservice.com/book Want to be a guest? https://ethicalmarketingservice.com/guest/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/EMS_Worthing Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ethicalmarketingservice Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-green-18655b97/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ethicalmarketingservice/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/emservice/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ethicalmarketingservice Pricing: https://ethicalmarketingservice.co.uk Subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/c/EthicalMarketingService Apple Podcasts: https://www.ethicalmarketingservice.co.uk/apple Spotify: https://www.ethicalmarketingservice.co.uk/spotify Stitcher: https://www.ethicalmarketingservice.co.uk/stitcher Adrian Tobey is a founder of a multi-award winning tech start up. He has been featured on WP Builds, Authority Magazine, WP Founders, MixErgy, WPTonic, Atarim Summit, WPMayor, WP Watercooler, LMScast, WP Plugins A-Z, Automation Rehab, Mastermind.fm, Trailblazer, How I Built It, and many more. As the son of entrepreneurs, he credits his parents for giving him the thirst of entrepreneurship. His parents deployed an Internet marketing training business way back in 2001. Adrian tagged along to those training sessions and learned quite a bit about marketing during his formative years.By the age of 16, he worked as an assistant trainer in some of the marketing sessions. And when he wasn't training people on how to succeed, he built WordPress sites and integrated CRMs. At 18, he became an InfusionSoft Certified Partner and Certified Trainer. He used that skill set to produce hundreds of sales funnels for his parents' clients.It was during that time that he also built and monetized his first WordPress plugin: Formlift.net. It still sells “form styling” to more than 1,000 InfusionSoft (now Keap) customers. At the age of 21, he dropped out of University to launch his own venture in 2018: Groundhogg.
Today’s co-host is Joe Casabona, podcaster, web developer, and course creator. Joe helps creators launch their own podcasts while also hosting and producing the product development podcast How I Built It. Joe began as a web developer specializing in WordPress, but he felt it necessary to transition his audience from DIYers to those looking for full service. With encouragement from peers and mentors, Joe found his niche in the podcasting space.To grow his new audience, Joe offered free consultations. While free sessions may not be lucrative off the bat, Joe gained invaluable information about common creator struggles. He used that information to improve his educational content and market his courses in a way that spoke to creator concerns.In this episode, Joe talks about everything podcast-related, from picking a topic to getting rid of nerves, to sustaining your show long-term. “We’re still at the beginning of podcasting. So if you’re worried that, ‘oh, nobody wants to listen to me talk about this’ you're wrong. Just figure out why you want to start a podcast, what’s going to drive you, and record those first few episodes.” ~ @jcasabonaMain Takeaways Simply presenting a digestible solution to someone’s problem is enough to build an audience, especially if you’ve done your market research and can anticipate your audience's main questions and concerns. When it comes to podcasting, practice makes perfect. You don’t need perfect sound and perfect video to succeed. When choosing a topic, think about why you want to start a podcast. Is it to help people? To establish yourself in a field? To explore a topic? Figuring out your why will help you stay the course. You can always repurpose the content you have on other mediums if you’re running low on episode ideas. Keep a notebook and write down ideas whenever they come to mind. Oftentimes the most popular episodes aren’t the episodes with big-name guests. Your audience will respond more to people who feel relatable to them. Links and Important Mentions Contact Joe How I Built It Joe on Twitter Podcast Liftoff Pat Flynn Start With Why PodMatch Podcast Bookers WP Builds Podcast Tot Notion Drafts Peter Hollens Tim Campos WordPress Lume Cube Stay in Touch Feast Club Twitter Facebook Instagram
A few months ago we heard from Amber Hinds about the importance of accessibility and how her WordPress plugin can help you create more accessible content. She also said that you need a human being to catch most accessibility issues – that’s where Bet Hannon comes in. Bet tells us all about what to look for when auditing your website, and how to execute a sampling audit. We also talk about a TON of tools. In Build Something More, listeners get a pre-and post-show. The pre-show is all about beer. The post-show is about database queries. (more…) View on separate page Transcript Joe Casabona: Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about the Build Something Weekly newsletter. It is weekly, it is free, and you will get tips, tricks, and tools delivered directly to your mailbox. I will recap the current week’s episode and all of the takeaways, I’ll give you a top story, content I wrote, and then some recommendations that I’ve been using that I think you should check out. So it is free, it is a weekly, it’s over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Go ahead and sign up over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 219 of How I Built It, the podcast that offers actionable tech tips for small business owners. That’s a relatively new tagline I’m trying. It used to be “the podcast that asks, ‘how did you build that?'” But we’re expanding beyond that and I’m really excited about that. First, before we get into it, I want to thank our sponsors: TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and The Events Calendar. You’ll be hearing about them later in the show. But first, I want to bring on Bet Hannon. Bet Hannon is the CEO of Bet Hannon Business Websites. We are going to be talking about their website accessibility sampling audit. In an earlier episode, I spoke to Amber Hinds about accessibility in general, their tool, the Accessibility Checker. Now we’re going to learn how an agency actually goes about doing an audit and helping their clients not get sued and have a more accessible website. So Bet, how are you today? Bet Hannon: I’m great. Glad to be here. Joe Casabona: Thanks for coming on the show. For those of you who are not Build Something Club members, bet and I had a fantastic pre-show conversation about craft beer. So if you are interested in that, you should become a Build Something Club member over at buildsomething.club. But for now, Bet, before we get into the nitty-gritty, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Bet Hannon: Great. So I run an agency that’s focused on WordPress. I got involved with WordPress in about 2008 after I had worked for 15 or so years in nonprofit management and doing some techie geeky things for the organizations that I served. But my position got downsized in that financial crisis and kind of stumbled into starting to do a little freelancing and then develop that into an agency. And have been loving it. I love problem-solving for people. Every project is like a little puzzle to solve. Joe Casabona: Yes, absolutely. That is what I also enjoyed about. When I was doing the full-time freelance website making thing, that was always my favorite part. I wrote a plugin recently, the first one in a while and I was like, “Man, I miss this.” So I’ll have to make it a habit of coding regularly. You lose it too. I guess it’s kind of like riding a bike. But men, things change. Bet Hannon: I know. I’m missing more. I’m doing more. I’m doing less and less of that myself, you know, as I’m running the agency. But it is nice to get in. What I miss is diving in and doing Gravity Forms customization. Joe Casabona: Nice, nice. Well, not nice that you miss it, but nice that you would do it. I always liked customizing Gravity Forms. So you got into WordPress in 2008. So this is your second recession, we’ll say. As we record this, there’s still a global pandemic. Bet Hannon: We actually have been doing okay. I was kind of worried for a bit. You know, a lot of folks really just figuring out they need websites or they need to revamp their websites, or they need to repurpose their websites. So we’ve been doing okay. Joe Casabona: That’s great. That’s interesting. I had a conversation with Brad Morrison back in May 2020 about that very thing. Like we were both kind of making websites in 2008, 2009. And I feel like whenever there is a recession, people realize they need to pivot or improve their online presence. I mean, especially true with this current one because…yeah. Bet Hannon: Right, right. Figuring out how to get information out there about when they’re going to be open or how they’re going to do curbside pickup or all of that stuff. I am kind of notoriously bad for giving unsolicited feedback about websites. So when I go to the local restaurant and I’ve looked up their thing, and I go, “Hey, your colors here are not accessible and this is terrible on mobile.” Joe Casabona: Man, I would do the same thing, where I’m like, “This should really be like that.” However, the PDF doesn’t download or whatever. Your website not…” Bet Hannon: Last week I went to the dentist. I paid the dentist bill from a couple months ago, but there’s no way to pay it online. I had to call and give them and do it over the phone. So when I went in, I said, “You should really not be taking those numbers over the phone. It’s easy to make a payment form. Call me.” Joe Casabona: Yeah, exactly. “Let me know.” I’m always incensed when you can’t pay for something online or whatever. So you have a WordPress agency now. Would you say that your main focus is accessibility or it’s just something you bake into every website? Bet Hannon: Well, it’s something we bake into every website. We got started with accessibility almost four years ago now. We had a client where we were doing administrative maintenance on their site and they are… they’re still our client. They were our a big agricultural Water District in California. And because of the way they’re connected to the state of California, they became aware that they were going to have some accessibility requirements. And they asked about what needed to happen. We said, “Oh, we could refer you to somebody.” And they said, “Well, we want to work with you. Let’s all learn this together.” Joe Casabona: Wow. Bet Hannon: So we dived in, and our entire team got trained and learned a lot about accessibility and worked through a lot of that with the client and just really got hooked. When you start diving into what makes the site accessible, but also the power of making the website available to more people and usable by more people and seeing how it really can impact people’s lives, whether they have a permanent disability or a temporary disability even, you know, to be able to use the sites. And so we just really got excited about that. Some of the best advice I got as an agency owner was never ever put accessibility in a proposal as something to be refused. That you should never put yourself in a position of allowing the client to throw people with disabilities under the bus in terms of bringing down the cost. That for me it’s staking our reputation as an agency on… everything we do has accessibility baked in. And I truly believe that accessibility is going to be what mobile responsive used to be five or 10 years ago. In another five to 10 years, everybody will be doing accessible websites and it’ll just be what every self-respecting developer does. So we’re just kind of on the early curve for that. Joe Casabona: I love that. When you said that it reminded me a lot of responsive web design. Because that was something that I felt I got in on early. I saw Ethan Marcotte talk about it super early. I put it in my proposal as like, “Do you want a responsive website?” And then I was like, “Why am I even asking? It’s just going to be part of it. It’ll be part of the cost. If they want to buy a cheap website from someone else, they can.” Bet Hannon: Yeah. And quite frankly, more often than not, when I talk to clients, and I say, “Look, this is part of what we do. We bake it into everyone. There are some legal requirements that you may or may not have. You need to do this,” and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, thanks. I hadn’t even thought about that yet.” So they’re usually grateful for having it or the topic being brought up. Joe Casabona: Absolutely. I mean, it’s our job right to advocate on behalf of our clients and inform them, right? When I go to a pizza shop, the pizza shop should expect that I know how to make the perfect pizza. I shouldn’t expect that they know how to make a website. Right? Bet Hannon: Well, it’s kind of what we do as freelancers and agencies. The client comes to us and they may say, “I want this one inch of website.” And we start looking at their… our job is to kind of take a consultative approach and to say, “If you added this on, this would really impact your business in a positive way. You can really grow your business by adding this thing on,” or “tell me about how you do the sales process. Oh, we can help automate that for you.” You know, so that you’re taking more of a consultative approach to helping people understand what they might need that they don’t yet know that they need. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Restrict Content Pro. 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The plugin has worked extremely well for me and I was able to get memberships up and running very quickly. Right now, they are offering a rare discount for how I built it listeners only: 20% off your purchase when you use RCPHOWIBUILTIT at checkout. That’s RCPHOWIBUILTIT, all one word. If you want to learn more about Restrict Content Pro and start making money with your own membership site today, head on over to howibuilt.it/rcp. That’s howibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks to Restrict Content Pro for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: So you mentioned that your team got trained. What was that like? Is there a certification process for accessibility? Bet Hannon: Mm hmm. Joe Casabona: All right. I was going to add a second part of that question, but your face lit up. So go for it. How was it like? Bet Hannon: There are. They’re both. There’s some online journey. There’s a ton of training that you can do out there. So if you’re just starting out and you’re wanting to learn more about website accessibility, some free options for doing that are going to WordPress TV. And there have been a bunch of presentations at various WordCamps on some of the technical pieces for accessibility. I’ll just be the first to confess that I’m not the lead developer at our agency. So some of those kind of technical pieces are not where I would necessarily be helpful to people. But there are tons of presentations from WordCamps to start getting going. There are some LinkedIn Learning pieces. Joe Dolson, who’s an accessibility advocate within WordPress has a great LinkedIn Learning course on Accessibility and WordPress. Very helpful. And then we had our folks do Deque, D-E-Q-U-E, deque.com, they do services around accessibility, but they also have some learning pieces. You can buy basically a membership for a year to do their self-paced online learning pieces. So we have everybody in our group do their base level, which is just awareness about disabilities, and what different accommodations are. So just kind of educating our team about what those are. And then our lead developer has been doing more advanced pieces in preparation for taking a certification exam. So there’s the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. They actually have some certification pieces. Those are several levels, in fact. Those are kind of where our folks are going. So as you may or may not have guessed, one of the ways that you might you would test a website for accessibility might be to use yourself a screen reader. So screen readers are what people who have visual impairments might want to use, and it reads out loud things that are on the web page. We’ve done that, and our developers done that for a long time. But we became aware like, I don’t know, maybe like six months ago, sort of like, well, you can use these tools, but are you using them like a visually impaired user would use them? So I did a little networking and found the consultant and agency, that is the Oregon Federation for the Blind refers people to. So if I experienced blindness and I needed to get training, my state would send me to this guy to learn how to use a screen reader. And we sent her to do training with him, our lead developer. And that was amazing because we had known for sure, but sure enough, people who are blind or visually impaired use screen readers differently than maybe we had anticipated. And so that then helps us be better at testing what we’re doing and how we’re building things out. Joe Casabona: Wow, that’s really interesting. I’ll mention one more resource that I read. Because there’s a chapter in my book on accessibility. But I read “Accessibility for Everyone.” It’s a book by Sarah… Oh, my gosh. Her last name is escaping me right now. I’m very sorry, Sarah. Oh, no, it’s not even Sarah. It’s Laura Kalbag. Laura Kalbag. That’s right. Sorry. But the book is fantastic. I will link that and everything that Bet just mentioned in the show notes over at howibuilt.it/219. Your mention of using a screen reader is very interesting because for my book, there’s a video component where I tried using one in order to show my readers how to use it to test. And honestly, it’s just I had never used one before. So I don’t think it was the most effective demo. But that leads me to ask another question, which is there must be resources in general for testing accessibility with a target audience. Right? So for example, I have transcripts for this podcast. I suspect that there’s a way for those who… Forgive me, I don’t know that I… The proper terminology is escaping me but people who are deaf or have hearing impairments. Is that the right way to put it? Bet Hannon: Mm hmm, hard of hearing. Joe Casabona: Okay. Someone got upset with me for saying hard of hearing Bet Hannon: Well, all kinds of groups, there are a variety of takes on things. Hard of Hearing is what I do see often. Joe Casabona: Okay, cool. That’s what I thought too. Okay, cool. But in any case, I guess, are there resources for you to test accessibility features with those who are most likely to use them? Bet Hannon: Do you mean doing testing with disabled users? Joe Casabona: Yes. Bet Hannon: The actual disabled users? Joe Casabona: Yes, yes. Bet Hannon: Well, people with disabilities often are chronically underemployed, and so if you have a way that you want to do a lot of testing, you could certainly do some networking to find people who could help you with testing. I think you should never ever ask a disabled person to test for you without getting compensated. Joe Casabona: Of course. Bet Hannon: I mean, think that’s just rude. We have several folks that test for us and consult with us when we have questions. Sometimes you’re testing a site and it’s just really hard to get a sense for… you know, if you tagged into this in a certain way, it might get you into a trap that you couldn’t get out of. You know, what are the clues? And so, just kind of having people do some testing for us. So we have a few people that do that for us. Joe Casabona: Got you. Bet Hannon: But resources for finding those people, I don’t… I mean, that’s going to vary quite widely. Joe Casabona: Got you. But there are resources available if you do some networking, like you said, and ask around. Bet Hannon: Yeah. You know, I would ask around. I mean, there’s some state agencies in your state, probably. You could network around about where do they send people when they need training? And then those people who are doing training on those things may often do some consulting like that on the side. Joe Casabona: Awesome. That makes perfect sense. This has already been super informative. Now, you have a website accessibility sampling audit. In a previous episode, I think I mentioned this earlier, with Amber Hinds, we kind of talked about like the WCAG ratings and things like that, which is sort of an automated thing, right? You go to a website, you get a rating. If it’s double, great. If it’s triple, even better. But we still need a person auditing your website, right? Bet Hannon: Yeah, yeah. Right. There are a variety of tools that are out there, automated tools there where you can test your site. And wave.webaim.org is the one that Amber was probably talking about. That’s one of the best known. Lighthouse is another one. It’s a Chrome extension that you can put in in the specter tools and you can look at there. They’re great. Those automated tools are really good and important to us because they can help save you a lot of time. The important thing to remember about them is that they only catch about 30% of the accessibility issues. And you may get some false positives and false negatives. And you’ll always need humankind of… you’ll need to look at things with a human eye. Those testing tools are never going to be enough to say that you’re fully accessible. So, for instance, an AI tool can tell you “yes or no, there’s an alt tag for this image.” Yes is good, No is bad. But if the alt tag is the name of the file, jpg49678, that’s not compliant. So it can give you the false negative that you had all the alt tags are taken care of when they’re not really. So you want to make sure that you’re using those tools as they’re intended, to do some basic screening, but at the same time that you’re really looking at things. Even the tools that Amber and her team have put together are great but they really require you to engage. And that’s the thing with accessibility. There is really no just put a plugin on or just pay to make it go away. You really have to learn what’s accessible and what’s not and implement it regularly. Accessibility has some parts for WordPress, and that’s what we deal with almost always. For WordPress, some parts of accessibility are in the theme. So whether your menu is accessible or not is largely controlled by your theme, for example. Your color contrast of your buttons and your color contrast is set by your theme. But a huge piece of accessibility is your content. So when you’re putting in content, are you making sure that the images have alt tags? Are you making sure that the H tags and the headings are nested without skipping any levels? So a lot of that content piece is stuff that people are just going to have to learn and learn to implement correctly as they go. Joe Casabona: That’s a really important point. I think Amber made the same point, right? Because Accessibility Checker… I don’t know if you’ve used it. Bet Hannon: Oh, yeah. Joe Casabona: She gave me a pro version. That was an inaudible “oh, yeah.” But the education part is really important. When I look at my blog posts and I see the kind of score I get, it’s like, “Hey, you have two h2 tags in a row here and you skipped an h2 tag or whatever it is.” Because I always forget if the… maybe this is a question you can answer for me. The site title is an h1 in most themes, which means your blog post… Bet Hannon: No, the page title is the h1. Joe Casabona: The page title is the h1. Okay. Bet Hannon: Yeah, yeah. Joe Casabona: So if I’m looking at a blog post… gosh, I should know this, but I don’t right now. If you’re looking at a blog post, should the title of the blog post be an h1 or an h2? Bet Hannon: Well, the title of the post or the page will be the h1. And that should be taken care of in the theme. The theme should handle that for you. And then when you start putting in H tags for kind of organizing your content, you should start with h2s. And you can go you can skip from an h2 to an h2. You just can’t go from an h2 an h4. Joe Casabona: Right. Bet Hannon: I think people often don’t quite understand or get that you shouldn’t use the H tags to style font. Right? Joe Casabona: Right. Bet Hannon: An H4 four can have as big a font as the h3 or the whatever. But you’re kind of organizing the content. I sometimes say it’s like when you were in high school English, and you had to do that outline with the Roman numerals and the capitals and then the lowercase Roman numerals and lowercase letters, and you have to kind of build it out in that way. My team doesn’t like that because “who learns to do that in English class anymore?” is what they tell me. Then I feel old. Joe Casabona: Really? Hold on. We can talk about this in Build Something More because it’s a sidetrack. People don’t learn how to do that in English class anymore? I’m outraged. Bet Hannon: Ohhh, yes. Well, you graduated before No Child Left Behind really diminished education. Joe Casabona: Oh, gosh. Bet Hannon: My wife is a college professor and sometimes what people have not learned in high school is quite astounding. Joe Casabona: Ah, that saddens me. Bet Hannon: Yeah, it is. My team sometimes talks about it as nesting file folders. That’s a different example that you can talk about. Like the whole drawer is the h1 and then you can have h2s and then nested folders. But you have to make sure that you don’t skip any. Joe Casabona: That’s interesting. I’m going to bet like most of my blog posts are inaccessible because I guess it was just always like a mental block for me. I thought the site title was h1, the page titles h2. So I always started in on h3. Bet Hannon: Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Joe Casabona: I better go back and fix all those. I reckon that there’s like… Bet Hannon: A few at a time. And that’s the thing. When people realize that they’ve been doing something incorrectly… I mean, know better, do better. That’s the thing. When you know better you can do better. And so when you realize that you may have not done that correctly over time, it can seem insurmountable. I mean, it just seems like this overwhelming task, I mean, if you have hundreds or thousands of posts to deal with. So the key is start and do a little at a time. Just make a goal to do two of them a week or three a week. It doesn’t take very long once you figure out what you’ve done. And then just kind of make your way through them. There are some tools for doing that. There’s a couple of really great alt tag checker tools. So there’s a free one in the repository—and now I’m going to forget its name, but we can put it in the show notes—that basically when you install the plugin, it’ll show you all the images in your media library and just show you which ones are missing alt tags. Joe Casabona: Oh, great. Bet Hannon: But then you still need to go back and fix them. And then there’s a paid tool, and it costs like $200 a year. I don’t remember the name of it, either, we’ll get into the show notes… Sorry, guys. I know it’s two, guys. Well, one is written by my friend Andrew Wilder and his team, but the other one I don’t even know. But anyway, the paid tool is really nice because it pulls in all existing alt tags. It will use AI to try and generate an alt tag based on what’s there. You have you still have to go in and kind of like say, “Oh, that’s not quite right. Let me actually fill this out.” But it gives you that help, that start. And then when you fix it there using that plugin, it fixes it on every post that’s used that image. So if you have a lot of images, it’s probably worth getting that paid tools. Joe Casabona: Yeah, for sure. For 200 bucks saving you hours of work. That’s really interesting. Because as we’re talking about this, I thought I could probably make a plugin that loops through the content of all of my posts and just bump up the heading. I’d still need to check. Bet Hannon: Yeah. If you knew it, you could do that, I suppose. Joe Casabona: I’d have to make sure it doesn’t go above h2. So I’d have to say, “Is this an h3 change to an h2, or whatever.” It would have to be smarter than just looping. Bet Hannon: If you knew you were consistently making the error, right? Joe Casabona: Yes. For me personally, I’m confident I consistently make that error. You know why I’m confident? I write in Ulysses, which is a fantastic writing app. It’s markdown, and it exports directly to WordPress. And I always start with an h2 for the document title, and it bothers me, and then I do h3 for all subsequent headings. So I know for a fact. Bet Hannon: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you start fixing it, you could do that. You might be able to do that. I got into doing more database query stuff a couple of years ago. We had a really large site with a ton of stuff, and very active site. We were going to be doing a new theme for them. And there’s always that problem where you have the active site where there’s WooCommerce, or an active blog, or whatever, and then like, you’ve got to pull that back together. So I was experimenting with a plugin that purportedly was going to merge in the changes from the production site. And in the testing, it looked all great. But during the time we had it in development, it got stuck in some kind of a loop with Gravity Forms entries. And I had 15 million, with an M, additional extraneous entries. I just had to start learning how to write queries to get stuff out because it was so huge. I couldn’t even get it to load. Joe Casabona: Jeez. That’s horrifying. Bet Hannon: It was crazy. Joe Casabona: There was a plugin a few years back that I guess was not viable market wise. It was bought by Delicious Brains. Bet Hannon: By the time I was looking at this, they’d already pulled that off. Joe Casabona: Oh, man. Bet Hannon: This was another one. But it’s a difficult problem. It’s not an easy problem to solve. Anyway, I learned how to do a little bit of SQL. Joe Casabona: Very nice, very nice. We can talk about that in Build Something More because I have some fun stories. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by TextExpander. In our fast-paced world, things change constantly, and errors in messaging often have significant consequences. With TextExpander, you can save time by converting any text you type into keyboard shortcut called a snippet. 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Joe Casabona: We haven’t even talked about the service yet, the website accessibility sampling audit. Tell us how that works, how you put it together, why you put it together, all that fun stuff. Bet Hannon: So you might want an accessibility audit of your site to help you know what things are wrong. Like you have been doing some of these things to try and fix things, but there may be still things that you are not sure are problems yet. And it is difficult with accessibility to know… It’s kind of like SEO—knowing where you’re kind of moving toward. It’s a moving target or that’s kind of fuzzy sometimes. So getting an audit is a great thing to do. Traditionally, an accessibility audit would look at every single page in detail and give you a detailed report of every single page of your website. And as you might imagine, that’s a labor-intensive thing because that’s a lot of work. So even if you have a moderate-sized site, it could run you into tens of thousands of dollars. And so what we discovered is that, by and large, if you have problems on with accessibility on your site, you can catch a lot of those with a sample of your content. So we developed an audit that was taking a sample of your content, and then you as the site owner can get this report. And then you have to extrapolate from there. If on your site audit we note that you have images without alt tags, you probably have a lot more than those then on the pages we looked at. So we try to work with folks to do around 25 URLs or so. Even sites that are really big blogs with thousands of posts, you really don’t need more than about three or four posts to do that. Unless you have a blog with a variety of authors. So we try to tell people, you know, try to get all of your page templates represented, try and get a good kind of representative sample of content through time. So like maybe if you start changing and doing better with your H tags now… but we’re only looking at those, we might not pick up that you still have that problem earlier. Joe Casabona: Got you. Bet Hannon: So we want to look at content creation through time. We want to get a variety of the authors on the blog. So maybe one person is continuing to do this one thing that is creating accessibility issues. Look at various features. If you’re doing a WooCommerce site or some other eCommerce site, you know, you want to look at the checkout process, you want to look at its membership site, looking at the process for doing that, and just try to work with them to come up with around 25 URLs to look at in terms of doing that. Joe Casabona: That’s right. And then we produce a big report. Often the reports are more than 15 pages. We actually give them a list of everything we looked for whether or not they violated it so they know what we checked for. We use those automated tools, but then we have human beings checking the page. And then if we run into something where we’re not sure about, we’ll call in our consultants and have people with actual disabilities looking at the content as well. And then we do include an hour of consultation time at the end. So then you can jump into a Zoom call, we can explain it to you, we can demo problems for you, show you why it’s a problem. Some people find that really helpful. If you want, you can bring your… we don’t need to do the remediation. But if you have a regular developer you work with, you can bring them on the call and we can make it more of a technical call about how they might need to fix that or what they might want to do to fix a problem. Joe Casabona: That’s great. That sounds a lot like when Gutenberg first rolled out I created a course, and I basically said like, “How to audit your website to see if it’s ready for Gutenberg.” Very similar. Page templates. I said just like, “Pick a sampling of old and new posts.” But content through time is a very nice, snappy way to put it. I know exactly what you’re saying and I think that’s great. Authors, various features, things like that. And then the one-hour consultation at the end. Patrick Garman came on the show a few weeks ago. They have in a WooCommerce performance site audit, also includes some consultation time. This was not a planned question or anything like that, but do you think that the audit has been a good addition to your business? Do you think it’s helped your business a lot? Because it seems like it’s an idea that’s catching on more, at least in the WordPress space. Bet Hannon: It is. I do think we have to be careful about taking on too many. It takes about two weeks start to finish and we only onboard one a week just because it represents a pretty good chunk of labor for us. And keeping up with our other projects is kind of priority in terms of paying the bills. But it is a good thing. Because most of an accessibility audit is done from the front end, we’re able to do audits on sites that are not WordPress. We can do a Shopify site or a Wix or Weebly site. But those folks don’t tend to want to do those kind of things. But you can do it on any kind of other platforms that someone might want to do. I think people are increasingly concerned. I’m seeing that more niche-driven. So for a bit, we had a ton of audits for food bloggers. So a pretty well-known food blogger got sued around accessibility, and it just raised that awareness for everybody that they… On the one hand, a good number of them are like, “I don’t want to get sued.” But what they also do know that it’s an important thing to do. They can increase their audience, it gives more people access to their content. So they definitely aren’t just anxious about being sued. And I want to be careful about not throwing around the fear-monger kind of thing. Joe Casabona: Right. Right. Bet Hannon: I mean, it is about not getting sued at one level, but it’s also that there are a lot of really great reasons to make your site accessible. Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve said this on the show before. People ask me how I grew my show so quickly, and I think one of the big growth points in the show’s history is when I added transcripts. I saw a definite increase in traffic to the site and even an increase in listenership. Sometimes it’s not just the deaf and hard of hearing who want to read the transcript. It’s people who maybe can’t listen at that moment and or maybe they want to read along while they listen. Bet Hannon: I have seen statistics go by that say that 80% of the videos on LinkedIn are played without sound. Joe Casabona: Wow. Bet Hannon: 80%. It’s very high. It’s pretty high like that for Facebook, too. I think about that, well, one of the times when I’m surfing LinkedIn is in the early morning when I don’t want to wake somebody up, or when I’m in a waiting room somewhere, pre-COVID, or where I just can’t listen. But I sure watch videos go by and yeah, the captions. Joe Casabona: For sure. I mean, that’s super interesting. 80%. That’s wild. For me, it’s usually maybe I listened or watched something and I remember a phrase and I want to find that phrase. So even for those who do listen or watch with the sound on, the transcript or the captions, the searchable text is invaluable to a lot of people. Bet Hannon: Well, you’re getting the search engine juice from that too. Joe Casabona: Yeah, exactly. Bet Hannon: Right? Joe Casabona: Yeah. Bet Hannon: When you think about captions, you have to think about whether it is… if it’s a video, often you’re doing captions because the video is conveying something of the conversation or the interaction as well. But for a podcast, doing the transcript… Well, I often do listen to podcasts at time and a half or, you know, I bump it up. If you got a transcript for me to read, it’s much faster. I can read a lot faster than I can listen. Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Awesome. Bet Hannon: So it’s not just situations where I might be time pressed and I just want to skim through stuff. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by the Events Calendar, the original calendar for WordPress. This free plugin helps you with calendaring, ticketing, and more powerful tools to help you manage your events from start to finish. Whether you run school events, concert at a venue, or fundraisers for nonprofits, the Events Calendar gives you the tools you need to make it your own. And with the Events Calendar Pro, you can create custom views, recurring events, add your own custom fields to events, and much more. Run virtual events? No problem. 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Joe Casabona: I know some well-known, big time podcasters who have kind of poo pooed transcripts because they don’t feel the added cost is worth it. And I’m just like, “First of all, you’re making more money than I am podcasting.” Even if you don’t use… Rev is expensive. My virtual assistant transcribes the videos I sent her so I know that she understands the task at hand, and she transcribed a 30-minute video in like three hours. Worth it. Worth it to pay her that. It’s cheaper than Rev. Bet Hannon: And there’s some other services that are up and coming too. And I think we will see more and more of those. Joe Casabona: I’ve been using otter.ai. Any place that offers an educational discount, I’ll grab it. Bet Hannon: I just heard about Otter today in another… I was in a meeting this morning and somebody mentioned that one. Joe Casabona: How funny. Bet Hannon: I hadn’t heard about it. Joe Casabona: What’s that called? That’s called something. You hear about it once and you hear about it everywhere. Bet Hannon: Synchronicity Joe Casabona: Oh, man. Bet Hannon: Oh, no. Joe Casabona: There’s something effect. I’ll look it up for the post-show. But anyway, we could talk tools all day. I mean, I guess that’s helpful, right? It’s an accessibility show. But otter.ai and Descript both offer educational discount, so if you have a .edu address, you can get it at like half price. So I’ll just snag those. I’ve been pretty happy with Otter. There’s a few things, but it’s AI, transcription. Bet Hannon: Right. And I don’t know if it kind of produces a transcript, but I do know that I’ve been seeing going around that Zoom is giving… For Zoom, they’re giving free on the fly too closed captioning for meetings. Joe Casabona: Yes. Bet Hannon: But if that gets saved in a file, that would be checked out. Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. Bet Hannon: There’s a way to turn that on in your account. Even if it’s live transcription, stuff like that is often a little buggy. But at least you’ve got something to start with from there. Joe Casabona: Again, you can hire an editor to edit it or have your virtual assistant read through and just spellcheck. It’s probably easier for them. So yeah, absolutely. Gosh, this has been super great. As we wrap up, if somebody wants to get started, maybe they have a website, and they’re not sure if it’s accessible, what are some tips to get started? Bet Hannon: Well, the first would be don’t be tempted by what are called the overlay plugins. So it’s big business right now. Those overlay plugins have huge amounts of venture capital pouring in. So their ads are everywhere, and they want to suck you in with just “buy our service and everything will be taken care of.” And they don’t. So don’t get sucked in with that. And then just start educating yourself about what needs to be there. I’d say the very base kinds of pieces are the things that we’ve already talked about in this podcast. You know, your alt tags and you’re heading tags, and then just start trying to work your way through testing your site, getting your content squared away. But ask questions. There are tons of people out on Twitter and LinkedIn and other places that are, if you have a question, willing to look at that and give you some, you know, not free consulting, but point you in the direction of some resources. Joe Casabona: Awesome. That’s fantastic. And with alt tags—again, I think I brought this up on the show previously, but I do want to drive this point home—it should be as descriptive as reasonably possible. Is that kind of the way to put it? Bet Hannon: Right. Yeah. We have a blog post that should come out on our site in another couple of weeks about alt tags. We’re in process with it. But yeah, you want to make it descriptive of the image, but you never want to put in the word image or photo or graphic or anything like that, because the screen reader reads that out loud. The screen reader already tells someone that it’s an image. And so you would just say, you know, “Father and child playing on the beach on a sunny day.” You know. It shouldn’t be too horribly long but it should be… If it’s a photo of a person, it can say, “Photo of Joe Casabona, an incredibly good-looking Italian man.” Joe Casabona: Well, thank you. You’re making… Bet Hannon: You can embellish your own text. Joe Casabona: Yeah, there you go. People will probably picture like Fabio or something. Maybe Fabio is like old-timey reference and newer, good-looking Italian man. That’s interesting. So “father and daughter on beach on a sunny day” is good. But maybe like, father and daughter on beach sunny day with red pale and father’s wearing like green swim trunks. That’s too much. Bet Hannon: Too much detail. Too much detail. Right. Yeah. Well, the thing you don’t want to do is you don’t want to put anything in a meme-like image with text on the top. People do that a lot. They just go to Canva and they’ll make a little meme thing to promote an event or to promote whatever. The thing is, when you do that, you need to make sure that you’re providing alternatives for that. So you can do it but you just want to make sure that… For instance, we have clients where they’re doing a lot of events driven pieces. They might make that graphic, but then in the text of the post, they need to… so that the alt text on the graphic can say, “Graphic promoting this event, details in the post below.” And then the person can skip into the content and get the details. Joe Casabona: Yeah, details in the post below. That’s another thing that I think Amber mentioned. Go ahead. Bet Hannon: But the thing is, if you only put that little Canva image that’s kind of meme, like, Google can’t see that text either. So you’re not getting any search engine juice off of that. Joe Casabona: That’s really interesting. So you wouldn’t necessarily want to have that exact text in the alt tag if it’s also like the title of the post and mentioned in the post below. Is accurate that accurate? Bet Hannon: Right, right. It becomes repetitive. Joe Casabona: Okay. Cool, cool. Bet Hannon: And actually, people who are using screen readers, which the alt text is about people who are using screen readers, like the rest of us, they skim through content. When we all go to a website, we just skim through, and we’re looking at the headings, and we’re looking for what interests us. We’re not really reading every word. So people who are using screen readers are skimming through, and they’re skimming through to look at the headings, H tags, come back to play on the links. And you want to make sure your links are set up so that the link text, the part that gets underlined or made into a colorable or whatever that effect is, but that link text is descriptive because often they’re just skimming through the text and having the screen reader read out that text to them. So if all of your link texts say “click here,” “click here,” “click here,” there’s no context. They’re gone. Joe Casabona: Oh, jeez. Wow. All right. Lots of really good… Bet Hannon: So “click here to learn more about accessibility. Click here to do blah, blah, blah. Click here to download a blah, blah.” Joe Casabona: Yeah. Love that. Right. And then I guess the same with buttons. You don’t just want to say like, “Click here.” You want to say like, “Enroll today” is usually what I put. But maybe I put “enroll today in Podcast Liftoff” or whatever. Bet Hannon: Right. I mean, yes, potentially. And then you remembering that buttons are really just links. Joe Casabona: This will be the last question before we wrap up. We’ve been talking forever. Bet Hannon: [inaudible 00:51:51] Joe Casabona: I know. I know. It’s just such a great conversation. This is mostly for me, and I hope the listeners are getting something out of it. With anchor tags, you can add a title text, right? Bet Hannon: Mm hmm. Joe Casabona: What’s the utility of the title text? Can I say like, “Enroll in the clickable tags” and then have a title that has more context? Or is that kind of like frowned upon? Bet Hannon: Oh, you’re asking me more of a technical question now. I’m sure there’s an answer, but I don’t know. Joe Casabona: All right. I mean, that’s a good answer too because that means at least you weren’t presented with some hard opinion on it. I’ll find something… Bet Hannon: You gotta remember I’m very rarely any more in the content in that way. Joe Casabona: I’ll find the link for the show notes for that because that’s… Bet Hannon: Cool. Joe Casabona: Again, we didn’t talk about that. It just came to my brain and I wanted to ask. Bet Hannon: Yeah, for sure. Joe Casabona: Before we wrap up, you gave us some great tips, do you have any trade secrets for us? Bet Hannon: Oh, yeah. Just don’t get hooked into those overlay things. They are… I really try not to say this very often, but they’re really kind of evil. A, they purport to fix all your problems, but they can only deal with the 30% that’s AI. They kind of make it sound like you won’t get sued if you use them. But that’s not really the case. Actually, we’re seeing some cases where people are being targeted because they’re using them. And the predatory lawsuit people know that they can’t take care of everything. They’re hooking people in a way that just feels kind of manipulative and not very… just not a good heart behind that. Joe Casabona: It’s snake oil. Bet Hannon: It’s snake oil. It really is. And because it’s an overlay, so it’s fixing some of those accessibility problems on the fly as your page is loading, which is adds extra bloat, slows your site down, do those increasingly focusing on speed. So it’s not great for your search engine kind of results and all of that as well. And when you stopped paying for that service, all of those problems are still there. You haven’t fixed anything. You’re paying all that money to the service over time and nothing’s getting fixed. Joe Casabona: That’s really interesting. So these overlay products are not like, “Here’s what’s wrong.” It’s like, “Here’s what we’re telling you is wrong and we’re just going to add a little JavaScript to fix it or whatever.” Bet Hannon: It’s like, “We will try and fix the things we can fix.” So they’ll use AI to put in alt tags, which may or may not be correct. They’re just guessing at the alt tags. And then they put these little, they put some little tools over on the side. Well, if you are a person that has a tool, an accessibility tool that you use on the web, if you have a screen magnifier or you already use some kind of colorblind filter thing, you have tools that you already are familiar with that you have installed that you want to use. And so those little accessibility tools things, it’s kind of like, look at me, I’m trying to be accessible is what it comes down to. And for people with disabilities, it’s sort of like saying to them, “Hey, you should leave the tools that you like and all the shortcuts for to use my second rate thing that’s going to come…” Because those tools conflict them. They create a conflict. So you should leave the tools that you know, and like, and know all the shortcuts to and use my special tool over here that I paid minimal bucks for.” Joe Casabona: It’s almost like a virtual signal. Bet Hannon: It’s frustrating. It’s a virtue signal but it’s really… it’s like telling the person in the wheelchair, “You got steps in front of your restaurant, you need to go around and use the ramp and come to the kitchen.” Joe Casabona: Jeez. Bet Hannon: It’s really offensive. Joe Casabona: Absolutely. And it just goes to show you, right? Because… Bet Hannon: I get that people want to be concerned about accessibility, but take some time to think it through in. Joe Casabona: Yeah. I mean, be concerned and then find an actual solution and not some Band-Aid that you bought at the dollar store. Bet Hannon: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Those services are not cheap either. And that’s the thing. Over time, you’re paying a lot of money, but it’s not really getting fixed. It’s just a kind of a cover-up that’s going to go away when you stop paying. Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. It just goes to show you that the best way you can be accessible is to write good semantic HTML and know the best practices. That’s just… Bet Hannon: Yeah, exactly. Joe Casabona: Awesome. Bet Hannon: Know better and do better. Joe Casabona: Yeah, know better and do better. I love it. Bet, this has been such a great hour we’ve been talking for. We may talk about other stuff in Build Something More. So be sure to catch our pre-show where we talk about craft beer, our post-show where we talk a little bit more over a build something club. Bet, if people want to learn more about you, and they should, where can they go to find you? Bet Hannon: You can find me on Twitter @BetHannon, and then our website is bhmbizsites.com. Joe Casabona: Fantastic. I will link those and lots of stuff that we talked about. This is a tool-heavy episode. So it’s going to be long show notes over and howibuilt.it/219. Bet, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Bet Hannon: It’s been great. Thanks for having me. Joe Casabona: Thanks to everybody listening. I really appreciate it. Thanks to our sponsors, TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and the Events Calendar. Until next time, get out there and build something. Sponsored by:Restrict Content Pro: Launch your membership site TextExpander: Get 20% off your first year by visiting the this link. The Events Calendar Source
If you’ve ever worked for a bigger company, you know that it’s easy to get bogged down by software and other restrictions in the name of security. Heck, I was once told I couldn’t work off-site because of it, and we had a VPN! Well, Jason Meller was sick of that and he suspected others were too, so he started Kolide. We talk all about what inspired him to take the leap and start a company, how he and his team built the software and the honest security manifesto! In Build Something More, we talk about cybersecurity and fear-mongering. (more…) View on separate page Transcript Joe Casabona: Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about the Build Something Weekly newsletter. It is weekly, it is free, and you will get tips, tricks, and tools delivered directly to your mailbox. I will recap the current week’s episode and all of the takeaways, I’ll give you a top story, content I wrote, and then some recommendations that I’ve been using that I think you should check out. So it is free, it is a weekly, it’s over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Go ahead and sign up over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 218 of How I Built It, the podcast that asks: how did you build that?, the podcast that offers actionable tech tips for small business owners. My name is Joe Casabona, I’m your host. Today our sponsors are TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and the Events Calendar. You’ll be hearing about them more later in the show. Right now I want to bring on our guest, Jason Meller. He is the CEO and founder of Kolide. We’re going to be talking about restructuring, how SAS products are built, how comprehensive solutions can impact scalability, and of course, we’ll learn a little bit about Kolide. Jason, how are you today? Jason Meller: Good. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Excited to talk about SAS. Joe Casabona: Likewise, thanks for coming on the show. When y’all reached out to me, I was excited to kind of hear… You know, we’ve talked about SAS before on this show, but a lot of stuff has happened since that episode. The global pandemic is one thing that happened. But also we still… Jason Meller: Just a little thing. Joe Casabona: Yeah, just that small thing that’s been going on for a year now as we record this. But also we’ve seen a big rise in things like no-code solutions and things like that. So I’m excited to talk more. The show is also pivoted from a big focus on WordPress products, so just general technology products. So I’m excited with that in mind to get started. But before we talk about all things SAS, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do? Jason Meller: As you said, my name is Jason Meller. I’m the CEO and founder of Kolide. But before that, my whole career has really been about cybersecurity. And not just securing devices and organizations and things like that, but actually building products for other folks that are in cybersecurity discipline. I found out very early on in my career that while I really enjoyed the practitioner part of being an incident responder and looking at it like cyber intelligence and things like that, as an engineer and someone who’s really obsessed with product, I found I got way more out of actually building the tools and capabilities that made those people a lot smarter, better, and faster for jobs. I found that out my first real job doing this professionally at General Electric on their Computer Incident Response Team, where I was hired on the team to really be doing intelligence type stuff, and then I just kind of was like, “Man, I really want to build really cool tools for these really smart people in my team.” And I ended up doing that and then basically building an entire career out of that. I moved on from GE to a company called Mandiant. They were sort of the company that you would call if you were compromised by one of those super advanced threat actors. I’m talking about nation states like Russia and China. You would call this company and then they would send these consultants in suits and ties. We were called the million-dollar company because if you gave us a call and we actually sent out consultants, you were probably going to be paying us at least a million dollars to deal with a major incident response effort. So in that context, it was a lot of fun building products there. And then over time, I realized that I was really good at the business side of this as well, and I wanted to strike out and do my own thing. And that’s how I started to Kolide. In 2016 is really a point in my life where I decided, “You know what? I think I can build my own product. I want to build a business around it. I want to do a startup.” And I transitioned from my last organization to starting the company. Joe Casabona: That’s fantastic. It sounds like you’re doing some really… I was going to say high level stuff, but it’s probably more low level stuff, right? You’re building products help with cybersecurity. Mandiant, it seems like they’re probably pretty busy given the current events that are going on and all the breaches that we’ve been hearing about lately. Jason Meller: Yeah, yeah. The CEO there, Kevin Mandia, he was actually just doing a congressional testimony a week or so ago over the solar winds hack, where they found basically all this malware in this very, very popular security product that most companies have and directly attributing it to major nation state that was using it to do reconnaissance and other types of really scary stuff on all our organizations. So, when I was working there, Kevin was always on the ground floor of probably the most important incidents of that time period. We were responding to all the major ones that were happening when I was there in the early 2000s. You mentioned I really like to kind of go low level into the stuff. The reality is, is the reason why I got into building products in the first place is I actually like distilling down really complicated topics to people who have never been exposed to them before. So a big part of what we do at Kolide is we try to make these really complex topics, something that’s accessible to someone who’s entering the industry, they’re a first time practitioner, or even end-users who have this type of software endpoint monitoring software on their devices. I’ll talk a little bit about that later in terms of the ethics around that. But ultimately, I really love talking about these types of topics with beginners and people who are just interested in the industry. Joe Casabona: That’s really fantastic. And cybersecurity is definitely something that I am interested in as well. I want to dig more into it. I think that’s probably a great topic for us to talk about in Build Something More. So if you are a member, you will get that in the episode you’re listening to right now. If you’re not, you can sign up over at buildsomething.club. So we’ll talk about cybersecurity in Build Something More. I’m really excited about that. Let’s get back into SAS stuff because I just started thinking about all these questions for later. So your current SAS, Kolide, is focused on cybersecurity or data security in some way, right? Jason Meller: Yeah, we actually call it HONEST Security. A big thing that I wanted to tackle when we started Kolide was I just felt that the current security industry was really almost sick, in the sense that we as engineers and people who work for large organizations, we started these companies, and then we are provisioned these laptops or sometimes we’re even allowed to bring our own and all this cybersecurity software sort of foisted onto that laptop. Now that we’re working from home and everything, it just felt weird to me that the software which can open up programs, it can really understand what your web browser history is, and you do all these things in the name of security, it just felt like to me that we really need to explore the privacy and the rules of engagement for how the security team should really be interacting with end users. End users in the security don’t really have like a really good relationship at most companies, even really technical organizations. The people who are building stuff feel really frustrated by the limitations imposed by the security you get in these laptops, they’re super locked down. “Oh, I can’t get Docker working. Is it because my firewall is messed up. And oh, I can’t even play with the firewall because all the options are grayed out.” This is pretty typical. And there’s just no one out there that was really thinking about this. So I wanted to build a security product that really focused on making that relationship between the security team and the end users a lot better, and actually putting them on the same page on a lot of different cybersecurity issues, like keeping their computer up to date and working properly without having to lock it down. So while cybersecurity and endpoint security are huge technical topics. Our application is actually really simple. It’s actually a web app and it also is a Slack app. So we work with companies that use Alack and we use an application that we built and we serve from the Slack App Store. And we actually work together with them to build this experience where you can actually work with the security team and collaborate on all the maybe the issues that you have in your device, like the firewall being off or you’re missing patches. And it’s really about having a hand on your shoulder from the security team, letting me know how you can manually get your device into a secure state without having to opt in to all this additional management, which could really impact productivity. So I wanted to build a product in that space, which is not a space that exists. So I had to write a whole manifesto about what HONEST Security was. That’s free. It’s on a website called honest.security. That’s the whole domain. So if you go there and check it out, you can kind of get a sense of what we’re going for with that entire topic. But yeah, that’s what the product is in essence. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Restrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than the Restrict Content Pro WordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. 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If you want to learn more about Restrict Content Pro and start making money with your own membership site today, head on over to howibuilt.it/rcp. That’s howibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks to Restrict Content Pro for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: You know, I was self-employed for a long time, then I worked for my alma mater, the University of Scranton, which for all intents and purposes most higher education are giant corporations with nonprofit budgets. There was a back and forth between me a web developer who likes to try out new tools and new local development environments and the lockdown nature of my machine. I couldn’t access certain ports. I had to put in requests with the other department in our IT area to get. And it would take me a couple of… I just started bringing my own laptop and doing things. Jason Meller: There you go. That’s exactly the problem we’re trying to solve. Because I think there’s a lot of security teams out there that believe that they are actually solving a security issue by locking down these devices. But what they’re really doing is they’re actually killing their own visibility into the issue because people are bringing their own laptops in because they feel so you’re trapped by these restrictions. They can’t get their work done. And they need to. I mean, it’s their livelihood, they have projects, they have expectations that they’ve made with their boss. You don’t really want to wake up like 10 minutes before you’re about to give a presentation and realize, “Oh, I can’t even turn off screen lock, my demo is going to get all interrupted when I’m recording because it’s like set to some insane degree.” At Kolide, we believe that end users really do have enough capability and knowledge to manage the security of their device. They just need to know what to do, and understand what the expectations are of the security team. It should be giving a little bit of nuance and I would say some latitude in terms of how they really can manage that based on the circumstances that they’re in. If I’m in an airport, that’s probably the right place for me to really set the screen lock to be like two minutes, because I might get up, I might go to the bathroom, I’m going to leave the whole thing out. But if I am at home, and we’re all home from COVID-19 working remotely, I don’t need it to be two minutes. I’m here. I’m surrounded by trusted family. No one’s coming over. Those are decisions I can make. As long as I’m staying within the parameters of what the security team really expects me to do and I can have a conversation with them, then that’s a much better solution than just wholesale locking down everybody to the worst possible level because that’s the only way you can do it. Joe Casabona: Right. And not to mention… I mean, I’m a savvy enough person to know what I should and shouldn’t be doing on the internet. Most times. I’m not saying I’m foolproof. But the big warning signs are there. But for the faculty at the University who might not know better, who are equally as frustrated, who then bring their laptops in, they might be even more compromised now because now they’re currently on the network, they’re doing stuff. We one time… maybe this is a story for Build Something More. But we one time had this JavaScript inserted into every single page of our content management system. So maybe I will tell that story and Build Something More. But it’s frustrating. It seems like you had the passion for this, you have the domain knowledge. Did you do other research to see if this was something that was viable from a market standpoint? Jason Meller: Yeah. I guess a piece of advice for the folks out there thinking, “I want to do a startup and maybe I want to build SAS products specifically.” I remember when I was a lot younger, I would often have ideas and then the first thing I would do is I would go on Google and I would go and see if anyone else had thought of that idea before. And then if I found any version of that idea out there, I was immediately discouraged. I was like, “Oh, this isn’t a new thing. I don’t want to do it.” But what I’ve learned over time is that oftentimes your passion for something doesn’t necessarily… just because there’s something out there doesn’t necessarily mean you have to avoid doing it. You can have a better iterative take on something out there that already exists without… you don’t have to come up with something completely brand new novel 100% in order to be successful in business. Sometimes it’s just an improvement or just a spin on something that exists out there. For HONEST Security, there was really nothing out there that I would say existed that really kind of focused on this issue. But there’s an entire industry of endpoint security products that are out there that have maybe little aspects of this. Like they have Slack notifications, but maybe they’re not interacting with end users. I think it would have been foolish for me to kind of look at those little starts and fits that other companies are doing and say, “Okay, they’re clearly going to head in that direction so I’m just going to give up.” I think if you’re really focused and passionate about a problem, you should still go for it if there are existing incumbents in the space. And sometimes you’ll find, you know, as you build out the entire idea and actually go through iterations of building it and getting in front of real people, that where you started from actually changes completely by the time you actually ship something by the end of it, and you ended up in a completely different direction, but you’re grateful for that journey. So I think if you’re passionate about a problem, sometimes doing your market research can help but I wouldn’t let that influence your decision 100% or whether or not you should actually move forward with it or not. Joe Casabona: I think that’s great advice, and it harkens back to a few previous episodes of great advice I got. First of all, maybe there’s a pre-existing product that doesn’t tell a good story or present the solution as good. So there’s that. If there is a pre-existing product, it means that there is a market for what you want to do, right? Jason Meller: Right. Joe Casabona: So just because there’s competition it doesn’t necessarily… I mean look at all the calculator or weather apps on the App Store. Then the other one is from a friend of mine, Scott Bollinger, who talked about kind of what you said about getting it out there into the hands of users. Get an MVP out there as soon as possible and start getting feedback. Because ultimately, the users will shape the direction your product goes in. Jason Meller: And there’s a good example of that. At Kolide, when we first started this process, we really wanted to focus on connecting the security team with the end users. And the first step of that was really the security team be able to convey what issues are on those devices and give users step by step feedback. But when we did that, we realized that it felt really strange for an end user who didn’t even know what Kolide was to suddenly get this ping out of nowhere. Like, “Hey, your devices missing these patches and your firewall is disabled, and here are the steps of how you can resolve that.” It’d be like if you know someone just burst in your house and there’s just demanding things. That wasn’t something that we… It sounds funny in hindsight but it wasn’t something that we thought about when we were building the MVP version of this experience. So we spent a lot of time thinking about how can we really put people at ease on the privacy aspect of this. And we actually arrived at an area where they actually self-install the agent. So we actually reach out to them via slack as an introduction, explain what this whole thing is, and then you actually install the installation package that puts the endpoint agent, that thing that gets all the telemetry on the device. Yourself versus it just being sort of foisted upon you by the IT security team. And that’s something that doesn’t exist. We’re the only security company that I’m aware of that actually encourages you to have the end users to install the main piece that makes it work. That was not something that we just got in the room and we thought of just out of the sky. It was based on talking with real people and hearing their concerns. So the most novel parts I think about our system are due to the feedback that we’ve had from our earliest iterations, not things that we thought of before we embarked on building anything. Joe Casabona: That’s such a great story and it makes perfect sense. I want to ask you the title question here, “how did you build it?” before pivoting into the more blue sky philosophical sort of questions, I guess. So you mentioned that this was a web app and a Slack app? Jason Meller: Yes. Yes. Funny story. We built it twice. The first time we did not build it well, and I think it’s because we took a very traditional I think VC-backed startup approach to how are we going to build our MVP. And we kind of embraced all the hot tech that was out there. We were like, “Okay, what’s the…” This is going all the way back to like 2017 or so. Like, “We want to build it in Golang because Golang is really good right now, everybody’s really talking about that, we’re going to host it on Kubernetes because Google just released their own container, you know, hosted version of Kubernetes, so let’s put it on there. And we want to, of course use React, and we want this to be micro services,” and so on and so forth. What we ended up realizing was that we didn’t suit the technologies that we chose to the actual talents that we had within the organization. We just assumed, I would say, sort of naively that we could just instantly transitions from tech that we had known and grown up with to I think really modern tech. And that ended up causing a lot of issues. In fact, most of the discussion at the company and the innovation that we were building was really just on the technical aspects of managing all these components, versus what we should have been talking about, which is actually building the product and having product discussions in order… what is the user experience of this going to look like, and not really worrying so much about the architecture. So we kind of crashed and burned pretty hard, I would say, at the end of 2018 or so, and we decided, “You know what? We are just building on top of this shifting sand and we just need to start over.” And that’s exactly what we did. The model from that point forward was “let’s keep it as simple as possible and let’s not concern ourselves with these major architectural designs and future scalability issues.” I think that a lot of engineers really worry too early about scalability when it’s not warranted. In fact, they’re worried that they’re going to have to scale up really, really fast, and they’re not going to be able to do it. Like their product is just going to be so successful, it’s going to be like the next Twitter, or they’re going to have the same reaction that Clubhouse is having right now. And then suddenly, they’re going to be completely hosed and they’re going to lose their moment. But that is so rare in practice. In fact, the thing that you should be optimizing for is that scaling up, but scaling down when your idea isn’t quite right. If you make all of these financial investments, financial investments in the form of your time as an engineer, but also shelling out money to, you know, Google Cloud Platform and AWS for all these expensive servers and container frameworks and things like that, it becomes really, really hard to actually scale that down to a financially feasible slow burn as you actually get your first few customers in the door and really understand what your product is. I think it’s more important that you protect yourself from not the outcome of your products going to exceed past your wildest machinations. It’s can you actually protect yourself in a scenario, the most likely scenario where your product isn’t going to do well? And you need to learn a lot more about why. And you need to at least a year or two of timeframe to really be able to do that and make the iteration is necessary. So try to figure out how you can scale your solution and your architecture down or make it so that it’s easy to do that, so you have as much time as possible. In Kolide, for us specifically, I was always a Ruby on Rails developer. I started off in PHP and then I really kind of fell in love with Ruby around the time. PHP really started taking off with classes and things like that that really, really kind of just grabbed me in. So we just focused on that. Instead of like trying to host it ourselves, we just went to Heroku and we hosted the whole thing there. And you know what? It turns out these platforms as service providers, like Heroku and some of the other ones that are out there, they’re probably the Laravel community and everything, they are really, really good at helping you scale when you are successful. So right now the biggest part of our app that’s I think challenging from an architecture perspective is the fact that we have all these devices out there for our customers, like tens of thousands of devices, and they’re all checking in on a regular interval to our device server. And there’s a lot of traffic to handle there. But the reality is is that it’s web traffic, and we can put the data in the database. And we don’t need all these crazy, hot technologies to layer into that to perform I would say, very, very basic operations. Like data comes in, we save it in the database, we visualize it in a web app that’s built-in Ruby on Rails. And then on the Slack app side, Slack has made it really, really easy with some very basic API [unintelligible 00:24:43] to have a really compelling experience. So we built that inside of the Rails app as well. And it’s really, really simple. and it’s something that we can maintain with three or four engineers, not like this hoard of hundreds of engineers that are really focused on the infrastructure and the operations and “oh, we need a front end engineer, and that front end engineer needs to collaborate with someone who’s going to really be building a back end API so they can plumb everything together.” That’s just not the reality of how the financials work at an early stage startup. You need to be able to have features go out the door without a lot of different hands touching them. The companies that have built all these crazy new technologies that are not so much new now, they’re huge. And they built these technologies to solve organizational issues at their size. That doesn’t necessarily mean these technologies are appropriate for companies that only have two or three people in them because those problems are just non-existent at a company of that scale. 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I can type out full instructions for my podcast editor, hi, Joel, in just a few keystrokes. Another one of my favorite and most used snippets is PPT. This will take whatever text I have on my keyboard and convert it to plain text. No more fighting formatting is I’m copying from Word or anyplace else. Last month I saved over two hours in typing alone. That doesn’t even take into the account the time I saved by not having to search for the right link, text, address, or number. You have no idea how many times I want to type out a link to a blog post or an affiliate link and I can’t remember it and then I have to go searching for it. That generally takes minutes. But since I have a TextExpander snippet, it takes seconds. TextExpander is available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. I’ve been using it a lot more on my iPhone lately because I’ve been working from my iPhone more because there are days when I’m just not in front of my computer right now. If you’ve been curious about trying TextExpander or simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visit textexpander.com/podcast and let them know that I sent you. Thanks so much to TextExpander for sponsoring the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: I’m a web developer… I’m sure this is for all programmers, but it’s like, “Oh, did you see the new thing? .js or whatever? We should use the new thing .js.” And I’m like, “I don’t want to use it. Why do I need to learn a new thing when I don’t know if I’m even going to need it?” I was working on an app for a hosting company a couple of years ago and they’re like, “We should make this headless WordPress and use Gatsby.” And I’m like, “Why? There’s no reason for us to use Gatsby. I don’t know Gatsby. And if I have to learn Gatsby, I’m going to charge you the hours it takes me to learn Gatsby because we don’t really need it.” So I think you’re absolutely right. Actually, this conversation here is timely to when we record this because I was lamenting how I was going to build out the community aspect of the membership. Again, I’m a web guy, I’m a WordPress guy, I was like, “I’ll just use like bbPress or BuddyPress, two plugins that bolt on the community. But no offense to the people who maintain bbPress, but it definitely looks like it was made in 2004 and I wanted something that looked nicer. And I was like, “I could invest all of my own development time to make bbPress and BuddyPress work the way I want, or I could just pay Circle.so 30 or 40 bucks a month and have everything. And on Twitter, I got a lot of well like, “You should just build it yourself. That’s what I did.” Someone said like, “That’s what I did, though nobody’s using the community.” They kind of said tongue in cheek. And I’m like, “So you invested all this time for nobody to even use the community.” Jason Meller: Right. That’s right. Joe Casabona: In two months, if nobody’s using the community, I can just stop paying for Circle instead of burning hours. You triggered me a little bit there but in the best way possible. Again, do the minimum viable thing instead of burning development hours when you don’t need to for the sake of trying the new thing or using this tool that you want to try out. Jason Meller: Yeah. I think that you touched on something. You said you’ve been doing web development for a while, and I have as well. And I think that there’s almost like a self-deprecating ages and thing that can kind of come up when you reach a certain age and you suddenly feel like there’s all this new technology that’s… it was a slow burn, like it was really kind of coming up, and then it just appeared and then everybody started using it. And then you almost feel like, “Oh, my gosh, am I becoming that old dude that doesn’t know what’s going on anymore? Am I going to be left behind.” I think that type of anxiety and that sort of self-deprecating “am I really in the mix anymore?” can force really bad errors of judgment in terms of “You know what? I need to learn something” that you really don’t need to learn, and in fact, might actually be worse than the thing that you already know. I think that when you’re really young and inexperienced, everything is brand new and you don’t have the benefit of the history of how all these things came together. So something that may not be optimal is fine by you and you’re going to learn that thing. But when you’re older and you have experience, you can compare and contrast how this new thing works compared to how used to build stuff. And sometimes the new thing is way worse. And you’re just like, “Why did I do this when I actually was much happier and more productive and there’s more maturity in the libraries and there’s more things for me to be able to kind of plug into this thing? What am I doing?” I think that’s where we ended up. And it sounds like it’s a very easy problem to avoid. But when you get in your own head, and you start thinking about those things, it can really force these errors that really just don’t need to happen early on in your company. Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the WordPress space, Gutenberg is the big thing, and everyone’s like, “You need to learn React.” I haven’t learned React yet and so far I’m okay. I’m like, “I haven’t lost a job because I haven’t learned React. I’m reluctant. I mean, now it’s probably I know it’s around to stay. But I learned Angular Version 1 and then Angular was like, “We’re changing everything in Version 2.” And then React came out, and then Vue came out. And I’m like, “I’m just going to solve the problem the best way I know how.” So I think that this is really important. Jason Meller: True. Joe Casabona: This can be translated to… Jason Meller: I was just going to say, by the way, don’t feel bad about learning React. We don’t build a stitch of React that Kolide and we have an incredibly successful web application. I am 100% anti-React. That’s basically what I was alluding to earlier when I said there’s these new things. I’m 100% on this camp of let’s bring as much back to the server side as possible. I grew up in an era where when you were coding for the web and you got to pick whatever language you want. It didn’t have to be JavaScript. You could pick anything. You could build a web app in C++, you could build it in COBOL if you wanted to. It really didn’t matter. And that’s the thing that’s really special about the web is that if you know HTML and you want to build something on the back end, you could do it in anything. And that is not the case with really any other platform that’s out there. Like if you want to build an iOS app, yes, there’s Electron and React Native and all these other technologies. But if you really want to build a good app, you have to do it in Swift or Objective-C. Like you just have to. That’s the lingua franca of the device. But on the web, that isn’t the case. And I feel like these React folks are now bringing like Server-side React, and they’re trying to make JavaScript the language of the web on both sides, which is fine for them. But someone who hates JavaScript, I don’t want to go there. I think that that actually is really important that we preserve that aspect of the web and how it came from and the flexibility and the freedom that’s there. So my hope is that React maybe can stand the client side and doesn’t end up being this thing that just eats the world. Because I think you can build really, really well-designed web apps that are performant, that are exciting, and making millions of dollars without even writing a stitch of it. And I hope that that continues to be the case. And I’m advocating for a world that exists. I didn’t expect to say that on this podcast, but here I am. Joe Casabona: Oh, that’s perfect. We can talk about more on this in Build Something More if it suits us because I have a lot of opinions about that as well. Jason Meller: Sure. Joe Casabona: Now that we’ve gotten really nerdy I’ll probably add chapters, like podcast player chapters to this one because I do want to bring it back to the small business owner who is maybe interested in building a SAS, but we’re a year into a pandemic as we record this, maybe there’s some economic uncertainty. It seems like the outlook changes every week. Why would we want to build a SAS right now? Jason Meller: It is a really great question. I think it’s very counterintuitive to say that actually it’s a really good time to start thinking about new business ideas, and specifically SAS products right now. But that’s actually how I feel. When you have these big societal shifts like the pandemic and everybody working remotely, they create opportunities that were none existed before. That’s very much the case at Kolide. We started it before the pandemic but we realized, because of the pandemic, people’s attitudes were really shifting about how security agents and the surveillance they were having on their device, the context of that just felt different when everybody was working from home than when you’re in a cubicle or in an office that’s really maintained by your employer. Suddenly, solutions like Slack and Microsoft Teams and all these things were way greater use than they were, most startups were using them and engineering style organizations were, but not every company on the earth. And now suddenly, these organizations, they’re looking for ways to use the existing apps that they’ve always used but now in a context where everybody is remote. And they really want them to be integrated in these chat-like experiences. So we just happen to be in the right place the right time. But my advice to folks who are thinking about how do you capitalize on this pandemic specifically is start looking at what is the ideal interactions that these business owners and business employees are really looking for in terms of dealing with their HR app, and how do I deal with expenses and things like that. Suddenly, all the incumbents in the space are on their back foot because new players can enter in and really offer a compelling experience that feels way more relevant to folks who are really not working from home, and doing 100% of their communication through a chat window or maybe Zoom. I think that that’s the seed that can generate this entire ecosystem of new stuff. Obviously, the pandemic is really scary, and people are losing their jobs, and there’s a lot of uncertainty there. But if you are someone who has an entrepreneurial spirit, you’ll often find opportunity in those lowest points. Now, I’m speaking from a position of privilege because I had the money to be able to kind of have the savings to be able to strike off and do it on my own. I had some investors come in and things like that. And not everybody has that opportunity. But I encourage folks who can do that and feel confident in their ability to do that, to find an opportunity, see where something isn’t working and draw from your own experience. If you’re frustrated by something, it probably means there’s tons of other folks that are frustrated by that exact same thing. It doesn’t have to be this huge, massive multimillion-dollar startup, it can just be something small that you sell online, and you just get on gumroad and just throw something out there. It doesn’t have to be even technology. It could just be an idea that you codified into a book that eventually can become something that’s backed by software or something else that you can sell a subscription for. So I encourage folks to take these dark times and look for opportunities there because that’s where new solutions can be born out of just changing circumstances. This pandemic is certainly a big example of that. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by the Events Calendar, the original calendar for WordPress. This free plugin helps you with calendaring, ticketing, and more powerful tools to help you manage your events from start to finish. Whether you run school events, concert at a venue, or fundraisers for nonprofits, the Events Calendar gives you the tools you need to make it your own. And with the Events Calendar Pro, you can create custom views, recurring events, add your own custom fields to events, and much more. Run virtual events? No problem. 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Joe Casabona: It is important to highlight that certain people are afforded certain opportunities more than others. But I still in 2020, I am a firm believer in the American dream and I know that there are a lot of people who are still able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do things in a way to put themselves in a better situation. Jason Meller: That’s true Joe Casabona: With the government handing out money right now, if it’s a little extra money that maybe… I’m not a financial adviser. But if it’s extra money that maybe you can put aside, invest in yourself a little bit and put that money towards having an MVP developed or something like that. Jason Meller: You know, everybody’s situation is a little bit different. There’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—you got to take care of your essentials before you can really start thinking about these things. I don’t want to get into the whole social-economic situation of our country right now, but the reality is, is that when you don’t have a lot of money, and I know this from experience, graduating from college and not having a lot of money, it weighs on you mentally. Suddenly, a simple trip to the grocery store, where today I can fly into the grocery store, now I don’t even go. I just order online and they just deliver it to me. But before, like last year, I would just go and I really wouldn’t be looking too hard at the prices because I didn’t have to. But when you’re on a really tight budget, suddenly something as simple as going to the grocery store becomes very exhausting because you’d have to do all this math. “Oh, is this check going to bounce if I got this extra thing?” And it can add up over time. I’m hoping that the relief from COVID-19 I think helps folks. I think it has a chilling effect that maybe all those anxious thoughts, and maybe people can start thinking about higher order activities like career and building things and things like that. That’s what that aid can sometimes help with. And my hope is that people see it that way. Joe Casabona: That’s a much better point than I made. Listen to Jason. Awesome. Well, man, we covered a lot of ground here: cybersecurity, how things are built, starting a SAS, socio-economic conditions. Before we wrap up, I do need to ask you my favorite question, which is, do you have any trade secrets for us? Jason Meller: Yes. I kind of gave it away earlier. I was saving that for the trade secret. But again, taking stock into how things change over time and then understanding where the opportunity is generated. And I just talked about how that was the case Kolide with this pandemic and people really starting to wake up from the work from home situation. But there’s things like that that happen all the time. And they don’t have to be these monumental society shifts. Sometimes it’s more of like a slow burn. Sometimes they’re political, sometimes it’s something that’s in the news. But things change all the time. And we sometimes just take for granted that all the things that we’re doing today are going to be the things that we do forever. But it was just 20 years ago that we’re driving to Blockbuster and renting movies that way. And everything has changed if you really think about it. It’s very important to kind of pinpoint those moments where it tips just a little bit too much where suddenly something that made a lot of sense and everybody wanted to do, it doesn’t make any sense anymore and nobody wants to do it. And that’s where you need to seize that opportunity and see that moment before anyone else does, and then hyper-focus on building something that solves a problem. And it’s very important not to think about that academically. You want to think about it from your own experience. Because if you’re feeling that pain, others are feeling it as well, and you’re solving a real problem, versus like I think this is a problem, I’m just gonna take a guess. The second best thing to do is talk to people. But even better than that is you just have so much empathy for the problem because you are facing it. Those are the best places to start. You can save a lot of time and shortcut, a lot of market research if you know the problem inside and out because it’s one that you have. So that’s the trade secret is pick the problems that suit you because you’re not going to have a lot of time to like meet thousands of people that experience this problem and come up to speed and then build a whole thing yourself. Solve problems that you’re familiar with and you understand because then you can get on podcasts like this and passionately talk about them without having to do a ton of research because they’re just part of you. So that is my trade secret is solve problems that you have. And you can build businesses on top of that if you do it well enough. Joe Casabona: I love that. I feel like you read the blog post I published a couple of weeks ago where I basically say that. It’s called What Baby Clothes Can Teach You About Your Business or something like that. Basically, how we have these baby clothes that must have been designed by a parent because they’re so easy. In the pre-show… I don’t know if you want to make this public or not. Jason Meller: No, it’s fine. Go for it. Joe Casabona: In the pre-show, we were talking about how you’re a new parent, eight-month -ld baby girl. I have an eight-month-old son. Man, that smile on your face right now that nobody can see but me is just the pure joy that a kid brings you right before they throw up all over you. Jason Meller: That’s right. Joe Casabona: So you’ve probably been awake in the middle of the night trying to change your kid. And these pajamas—this is a tangent—they have a reverse zipper on them so that you zip up to unzip them. They must have been designed by a parent. Because the snap-on ones are definitely just designed by some random person who’s never touched a kid before. But the reverse zipper ones, this person understood the problem, the way that Jason is telling you to understand and solve problems. So bringing it back, Jason, this has been such a great conversation. If people want to learn more about you, where can they go? Jason Meller: I mentioned this earlier in the podcast. But if there’s one thing that you want to look into me about is I want you to read HONEST Security. You can find that just by going to honest.security. That’s the whole URL. If you want to learn a little bit more about Kolide, you can visit us on the web at Kolide.com. Kolide with a K. And if you want to follow me on Twitter, you can hit me up @JMeller. Joe Casabona: Awesome. This has been absolutely fantastic. Stick around for Build Something More, where we’re going to talk about cybersecurity, maybe Clubhouse and JavaScript tools. There’s a lot that we could cover honestly. For all the show notes as well as a link to the club, you can go over to howibuilt.it/218. Thanks so much to our sponsors: TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and the Events Calendar. And Jason, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Jason Meller: Thanks for having me. Joe Casabona: And until next time, get out there and build something. Sponsored by:Restrict Content Pro: Launch your membership site TextExpander: Get 20% off your first year by visiting the this link. The Events Calendar Source
Promoting your book can be a tough road – I know because I’m currently on it. On top of establishing trust, you need to demonstrate that you’re worth investing in. Plus, unlike online courses, it can be tough to build and keep an audience if people are just buying your book off Amazon. Luckily, a podcast can help. We’ll get into all of that in this episode. Plus, in Build Something More I’ll tell you all about my experience with both self-publishing and going through an actual publisher. (more…) View on separate page Transcript Joe Casabona: Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about the Build Something Weekly newsletter. It is weekly, it is free, and you will get tips, tricks, and tools delivered directly to your mailbox. I will recap the current week’s episode and all of the takeaways, I’ll give you a top story, content I wrote, and then some recommendations that I’ve been using that I think you should check out. So it is free, it is a weekly, it’s over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Go ahead and sign up over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 217 of How I Built It, the podcast that offers actionable tech tips to small business owners. I’m your host Joe Casabona. Today we are continuing a small miniseries I started a few weeks ago about why certain people in certain industries should start a podcast. Now back in Episode 154—I will link that in the show notes over at howibuilt.it/217—I talk about why everybody should start a podcast. This was a kind of general point episode. It was just before the pandemic started, and it seemed like lots of people were going to get into podcasting in 2020. As we wade into 2021, I think that there are specific use cases and benefits for people who I am looking forward to helping specifically. So certain niches that I believe I can help because I have strong experience in those areas. A few weeks ago, it was course creators and why course creators should start a podcast. Today it is why authors should start a podcast. I’m an author myself. I’ve written five books, four with an actual publisher. So I guess I’ve written six books, four with actual publishers. I’ve been through the process a lot. And reluctantly, with my most recent book “HTML and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide“, I actually didn’t start a podcast where perhaps I should have. So we’re going to get into all of that today. Our sponsors for today’s episode are TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and Mindsize. You’ll hear about them later in the episode. But first, let’s get to it. Now, again, in Episode 154, I covered all the reasons. It’s called All the Reasons You Should Start a Podcast. And I rehashed them a little bit a few episodes ago, I think that was Episode 214, where I talked about why course creators should start a podcast. But just the gist, it’s easier than ever to start a podcast. You no longer need thousands of dollars’ worth of recording equipment. For probably 100 bucks, you can get up and running. You can get relatively cheap audio hosting. You can also get free audio hosting, but you can get relatively cheap audio hosting, which is what I would recommend. It’s the next great content plane. It’s where lots of people are going to get content because a podcast doesn’t require you to sit in front of a screen and read. You can multitask while you listen to a podcast. You can do it while driving or commuting. You can do it while cleaning the house or mowing the lawn. So it’s a convenient form of content. And then it’s a way to grow your business because it’s a lot more intimate than other forms of content. People have your voice in their headphones while they’re listening to a podcast. It allows your listeners to get to know you better. But those are the general points for why anyone should start a podcast, why should authors start a podcast. Again, I have experience here. I am an author. I’ve written a bunch of books. In fact, in the extended episode of build something more, which is the members-only episode, I’m going to talk about what it’s like or what it was like writing each of my books and the difference between publishing and self-publishing, and why I didn’t start a separate podcast from my books and things like that. If you want to get that part of the episode, you can head over to buildsomething.club and sign up. It is $5 a month or $50 a year for lots of extra content, including what I’ll be talking about today. So you’re an author, you’re writing a book or you’ve written a book and you want more people to buy it. Why should you start a podcast? Well, again, it’s one of the best ways to establish trust. If people are buying educational content from you, like a book, like a course, then people need to know, like, and trust you before they buy. Now, a book is a little bit easier. Especially if you’re going through an actual publisher, the book might be on the bookshelves, and so people going to bookstores, as people start to do that more might just happen across your title and pick it up. But if they’re perusing Amazon, why should they buy your book over this other book? My most recent book got a few bad reviews because there was a miscommunication as to an extra part of the book. My book is the ninth edition. It’s about half the size maybe of the eighth edition, but there’s also like 40 videos that come free for anybody who buys the book. And those videos because it’s an HTML and CSS course, are invaluable. In the book, I teach the general information, the semantics, the markup, but in the videos, you actually get to see what happens when you write some code. That is a giant value add that maybe the people who left the bad reviews didn’t know about. And when you get a bad review, as I talked with Michael Begg about in Episode 209, if you get a bad review, it’s hard to come back from that. So how do you combat that? Well, if you have a podcast where people will know, like, and trust you, and they understand that generally people like to leave bad reviews more than good reviews, maybe they’ll be more likely to buy your book because they know who you are. They don’t know who the commenter is, but they know you and they know what you’re talking about. Similarly, it will help you establish authority in your subject matter. Again, if we just take the example of HTML and CSS, maybe I should have started a separate HTML and CSS podcast. It’s not too late. The book came out less than a year ago, and we’re coming up to a point where teachers will start evaluating what books they want to use in the classroom. So maybe I start a podcast called, I don’t know, HTML and CSS Bytes, or something like that. I’m brainstorming right on the show. I should write this down, though. That’s probably a good idea. If you have that podcast and you’re putting out episodes and your teaching the thing that you teach in the book, or if you wrote… I should say that this is mostly nonfiction that I’m talking about here. If you write a fiction book, we’ll get into things that you can do with a fiction book. But if it’s a knowledge worker book, if it’s a business book, a nonfiction book, then you can take those topics and repurpose them and talk about them on your podcast. And I know what you’re thinking here. Am I giving away the shop? If I start a podcast about what my books about, am I giving away the shop? And here’s the thing. No. Because maybe Chapter 10 of your book is relevant for your most recent podcast episode. If I pick an example, Chapter 19 in my book is about CSS preprocessors. Maybe news just broke that a new CSS preprocessor is coming out and I want to talk about it. So I can use some of the content from my book for that. But unless you already know CSS, the CSS preprocessor conversation will be out of context. Your book puts everything in context. So your podcast will help show people: “Hey, I know what I’m talking about. If you want to know more about what I’m talking about, then buy my book.” That is up next, right? What is your call to action on your podcast? And that’s something really important to talk about. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Restrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than the Restrict Content Pro WordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. You can create any number of subscription packages, including free levels and free trials. But that’s not all. 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If you want to learn more about Restrict Content Pro and start making money with your own membership site today, head on over to howibuilt.it/rcp. That’s howibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks to Restrict Content Pro for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: So, your call to action is very clear. It’s “buy my book.” My call to action on this podcast has been “join my mailing list” pretty much, right? I’ve been working in the membership call to action. But if you’re starting a podcast where you want people to buy your book, super easy. “Hey, you like what I’m talking about? You want to learn more about what I’m talking about? Go to howibuilt.it/book and buy my book. And then you can get even more. And mention that you heard about it on this podcast and I’ll give you a shout out.” Or “if you email me a receipt from the book and say that you bought it because of this podcast, I’ll send you a bonus audiobook” or something like that. So your call to action day in and day out will be “buy my book.” And people will hear that every time: “buy my book.” All right? “Well, this episode really made me want to buy the book, so I’m going to do that.” Again, to get people to buy the book, you can incentivize them a little bit or you can, for the podcast, include bonus materials that didn’t make it into the book. The editing process is long and hard and there are a lot of things that maybe you thought about including in the book, but because of time constraints or because of other constraints, you maybe decided not to talk about those things. Maybe it wasn’t relevant to the final edition of the book. A really good example from the HTML and CSS book that I wrote is I had a section maybe on doing mockups and why you might want to do mockups, and how they can help you. But when I wrote the outline and then started to write the chapters, I realized this is not a how to design websites book. This is a book about HTML and CSS. So the markup section, not super relevant. Another thing that I have in my mind map is linters and JavaScript libraries, static site generators. Those are things that as a web developer you might want to know. But if we’re trying to fit everything for HTML and CSS into 400 pages or so, then some things had to go. And that was those three topics had to go. So I have a lot of stuff here in this mind map that I can talk about on the podcast. So in your writing journey, be sure to keep notes about things that do or do not make it into the final product and that stuff that you can then share with your audience in a different way. Again, you can take it out of context, and then tell the listeners, “Hey, if you want all of this in context, today’s episode goes really well with chapter five. So buy my book, take a look at Chapter 5. You’ll get even more out of it.” Or “now Chapter 5 will have even more meaning to you.” Along with that, you can also share your journey through the book writing process. So include the bonus materials that didn’t make it, but also talk about the process in general. When I was writing my book… I’m going to make just a gigantic excuse here. So I’m going to steal this excuse from you. This is not a good excuse. While I was writing my book, I was doing a lot of other things as well. I wasn’t as cognizant as I could have been in preparing for the marketing of the book. So I didn’t pay super close attention to all of that. I just wanted to get it done, especially because I was supposed to be wrapping up as the pandemic started, and the pandemic pushed the process back a little bit. So by the time I was ready to publish, I was pretty much at my wit’s end with everything. I just wanted to get it out the door. But if you’re writing your book right now or you took better notes than I did about your book, then share your journey, talk about the research you did, talk about the apps and tools that you used. I used the MindNode for mind mapping. Did you mind map or did you draw it all out on a whiteboard? What did you use to write the book? I wrote a lot of my booking Ulysses, which is a fantastic writing app, but then I did have to move it over to my publisher’s template in Microsoft Word. “How’s editing going?” Editors can be brutal. And they need to be. My editor was brutal. And I’m grateful for it because I have a much better book now. But talk about how editing is going. What’s something that maybe got pointed out to you in the editing process that made your media book better? Talk about other behind-the-scenes stuff, cover design, image creation. If you’re self-publishing, how’s that going? What kind of research are you doing for self-publishing? Are you going to put it on Amazon with Kindle publishers direct or are you going to use something else? And then you can get early feedback as well. Maybe if I had a dedicated podcast for my book, I could have talked about the things I covered in say Chapter 3, and then gotten feedback from listeners. Is there anything I’m not covering here that you want to see? Is there anything unclear? What else can I do to make this chapter better? And then all of this will again make people feel more attached to the book. You’re going to be talking about this behind-the-scenes stuff, they’re going to want to know what the final product looks like. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by TextExpander. In our fast-paced world, things change constantly, and errors in messaging often have significant consequences. With TextExpander, you can save time by converting any text you type into keyboard shortcut called a snippet. 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Last month I saved over two hours in typing alone. That doesn’t even take into the account the time I saved by not having to search for the right link, text, address, or number. You have no idea how many times I want to type out a link to a blog post or an affiliate link and I can’t remember it and then I have to go searching for it. That generally takes minutes. But since I have a TextExpander snippet, it takes seconds. TextExpander is available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. I’ve been using it a lot more on my iPhone lately because I’ve been working from my iPhone more because there are days when I’m just not in front of my computer right now. If you’ve been curious about trying TextExpander or simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visit textexpander.com/podcast and let them know that I sent you. Thanks so much to TextExpander for sponsoring the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: Your podcast will also help you leverage your book’s audience, so people who buy the book. And I should say, if it’s not too late, mention your podcast in the book, too. This could be a two way street. But it could help you leverage your book’s audience to join your mailing list, to get other products, to join your community. So up until this point, I’ve kind of talked about the podcast as being a way to get more people to buy your book. But it can also help connect with the people who’ve bought the book already. Because that’s hard, right? If you are an author, especially if you go through a publisher, then you know that you don’t get direct access to all the customers’ information. Heck, the publisher might not even get direct access to all the customers’ information. My publisher sells to bookstores. You think Barnes and Noble is giving my publisher a list of all the people who bought my book that day? They’re probably not. So my publisher doesn’t even have all the information. And then certainly, unless there are very intense disclosures, they wouldn’t pass that along to me either. That’s why you see a lot of authors say, “Hey, download the bonus materials at mywebsite.com/book or book.com/bonus or whatever.” Because that’s how they are connecting with their audience. That’s how they’re getting their audience email addresses. But if you have a podcast and you say, “Hey, listen to my podcast. If you want even more content around this topic, listen to my podcast.” From there, you can get them to join your mailing list. You can get other products to them. You can get them to join your community. Imagine having a community of people who’ve read your book and talk about the book. You can engage much more with your audience on your book-related podcast. Or even if you write a book… Maybe you’re James Patterson and you write like four books a year, you get to talk about those books more. You get to talk about the process more. But you get to engage with your audience more than with a book. As the author, you write a book, people read your words. And unless they really want to take action and email you, you’re probably not going to hear from most of those people. Now, maybe you do. At a conference, people have walked up to me and they’ve told me like my book helped them become a WordPress developer. And that is just such a rewarding feeling. But that’s few and far between. It’s certainly fewer than the number of people who bought the book. But again, if you have your podcast, you’re talking about your book and bonus materials, now you can engage with your audience more. You can ask them to write in on today’s topic or a topic that they want to hear about. The other thing with that is you can go deeper on topics or you can update topics. With the HTML and CSS book, CSS has a new text-based proposal that came out recently, several months after my book is published. So, again, if I have this HTML and CSS podcast—I’m kind of convincing myself to start one—I can share updates on that stuff. I can share errata. I can have like an errata episode where “Hey, in this part of the book…” hopefully I wouldn’t have too many of those. Hopefully, you wouldn’t have too many of those. But things happen, things change. So you can share updates, errata, and current events related to the book. If you have an SEO book or a digital advertising book, that’s a good example. If you have a book on how to leverage digital ads that’s out, you probably wouldn’t have written about Google’s FLoC, which is like federated learning of cohorts or something like that. So you can have a podcast episode about that and then relate it back to the content in your book. So it makes your book content a lot more dynamic. It makes it living, especially if it’s a printed book as well as a digital book. But even if it’s a digital book, how often are you going back to that well to update your book when there are updates? Ideally, your book should be passive income. People buy your book, they get knowledge out of it. But the podcast can be that outlet for updates, errata, current events, and things like that. So what do we have so far? Why as you the author should you start a podcast? It’ll help people establish trust in you. It’ll get them to know, like, and trust you. It’ll establish you as an authority in the subject matter your book is about. You can have a very clear call to action: “buy my book.” Now, in lieu of what we just talked about, maybe the call to action is “join my mailing list.” And in your onboarding sequence, say, “Have you bought the book already?” And then you can segment your people that way. And then for people who haven’t bought the book, you can market the book to them. But for people who have bought the book, you can share behind-the-scenes stuff. You can include bonus materials that didn’t make it into the book in your podcast. You can share your journey through the book writing process. Again, this helps people become attached to you and like you even more. You’re sharing a process that lots of people are excited about or are at least interested about. I get tons of questions. What’s it like writing a book? Did you publish it? Did you go through a publisher? Did you self-publish? What was that like? So that’s really good content, not just for the people who want to buy your book and your target audience, but in general. So you can share your journey. It’ll help you leverage your book’s audience and connect with them more, and it’ll help you kind of sudo update the book as time goes on. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Mindsize. Look, it’s super important for stores to have an online presence these days. If customers can’t buy online, they might not buy at all. And while doing eCommerce fast has gotten easier, doing eCommerce right still has its considerable challenges. That’s where Mindsize comes in. They are a full service digital agency that focuses on WordPress and WooCommerce development. But that’s not all. They work with Shopify, BigCommerce, and more. And they’ll work with you to create the perfect strategy and website for your business. Already have an eCommerce site and want to make sure it’s up and running in tip-top shape? Their flat-rate site audit is exactly what you need. Over the course of two weeks, they’ll dive into every aspect of your site and deliver a prioritized list of actionable recommendations to make your site even better. That means more sales and engagement for you and your store. Or if you’re a freelancer or agency who feels in over your head or with an eCommerce build, their agency support plan is built specifically for you. There were a few times in my career where I really could have used that. They’ll take a high stress situation and help you relax while still delivering for your client. So check out Mindsize over at mindsize.com today. They will help you make more money, whether you need an eCommerce store, whether you need to improve your current eCommerce store, or if you build eCommerce stores for others. That’s mindsize.com. Thanks so much to Mindsize for supporting the show. Joe Casabona: So that’s a bunch of stuff that we just talked about. But it can help you without being directly related to your book too, right? I mean, yes, it can help you because more people will buy your book. You’re putting a voice to the words. I think that’s really important. You can engage with your audience more, because people who are buying your book might listen to your podcast then or people who are listening to your podcast can buy your book. Either way, that’s two contact points for a single audience member. Get them on your mailing list, and then you can ask them direct questions. “What did you like about the book? What didn’t you like about the book? What do you want me to cover on the podcast that you think I should have elaborated more about in the book?” Or “I just finished Chapter 4, here’s what I cover. Do you think I’m missing anything?” Or “is there something that’s unclear?” But then you can also book more speaking gigs. Because here’s the dirty little secret. Writing a book is probably not going to make you rich. I mean, unless you’re like James Patterson or J. K. Rowling. Especially in a nonfiction title, right? That’s why every business book you read constantly promotes whatever service is related to the book they wrote. “Hey, we just talked about this in Chapter 5, if you’re trying to do this and you’re having trouble, hire one of our experts.” And that’s fine. I mean, that’s fine within reason. I read like an 80-page book recently, where he promoted it like every five pages. And I’m like, “Well, I’m not going to hire you. You only wrote this book to promote your services. It’s not really helpful.” But anyway, you can book more speaking gigs. That is something that pays pretty well if you find the right conferences. And the more people buy your book, the more clout you get, and then the more speaking gigs that you have. And if people are listening to you speak on your podcast, they know your cadence. They know the kind of content that they’re going to get. So, I mean, your podcast can be an audition for speaking gigs. So, all of these things put together, I think that a podcast can not only help you sell more copies of your book, but it can help you create super fans for your book, because you’re giving them a lot of extras that they wouldn’t otherwise get. So people will buy your book, people who bought your book will listen to your podcast, and they’ll learn more about you. Maybe if it is a nonfiction book, and you do have consulting services, you can offer them. I know my books that I usually write are specifically written for the classroom. And so maybe teachers will listen to the podcast, and they’ll pick up my book so that they can teach it to their students. Maybe I get a guest lecturer gig. Things like that. That’s everything that I have for why authors should start a podcast. Oh, and I should mention this really quick actually. Friend of the show, Brittney Lynn from Human Connection Agency and the Human Connection Podcast had a really good episode about PR for authors and how and when authors should start promoting their book. And I was shocked. I think she said… I want to say six months before. For a course launch, they usually say eight weeks. But you want to start the merry go round of book promotion. I will link the episode in the show notes over at howibuilt.it/217. But it was a longer lead time than I expected. I want to say six months. So if you start a podcast while you’re writing the book, that is a built in marketing channel for you, because you’re starting the book, you’re doing it out in the open, which people love behind-the-scenes stuff. You are maybe getting real-time feedback as much as your publisher will allow. Or again, if you are self-publishing, you’re just doing it in the open, you’re generating buzz. Throw up that preorder page and start getting orders. And then when it comes out, you have a big launch episode and then you continue creating great content. And that’ll open up a lot of opportunities for you. So that’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks to TextExpander, Mindsize and Restrict Content Pro for sponsoring the show. If you liked this episode, head over to howibuilt.it/217 and join the mailing list. Maybe join the Build Something Club. Right after I end this, I’m going to talk behind the scenes of my books, all of the books I’ve written, and what the process was like publishing versus self-publishing. I feel like this was a cathartic episode for me though. It gave me some ideas for—even though my books have been on the shelves for about six months—why I should start a podcast for that book. So maybe I should eat my own dog food. Let me know. If you’re an author, write in. You can do that over at howibuilt.it/217 as well, if you got any good ideas or if you’re looking for help promoting your book. All right, thanks so much for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something. Sponsored by:Mindsize: Your WooCommerce Partner Restrict Content Pro: Launch your membership site TextExpander: Get 20% off your first year by visiting the this link. Source
In today’s episode, Joe talks to Joe Casabona, a creator of online courses at Creator Courses and for LinkedIn Learning, and hosts a podcast called How I Built It. They share similar sentiments on parenting toddlers, mental health check while juggling work and parenting, and expanding a Circle community among other Wordpress related responsibilities. Episode Resources: Visit buildsomething.club/wpmrr Check out Joe’s website Joe is on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube Leave an Apple podcast review or binge-watch past episodes Send questions to yo@wpmrr.com for the next Q&A pod Visit the WPMRR website What to Listen For: 00:00 Intro 02:16 Welcome back to the pod, Joe! 02:37 On vaccination roll-out 06:20 Staying at home with 2 kids 11:18 Juggling between family life and work schedule 15:13 The challenges of parenthood 19:10 Adjusting to and managing time allocation 23:12 “Hire help before you need it.” - Joe Casabona 26:40 External feedback can sometimes help solve roadblocks 30:23 Growing the podcast and cultivating a Circle community 35:11 Live streaming on Circle? 39:58 Using a community to drive traffic and product sales 45:28 Giving people a reason to stay in your community 51:15 Where to find Joe online!
One thing the global pandemic taught us is we need to have a great online presence. This is especially true if you need to sell online – and let’s face it, we all do now. Well Patrick Garman of Mindsize has the knowledge and experience to help anyone launch and improve their eCommerce store. And he gives us some of his best stuff in today’s episode. Plus, Mindsize went through a bit of a rebrand, and we talk all about it in Build Something More. (more…) View on separate page Transcript Joe Casabona: Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about the Build Something Weekly newsletter. It is weekly, it is free, and you will get tips, tricks, and tools delivered directly to your mailbox. I will recap the current week’s episode and all of the takeaways, I’ll give you a top story, content I wrote, and then some recommendations that I’ve been using that I think you should check out. So it is free, it is a weekly, it’s over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Go ahead and sign up over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Intro: Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 211 of How I Built It, the podcast that asks, “How did you build that?” The podcast offering actionable tech tips for small business owners. That’s the new tagline that I’m working with. Today our sponsors are TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and Mindsize. Mindsize being of note here because my guest today is the CEO of Mindsize. His name is Patrick Garman. Patrick, how are you today? Patrick Garman: I am great today. It’s a little chilly in Texas. It’s not why I moved here. But we’re getting past that. Joe Casabona: Awesome. As somebody who is born and raised in the northeast, what is a little chilly in Texas? Patrick Garman: I think today it’s 60s-ish. It’s been bouncing between 40s and 60s. I grew up in Illinois, so I definitely know what cold is. Joe Casabona: Yeah, you know what cold is. Patrick Garman: And that’s why we don’t live in Illinois anymore. Joe Casabona: Yes. It feels like 34 here right now. I haven’t tried to talk my wife into… because as we record this, we just got dumped on like 10 inches of snow. I’ve been trying to talk her into moving to Texas, as a matter of fact. And she was like, “What about California with all your California friends or whatever?” Or her brothers in the Navy. And I’m like, “We’ll get tax to oblivion in California.” It’s like too expensive out there. Patrick Garman: I can summarize it very quickly for you how to decide where to move. Joe Casabona: All right. Patrick Garman: North half of the country, too cold. So you got to be lower half. Southeast, too humid. Southwest is either California or desert. You don’t want to live in California for taxes and all those reasons. You don’t want to live in a desert. Pretty much leaves Texas. So then within Texas and tech guys usually going to be near bigger cities. So you got DFW, Austin, San Antonio, Houston. Houston still got that humidity. San Antonio is a bit too far south. It gets a bit warmer than I care for. Austin is not much of a travel hub, but it’s still a kind of a great place for visiting. Would never live there. That leaves DFW. Joe Casabona: All right. Patrick Garman: Within DFW, Dallas is too busy. Fort Worth is really calm and relaxed. Now we live in Fort Worth. Joe Casabona: All right. There you have. See, we can end the episode right here. Where do you live? Fort Worth. I am being pulled towards Houston of course because our friends, Chris Lemma and Shawn Hesketh both live there. Yeah. And my favorite cigar shop, Stogies, is there. Stogies, world-class cigars. Patrick Garman: Three hour drive from Fort Worth. I’ll give it 10, 20 years. There’s that bullet trainer. Fast trainer button. So it’s not too far. Austin is right in the middle, too. Joe Casabona: There you go. Three hours not too bad. That’s the drive to my parents’ house, from Near Philadelphia to an hour north of New York City. Patrick Garman: At the end of the day, though, in the winter, Texas is about 20 degrees warmer than Illinois. In the summer, it’s 5 to 10 degrees warmer than Illinois. So during the winter, what that means is when you’re getting 10 inches of snow, it’s chilly here. During the summer, you’re really hot and you’re air conditioning on, in Texas, we’re really hot and air conditioning on. Exact same. Joe Casabona: I like that. Here we go. I’m going to present the evidence again to my wife. The only problem—this will be the last thing and then we’ll talk eCommerce after this—is if I do move to Texas, say I live near Houston, I am a die-hard Yankee fan and I will be in Houston Astros territory. That’ll be like me moving to Boston as far as I’m concerned now. So I don’t know. Patrick Garman: It’s tough choices. Joe Casabona: I know. I know. Baseball. I see you’re a baseball fan. You got the Cubs pennant in the background there. Patrick Garman: I was a Cubs fan before they won the World Series. When they were losers. My family’s all Cubs fans. My mom I think has the little ID card from I think my great grandma or her great grandmother says, “Cubs fan for life.” Joe Casabona: Nice. Patrick Garman: So we’ve all been Cubs. Joe Casabona: Very nice. Another thing I see in the background there is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Patrick Garman: Of course. Joe Casabona: So we were introduced… You brought this up in the pre-show, so you can relay this story, but I remember it. Lindsey Miller, friend of the show, introduced us at Post Status publish, is that right? Patrick Garman: Yeah. I forget which one it was or where we were. It was the big garage space and I was talking to Lindsay. I think I was telling her something about how my wife and I were married in Disney. She’s like, “Have you met Joe?” I knew who Joe was, but she brought me over and introduced us, and here we are. That was a couple of years ago. I made it sound like it was immediate. Joe Casabona: Yeah. Gosh, well, it feels like a lifetime ago now. The big garage one, that must have been at Atlanta, right? Patrick Garman: Yeah. Joe Casabona: Because the first one was cold and in Philadelphia. Actually, it was unseasonably warm for Philadelphia the year of that WordCamp US—the first year of WordCamp US. But not as warm as Atlanta in August. I’m really glad to have you on the show. Of course, Mindsize is a sponsor of the show. Mindsize is a full-service eCommerce shop. We know each other through the WordPress space. I know you do a lot of WooCommerce work, and you’ve worked for a few of our friends in the greater hosting space and things like that. But you don’t just do WooCommerce, right? Patrick Garman: Yeah. We work with pretty much anything that our customers use. So even before Mindsize existed, I had worked on some of the largest WooCommerce and Shopify sites that had existed. And then Mindsize was basically built on top of that technical expertise. It’s very few people can walk into a room and talk eCommerce on multiple platforms that are running nine-figure stores. It’s a rare talent. It’s a rare thing to have any experience in. The people can run large sites, they can run load tests of, yeah, we can theoretically handle this amount of load and traffic. And then there’s actually taking in millions of dollars of sales in an hour. There’s a big difference between theory and real life. So we work on a variety of platforms. They’ve all got their pros and cons. We always look and see what platform is going to fit the need of that site. Joe Casabona: That’s actually a great thing to think about, right? Because as we record this, we are still in the midst of a global pandemic. That global pandemic drove eCommerce growth 77%. Patrick Rowland was telling me 77% growth in 2020. That’s about as much as they expected it to grow in four to six years. Patrick Garman: We saw stores doing, I mean, basically their year’s worth of sales in the first quarter last year. Joe Casabona: Wow. Patrick Garman: I mean, doubling overnight effectively. Especially in the grocery space, I saw a lot of grocery chains that were quickly trying to turn digital and get to curbside. And then there were some shops that would literally turn their entire site off effectively and say we’re working on a new digital experience but they couldn’t take orders online. They had the platform and it just buckled under the stress. And that’s what we’re here to solve. Joe Casabona: That’s super interesting, right? Because actually, you mentioned something that I also learned in my… I did a project called WordPress Year in Review, and I looked at WooCommerce and the eCommerce space in general. It sounds like BOPIS. Is that what it is? Buy online pickup curbside? Patrick Garman: I hadn’t heard of that acronym but I’m sure it exists somewhere. If it didn’t exist before, it exists now. Joe Casabona: Yeah, right. But I heard that that the biggest growth actually happened there. It wasn’t necessarily lots of people trying to fulfill and ship orders online. It was like people selling their wares and then people coming to pick it up. Patrick Garman: That was true of stores big and small. Grocery was really picking up in the beginning and then other brick and mortar stores were adding it. I can remember vividly black Friday, Saturday right after Cyber Monday, my MacBook actually died right before that. So I needed a laptop to work. I placed an order on Best Buy. It was a deal because it was right. But I drove to Best Buy to pick it up, which Best Buy previously I don’t think they had pick up in their parking lot, but then they had it. I mean, it’s DFW sales all over. You imagine the lines that existed in the stores previously. The line was now outside. There was an hour wait to get curbside pickup at Best Buy. Joe Casabona: Oh, gosh. Patrick Garman: There were parking spots numbered up to around 100. So I found a parking spot in their parking and then we just sat there and waited for an hour for someone to bring our laptop out. The sales were still happening. And because of COVID, they were happening in the parking lot and people bringing stuff out. So logistics completely changed for all these stores. And I think they expected some of it since they did have parking spots numbered to the 90s and I think a hundreds but I wasn’t expecting that at all. It’s crazy. Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. What were some of the things that you and your… Well, first of all, Mindsize, we were talking about – what? 11-ish people? Patrick Garman: Yeah, including myself, 11 people. And only two people in that are nontechnical, non-developers. The rest of the company, including myself, are developers actively working on our client sites. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Restrict Content Pro. 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The plugin has worked extremely well for me and I was able to get memberships up and running very quickly. Right now, they are offering a rare discount for how I built it listeners only: 20% off your purchase when you use RCPHOWIBUILTIT at checkout. That’s RCPHOWIBUILTIT, all one word. If you want to learn more about Restrict Content Pro and start making money with your own membership site today, head on over to howibuilt.it/rcp. That’s howibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks to Restrict Content Pro for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: What did you guys see going into the pandemic? Was it a lot of businesses they’re like, “Oh man, I need to set up a website”? Or was it more like, “I’m online and I need to do something better because my logistics has completely changed.” Patrick Garman: We focused a lot more on the digital for businesses. So they usually had a website and either had eCommerce or needed eCommerce added. We helped a lot with that transition and bringing people to digital and selling online where they weren’t before. One of the biggest things I learned though from it all, in a lot of meetings with people, I would almost sound like the crazy, paranoid person. Like, “We’re going to build this for scaling even though we’re probably not going to scale anytime soon. We’re going to build it the right way. You don’t need 20 web servers, but we’re going to build it to at least run on two so that if you ever need it, it’s there. We’re going to build it in a specific way where it’s scalable. We’re not going to take the shortcuts.” We lost some work because of it, because we wanted to take what we believed is the right path. When COVID really hit and things really started blowing up, the sites that we were working on and built in that way, we didn’t have to go back and make it scalable, because it already was. We didn’t have to have that transition from “Okay, we built the site for x scale, now we’re at 3x. How do we go make it work?” We instead took all our efforts with our clients and put them into how to better serve their customers. Instead of figuring out how to sell online, we figured out how to better serve their customers. We worked with clients to build programs for people to better get their grocery and other items from the curbside. Hotlines that people who normally wouldn’t order online, seniors, for example, being able to call a phone line and place their order and then pick it up at the store in the parking lot. Instead of having to have that 70-year-old person learn how to order online, they just talk to someone on the phone and place their order. So by building it right, one, it was extremely validating because now I’m not the crazy person, I’m the person who just planned right. But we were better able to help people. And as a company, and as we’ve been changing what Mindsize is and what we do, that’s the thing I’m looking to get out of Mindsize. I [unintelligible 00:15:13] a CEO now. We want to help people. We want to make people’s lives better, make the world a better place. And when I talk to clients and I hear the stories of their customers, of the work that we’re doing impacting their lives, it makes everything worthwhile. Joe Casabona: That’s truly fantastic. And that validation is always important. I mean, I’m a developer, too, right? Not quite at the scale that you do work. I do different kinds of development work. But I think about stuff like that, too. Even being overly paranoid, but not really. Even we were going to get together with some friends and I was like, “I don’t know if we should, blah. blah, blah, pandemic.” And it turns out that one of their moms got COVID. And I’m like, “I feel totally validated now.” It’s nice to not actually be the crazy person. But that’s great. When it comes to kind of scaling, how much of that is coding versus the server’s stack? Can I set up a Shopify site and understand that they’re set up to scale so that I don’t get slammed if I’m getting like a thousand orders a minute or something? Maybe a thousand orders a minute is not a lot. Patrick Garman: It’s different depending on the platform. So Shopify, scalability is usually handled for you. I’ve worked on sites where a single flash sale could bring more volume to the entire platform than their entire platform had in a previous Black Friday sale. I mean, a single site being able to handle that level of traffic broke stuff at the time. However, they took all their learnings there of caching in their database, sharding everything, and put it at the core platform level, where every store, in theory, should be able to handle that level of traffic immediately and succeed. So for Shopify, scalability is not your problem. What your problem is, is that it’s very Apple versus Android when you look at Shopify versus WooCommerce. Shopify is polished. They are very opinionated. “This is how you sell this is how you’re going to do things.” And if you fit that model, you’re going to have the easiest time in the world selling. They integrate with pretty much everything because they’re so big. They’re going to get those integrations first. I think they were the first platform to have shopping on Instagram. Joe Casabona: Oh, wow. Patrick Garman: As a customer, I use shop pay all the time. I go to an eCommerce site I’ve never been to before I see the shop pay button, I click it, I type in my email, and away I go. I just paid securely. I didn’t have to enter anything else after that. WooCommerce, if you don’t fit the mold, you need something custom. You need that Android experience of being able to change anything and everything. But you have to think a bit more carefully about what you’re doing. And it’s less the server stack and it’s less… I mean, it is the code, but it’s knowing how to architect things. To be honest, when we run servers for our clients, it is pretty much Vanilla. We like AWS server Google. But any other one, we use the Vanilla services they have. Very little customization. And the reason for that is it works. I’ve proven it works at very high scale. But then also, if our entire team, the Mindsize team has a trip and we’re all on a bus and that bus crashes and we’re no longer here, Vanilla means that anyone can pick it up that knows AWS and continue serving their customer. So complexity for the sake of milliseconds doesn’t actually gain you too much because you still have to pay for that in the back end of, “Okay, how do we actually support this?” It’s 3am, our server is down. Do we call the one person in the world who actually knows how to fix it? Or do we call any sysadmin who can come in and fix that, and then it’ll set up? But really it’s summarized in two things in WooCommerce: database reads and database writes. Write less to your database, read less from your database and your site’s going to scale. Joe Casabona: I love that. I love that philosophy. The server philosophy, I should say. I mean, naturally, the more static you can make your site, will say, the faster it’s going to be. You’re just serving up. It’s almost like you’re serving up flat files, right? Patrick Garman: Yeah. Joe Casabona: If you do it right. But the servers are Vanilla. That reminds me of a conversation I had early on in this show with Pippin Williamson, who I asked him what his development setup was like. And this was at a time where everybody was like grunting or golfing or whatever in Node JS ran everything or whatever. I didn’t see why people were doing it that way. And then Pippin really validated me. And Patrick, you just validated me more. He said, “If my laptop falls into a lake, I want to buy a new one and be up and running in less than an hour.” And if you like grunt and gulp everything, like it’s going to take forever. You got to install Homebrew and then figure things out and then update or whatever. Like whatever needs to happen to make all that magic stuff work. So I think you’re absolutely right. Patrick Garman: When my laptop died actually and I bought that new laptop, I had to do the exact same thing. I have the same exact philosophy there. Git clone, run a few commands, import the database, I’m up and running. I mean, Laravel Valet does everything I need. Joe Casabona: That’s fantastic. Yeah, awesome. You’ve mentioned Laravel. Maybe in Build Something More, the members-only show, we can talk about Laravel, if the developers and the nerds want to hang out. So we’ve been talking for a while and we haven’t… I mean, we’ve gotten into kind of your experience a bit. For a lot of the people who are not developers who are listening, what should they look for? Let’s say in two situations. They don’t have an eCommerce shop and they want one, or they have an eCommerce shop and they want to improve it. Let’s look at those two people. Let’s start with I don’t have an eCommerce shop, what do I look for if I want to start one? Patrick Garman: I speak a lot in analogies. It makes it very easy to talk to my clients and get complex scenarios described them in a way they understand. So I’ll use one here too. Building your eCommerce shop is not like buying a car. When you buy your car, if you don’t get that feature in the beginning, when you first buy it, you’re probably not going to get it later. Unless you own a Tesla and everything’s, you know, paywall and every feature. If you don’t have air conditioning when you buy your car, you’re not going to have it later. If you don’t have leather seats now, you’re not going to get it later. Your eCommerce site or any WordPress site, or pretty much any site at all is not that. It’s something you can gradually build on. So we talked to a lot of people who want a site that’s everything in the kitchen sink, every feature possible, single sign on, have 20 different social networks. You’re doing two things there. One, you’re adding a whole lot of bloat to your site. It’s just not going to help. And two, you’re losing focus of what you’re actually trying to do by adding so many bells and whistles. Just focus on what your business is, what’s the minimum that you can do to get this out and launch it. And then continue to make data-driven decisions based on what you add next. So that will ultimately give you a faster site because there’s less code and then also you’re going to have a cheaper build in upfront. You don’t have to pay for 50 features if you can get by with three. And then you can get live faster, start making money faster, if it’s eCommerce, at least. And then use that to continually reinvest in the business, either in the business itself or the digital side of it. But if you already have a site, whether you added 50 bells and whistles or not, the simplest thing you could do, whether you’re a developer or not, is install Query Monitor. Just install Query monitor, browse around your site. Does it turn colors on you? Is it turning orange? Is it turning red? I think there’s like five different colors it can turn. If it’s turning a color in your admin bar, something’s wrong. If it’s red, there’s errors. If it’s orange, slow queries. So first, see if it’s turning colors. If it is, it’ll tell you why, and then you’ll probably need to talk to developer about fixing it. If it’s just slow and not turning colors, look at the numbers at the very top. How many queries are there? How much time is it taking to run? On average, if your page is using over 100 database queries to build itself, find a way to get less. If your homepage takes more than 50 to 70 queries, get that number down. And just think of everything exponentially. It’s not if one user has a hundred queries to build a page. It’s if a hundred users or a thousand users get to it. If you can knock 20% of your queries off, that exponential savings is what will keep your site online when there’s a global pandemic and now you have five times the traffic. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by TextExpander. With TextExpander, you can save time by converting any text you type into keyboard shortcuts called snippets. Say goodbye to repetitive text entry, spelling and message errors, and trying to remember the right thing to say. With TextExpander, you can say the right thing in just a few keystrokes. Better than copy and paste, better than scripts and templates, TextExpander snippets allow you to maximize your time by getting rid of the repetitive things you type while still customizing and personalizing your messages. 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Plus, they’re providing resources and blog posts to help you make the most of their tool and be productive. TextExpander is available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. If you’ve been curious about trying TextExpander or simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visit textexpander.com/podcast and let them know that I sent you. Joe Casabona: First of all, great analogy. I think it’s really important. Because you hear it all the time, right? “I want this, this, this, and this.” “All right, let’s just start with the first thing that you absolutely need. We’re just going to make it so that you can accept payments online.” When I recommend podcasting strategy to people who have very little money to spend, they probably don’t want that monthly hosting bill, I’ll usually say something like, “Start on Anchor. Have a plan to get off of Anchor fast.” I mean, just because it’s on your platform, right? And if the product is free, then you’re the product or whatever. Is that a reasonable path to take with eCommerce too? Like start on something that’s cheaper and easier to spin up like Shopify or whatever, their Squarespace stores—I don’t really know the pricing off the top of my head—and then move to WooCommerce. Do you think that’s reasonable? Or should we just start on WooCommerce because the… non-technical debt, but the migration path is a bigger pain in the neck. Patrick Garman: It depends on where you’re heading. If you are going to have a site and you know you’re going to have subscriptions in it but you don’t want to start with subscriptions out of the gate, I wouldn’t start on Shopify first because you will have to move off to get a good experience. Shopify and subscription sites, you can do it. If you want to have two completely different checkouts and have a customer that has to have two different wallets of cards and they can’t share them, that’s a terrible experience. If you just want to get up online, cost wise, it’s probably negligible, about the cost, to build a site on one platform or the other depending on what you’re doing. I mean, small sites, if you’re just throwing up a site, I’m sure you can find the nickels and dimes that you can compare back and forth. Joe Casabona: Sure. Patrick Garman: For a reasonable size business, something that is large enough that it can be your sole income, at the end of the day, it’s not going to make that much difference. Shopify, you’re going to pay a monthly fee, but you don’t have to pay hosting on WooCommerce. WooCommerce, you have to pay more upfront for plugins. There’s usually an annual fee for support and updates. Shopify is lower monthly because you have to pay monthly, but then it ends up being the same. I think it actually ends up being more expensive on Shopify. I did a comparison. If you go back far enough in my Twitter feed, I did that comparison to someone on Twitter. And I think it ended up being Shopify was like 30% more expensive for a subscription site. But start wherever you can. If you can get a site up on any platform, start on the one you think you’re going to end up long term, then you don’t have to worry about replatforming later. But if you can get up now on Shopify and will have to move later, everything’s exponential no matter what we’re doing. The sales you start now, just like your savings account will continue to build on each other and you’ll get more word of mouth, more marketing. Even SEO, you’ll have more age with your business. Start now. Start getting sales in the door so then later you can get even more sales. Any sales is better than no sales. Joe Casabona: Any sales is better than no sales. That’s perfect. You mentioned subscription specifically. But even if you’re switching let’s say subscription plugins or membership plugins, you still might run into the issue of having to migrate users, right? Like if they’ve accepted auto payments monthly through one plug in and then you switch plugins, they’re going to have to redo that anyway in some cases, right? Unless maybe you use Stripe for everybody. Patrick Garman: It is tricky. There’s a migration no matter what. Replatforming costs generally don’t benefit your customers much. It’s going to cost a fair bit for you to do it. Customers aren’t even going to care to notice. Sure, maybe it’s a slicker interface, your website is a little bit faster. They’re already paying you they don’t care. Avoid replatforming if you can, but not at the expense of just not even starting your business. Joe Casabona: Right. Again, I think that’s great. I always wonder… this is a small tangent, before we get into, well, I guess what’s going to be like the tail end of this conversation, because we’ve been talking for a while. I always was kind of annoyed that WooCommerce memberships and WooCommerce subscriptions were two different plugins because it was double the cost for me. But then LearnDash, which is my online course platform, LMS rolled out memberships as part of the plugin and I could dump WooCommerce memberships because the only reason I was using WooCommerce memberships was to create access to all of my courses, which I needed custom code for anyway. So I was able to replatform the membership part without messing up my monthly subscribers, because WooCommerce subscriptions was still at the root of that. I don’t know that I worded that right. Basically, I was able to replatform part of it because the subscriptions was decoupled from the memberships. Patrick Garman: In this case, you couldn’t really plan ahead for that because they came out with a feature. But any planning you can do at the beginning of what gives you the best long-term roadmap and the most options will usually work out better in your favor. We do the same with data. When we’re building a large site, we have a lot of data involved. How do we plan this? Your data is going to grow exponentially. Do you need 20 metas to be saved on an order every single order to do these features that you don’t even know if you’re going to do? Then you think about the exponential side of it 20 metas per order times 1,000 orders a day times however many days you’re doing sales. Your database now is growing exponentially, and all your other costs continue to rise. So we always try and look at the big picture. We generally don’t do individual tasks work for clients because that one little feature, if you’re not thinking about the big picture, you’re probably going to miss something. We had that experience recently with a client where they asked for a feature and we built something that achieved it. But we built it in a very specific way that ultimately gives them even more flexibility, more abilities in their site. And they actually asked a question in a call, like, why did you choose to do it this way? It’s a better result but we didn’t ask for this yet you gave us something that serves it and more. And that’s because we’ve been working with them for months, so we know where they’re headed and what the goals are. And we can take all that into account. Joe Casabona: I think that’s great. You’ve mentioned a couple of times now planning for the future is so important. I tell people that I was always most successful at selling my security package to clients after they had some incident. Like they deleted their site accidentally or whatever and I happen to have like an early backup. Or their site got hacked. And then they saw the value in paying me to make sure it didn’t happen again. But planning on the front end, like you said, it’s insanely important not just for the unknown the kind of known unknowns or whatever. But you were able to spend your time servicing your clients, customers better because you took the right moves early on, you made the right investments. It is a bit easier for us compared to the typical WordPress agency. If you think back five years ago or even further, they’re selling sites to businesses. And you’re always going to have that executive in the boardroom of, you know, we’ve been selling in our stores for 50 years. Why do we need a website now? The internet’s fad, it’s going to go away. So why are we building a website? For us, in the eCommerce side, we can sit there and say, “You know, we did this work. Here’s the data to show that that actually increased your sales by Y percent, plus that other work we did that increased it Z percent.” So you can show the value of the work being done. Whereas a landing page or a blog is harder to do that. There’s a lot easier calculations for ROI on eCommerce than there is before. So we are benefiting a bit from that. And we can show in a project or two, here’s the ROI of the work we’ve done. So we can prove it and get more work going forward. I’ll gladly take that as my benefit over trying to sell normal sites, which I say as we’re trying to get into selling more normal sites. We’re known for eCommerce and 90% of our work is people saying, “I’ve got a site and it’s slow. Patrick, please save me.” What I keep telling people is if you build it right the first time you don’t have to be saved. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Mindsize. Look, it’s super important for stores to have an online presence these days. If customers can’t buy online, they might not buy at all. And while doing eCommerce fast has gotten easier, doing eCommerce right still has its considerable challenges. That’s where Mindsize comes in. They are a full service digital agency that focuses on WordPress and WooCommerce development. But that’s not all. They work with Shopify, big commerce, and more. And they’ll work with you to create the perfect strategy and website for your business. Already have an eCommerce site and want to make sure it’s up and running in tip-top shape? Their flat-rate site audit is exactly what you need. Over the course of two weeks, they’ll dive into every aspect of your site and deliver a prioritized list of actionable recommendations to make your site even better. That means more sales and engagement for you and your store. Or if you’re a freelancer or agency who feels in over your head or with an eCommerce build, their agency support plan is built specifically for you. There were a few times in my career where I really could have used that. They’ll take a high stress situation and help you relax while still delivering for your client. So check out Mindsize over at mindsize.com today. They will help you make more money, whether you need an eCommerce store, whether you need to improve your current eCommerce store, or if you build eCommerce stores for others. That’s mindsize.com. Thanks so much to Mindsize for supporting the show. Joe Casabona: Before we wrap up here, I do want to ask you about a couple of interesting services that you offer, and I’m wondering how you put them together. So this is like where the title question could be, right? How did you build it? One is the site audit, which is a two-week process where you audit an eCommerce site. And the other is kind of the white label agency service. So let’s talk about the site audit first. How did you kind of come up with that and what’s the process for it? Patrick Garman: Sure. So we’ve been doing site audits, basically, since the beginning of Mindsize. It’s a process we’ve refined over the years. It’s a process I had before Mindsize existed of how to look at a site and really drill down at the high level what we’re trying to solve. In that two weeks, it’s not two weeks of hardcore diving into code, looking at every single thing. It’s not a line for line review with a site. It’s looking at the analytics, looking at the data, looking at where the site is, where they want to take it, and determining what issues we see for one at the high level. We’re not going to find every single security flaw, and that’s not what we’re looking for. If you were to look at a chart of all the issues on a site, we’re looking for the mountain peaks. We’re looking for the big issues that we can solve, get those out of the way. You’re going to find more afterwards. But we look to beat up the site and make it more scalable as a business and as a website. If we do that right, at the end of the two weeks, we’re going to deliver a report that’s going to say, “Here’s all our findings. Here’s what we recommend.” And every report also includes, you know, “Here’s our prioritized list. If this were our business, this is the order in which we would solve things in the timeline we would solve them.” And usually, it’s “in this month, we do this, in the next three months, six months, twelve months.” However long we need to go out, depending on how many issues there are. So we’ll list it out. Of course, we’re a business. At the very end, it’s going to say, “We also recommend a retainer of this size. This is how we can achieve everything we just said in the timeline we just said.” I tell everyone that we’re going to do that at the beginning so they’re not surprised. But this audit you can take anywhere. It’s a flat rate. It’s two weeks. We’ll dive into your site, we’ll figure out what’s wrong, and tell you how to make it better. And then we can do it. We’ve worked with companies who had their own internal development teams, and we assisted them to knock out the work. And others have just taken it straight to their own development teams. Joe Casabona: I mean, that makes sense for situations like that. It’s like a discovery phase, right? Well, a paid discovery phase, where I will tell you everything that you need to do. “Here’s your whole plan. I can do it, because I just looked at the site, and I know how I’m going to do it. Or you could take it to another site, another agency who will do it may be cheaper or differently, or you’ve worked with them before.” It almost sounds like this is like the car inspection, right? Where you’re not going to fix like the stains on the seats or whatever. But if I need new brakes and rotors, that’s the thing that your site audit will uncover and you’ll mention in the report. Patrick Garman: Exactly, yeah. And we have found things from API’s that didn’t need to exist. The absolute worst offender was…I think, as developers, sometimes we get specs that had buzzwords in them. And I think this one included REST API. So they found a way to use the REST API. But the way they did it, it needed to talk to an external database. So they made a REST API endpoint that served database credentials that were already hard coded into the site. The REST API endpoint had no authentication. So you could just get it for free. Joe Casabona: Wow. Patrick Garman: And then code within the site. I’m pretty sure it’s in the same exact plugin actually would make a HTTP call to the REST API endpoint, which then bootstrap the site again to then get the database credentials to then put them into a SQL query. Joe Casabona: Oh, my gosh. Patrick Garman: We find some crazy stuff sometimes. We obviously fix that. We find security issues. Sometimes we flag it right away. We don’t wait for the end of the two weeks. Joe Casabona: That’s what I was going to ask you. Do you like find it, and you are like, “Put it in the report.” Or you were like, “Uh, guys, this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” Patrick Garman: We found a few cases like that where we had actually reached out… Usually, we start the audit and we ask questions along the way. But we try not to get too much bias. And at the end of the audit, we do a one-hour call just going over everything with the store owner. But in those cases, we reach out, we let them know. We’ll usually have some sort of fix ready or a recommended fix. So we do sometimes find the granular, but we’re usually not looking for it. Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That’s story reminded me of a site that I was working on for some people I worked for at some point, where they were taking donations and the credit card information was stored in a plain text file on the server. I immediately brought it to the manager and I was like, “This is bad for a lot of reasons, but number one is you’re violating… this is not PCI compliant. This is a data security issue. This is really bad.” Patrick Garman: Unfortunately, I think we’ve all got stories like that. We’ve run into it too. I’ve been running into those as long as I’ve been working on WooCommerce, which is starting around like version 1.1. Joe Casabona: Wow. It’s just like crazy. Because the first time a client brought that to me, I was still in college. They said that they were like raffling off a house, like a million-dollar home, and PayPal view that as gambling, so we couldn’t use PayPal. So they’re like, “Well, why don’t we just save the credit card information then we could process it on our end on our machine.” And I’m like, “You can’t do that. We’re not allowed to do that. It’s bad. People’s credit cards will get stolen.” I knew that as a college kid. I just don’t understand how it gets to a point where, I mean, I guess it’s just like my nephew can make a site and he’s just going to do whatever I tell him to do. Patrick Garman: Is that the guy I mentioned or referred to before, the executive in the boardroom that thinks the internet is a fad, yeah, let’s just get the credit cards, we’ll run them. Joe Casabona: That’s a good point actually. The CEO of that company is the person who made that recommendation. Thankfully for them and me, I was like, “We can’t do that.” Which brings me to your next service, the White Label eCommerce. Because that project, to use an Italian term, gave me agita. Once I saw that it was going sideways, it made me actually sick to my stomach. It was like the highest stakes site I’d ever worked on, and I didn’t have like the breadth of experience I thought I needed. I really could have probably used your white label service. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that. Patrick Garman: I don’t remember where I first heard this phrase, but experience is what you needed when you didn’t have it. I’ve talked to a number of site owners, agency owners, I’ve talked to a lot of people in the eCommerce space. Mindsize, we’re 11 people. We’re not a tiny company but we’re not a huge company. We consider ourselves experts on the work we’re doing. So we charge accordingly. We’re not the cheapest, we’re not the most expensive either. But there’s a lot of work that other people can do with some simple guidance. Something where you can build it. Joe, you’ve got development skills. If I told you how to build something, you could build it. You just need the blueprint for how to build it, which you don’t have. As a company and me personally, I try and give back a lot to the community. My entire career is built on the community effectively. I got a lot of information from it. I’m the developer I am today with a lot of the code reuse I got previously. So I try and get back to the community. I try and do a lot of talks just sharing information. But at the end of the day, there’s only so much I can share. Our agency support plan, though, it’s $499 a month and basically gets you direct access to the Mindsize architects. So in our projects, we have the project manager, we have an architect and a project lead and then the developers on it. So an architect would be someone like myself. I can take the business needs and turn it into the architectural plans for a project or a task that we’re doing. Once we have that spec, we can then work with the project manager and project lead to turn it into what the tasks are and then have the developers do it. So with this plan, $500 bucks a month, you get five support hours with our architects. You could use those for asking, “Hey, I need to build this plugin. How do I make sure it’s scalable?” It could be “what kind of hosting should I look for this type of site?” One of the first questions I ask when we’re hiring and I’m in second interviews is, “What is your recommended hosting.” And for 90% of people in our interviews, it’s usually a shared hosting. And there’s different levels. I get all the way from Bluehost, to GoDaddy, to Siteground, one on one, all the big names that popped up. That goes to show you even people who are getting to our second interviews of senior developers may not know what the best hosting for a different type of site is. And our architects do. So, five hours a month, you can ask quite a few questions. If you were to ask me, What do I do to find out how the site is slow, and I tell you, “Install Query Monitor, look for pretty colors,” we’re going to have that conversation in five to 15 minutes. So you get that benefit of being able to ask questions to people you trust will get an answer to you within a day, you know, business days. I think, for most people will get a Slack channel set up to use. There’s quick and easy access. But what I’ve learned the most from other business owners and agency owners is we have nowhere to turn for this stuff. We’ll try slack, we’ll try different communities, we’ll try online. And I wish I could just have these questions. $500, for some people, it’s too expensive. For small mom-and-pop shops, they’re probably not going to pay $500 for support. But for a decent-sized agency that just needs this extra level of support, it seems like the right price point. And on top of that, I actually saw recently in some of the Facebook groups I’m in with different smaller freelancers and agency owners, how do you take vacation if you’re solo? Who do you give your clients off to? With our agency support plan, we also have an opportunity for getting our development hours at a discounted rate. So if you need to just have us do some work for you either for a large project or for someone who just wants someone to watch the ship while they’re away and having a vacation, they deserve to finally take, our teams available to help with that too. So we think we’re experts in what we do and we’re trying to share that in a way that benefits everyone involved—as you’re probably not going to ask the same question multiple times. So once we answer something for you, you’re going to learn from that, continue to know it, it will better your business as well. Joe Casabona: I think that’s great. There’s two points I want to just kind of drive home here. $500 a month you say might seem expensive to maybe freelancers or small mom and pop shops. But if you can sell an eCommerce site, right… I mean, I don’t want to anchor a price to an eCommerce site, but when people come to me, I say an eCommerce site sell at $10,000 for me to do the basics. Whatever, right? One guy came to me and needed like 10,000 products, medical products on the site. And I was like, “That’s going to be $30,000.” He’s like, “That’s expensive.” And I’m like, “Like, “It is $3 per product. $3 per product is what I’m charging you.” But if you sell on eCommerce site, you’re probably selling it where you can add in that extra 500 bucks a month to get access to deliver an even better site. The value that you are going to add by paying that 500 bucks is going to be much more than 500 bucks to the client. Patrick Garman: And if you think of the hourly rate, someone who’s going to be interested in this and is probably charging, it’s going to be somewhere…I’m assuming, $50 to $75 to like $100 $125 an hour. $500 monthly, that’s an hour to a week extra. If we can answer questions for you that can get you back an hour or two a week to better serve your own clients and immediately has ROI. Joe Casabona: Right, exactly. Spend that hour, go on a podcast. That’s a little bit of marketing to maybe get more clients, right? Patrick Garman: That’s what I’m doing. Joe Casabona: Yeah, exactly. The other thing is you mentioned taking vacation time and getting people to cover for you. I think this is another important thing that it’s easy for solo shops to overlook. But find somebody like a friend or Mindsize. When I went on my honeymoon, two weeks in Italy did not even take my laptop. I barely had internet. I asked my friend Matt Pritchett, Fort Worth natives, right? I think he’s living in Tennessee now. I’m sorry, Matt, you’ve moved a lot and I’ve lost track. But I asked him, I’m like, “Hey, man, I’ll just forward my emails to you. If there’s a problem with one of my clients’ sites, do the work, “I’ll pay you when I get home.” There were shocker there were no insane emergencies. So I think it’s really important. It’s maybe hard for some people but take that time. Take that time to yourself. Patrick Garman: We’re all working too hard. I mean, between the work I was doing prior to Mindsize, and then starting an agency, and then also just getting through a pandemic, I mean, as a business—not all businesses were as fortunate as we were to survive even in 2020—but I took my first vacation where I wasn’t working in 10 years last year. Joe Casabona: Wow. Patrick Garman: I spent a week. I did have my laptop on me. So I didn’t go that far. I’m too paranoid to not bring it with, but I trusted the team we have. Over the course of 2020, we put a lot of processes and policies in place that enabled me to finally take a vacation. I mean, I had taken trips to Disney and I was sitting in our resort room working. Joe Casabona: I worked from the Disney Vacation Club members lounge in Epcot one day. I had my laptop with me. It was kind of planned. It was like a half vacation day but I have my laptop with me. I’ll tell you. I mean, working at Disney World makes working a little less bad, but I’d still rather be. Patrick Garman: Yeah. It’s better not to. But walking down Main Street with my phone out on slack trying to tell someone how to reboot a server, that’s not what I should be doing on Main Street. Joe Casabona: Amazing. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. I do need to ask you my favorite question, which is, do you have any trade secrets for us? Patrick Garman: I’ve kind of given them away a little bit. But at the end of the day, for an eCommerce site or any site, keep it simple. I mean, that’s number one. Simplicity is going to make everything better. I run into that every week where someone’s trying to overthink a problem or clients building content had a scenario yesterday. One of our clients building content on a page and the page builders alert block that was there, when you click “dismiss,” it would throw the page out of whack a bit. So I have a question, “Do you need it dismissable?” “No. Okay, so don’t make a dismissable. It’s simpler content, and it’s not going to break.” We could spend five hours figuring out why the “dismiss” button is making the content go out of whack. But we have a problem now, so we solve it now with a simple solution. And number two is just look at your database queries. If you have an eCommerce site and it’s on WooCommerce, install Query Monitor. It’s free. It’s not that hard to use. How many queries are you running? How much can you get rid of? The less you do by keeping it simple, your site’s going to go farther, and be faster. Joe Casabona: Love it. And Query Monitor is fantastic. I think Brian Richards, friend of the show, recommended that plug in to me when I was having some issue. Well, this has been fantastic. What we haven’t touched on, which we’ll touch on in Build Something More, is you recently went through a rebrand and I would love to hear more about that because I just signed up as we record this for Design Pickle. So now I have a graphic designer who I love his work. I’m just so excited to have all of the things that I designed which is basically just like a font redesigned from a real person, a real graphic designer. So excited to talk about that in Build Something More. But first, Patrick, where can people find you? Patrick Garman: I’m usually on Twitter. My personal tag is @pmgarman. I’m not AGPS. You can also find Mindsize there @Mindsizeme, and then my own website Pmgarman.me and mindsize.com. Joe Casabona: All right. I will have links to those and everything we talked about in the show notes over at howibuilt.it/211. If you want to catch my discussion with Patrick on the rebrand and Build Something More, and you are not yet a member, you can sign up over at buildsomething.club. Thanks so much to our sponsors for this episode: TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and of course Mindsize. Thanks so much for listening. Patrick, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Patrick Garman: Yeah, no problem. Happy to be here. Joe Casabona: And until next time, get out there and build something. Sponsored by:Mindsize: Your WooCommerce Partner Restrict Content Pro: Launch your membership site TextExpander: Get 20% off your first year by visiting the this link. Source
Have you ever wondered why your product or service didn’t get much traction on social media even though you post all the time? According to Michelle Knight, it’s all about your personal brand (or lack thereof). Maybe you’ve heard the term before, but what does “personal brand” really mean? Luckily, Michelle has us covered! She’ll tell us all about why you need a personal brand and how to craft one. In Build Something More, we talk Star Wars in the pre-show and social media dos/don’ts, traveling, and schooling in the post-show. This has been one of my favorite conversations so far this year! (more…) View on separate page Transcript Joe:Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about theBuild Something Weeklynewsletter. It is weekly, it is free, and you will get tips, tricks, and tools delivered directly to your mailbox. I will recap the current week’s episode and all of the takeaways, I’ll give you a top story, content I wrote, and then some recommendations that I’ve been using that I think you should check out. So it is free, it is a weekly, it’s over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Go ahead and sign up over athowibuilt.it/subscribe. Intro:Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 210 of How I Built It, the podcast that asks, How did you build that? Today’s sponsors areMindsize,Restrict Content Pro, andTextExpander, who you will be hearing about later on in the show. Now, if you are aBuild Something Clubmember, if you’re subscribed to Build Something More but you happen to be picking up the normal feed, definitely get the Build Something More feed because we, Michelle and I, had a fantastic pre-show conversation, which is a show first. I’m sending out the pre-show because it was really good. Speaking of, my guest is Michelle Knight. She is the personal branding and marketing strategist over atBrandmerry. Michelle, how are you today? Michelle Knight:Oh, great. Thanks for having me. Loved our little pre-show chat. Joe: Likewise. Likewise. Thanks for joining me on the show here. Thanks for joining us. It was a lot of fun and nerd culture and WandaVision. First of all, if you’re not watching WandaVision, you should watch WandaVision. I guess by the time this comes out, we will actually be behind. So, if you haven’t seen it, spoiler alert. But if you’re all caught up, you know, don’t tell past us what happened. That’s what we’re talking about today. We’re talking today about how to market your business without relying on social media, which I’m really excited about. I was looking at your website, again, personal branding consultant. I think this is a really good topic to talk about because I feel like I was telling my students about this like 10 years ago. I was teaching at the college level, college freshmen a computer literacy course, and I’m like, “You need to have a personal brand.” And they’re like, “Who cares?” But now fast forward to 2021, I feel like that’s even more important. So before we dive into the kind of social media stuff, I suspect having a strong personal brand will help with that. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about what you do there? Michelle Knight:Yeah, absolutely. I founded my companyBrandmerryright after my son was born in 2016 out of just the need to be home, to just not want to commute to work anymore. I had a background in PR, background in communications and I dove headfirst into creating my online business with really kind of wearing this coach consultant hat. I struggled a lot. I had no idea what I was doing. I felt like I was mimicking everybody else. I spent months creating a website that then didn’t look like or sound like me, which is highly relatable to a lot of people. About nine months into it, when I was planning on leaving my nine to five, I was like, “Something needs to shift.” So I started to do more and more research outside as well as some internal research to figure out who I was and what I really wanted to build a brand around. And everything really started to shift for me at that point in time. I started to show up in a different way, I started to really express myself, I did more live videos and I started to share more stories. And instantly, I saw connections start to happen. The same people who had been in my community for months were buying from me suddenly. And I didn’t change the offer. All I did was change how I was showing up and creating a brand that was a representation of that. So that’s what I really fell in love with personal branding and storytelling, and I spent, the next three or four years really focusing on that aspect, teaching entrepreneurs specifically how to figure out, number one, who they are and how they want to show up online and then creating a brand and a product suite that’s in alignment with that mission. And then I’ve moved in the last couple of years to focus on, now, how do we market that? Because you realize really quickly that you can have an amazing personal brand, you can have an amazing product, but if you don’t know how to effectively market it, then nobody else is going to know about it. Joe:I love that. And it’s so funny that you mentioned that because I feel like between the pre-show and this you must have been listening into the solo episode I recorded right before this, which wasEpisode 205, where I talked about my failed Patreon experiment. It’s the same thing. I started this podcast in 2016. I went self-employed in 2017 after my daughter was born, and I thought, “I need to launch memberships. I need to launch a membership for my podcast.” And I just copied everyone else’s benefits, everyone else’s levels. And I’m like, “How come no one’s buying?” And then I came to realize I’m just promising a bunch of stuff that I don’t even know if I can deliver or not. So I took that down, and I’ve changed directions. Well, now people are actually buying my membership because it reflects me and what I can offer. So I think that’s fantastic. Michelle Knight:Well, I tell people all the time that people don’t buy the product or the service, there’s a million products and services that are exactly the same across the board. If people really just focused on that, then they would just buy the first thing that they see. But it’s about that connection, it’s about that relationship. And that’s why personal branding is so important. Joe:Yeah, absolutely. As people listen to this, I know that’s something I struggled with early on when I was freelancing and making websites for people was, how do I write my copy? Do I write “I”? Do I write “we”? Who is this? Is it the royal we? So maybe we can start there? How you present yourself, as you said, is so integral to connecting with customers, with selling more products and services? I or we? Michelle Knight:I think it depends. I think when you’re starting a business and you’re the sole CEO and face of that business, I always recommend going with “I”. Primarily because, who is the “we”? You and your imaginary team, probably not in the beginning. You’re the decision-maker at that point in time. The “I” allows for more of that personal connection. If you’re working with a company, I think you go back and forth. If we’re speaking on behalf of the company, I have a background in nonprofit management, if you’re speaking on behalf of the nonprofit and the work that they do, it’s a “we”. But if your CEO is stepping out and saying something, sharing their story, sharing what they’re doing, it’s an “I”. And then I guess as your business evolves, and I see this a lot, especially as someone who has added more team members and is moving more into a company role, I go back and forth between the two. If it’s me, I’m showing up, I’m sharing a story, I’m focusing on connecting, I’m the one telling the story. But if I’m talking about the team as a whole and we made this decision, then I can share that. So right out of the gate, I say default to “I”. As you grow, incorporate the “we.” Joe:I think that’s great. And that’s generally the advice that I’ve recommended as well just because, you know, there are benefits to working one on one with a freelancer. And maybe they’re not available 24/7 but they are there to fully understand your business to be invested in a way that some giant agency can’t be. Michelle Knight:Totally. Joe:Awesome. So when it comes to building your personal brand, we’re not just talking about website copy and “I” or “we.” What are we talking about? If I wanted to start investing in more of a personal brand for me, where would I start? Would I look inwardly? Would I do some research into things I should consider? What does the process look like? Michelle Knight:It’s kind of all of that. I like to say that branding as a whole, and I think it’s important to say, is an experience. I think very old school and what I thought even just five years ago was like, “Let me get my website up. Let me choose my colors and my fonts. If I do that everything will be fine.” And we’ve really learned. And now that information is so readily available to us, that it’s not about those things. It really is about the experience that we’re creating. And those things can help with that process, but at the end of the day, it’s that voice, it’s that mission, it’s how we’re carrying through everything that we’re doing, from website design to coffee to our products and our offers. The method that I teach is first to look inward because as a recovering perfectionist, I have a tendency to go outward, and say, “Oh, what are you doing? That seems to be working. Let me just copy that.” And that’s what happened in the beginning of my business. So I recommend going inward first. The first practice that I love to guide people through is just what’s your story because one of the first pieces of copy that everyone should really write is their brand story. And it’s one of the most fun things that you can create in the beginning. So going inward and saying, “What is my story? What has led me to where I am today? What’s the purpose behind me wanting to put my work out in the world?” As I mentioned before, I’m from a nonprofit background. So I always recommend my clients establish a mission for their brand. What are your values? These are the things that you want to identify right out of the gate so that you can make sure that you’re always showing up in those pieces—your brand is always showing up. Then the second piece of this is, all right, now, who do you want to attract? A lot of people forget this step of the personal brand, and then we start showing up sharing content and stories and it’s not resonating with people because it’s just about me, me, me, me, me, me, me, I, I, I, I, when what we share needs to resonate with the people that we want to attract. So, you’re not showing up and just like writing your biography online. You’re building a business. So the stories that you share, the content that you share, even the colors that you choose needs to come down to, you know, how do I want my audience to feel? What are they seeking? What are they looking for? What’s happened in their life? That portion of it is where we get more into research, you know, the dreaded ideal client research that everyone hates. But I swear you have to do it. I personally love it. But that’s where that piece comes in. So then you combine those two things together, and you say, “All right, now let me decide what offer can I create based on my expertise that my audience absolutely needs? Because I know them so well at this point. What types of messages can I create that showcase my expertise and my strengths that resonate with my ideal customer. And so everything then kind of pulls on those two pieces as you build your business. Sponsor:This episode is brought to you byRestrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than theRestrict Content ProWordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. 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If you want to learn more aboutRestrict Content Proand start making money with your own membership site today, head on over tohowibuilt.it/rcp, that’showibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks toRestrict Content Profor supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe:This is the exact thing that I said, again, in that episode I just recorded. “I made the Patreon copy about me and I started my own business and I want to make content full time. And you should give me money so I can make content full time.” And I just read it back recently and I’m like, “What was I even thinking?” Who cares? Who cares that I want to make content? People want good content, and they will support good content, but they’re not just going to give me money to create it because I want to create, I should say. Michelle Knight:Exactly. Unless you’re a celebrity, and then maybe they’ll be so obsessed with you and your life that they’re like, “Yeah, sign me up to watch behind the scenes.” But the majority of us are not there. And I think too, just circling back to what you said, everyone wants to know what’s in it for me? What’s the benefit? So even if you are at a stage where maybe you’re sharing behind-the-scenes stuff, why should someone pay you to see that? What’s the benefit to them? So no matter what you’re doing with your copy with your content, even with storytelling, where you might be saying, “My son was one month postpartum when I started my business,” you still gotta turn it back around to your audience and provide value to them so it’s not like a talking head situation. Joe:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that’s fantastic. And then looking inwardly, I think that’s really important. A book that has just resonated with me ever since the day I read it was “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek. And it’s what you said there. A lot of the same things. It’s figure out why you’re doing something. Establish your mission. And then everything should focus around that. Now, a lot of the listeners here are small business owners. A lot are in the WordPress space, but a lot aren’t. I guess that was a weird thing to say. That’s redundant. A lot of people are definitely small business owners who maybe don’t have the time or resources to fully invest in something like this. Are there one or two things that they should really focus on first and then maybe build out over time? Michelle Knight:Yeah. What I always recommend is get super clear on those two pieces that we just talked about. You understand, like I said, your mission, craft, understand what has led you to where you are. Because doing that story work allows you to pull on the strengths and the experiences that you’ve had, which then you can share through your copy and your content. And then you’ve got to do the ideal client research. Don’t tell me you don’t have time for it, because you’re going to suffer. People come to me and they’re like, “I don’t know what content to share.” And I’m like, “Do your ideal client research.” “I don’t know how to write a better copy.” Do your ideal client research. We always want to think there’s some mystery formula that we just have to follow. But it really is just like do the work, do the dirty work and you’re going to be set up for success in your business. I call it the foundation. One of my first coaches was like, “You shouldn’t use that word. It’s not sexy.” And I was like, “I don’t care.” It’s legit what I’m teaching. You build a foundation like you would a building so that you continue to add to it. And it just topples on top of itself. So those two pieces are key. I tell entrepreneurs all the time you don’t need a perfect website. You don’t need… Designers don’t come at me. But you don’t need to hire a designer in your first year of business. There are so many tools out there. Go into Canva, put some colors in there, and make a logo. You don’t even need a frickin logo, which branding people always come at me for that too. It really comes down to your copy and your messaging. If you can write clearly to your ideal customer, you can have a white background on a sales page with black copy and a photo and a button and you will still make sales. Joe:Yep, absolutely. What you said there really reminds me of like, get super clear on your mission. If you don’t do the ideal client research, you’re wasting your time. It reminds me of just last night, I woke up in the middle of the night. My son was hungry, he was crying. I didn’t want him to wake up my daughter. So I ran downstairs and I pulled a bottle out of the fridge. Now I knew I should have warmed it up. Because he doesn’t like cold formula. But I was like it’ll be fine. And I tried feeding him for like 10 minutes and he kept rejecting it and then I had to go back downstairs. And then he drank it all. But I wasted probably 20 minutes there. And I knew. So don’t serve your business cold formula I guess is what I’m trying to say. Michelle Knight:I love, love, love that analogy. And you wasted 20 minutes, but entrepreneurs waste years. Joe:Me too. I’ve done it. Michelle Knight:I start working with entrepreneurs and they’re like, “I have a website. I post every day on social media. I’m doing the things.” And when we nearly get down to it, there are gaps in their foundational pieces. That small tweaks fix and then suddenly it’s like, “Oh, sweet. Now I just need to show up and keep running with this and scale my business.” Joe:Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned social media. Part of the reason that I had you on the show, which by the way, Brittany Lin, and I know I’ve mentioned her on the show before, she’s helped me out. She’s helped me figure out my kind of ideal client stuff and the niches I want to be in, connected us. And the thing that caught me the most was how to market your business without relying on social media. I think I can speak for a lot of people when I say, “I learned a long time ago that if you build it, they will come. That field of dreams marketing does not work. As a developer, that was a very hard lesson for me to learn. But then I just moved on to another fallacy, which is if I tweet it, they will come. I thought if I launched a course, if I tweet that I launched the course, people will see it’s great and they will buy it. But that’s not really how it works. Michelle Knight:No, unfortunately. I mean, fortunately for me because I teach the strategies, but unfortunately for us as entrepreneurs. Like I said, I was right there too. I spent eight months with my husband trying to figure out this whole website thing. And then I launched it, like full champagne toast video on Instagram, like full thing, nobody came. My mom maybe. And that website even sat there for months and months and months and wasn’t getting consistent traffic. So, I think like you were saying, one of the first things is that we build a website, and then we’re like, “All the people will find my website.” But it doesn’t work like that. So then we go to social media, which is really the first thing that we’re taught when we want to start a business. “Just post on Facebook, post on Instagram, post on Twitter, and people will find you.” But the reality is that people are using those platforms to find things. They are using those platforms for connection. So a lot of entrepreneurs use social media solely as the top level for getting in front of their cold audience and attracting that. The brand awareness stage basically. When really social media at emphasis should be more on that connection stage, moving your audience through the buying process, the personal branding aspect, then watching you on Insta stories. Are you making a funny reel? Are those different things? That’s where it should be. But so many entrepreneurs were focused on it to find new people, and then build their email platform. And then they grow by like five people every two weeks, and they get frustrated, when there’s actually a better way as I have come to find out. Joe:Yes. We’re going to talk about that. Perhaps in Build Something More we can talk about maybe effective social media uses, right? Because like you mentioned reels, and I’m like, “I don’t know how to use reels.” Somebody just invited me to Clubhouse today and I don’t know what I’m doing there. In Build Something More, we’ll talk about specific social media platforms, what to do, what not to do. But you have a better way besides just tweeting or writing on Facebook, “Hey, my website. Come check out my website.” My friends and family don’t care that I sell podcast courses. They don’t really know I have a podcast. Michelle Knight:It’s not that I hate social media. And I tell people this, I actually love it. I love hanging out on there and having fun. But it should not be what we rely on to build our email list, to attract consistent leads, and convert to sales. You think of a triangle, an upside-down triangle, we’ve all seen it like a pyramid, you’ve got that cold traffic coming in the top. That has to be consistent. Otherwise, the bottoms just going to dry up. You’re not going to have anybody moving into a paying customer. So these more evergreen strategies that I love to teach are the strategies that allow those consistent leads to come in without requiring you to consistently create new content every single day. Joe:I was going to say you’re speaking my language because my wife, and listeners now, my wife’s a nurse, she works three 12 hour shifts a week, which means on those days I’m watching my kids. So I’m not working. I don’t have time to create that kind of new content. Evergreen strategies sound like exactly what I need. Michelle Knight:This came about for me on accident really, because I had done the things, as we’ve talked about, I built the business and I did hit six figures in my business in a year through a lot of exhaustive hustle. I was raising a baby, I was working nine to five for the first nine months. So I was optimizing my strategies, I had some systems in place, but I was like, “There’s no way I can grow past this, and maintain this same idea.” So that’s when I really started to look at things like Pinterest, search engine optimization, the power of Google and blogging, YouTube video, or more of the search engine platforms where people are seeking out support in these areas, getting them, hooking them and then nurturing and building my community through fun content. Sponsor:This episode is brought to you byTextExpander. It’s a new year and you can start off on the right foot by reclaiming your time. 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This will take whatever text I have on my keyboard and convert it to plain text so I’m no longer fighting formatting. Plus, if you have employees or contractors, you can useTextExpanderto manage and share snippets with them so you all get it right every time. I’ve recently started sharingTextExpandersnippets with my virtual assistant. This year, How I Built It is focusing on being productive while working from home.TextExpanderis the perfect tool for that. Plus, they’re providing resources and blog posts to help you make the most of their tool and be productive.TextExpanderis available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. If you’ve been curious about tryingTextExpanderor simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visittextexpander.com/podcastand let them know that I sent you. Joe:Maybe let’s pick one. Maybe let’s do YouTube, right? Michelle Knight:Okay. Joe:You said that you found YouTube as… that’s the number two search engine in the world. Google is number one, and then Google owns YouTube is number two. People go there to learn things. So if I’m trying to develop an effective strategy for building an audience through these evergreen strategies, is YouTube a good channel for that? Michelle Knight:It is. I always tell people to really think about how they like to create content. So some people love video. I’m one of those people. And I love video to be my core piece of content. So one of the things that I teach is repurposing. And people call me the repurposing Queen because I can take one piece of content and I can turn it into like 32 pieces of content. Joe:Awesome. Michelle Knight:So some people like video, some people write and so they prefer blogging. Truly the strategies are the same across the board. So that’s what’s cool. I mean, the way you upload your title, and maybe your keywords is different placement but the process that you go through is the same. And the reason that these all work, again, is because there’s search engines. Same with Pinterest, which a lot of people don’t think about. But Pinterest is where you go, you type in the search bar, it’s all keyword optimized and so people will find your content. I don’t know about you, but I don’t search for anything on Facebook. No. So when you’re thinking about these different platforms, and I’m happy to share some of the steps on that, but what I really want to drive home to is that you’re hitting people at every single stage of the buying process. So rather than just attracting somebody who’s maybe looking for content, we’re also attracting and getting in front of people who are ready to buy. So there’s the stages of the buying process. Someone understands they’ve got a problem, and so they’re looking for options to solve their problem. Then they move into the research stage, which is where people are googling and looking on YouTube and stuff like that, then they’re aware of a solution. So now they’re trying to explore, like, what’s the best solution for them. They’ve figured it out and now they’re shopping around to figure out which one they’re going to buy. And then they become a buyer. There are people who are at stage five, who are like, “I have my money, I want to give it to someone.” I’m telling you, they’re going to Google, they’re typing in what they want, and then they’re hitting up the first 30 people. And I know that because that’s where most of my clients come from is just searching in branding coach, and landing on my website, strong personal brand, investing the money. That’s what’s so cool about the whole concept of evergreen SEO optimized content is you’re able to get people in every single stage, whether they’re just looking for help with three tips to write a better story, they might land on a blog post, or they’re just ready to pull out their credit card. Joe:I think that’s fantastic. And it’s so funny that you mentioned Pinterest because I hadChelsea Clarkeon the show a few episodes ago and that was her trade secret. Michelle Knight:Yes, mine too. Joe:She was like, “Not enough people are using Pinterest.” So I think that’s so funny. I told Chelsea I would look into it now. I definitely will look into it. That’s incredible. This is really interesting that you say that. Because again, the conventional wisdom says like, “You need to get people at the top of the funnel and you introduce yourself. And then you get them on your mailing list and then you market to them for like 14 years and then maybe they’re right on. But people who are ready to spend money, those are probably the best people to directly market to in the short term. I don’t want to say that the nurturing is bad, obviously, because it’s great. But if people are willing to spend their money, they might as well spend it with you. Michelle Knight:Totally. The nurturing part is so fun. I’ve had things where I’m like, “Oh, you’re cool. Let me just see what you’re about and I’ll buy down the road.” But I think as a business owner, it’s important to understand that your ideal customer could be at these different stages. And when you create this evergreen type of content, you’re able to show up and pull them in no matter what stage they’re at, rather than social media, which is totally different. Not to mention actually getting it in front of people who are searching for it is near impossible. So that’s why these strategies are so helpful in sustainably growing your business, getting those consistent leads, and making that consistent sale. Joe:I think that’s super important. Again, if we’re talking about YouTube, just, for example, people are finding that evergreen content. I know because I see the comments come in on my YouTube videos, the most popular ones, and it’s like, “How to do separate audio tracks with Zoom.” Or my friends are like, “Dude, I searched on YouTube and you were the first one to come up. Great video.” How do I… how does one… I don’t want to make this seem like it’s about me. I was always that guy in class who raised his hand and asked a question because I knew I had that question but I assumed like half of the class also had that question. Michelle Knight:Totally. Joe:How do I get them from YouTube to mailing list? Or is from YouTube to mailing list even the right move? You say all these people are at different stages. What’s my call to action post-YouTube video? Michelle Knight:I always recommend email list. Because I always say an email is the first investment that someone will make in your business. And when we start thinking about email addresses as currency, everything changes. It pains me when people are like, “Come follow me on Instagram.” Or like, “Just like this video,” and that’s it. It’s like, no, if someone’s watched the end of your video for YouTube specifically and they’re engaged, they’re ready for the next step. So give them that opportunity. So across the board, no matter what you do, I always recommend some sort of lead magnet, some way to get somebody on your email list. And in service base, that’s typically something free. A free guide, a free video free something. But it can also be product-based. A coupon. Take a quiz. There’s all kinds of different things that you can do. But that’s really important because people are typically like, “This is great. I want more of this.” And we want to get them on our email list. Because although your email list is maybe on a platform that you don’t control, the reality is you do have more control over that information than Facebook or Instagram. If Instagram went down, and that was all that you were using to get in touch with your community, you would be screwed. But if you have an email list on the back end, you can download that spreadsheet, move to a different platform email, get really creative with it. So across the board, I recommend that. And because these pieces of content are evergreen, I very rarely recommend pitching a product or a service unless it too is evergreen. So if you have a course that you sell all the time or a membership site that people can join or even something that opens multiple times a year, and you’re just saying hey, “I offer this inside of my program, go here to learn more.” And then if they land their doors are open great. If not, they can join a waitlist. But yeah, across the board, always, always email list. I’m a firm believer in that one. Joe:Awesome. I’m really glad to hear that because that’s also what I’ve been preaching. I’m like, I’m a guy I know some things, but it’s always good to hear from the experts. But also I haven’t been good about that. I always end my YouTube videos with “like” and “smash that like button.” I’ve never said that for real. Michelle Knight:Thank you. Joe:“Like and subscribe,” and then my tagline. I’ll have like a card right so people can go, or the icon on the end screen. I’ve put a lot of time into my end screens, but saying it verbally in the video is super important, right? If you like what I’m talking about, get the free guide for whatever, 5 Zoom tips that’ll make you look even better. I just thought of that lead magnet now… Michelle Knight:I like it. Joe:By the time this comes out… Michelle Knight:It might be really valuable for a lot of people today. Joe:Yeah. I think that’s really important. And I really needed to hear that because at first, I wasn’t sure. But you’re right about owning your platform. I export my subscriber list like once every six weeks, which makes me sound like a crazy person. I use ConvertKit and I assume they’re not going anywhere because they’re really great. But if they disappear one day, I’m losing a bunch of email addresses. Michelle Knight:I use ConvertKit too. We do the same thing. We’re really adamant about our email list over here. I say we now because my team member actually does it. I don’t have to do it anymore. But we not only download but clean our list quite frequently. We get a lot of subscribers every day and I invest in advertising and some of those different avenues as well. I want to make sure that the people who are there actually want to be there. So we frequently like to clean our list to help with that as well. So there’s a little bonus tip for those of you. Sponsor:This episode is brought to you byMindsize. 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Or if you’re a freelancer or agency who feels in over your head or with an eCommerce build, their agency support plan is built specifically for you. There were a few times in my career where I really could have used that. They’ll take a high stress situation and help you relax while still delivering for your client. So check outMindsizeover atmindsize.comtoday. They will help you make more money, whether you need an eCommerce store, whether you need to improve your current eCommerce store, or if you build eCommerce stores for others. That’smindsize.com. Thanks so much toMindsizefor supporting the show. Joe:We are moving into the tips for listeners segment of the show. You’ve given us so much. But let’s say that somebody have taken your first two pieces of advice. Look inward, what’s your story, figure out your ideal client. What’s the next step? What should they do from there? Michelle Knight:I think from there, it really becomes creating content, we want to wait to create content until… I feel like I’m beating a dead horse, right? …we have the website up or the thing. But if you want to sell you need to have people to sell to. One of the best things that you can do once you’ve got a little solid ground with “Who am I? Who do I want to attract? What’s my mission? What am I offering?” then start putting content out there so that you can start building your audience. The first thing that I recommend is focus on quality content. Focus on things people are searching for. I’m holding my eyes right now—people can’t see me—because I’m trying to meditate. People always say, “What do I talk about? What do I create content about?” I’m like, “Go Google. See what people are searching for.” If you really want to show up, go into your niche and figure out what people need help with. There are so many free tools out there. I’m going to tell you some of them now.AnswerThePublicis an awesome free tool. All of these give you a limited amount of searches every day, but still just go do it every day for like five days, and you’ll be solid for 90 days.AnswerThePublicwill tell you the top questions being asked on Google. And you can type in your industry, you can type in your ideal customer, you can type in pain points, and they will tell you exactly what people are asking for. You can use a tool called Keywords Everywhere, which is a small investment but amazing when you’re wanting to do SEO. It’ll tell you how many monthly searches keywords get. You know you might be like, “This is great,” and it gets zero searches a month. It’s really going to help you. You can change even a little bit of the language, you can get thousand searches a month, and that’s amazing. You can even use YouTube specifically because they will autofill for you. So go to the search bar and type in something relevant to what you’re offering and let it tell you what the top searches are. So doing research and having that strong strategy in place to create content that people are actually searching for is important. And then you put your spin on it. I did a podcast episode the other day on morning routines. It was like pulling teeth from my team to get me to do this because I was like, “I’m not doing fluff content.” And they’re like, “Everyone keeps asking for this. Everyone wants this.” So I put my own spin on it. And it’s been a huge download. And I’ve gotten tons of messages that are like, “Oh my gosh, I love this.” You get to put your own spin on it, but you gotta make sure you’re getting in front of people. It’s the same with subject lines. If your subject line isn’t amazing, no one’s going to open your email, and no one’s going to know about all the goodness that you have. Same with titles of your content. So number one is focus on creating high-value quality content that people are actually searching for. Don’t just pull it out of thin air and be like, “This might be nice.” The good news is, you’ll have a lot of that information because you’ve done the ideal client research. Joe:I have been reminded… because I just do things I think are good ideas. I have been reminded that I am not my ideal customer. It’s something important to remember. This is great advice.AnswerThePublic. I’m definitely going to check that one out because I’ve never heard of it before. Really excited about that.Jennifer Bournwas on the show early on this year and she also talks about joining Facebook groups and even paid communities where people are asking questions of like… communities for your ideal customer, not communities of whatever you do professionally totally. Michelle Knight:Totally. And that’s what reallyAnswerThePubliccan also point you to forums and like Reddit and stuff, so then you can read through that. Full disclaimer. I actually hate Facebook groups. So I love them for paid stuff. Joe:Me too. Michelle Knight:But I don’t have my own account. I just stopped that a long time ago when I learned about evergreen content. But I will go into Facebook groups and just use the search function and just see what questions people are asking for support on and then write a blog post about it. So you’re totally right. It’s a great tool for ideal client research. Joe:That’s awesome. And then one more tool based on YouTube is vidIQ. Have you heard of this one? Michelle Knight:Yes. I love vidIQ. Joe:I think it’s really been helpful for me. I’ve only kind of used it superficially. Just like when I create a video, the extension in Chrome is there, and it’s like suggesting keywords. I really need to dive deep into it, though, because I think that it could be a really valuable tool for me. My channel is monetized now, and the amount I make is more than what they charge monthly. Michelle Knight:There you go. Joe:I think it’s a good investment. Michelle Knight:Well, it’s funny, because that actually is tip number two, which is to actually optimize your content. So you’re creating a high value content, you’re creating content that people are searching for, and then make sure that you’re actually optimizing that content. So no matter what platform evergreen platform you’re choosing will focus on YouTube, specifically, there are tools out there to tell you and give you tips on what keywords to use. Think about optimizing the title for search. The title, for instance, I might write a blog post that has a different title than a video of the same content that I put on YouTube, because I’m really paying attention to optimizing it for each of the platforms. Your thumbnail, right? Like making sure that these pieces are in place because they play a huge role in your content actually getting seen. We think like, “We’re going to have an amazing video, and everyone’s going to find it.” It really comes down to title and keywords and first impression. And that’s it. Those could be great and your video could suck and you’ll still rank as number one. We want it to be great all across the board so people want to hear more from you, but make sure when you’re creating this content, you’re taking the time to optimize it. Whether that’s SEO for blogging, writing your description, making sure your title and your keywords and your headers are in there. Same with Pinterest. Same with YouTube. Joe:Awesome. The YouTube thumbnail super-duper important. Michelle Knight:It’s crazy. Joe:I never thought about it until I noticed that all the people who were making similar content to me had them making a face and then pointing. Michelle Knight:It’s like a whole thing right now. Joe:It’s usually a screengrab of me that I like cut out and put but I just can’t… I saw one where I was like one finger up and looking like a teacher, and I’m like, “You look so unnatural.” But I’m doing my best. vidIQ is cool because it’ll show your thumbnail embedded with other thumbnails too in a search. Michelle Knight:Well, now you can do like gifs thumbnails. Joe:What? Michelle Knight:Yeah. You can do moving thumbnails. Joe:Breaking news. I did not know that. Michelle Knight:Breaking news. Joe:Awesome. I’m going to look into that too. I got a lot of homework for this episode. Michelle Knight:Sorry. Joe:Michelle, this has been so much fun. I do need to ask you my favorite question, which is, do you have any trade secrets for us? Michelle Knight:Oh, man. I’m going to bring it back to the beginning on the storytelling piece. This is my secret. This is my secret. Not enough people do it. I’m going to challenge you that every piece of content that you create has a micro-story in it somewhere. Now that micro-story can be in the introduction, where you introduce what you’re sharing, and why you’re sharing it. That micro-story can be in the actual education piece of it. It can be at the end. But the thing with storytelling that is so amazing is the effect that it has in our audience’s brain. So when you incorporate even just one single sentence of storytelling in your content, your audience is 22 times more likely to remember it. I don’t know about you, but I want people to remember my stuff. So even just that simple thing… There’s neural co… I nerd out on this stuff. But there’s neural coupling that happens when we hear other people’s stories. So our brains are activated, dopamine is released. We feel good. And it doesn’t have to be an earth-shaking story as I like to say. It’s so small relatable moments. So that has been my secret. Every piece of content that I create, every podcast that I’m on, everything that you will see for me has a tiny little bit of storytelling in it, whether it’s mine or my ideal customer’s, or what I like to call future casting, which is like a pretend made up kind of figurative story because it’s so, so powerful, and will serve you on both branding and the marketing level and selling honestly. Joe:That’s awesome. Micro story. I love it. As you say that, something has clicked for me. Because one of my most popular pieces of content right now is a blog post that’s titled “Why Gear Matters Least when You’re Starting a Podcast. I tell a story about how growing up my favorite baseball player was Paul O’Neill and I wanted to bat like Paul O’Neill, but me trying to mimic him and look and sound like him, quote-unquote, didn’t work for me because first of all, I’m not a lefty. Second of all, he’s very tall. So I just think that’s great. Challenge accepted. Michelle Knight:All right. Joe:As I write more blog posts, I’m going to include a micro-story in each. I’m glad you said in the educational piece or at the end. Mine was towards the end. And I was questioning that. I’m like, “Should I put it up front to hook the reader?” But I think the headline hooked them enough to keep reading. Michelle Knight:It always depends on what you’re presenting. Sometimes if you have to give a backstory, especially like we talked about, educational content does really well because that’s what people are searching for. Sometimes you want to set that up. If we’re sharing a misconception or mistakes or how to do something, we might want to share our journey with that. But sometimes you can just hook by asking questions or speaking directly to your ideal customer. But yeah, no matter where, put that story in there. I don’t care where it is. Joe:Awesome. Michelle, this has been an absolute pleasure. If people want to learn more about you, where can they find you? Instagram? Michelle Knight:Yeah, definitely find me on Instagram. You can go to my website, which is fully optimized. It’sbrandmerry.com. There’s links to all the things, tons of blog and video content on there, a freebie so you can join my email list You know, all the things. Joe:All the good stuff. Awesome. I will include that and all sorts of links that we talked about in the show notes over athowibuilt.it/210. If you want to hear Michelle and I talk more about the do’s and don’ts of specific platforms, maybe a little bit about travel because you mentioned something interesting in the pre-show, you can sign up for theBuild Something Clubover andbuildsomething.club. It’s a paltry $5 a month, and you get lots of really fantastic content, and a custom member chip—it’s a poker chip with a podcast logo on it. I love it. But in any case, Michelle, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Michelle Knight:Thank you for having me. Joe: And thanks to our sponsors: Mindsize, Restrict Content Pro, and TextExpander. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something. Joe:Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about theBuild Something Weeklynewsletter. It is weekly, it is free, and you will get tips, tricks, and tools delivered directly to your mailbox. I will recap the current week’s episode and all of the takeaways, I’ll give you a top story, content I wrote, and then some recommendations that I’ve been using that I think you should check out. So it is free, it is a weekly, it’s over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Go ahead and sign up over athowibuilt.it/subscribe. Intro:Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 210 of How I Built It, the podcast that asks, How did you build that? Today’s sponsors areMindsize,Restrict Content Pro, andTextExpander, who you will be hearing about later on in the show. Now, if you are aBuild Something Clubmember, if you’re subscribed to Build Something More but you happen to be picking up the normal feed, definitely get the Build Something More feed because we, Michelle and I, had a fantastic pre-show conversation, which is a show first. I’m sending out the pre-show because it was really good. Speaking of, my guest is Michelle Knight. She is the personal branding and marketing strategist over atBrandmerry. Michelle, how are you today? Michelle Knight:Oh, great. Thanks for having me. Loved our little pre-show chat. Joe:Likewise. Likewise. Thanks for joining me on the show here. Thanks for joining us. It was a lot of fun and nerd culture and WandaVision. First of all, if you’re not watching WandaVision, you should watch WandaVision. I guess by the time this comes out, we will actually be behind. So, if you haven’t seen it, spoiler alert. But if you’re all caught up, you know, don’t talk past what happened. That’s what we’re talking about today. We’re talking today about how to market your business without relying on social media, which I’m really excited about. I was looking at your website, again, personal branding consultant. I think this is a really good topic to talk about because I feel like I was telling my students about this like 10 years ago. I was teaching at the college level, college freshmen a computer literacy course, and I’m like, “You need to have a personal brand.” And they’re like, “Who cares?” But now fast forward to 2021, I feel like that’s even more important. So before we dive into the kind of social media stuff, I suspect having a strong personal brand will help with that. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about what you do there? Michelle Knight:Yeah, absolutely. I founded my companyBrandmerryright after my son was born in 2016 out of just the need to be home, to just not want to commute to work anymore. I had a background in PR, background in communications and I dove headfirst into creating my online business with really kind of wearing this coach consultant hat. I struggled a lot. I had no idea what I was doing. I felt like I was mimicking everybody else. I spent months creating a website that then didn’t look like or sound like me, which is highly relatable to a lot of people. About nine months into it, when I was planning on leaving my nine to five, I was like, “Something needs to shift.” So I started to do more and more research outside as well as some internal research to figure out who I was and what I really wanted to build a brand around. And everything really started to shift for me at that point in time. I started to show up in a different way, I started to really express myself, I did more live videos and I started to share more stories. And instantly, I saw connections start to happen. The same people who had been in my community for months were buying from me suddenly. And I didn’t change the offer. All I did was change how I was showing up and creating a brand that was a representation of that. So that’s what I really fell in love with personal branding and storytelling, and I spent, the next three or four years really focusing on that aspect, teaching entrepreneurs specifically how to figure out, number one, who they are and how they want to show up online and then creating a brand and a product suite that’s in alignment with that mission. And then I’ve moved in the last couple of years to focus on, now, how do we market that? Because you realize really quickly that you can have an amazing personal brand, you can have an amazing product, but if you don’t know how to effectively market it, then nobody else is going to know about it. Joe:I love that. And it’s so funny that you mentioned that because I feel like between the pre-show and this you must have been listening into the solo episode I recorded right before this, which wasEpisode 205, where I talked about my failed Patreon experiment. It’s the same thing. I started this podcast in 2016. I went self-employed in 2017 after my daughter was born, and I thought, “I need to launch memberships. I need to launch a membership for my podcast.” And I just copied everyone else’s benefits, everyone else’s levels. And I’m like, “How come no one’s buying?” And then I came to realize I’m just promising a bunch of stuff that I don’t even know if I can deliver or not. So I took that down, and I’ve changed directions. Well, now people are actually buying my membership because it reflects me and what I can offer. So I think that’s fantastic. Michelle Knight:Well, I tell people all the time that people don’t buy the product or the service, there’s a million products and services that are exactly the same across the board. If people really just focused on that, then they would just buy the first thing that they see. But it’s about that connection, it’s about that relationship. And that’s why personal branding is so important. Joe:Yeah, absolutely. As people listen to this, I know that’s something I struggled with early on when I was freelancing and making websites for people was, how do I write my copy? Do I write “I”? Do I write “we”? Who is this? Is it the royal we? So maybe we can start there? How you present yourself, as you said, is so integral to connecting with customers, with selling more products and services? I or we? Michelle Knight:I think it depends. I think when you’re starting a business and you’re the sole CEO and face of that business, I always recommend going with “I”. Primarily because, who is the “we”? You and your imaginary team, probably not in the beginning. You’re the decision-maker at that point in time. The “I” allows for more of that personal connection. If you’re working with a company, I think you go back and forth. If we’re speaking on behalf of the company, I have a background in nonprofit management, if you’re speaking on behalf of the nonprofit and the work that they do, it’s a “we”. But if your CEO is stepping out and saying something, sharing their story, sharing what they’re doing, it’s an “I”. And then I guess as your business evolves, and I see this a lot, especially as someone who has added more team members and is moving more into a company role, I go back and forth between the two. If it’s me, I’m showing up, I’m sharing a story, I’m focusing on connecting, I’m the one telling the story. But if I’m talking about the team as a whole and we made this decision, then I can share that. So right out of the gate, I say default to “I”. As you grow, incorporate the “we.” Joe:I think that’s great. And that’s generally the advice that I’ve recommended as well just because, you know, there are benefits to working one on one with a freelancer. And maybe they’re not available 24/7 but they are there to fully understand your business to be invested in a way that some giant agency can’t be. Michelle Knight:Totally. Joe:Awesome. So when it comes to building your personal brand, we’re not just talking about website copy and “I” or “we.” What are we talking about? If I wanted to start investing in more of a personal brand for me, where would I start? Would I look inwardly? Would I do some research into things I should consider? What does the process look like? Michelle Knight:It’s kind of all of that. I like to say that branding as a whole, and I think it’s important to say, is an experience. I think very old school and what I thought even just five years ago was like, “Let me get my website up. Let me choose my colors and my fonts. If I do that everything will be fine.” And we’ve really learned. And now that information is so readily available to us, that it’s not about those things. It really is about the experience that we’re creating. And those things can help with that process, but at the end of the day, it’s that voice, it’s that mission, it’s how we’re carrying through everything that we’re doing, from website design to coffee to our products and our offers. The method that I teach is first to look inward because as a recovering perfectionist, I have a tendency to go outward, and say, “Oh, what are you doing? That seems to be working. Let me just copy that.” And that’s what happened in the beginning of my business. So I recommend going inward first. The first practice that I love to guide people through is just what’s your story because one of the first pieces of copy that everyone should really write is their brand story. And it’s one of the most fun things that you can create in the beginning. So going inward and saying, “What is my story? What has led me to where I am today? What’s the purpose behind me wanting to put my work out in the world?” As I mentioned before, I’m from a nonprofit background. So I always recommend my clients establish a mission for their brand. What are your values? These are the things that you want to identify right out of the gate so that you can make sure that you’re always showing up in those pieces—your brand is always showing up. Then the second piece of this is, all right, now, who do you want to attract? A lot of people forget this step of the personal brand, and then we start showing up sharing content and stories and it’s not resonating with people because it’s just about me, me, me, me, me, me, me, I, I, I, I, when what we share needs to resonate with the people that we want to attract. So, you’re not showing up and just like writing your biography online. You’re building a business. So the stories that you share, the content that you share, even the colors that you choose needs to come down to, you know, how do I want my audience to feel? What are they seeking? What are they looking for? What’s happened in their life? That portion of it is where we get more into research, you know, the dreaded ideal client research that everyone hates. But I swear you have to do it. I personally love it. But that’s where that piece comes in. So then you combine those two things together, and you say, “All right, now let me decide what offer can I create based on my expertise that my audience absolutely needs? Because I know them so well at this point. What types of messages can I create that showcase my expertise and my strengths that resonate with my ideal customer. And so everything then kind of pulls on those two pieces as you build your business. Sponsor:This episode is brought to you byRestrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than theRestrict Content ProWordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. You can create any number of subscription packages, including free levels and free trials. But that’s not all. Their extensive add-ons library allows you to do even more, like drip out content, connect with any number of CRMs and newsletter tools, including ConvertKit and Mailchimp and integrate with other WordPress plugins like bbPress. Since theBuild Something Clubrolled out earlier this year, you can bet it’s usingRestrict Content Pro. And I have used all of the things mentioned here in this ad read. I have created free levels. I’ve created coupons. I use ConvertKit and I’m using it with bbPress for the forums. I’m a big fan of the team, and I know they do fantastic work. The plugin has worked extremely well for me and I was able to get memberships up and running very quickly. Right now, they are offering a rare discount for how I built it listeners only: 20% off your purchase when you use RCPHOWIBUILTIT at checkout. That’s RCPHOWIBUILTIT, all one word. If you want to learn more aboutRestrict Content Proand start making money with your own membership site today, head on over tohowibuilt.it/rcp, that’showibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks toRestrict Content Profor supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe:This is the exact thing that I said, again, in that episode I just recorded. “I made the Patreon copy about me and I started my own business and I want to make content full time. And you should give me money so I can make content full time.” And I just read it back recently and I’m like, “What was I even thinking?” Who cares? Who cares that I want to make content? People want good content, and they will support good content, but they’re not just
Hello hello welcome back to the Human Connection podcast, I'm your host Brittney Lynn and First of all thank y'all so much for the amazing feedback on my big news from last week! If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can head back to last week's episode titled “my big news.” It's where I share a huge life change for both my husband and I as we are currently converting a sprinter van into a tiny home! I know, v. crazy but life is too short and we are excited for this new adventure. Anyways, I gabbed all about that in my solo episode last week but this week is all about my interview with Joe Casabona! Joe started his career almost 20 years ago as a freelance web developer and has been a team lead, system admin, and was even a faculty member at his alma mater. Podcasting has been the perfect medium for Joe to share his knowledge and build up his peers. He is not only a veteran podcaster but he helps people launch their own podcasts. When he's not creating courses for LinkedIn Learning, you can find Joe spending time with his family, enjoying baseball, or talking too much about Star Wars. In today's episode, you'll find out: Why everyone should have a podcast 4 ways to make money podcasting (Joe makes 40% of his income from podcasting and it's not only sponsorships!) Easy ways to start making money from your podcast now Tips on creating a membership community outside of tools like Patreon Full show notes at: http://brittneyllynn.com/humanconnection Links mentioned: Learn more and sign up for our monthly subscription, Curated Connections My interview on Smart Passive Income Stuff You Should Know podcast Build Something Club Sign up for ConvertKit (affiliate link) Memberful Restrict Content Pro Wishlist Member GiveWP Sign up for Joe's free podcast launch framework Check out Joe Casabona's website How I Built It podcast Follow Joe on Twitter
Going on podcasts can be a great opportunity for small business owners. You’re getting in front of a new audience to tell your story and show your expertise. But did you know there’s a whole other avenue you can explore? Kristin Molenaar does, and she tell us all about it! Plus, in Build Something More, she walks us through forming your podcast pitch. (more…) View on separate page Transcript Joe: Hey everybody, and welcome to Episode 207 of How I Build It, the podcast that asks, How did you build that? Today my guest is… I’m so terrible because I just asked you how to pronounce your last name. Kristin Molenaar. Kristin: You got it. Molenaar. Joe: Excellent. Excellent. I’m excited to be talking to Kristin Molenaar. She is the founder of YesBoss. And we’re going to be talking about why being a podcast guest is ineffective for many entrepreneurs. But before we get into that, I do want to tell you that today’s episode is brought to you by three fantastic sponsors: Mindsize, Restrict Content Pro, and TextExpander. You will be hearing about those fine folks later in the episode. Right now. Let’s bring on our guests. Kristin, how are you? Kristin: Hey, I’m doing well. How are you? Joe: I am doing fantastically. Like I said, I’m really excited to talk about this. Because I do feel like for a long time I didn’t take advantage of the fact well enough that I was going on other people’s podcasts and trying to build my audience, things like that. I know that a lot of my guests, this is a platform for them. Basically, what we’re trading here is you are giving me some of your time so I can create good content and I am putting you in front of my audience. So I want you to have people get in touch with you and stuff like that. So hopefully, this will be a good reference for future guests on this podcast and others. But before we get into that—I just said ‘before we get into that’ like three times—I want you to tell people who you are and what you do. Kristin: I run a company called YesBoss. We’re a podcast booking agency, essentially. So we help mostly service-based entrepreneurs, so online service providers, we help them get booked on podcasts so they can generate more leads in just an hour a week. My zone of genius is talking. I like to talk for a living, and we help other clients who like to do that exact same thing. Joe: That’s fantastic. And I’ve got to say you do a good job. I get lots of guest pitches each day and I have a pretty strong litmus test for if I’m going to respond or not or if I’m going to accept the guest or not. And you pass not once but twice or thrice, I think at this point. Kristin: A testament to our service, huh? Thank you for that. Joe: Absolutely. Because you get the pitches and it’s like, “Hi (name), I’m person…” And then like five paragraphs about why they’re so great. And I’m just like, “I don’t want you to just… I want to bring value to my listeners.” I don’t remember exactly what you said in your email but I read it and I was like, “I think this will be insanely valuable for both me and my listener.” Kristin: Well, I’m excited. There’s definitely a formula there. There’s definitely a lot of testing we’ve done to those pitches. So I’m so glad to hear your thoughts on it. Thank you so much. Joe: Absolutely. And thank you for taking the time. I feel like you’ve listened to the show and you knew exactly what I want to talk about. So, you don’t have to say whether you have or not, but it felt that way at least. So you are a podcast booking agency. There is definitely a lot of value in that. So maybe before we get into the main thing that we’re talking about, why should more entrepreneurs go on podcasts? Kristin: I would say that it’s like the simplest sales funnel I’ve ever built in my whole entire life. I feel like as entrepreneurs, you know, especially if you’re an entrepreneur that has ever been on Facebook, you’re gonna be hit with a lot of messages about how to do all the things. And I think what took me a while to really learn because when I first started in this entrepreneurial journey I was floundering for 14 months, and then I found a rhythm that really worked. What I really found is it all boils down to having a sales funnel that hits a few checkmarks. So at the top of that sales funnel is, how are you getting visible? How are you attracting those people? How are you then nurturing those people, selling those people, and retaining those people? So that’s just this basic sales funnel strategy. And there’s all these ways to do that. There’s ads, there’s social media platforms. There’s all these top level things to get new audience attraction, then there’s all these ways to nurture your clients, you know, email lists or people that are on your social media. How are you retaining those existing people and selling? So there’s all these different ways to do this. What I have found though is… I stumbled upon this honestly. When I started doing podcast guesting myself, what I realized is I was getting in front of new people and attracting new people, and forming relationships with a new person. So specifically the podcast host. And what happened afterwards was people were coming to me to ask about my services and they had already been pre-sold. Because the nature of a podcast episode is that you are building that trust factor really rapidly, you are attracting. You’re the nurturing by really sharing all of your genius on that episode. Like you already said at the beginning of this episode, you bring on guests, and you want to highlight all the ways that they know how to do what they do. So you’re providing a platform for me to talk to you about how smart I am. I mean, if you want to put it that way. Joe: Yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly what it is. Kristin: And by the end of the episode, you know how to work with me, you know who in your network to tell to work with me. And then as a ripple effect, so I see this as a secondary thing, as the secondary thing, your audience and the people that are listening to the podcast also know that. So I’ve just been kind of blown away at how effective and fun it’s been. Joe: That’s incredible. I love a lot of what you said there. I mean, if longtime listeners of the show will know I’ve said no trust a million times on this podcast. Because it’s so important. It’s why I teach people how to start their own podcasts to grow their business because it’s an easy way… not an easy way but it’s a fast way to convince people that you are likeable and trustworthy. And people invite me into their headphones every week. So they feel like they know me. And it’s a strong bond. So, when I have a guest on the show, I’m saying I trust this person enough to give them the platform of listeners I have teach me something. I learn something from every single one of my guests. So I love what you said there about how this is the simplest sales funnel you’ve ever built in your life. How do you figure out what shows you should go on? Kristin: I think this is a really good question. I think I’ve got to start it by saying this. I think that most people see podcasts guesting in one of two ways. They see it as a traditional marketing strategy. And that marketing strategy says, “Find the podcast with the biggest audience that you can attract and go there.” And then the other people see this as traditional PR strategy. And the PR strategy says, “Get on the podcast with the biggest name recognition so you can leverage that authority on your website, your social media presence,” all those places. For me, I see it a bit differently. For me, I have realized that being a profitable podcast guest has more to do with relationships than it does marketing and PR strategies. So when I’m looking at what podcasts I want to be on… You know, I looked at you, Joe, I didn’t necessarily look at your audience and who you’ve attracted but like, are you someone that I want to have a business relationship with? Are you someone who has a complimentary or similar message to that that I share? Do our business philosophies align? Do we think the same way when it comes to what we do for our clients? Because I have seen that when I focus on relationships, the ripple effects of every time that I show up are so much greater than what can happen when I just attract your audience. I’ve seen things being invited to be a guest inside somebody’s paid course or mastermind or whatever. I’ve had those opportunities arise. I’ve been invited to speak on stages, I’ve been invited to have JV partnerships, somebody that interviewed me is now an affiliate partner for me, so they make money when I make money. These kinds of things all come from relationship. And when you’re looking just at the person’s audience, you’re really missing out on that relationship aspect. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Restrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than the Restrict Content Pro WordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. You can create any number of subscription packages, including free trials and even free tiers. But that’s not all, their extensive add-ons library allows you to do even more, like drip out content, connect with any number of CRMs and newsletter tools, including my favorite ConvertKit, and you can integrate with other WordPress plugins like bbPress. When the Build Something Club comes out later this month, you can bet it’s going to be using Restrict Content Pro. I’m a big fan of the team. I’m a big fan of the tool and I know they do fantastic work over there. If you want to learn more about Restrict Content Pro and start making money with your own membership site today, head on over to howibuilt.it/rcp, that’s howibuilt.it/rcp to learn more and get a special offer for listeners only. Thanks so much to Restrict Content Pro for supporting the show. Joe: It becomes increasingly clear now why your pitch to come on this show stood out more than other pitches. Because, again, I really can’t stress this enough. I talk a lot. I try not to talk about myself a lot. When I get a pitch is just like, “Jim baseball, went to Harvard, and was the first of his class and all this and now he’s great. And here’s all the reasons He’s great.” I’m just like, “Cool. What does that mean for me?” I’ve had great people on my podcast, but I want my audience to come away with someone they can feel like they can form a relationship with. So I really love that. Kristin: There’s two things that I want to say to kind of expand on what you’ve just said. It’s the job of the podcast guests to deliver an episode on a silver platter to the podcast host. And that starts with writing a really good pitch. The pitch has got to include talking points that are not all about how I built a million-dollar business with a team of five people. Okay, cool. But what is that episode about? What is the value that you’re going to be bringing to the podcast host audience? So, the podcast guests, they should be focused on the podcast host. What they have to understand is a podcast host is looking for how to deliver the most value to their audience. So you’ve got to deliver to them exactly what the episode is going to be about. Because if I hadn’t written talking points that were valuable to your audience, we would get on this interview and you would be thinking, “Cool, I don’t know what to ask Kristin. I am not sure what her zone of genius is. I don’t even know what this episode is gonna be about.” No one would find value in that episode at all, and that would be me doing you a disservice. Joe: That’s a very generous way to put it. Because I also think it’s the host’s job to tee up things, really good things for the guests to ask. It’s a good back and forth, a good conversation. But like you said, you gave me topics, and I’m like, “Yes, this is really good for my audience.” If we look at the pitch and it’s like, “Yeah, I built a million dollars in 30 days with five people or whatever,” it’s like, “Cool. I want guests that my audience can relate to.” I’ve had really good big name guests, but the episodes didn’t do very well because the guest was not relatable. Whereas some of the episodes with maybe lesser known people, people who don’t have their own giant audience, but delivered huge value… downloads through the roof. So it’s definitely less about who is on the show as much as what you talk about on the show. Kristin: It also hits on the point that your accolades have to have relevance. Accolades for the sake of accolades are not interesting to anyone but yourself. Joe: Yeah, exactly. Kristin: There’s a place for it in the pitch to talk about the things that you’ve done, but the point of talking about those things are to just prove to the person that you have the ability to talk about those talking points. So if it’s where I went to college or something else, there’s no relevance there. There’s no tie into what the episode is actually about or what we’re going to be talking about. Joe: Right. Yeah. Unless my show was like, “People who went to Harvard.” Kristin: There you go. Joe: Especially the revenue one. This is my last ranty point. But the revenue one is always suspect to me, because if you have a million-dollar revenue business and your expenses are like a million in one dollars, you don’t have a successful business; you are making no money. There are at least better accolades than how much revenue your business makes. Kristin: Right. It’s a vanity metric. Joe: Yeah, exactly. Kristin: Revenue is a vanity metric. Joe: Yeah, exactly. Well, that was fun. I have strong opinions and I’m always happy for it to wax poetic about them. But getting back on course here, why should we go on a podcast? We answered how do you figure out what shows to go on. Let’s say now that the listener here has reached out to a podcast and they have successfully landed the guest spot. The topic that you reached out about, the reason why being a podcast guest is ineffective for most entrepreneurs is one that really rings true to me. Because it’s time that you should really take advantage of in some way. First of all, let’s talk about why is it ineffective for most entrepreneurs, then we can talk about how to not make it ineffective. How to make it effective? There we go. Kristin: Yeah, I think that’s perfect. I think that’s perfect. I do talk to people all the time and have said, “I’ve been invited to speak on a podcast and it didn’t yield any results for me. I didn’t get any clients from it. There were no results.” However, that looks to you. And at the root of it, I feel that there’s a common denominator here. And often that is that the person doing the guesting doesn’t really know what they’re offering. It’s probably too wide. I mean, really, this is like a business foundational thing, but it is so essential when you’re getting yourself out there and creating visibility for yourself. Yes, okay, maybe you’re a business consultant, business coach, maybe you’re a copywriter, but those are really, really broad things. You’ve got to know like, what are you specifically doing? So here’s the thing about what I do. People know that I booked people on podcasts. That’s not very wide. That is really darn specific. That same kind of specificity can be for even the business coaches or consultants that offer a wide variety of services, you have to think about what’s your point of entry. What’s the first thing that people do to work with you? What is that one problem or one solution that you can solve for somebody, that very first one that you can solve for them? If you’re a copywriter, I’ve talked to several copywriters, who because they’re really great copywriters and they’ve got great social media presences, they’ve been invited to speak on podcast and they’re like, “But it didn’t yield anything.” And I’m thinking, “Okay, when you got off that episode, did the podcast host, they probably thought that you were really smart, and they would love to work with you if they had some kind of work to give to you, but did they even know what to hire you for? Were they hiring you to write their sales pages? Were they hiring you to write their social media content? Were they hiring you to write emails for them? What were they hiring you to do?” Because there’s got to be that really specific offer that you know how to talk about. The way that I talk to my clients is, do you have a methodology for what you do? That methodology becomes so easy to get in the room and have an interview about how you do all the things you do. So, for me, my objective with a really good podcast interview is I’m able to talk someone else through how to do my job. So essentially, if you’re a DIY kind of person, you could do my job for me. And that’s okay because my ideal clients, the cream of the crop are the people that hear that I know what I’m doing, they know that they don’t want to DIY it themselves, and it becomes a no-brainer for them to work with somebody like me. Joe: Love that. Because something I think a lot of people are worried about, especially when they go on podcasts or when they blog, is that, “Well, if I just tell people what to do, they’re gonna do it, and they’re not gonna hire me.” But that’s not the case. Imagine if you hired somebody to remodel your kitchen. After he walks me through how he’s going to do it, I want to hire him even more because I’m like, “I can’t do this. I’m gonna mess this up.” Kristin: That’s a good example. Joe: It’s the same. I was on a podcast recently where we talked about four ways to monetize your podcast. And I told them everything that they need to do to monetize their podcast. And if they want to go off and do it, they can, but if they’re like, “Wait, I don’t know how to configure this tool that Joe talked about to do it,” or “I don’t know how to set up a membership site with WordPress,” now they know how to get ahold of me because… Well, I don’t want to spoil what you’re about to say, but they do know how to get a hold of me I suspect because of the way you’re going to answer this next question, which they don’t know what they’re offering. How do you begin Build an offering for a podcast? What are the steps that I need to take to make sure I am making the most of being a podcast guest? Kristin: There’s two things. There’s what happens before, which we already kind of touched on, and what happens after. So the what happens before is making sure that you’re writing those talking points that lead the conversation into that. The whole topic that we’re talking about right now is being an effective versus an ineffective podcast guest. You asking me that tees up all the talking points and the methodologies that I have to share. You are asking me questions where the answers are my methodology. Like I’m able to talk about that. This is something that when we work with our clients, we give them a really big questionnaire that’s talking… We ask them to tell us all about how they serve their clients and just tons of stuff. And then we use that information to write talking points that will really showcase their genius in the best way possible. So it all starts there. But then I think what people really miss out on is it follows up by having a connection with that podcast host. And starting that relationship after the interview has ended, after you stop recording, having a conversation about like, “How can I serve your audience? How can I be of value to you?” I think that that then formulates the snowball effect of a genuine relationship and showing up in a way for that podcast host where they know that you’re there for that relationship. Well, I think that some people would think that my answer would have to do all about the methodology and sharing about that methodology. The only real secret there is, when you’ve got to have one? And it’s going to be dependent on what you do. You’ve just got to know how to do what you do, and you’ve got to be willing to have a genuine pullback, all the curtains, talk about all the things. I mean, I tell podcast hosts when I come in, like, “I’m an open book. You can ask me whatever you want.” My mindset is that I don’t have any secrets. We live in a world where you could Google everything. Like me pretending if I don’t tell you you won’t know, who am I fooling really? So you’ve got to leverage on teeing up the conversation and being really genuine about having a goal of a relationship with the person that you’re in the room. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by TextExpander. It’s a new year and you can start off on the right foot by reclaiming your time. With TextExpander, you can save time by converting any text you type into keyboard shortcuts called snippets. Say goodbye to repetitive text entry, spelling and message errors, and trying to remember the right thing to say. With TextExpander, you can say the right thing in just a few keystrokes. Better than copy and paste better than scripts and templates, TextExpander snippets allow you to maximize your time by getting rid of the repetitive things you type while still customizing and personalizing your messages. TextExpander can be used in any platform, any app, anywhere you type. Take back your time and increase your productivity in the new year. And let me just say that snippets is not all it does. With advanced snippets, you can create fill-ins, pop up fields, and much more. You can even use JavaScript or AppleScript. I can type out full instructions for my podcast editor, Hi, Joel, in just a few keystrokes. Another one of my favorite and most used snippets is PPT. This will take whatever text I have on my keyboard and convert it to plain text so I’m no longer fighting formatting. Plus, if you have employees or contractors, you can use TextExpander to manage and share snippets with them so you all get it right every time. I’ve recently started sharing TextExpander snippets with my virtual assistant. This year, How I Built It is focusing on being productive while working from home. TextExpander is the perfect tool for that. Plus, they’re providing resources and blog posts to help you make the most of their tool and be productive. TextExpander is available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. If you’ve been curious about trying TextExpander or simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visit textexpander.com/podcast and let them know that I sent you. Joe: Actually, to your exact point, the exact point that we’re making, I listened to Smart Passive Income some time ago. This is Pat Flynn’s podcast. And he had a publicist on there named Brittney Lynn. And I listened to that episode and I was like, “Well…” I hired her. I hired her to help me figure out my messaging. And she sent me a huge questionnaire and I honestly had to think about it for a week. And I’m like, “What do I want out of whatever? What is my messaging?” Now I have those talking points, mostly around podcasting and a target audience and things like that. I think that’s super duper valuable. I think also something that you’re talking about that I had not thought of, or I honestly didn’t think the conversation would go in this direction, so this is great, is you’re really leaning on the relationship you’re forming with the podcast host. So this is not just a call to action, go to my website/joe to get the free download. It’s like, “I just spent an hour talking to this person. We get along well. How can we help each other?” It’s almost like you’re creating public networking meetings with a podcast host? Kristin: It’s like speed dating for business almost. And I say speed dating on purpose because the idea is that we get past all the fluff. We’re not like, “How are you?” And we did do some of this. I know that you have kids. You know that I have a kid. We did a little bit of that before the interview recorded. But it’s like, let’s get down to like the nitty-gritty of how we’re serving our people and the meaningful stuff about our business to see if like, “Hey, maybe I can support your audience. Maybe you can support my audience.” We’re getting into the really important details that are essential when you’re having a good business relationship with somebody. Joe: That’s super interesting. I’ll ask you this then. This sort of, we’ll say strategy, works pretty well for you because you are in the business of podcast booking. So obviously, you go on a podcast, I like you, I trust you, now you know what the show is about. So if you have a potential guest for me, I am more likely to accept that, right? Kristin: That’s true. That’s true. Joe: What about people who aren’t necessarily in the podcast space. Again, let’s say I make or I fix bicycles or whatever. I keep using that example but it’s like hyperlocal. So it doesn’t really work that well. But let’s just say I make websites. What… Kristin: That one works. Joe: Yeah, that one works. Kristin: I can work with that. Thank you. Joe: Just to give you a really hard exam. How good are you? Kristin: I know, right? Joe: So I make websites, I’m booking myself to go on podcast to talk about making websites, how do I nurture that relationship with a podcast host if they don’t have…” Well, I won’t qualify? How do I nurture that relationship with the podcast host? Kristin: What we have found is our sweet spot is entrepreneurs that serve other entrepreneurs. No, I’m not saying that there is not a viable strategy here beyond that. But for us, that is really our sweet spot, and where I can just talk all day long. Here’s the thing. When you are an entrepreneur and you’re getting in front of somebody who has the same business philosophies as you do, you can riff and get passionate about the same exact things, which I know that you and I can do that. What happens is my network becomes open to you and your network becomes open to me because we know that if this friend of ours or this peer of ours, somebody… Well, I’ll just say it this way. Somebody else that has interviewed me, another podcast host, we know that telling that other podcast hosts that they should meet you, Joe, like, well, they like me and they got passionate about the same things with me as you and I got passionate about. So if they need websites, you’re the guy. And you know somebody in your network that you have hit it off with, they hit it off with you and you and I have hit it off, so they’re gonna hit it off with me. So it’s easy to make those inner network connections. This is where I think that the strategy in my mind or what’s played out for me and our clients is so different than PR and marketing because we’re looking at… You’ve said it. We’re looking at the relationship and we’re looking at, you know, is this somebody that would be an easy person for me to tell my network, “You’ve got to hear about Joe.” But also what that does is… This is not the answer the question, but it just came to mind. Another thing that does is when I go and fulfill my obligation to tell my audience about this interview, because I do think that if you’re going to be a guest, you’ve got to be willing to talk about the fact that you’ve been on the interview, that is bare minimum commitment in my mind, it’s easy for me to write something genuine on LinkedIn, like, ” You’ve got to listen to podcasts with Joe. He and I have so many things in common. These are the things that we talked about.” That excitement that comes from sharing that episode is genuine because of the relationship I felt. I see this as really tapping into each other’s networks. Another example that I like to give is relationship building also opens doors to bigger podcasts, and bigger mediums, and all of those things that you want to look at when you’re doing traditional marketing and traditional PR. So, the example you talked about Smart Passive Income, you know, there’s tons of people that would love to be on Smart Passive Income and they’ve come to me and said, “Can you get me on Smart Passive Income.” And what I say is this. “Look, you don’t just knock on that door and say, ‘Hey, here I am. Can you please have me on your podcast?'” What you do though, is you look at other people that are in his circle, and get in with those people to see who can open those doors. So a great way to drive this home is you don’t go and send a cold pitch to the queen and expect to be invited to visit the queen. However, there are people that know the queen that maybe you can get in with them. And if you really liked them and you have some commonalities there, they might invite you to come meet the Queen someday. This is a long-term strategy and it doesn’t stop at just my network and your network. It ripples. It ripples if you really foster these things. Joe: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a great analogy. And it’s proven too. A warm lead is more often likely to succeed than a cold call. If someone makes the introduction for me as opposed to me just saying, like, “Hey, I want to use your platform,” the warm lead is going to work out better more often than not. So we’ve talked about kind of tapping into the network through forming the relationship with the host, and the guest host relationship. Do you do anything to talk directly to the audience? If someone is listening now, they’re like, “Man, I really want Kristin to help me get on other people’s podcasts,” is there a strategy there for that as well? Kristin: On our end, if I’m asked what my call to action is, we do have that backend stuff in place. I will say though because I want to make sure everybody’s expectations are correct, I have found that not as many people wanted to come and get on my email list and take my DIY content. For me, that hasn’t been a huge… I don’t know, a huge success, I’ll say. Some people do end up on my email list but I think that… And maybe this is because my service is very done-for-you that the people who are attracted to a done for you service are interested in consuming your DIY content. Joe: Oh yeah. Kristin: So I think that you’ve got to be really creative about how your content is positioned if you’re a done-for-you service. I mean, you can touch on that DIY but you’ve got to be really concise about it. So for example, my opt-in is a 10 minute masterclass and I had a few clients review that and they were like, “I think it needs to be shorter.” It had been like 13 minutes and I chopped it down to 10 minutes. Because what I realized is, look, the people that want to hire me don’t want to hear me drone on and on. I’ve got to get to the point as quickly as possible. So I think you’ve got to think about that back end offer a little bit. And I will just say my experience has been that, that has not been the most profitable. So, like say 100 people end up on my email list. I am getting more value from meeting two people in the podcast host network than I am from those 100 people that got on my email list. And heck, those 100 people took a whole lot more work. Because that’s the kind of work that you’re like sitting behind your computer trying to… You know, you’re writing the content. For me, that’s harder. Joe: You’re building up. Kristin: Exactly. I would rather meet another podcast host or be invited to speak inside somebody’s paid mastermind or group coaching program. For me, those have gotten just greater impact because the people that want to say yes are quicker yeses, and I don’t have to nurture them as much. So I don’t know. Yeah, you can nurture but it’s not my favorite strategy. Joe: I think that’s a very interesting perspective. Because, again, longtime listeners of the show will know, I’m like, “Your call to action if you have your own podcast or whatever, build your email list, build your email list.” This is from a more product-centric approach for me. I sell $99 courses or whatever. I sell a $9 a month membership or whatever. So the nurturing and the adding value is a bit more important for me. Also, those people are DIYers. So my DIY opt-in is going to work a little better. But for the done-for-you service, I think that’s a really interesting and valuable perspective. Perhaps we’ll dig into that a little bit more in the members show. If you are not a member by the way, you can go to buildsomething.club to sign up. It’s just fantastic. It’s a hoot there. Before we get into tips for the listeners, I am distracted by something in your background. Is that a cigar box? Kristin: It is. It is. My husband and I found a bunch of cigar boxes in a thrift store. I don’t know, five-plus years ago, and I have them sprinkled throughout my house because they’re really great storage boxes, and they’re just kind of industrial and fun. Joe: Yeah, absolutely. They smell nice. I’m a cigar smoker myself. So I saw the box and I was like, “I wonder.” Kristin: Oh, that’s interesting. Joe: Yeah. Fantastic. I don’t have any empty boxes right now, but next time I have some I’ll let you know. Kristin: I mean, they’re perfect for storing things. They look cool in your house. I think so. Joe: Yes, they do. Yeah, absolutely. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Mindsize. 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Or if you’re a freelancer or agency who feels in over your head or with an eCommerce build, their agency support plan is built specifically for you. There were a few times in my career where I really could have used that. They’ll take a high stress situation and help you relax while still delivering for your client. So check out Mindsize over at mindsize.com today. They will help you make more money, whether you need an eCommerce store, whether you need to improve your current eCommerce store, or if you build eCommerce stores for others. That’s mindsize.com. Thanks so much to Mindsize for supporting the show. Joe: As we get to the end of this conversation, what are some tips for the listeners that you have? I think we talked a bit about how to get on people’s shows and the things that you should think about before you go on people’s shows. Maybe if they’re starting from square one, what’s one or two things that they should do to make sure they have an efficient podcast guesting experience? Kristin: Talking to this audience, the person that’s never done it before, one of the biggest apprehensions that I hear is, “Am I ready? I’m nervous. When I show up, is it going to be a good episode? It’s gonna get published and I don’t know who’s gonna hear it.” There’s some of those concerns that come with first time guesting. And I know that people that ultimately are going to be fantastic guests still have those apprehensions. I did. So I can totally relate to that. So I want to offer this piece of advice that I feel not a lot of people take into consideration. And that is that there’s still a ton of value in being featured on a brand new podcast. I talked to somebody recently, a podcaster, I was interviewed by her and she told me that she actually likes to be in that first episode because when somebody finds a new podcast that they like, they go way back to the beginning and they begin bingeing it. So maybe that doesn’t help prove by point that you should go after a smaller podcast because the barriers are lower, because I just talked about how everybody’s going to hear it. But the strategy for me has been, look, if somebody is serious enough about their business to decide to start a podcast, that’s a serious entrepreneur right there. You can speak to the fact that building a podcast, it is not a small logistical commitment. It is a big deal to decide that you’re going to be a podcast host. So if you are feeling apprehensive, but want to kind of test the waters, get out there a little bit, I would say there’s tons of Facebook groups, tons of communities of people learning how to launch their podcast. Get in with those people. I think that the barriers might feel a little bit lower because they’re not going to be expecting as much from you because they’re just starting out. You can kind of be beginners together a little bit. But I would also say with that, like, here’s the reality. This is a conversation. Joe, you’re asking me questions, and I’m answering them with things that I can just talk about off the top of my head. I’m not over-preparing for episodes. If you were to ask me things… “Well, here we go.” If you had gone with that bicycle example, I would have said, “You know, Joe, I would love to tell you how I’m smart enough to figure that one out but I don’t know.” Being okay with saying that and realizing like, “I know what I know really stinking well but that doesn’t mean that I know everything. And I’m okay with that.” So it’s just a conversation. Be true to who you are, talk about what you know, and be honest about the things that you don’t know or maybe even your failures. Some of those things are really inspiring as well. Joe: I agree wholeheartedly actually. One of the reasons that this show did so well in the beginning was because we did talk about failures a lot. And I think that makes starting a business maybe less intimidating, right? Because you see the gold medalist win the gold medal at the Olympics but you don’t see the years it took for them to train and fail and break their leg or whatever. You don’t see the struggle as often as the success. And I think that that’s important. That’s great. So get in with people who are learning how to podcast. Remember, it’s a conversation. I think that’s super important. Because some people want me to send them exactly the questions I’m going to ask ahead of time, and I’m always happy to oblige. But honestly, I genuinely don’t because I did a little background research on my guests, I know what you’d like to talk about and I mean, frankly, I’m gonna have any conversation. I talk a lot. I’m an extrovert, I’m from New York, and I’m Italian. So we talk a lot. So I’m most likely going to ask you questions that you’re prepared to answer anyway. I love that. I think that’s fantastic. Then, before we go, I do need to ask you my favorite question, which is, do you have any trade secrets for us? Kristin: Gosh, I’m trying to think of the best way to answer that. The trade secrets. Yes, I do have one. I do have one. So when you are pitching for yourself and you want to find podcast hosts that are in alignment with what you talk about, here’s a really cool insider secret. Find somebody who has done a podcast tour who has a message that’s complimentary to yours. I have a very easy example. I’m all about work less, make more. I offer a done for you service. So this is for people that are not interested in DIY, they’re cool with delegation and spending a little bit more to shortcut things. You know who talks about work less, make more? James Schramko who has a really great podcast and he has been a guest on a lot of other people’s podcasts. So what you can do is you look at that influencer, so James is my influencer, you find all the places that he has previously been featured. And guess what? There’s a gold mine of people that would probably be a good fit for you. Joe: What? That is an incredible… That’s a good trade secret. That’s legit. I love that. Like I said, we’ll talk a little bit more about kind of building your pitch and figuring out your messaging and things like that in the show after the show, the membership show. But for now, Kristin, this has been fantastic. If people want to learn more about you, where can they find you? Kristin: I personally hang out on LinkedIn. And because my last name is spelled with two A’s, got a unique spelling there, when you search me on LinkedIn, I’m the only one that shows up. Kristin Molenaar. So if you’re a podcast host, and you’re looking for guests, I mean, that’s not our paid service but we would be happy to hook you up with some people that have got their act together. Joe: Awesome. Kristin: And then if you’re interested in our services and just want to check that out, our website is yesbossva.com. And that has our 10-minute masterclass that I just briefly talked about here. Joe: Excellent. I will link to all of that and more over at the show notes. You can find those at howibuilt.it/207. Kristin, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Kristin: This was so much fun. Thanks for having me. Joe: Yes. And thank you to our sponsors, TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and Mindsize. Thank you, of course, for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something. Sponsored by:Mindsize: Your WooCommerce Partner Restrict Content Pro: Launch your membership site TextExpander: Get 20% off your first year by visiting the this link. Source
Joe is a course developer and college professor and has a Master's Degree in Software Engineering and a WordPress Front End Developer, plus he hosts multiple podcasts and also teaches PHP and Web Development on Lynda.com He started freelancing in 2002 and has been a teacher at the college level for over 10 years. His passions in both areas have driven him to build Creator Courses, a school for those who want to create online businesses. As a big proponent of learning by doing, He loves creating focused, task-driven courses to help students build something. When he isn't teaching, he interviewed people for his podcast, How I Built It. https://casabona.org/ https://howibuilt.it/ https://www.lynda.com/Joe-Casabona/1993620071-1.html https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasabona
Joe is a course developer and college professor and has a Master's Degree in Software Engineering and a WordPress Front End Developer, plus he hosts multiple podcasts and also teaches PHP and Web Development on Lynda.com He started freelancing in 2002 and has been a teacher at the college level for over 10 years. His passions in both areas have driven him to build Creator Courses, a school for those who want to create online businesses. As a big proponent of learning by doing, He loves creating focused, task-driven courses to help students build something. When he isn't teaching, he interviewed people for his podcast, How I Built It. https://casabona.org/ https://howibuilt.it/ https://www.lynda.com/Joe-Casabona/1993620071-1.html https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasabona
Before we get too deep into this season, I wanted to make sure you and I have a good baseline for creating content and engaging with the audience. Taylor Waldon, the Content Strategist for GiveWP, does a fantastic job of this. We talk about how they are expanding their niche and why creating the right content is crucial. This is a must list for anyone who's creating content for their small business, no matter what you do. The post Better Audience Engagement for Your Content with Taylor Waldon appeared first on How I Built It.
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