Podcast appearances and mentions of jason schuller

Norquest College is like many educational institutions. Budgets are tight, and capacity is often lacking, but by being smart about building new buildings, combining efforts with renovations to old buildings and by measuring energy use Norquest College is finding innovative ways to save big bucks on energy costs. We take a tour with the facilities manager Jason Schuller to learn what they are doing to reduce costs and emissions. GreenEnergyFutures.ca CKUA.com Podcast

In this episode, Gaby Galea talks to Jason Schuller and JR Farr, two of the four co-founders of Lemon Squeezy, a plugin that helps simplify the selling of digital products. Lemon Squeezy fits under the Make Lemonade product portfolio and the digital maker crew hopes to continually launch and build new products together. Episode Highlights and Topics: What is Lemon Squeezy? Easy-peasy way to sell digital products online End-to-End Solution: Easily do everything online as a digital creator with one-stop shop Pain Points: Digital creators/makers can build things, the problem is selling those things Lemon Squeezy is and probably always will be a SaaS-based product WordPress Integration? Working on easy-peasy way to access, embed, and use plugin Other Platforms: Lemon Squeezy can be used with any platform - it’s pretty flexible Merchant Records: Creators upload products and Lemon Squeezy handles payments Marketing: How Lemon Squeezy helps companies add context to their email messaging Lemon Squeezy Price: Subscription depends on plan, customers, and features for now Resources/Links: Lemon Squeezy Iconic app Make Lemonade Mailchimp ConvertKit Castos WP Mayor Email WP Mayor

Jason Schuller knows a thing or two about taking ideas and making them reality. Over the last decade he's launched countless projects, sold them when they no longer serve his needs, and launched more.Currently he's working on Lemon Squeezy at Make Lemonade.Find the full transcript and more at BYLT.co/jason-schullerAs always, this episode of Starting Now is brought to you by BYLT. At BYLT we help you get started online. Whether you want to start a blog or a business head on over to BYLT.co to get started.Subscribe to Starting Now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Also watch the video interview on YouTube.And, finally, if you're enjoying our podcasts and care to learn more about us, at SPYR we build minimalist businesses and we help you start your own at BYLT.

Marketers rejoice! WP Landing Kit is a plugin that you've wanted for ages and ages and now you have it! It allows you to point all of your domains at one WordPress install! You can then control all of your landing pages from one WordPress install, meaning that you save time on updating it and you can use successful page templates with ease. You might not immediatley see the utility of a plugin like this, but after listening to the podcast, you'll realsise that it's a genius idea. Jason Schuller is on the podcast today to talk about how it all works and how you can use it. Go listen...

Marketers rejoice! WP Landing Kit is a plugin that you've wanted for ages and ages and now you have it! It allows you to point all of your domains at one WordPress install! You can then control all of your landing pages from one WordPress install, meaning that you save time on updating it and you can use successful page templates with ease. You might not immediatley see the utility of a plugin like this, but after listening to the podcast, you'll realsise that it's a genius idea. Jason Schuller is on the podcast today to talk about how it all works and how you can use it. Go listen...

Marketers rejoice! WP Landing Kit is a plugin that you've wanted for ages and ages and now you have it! It allows you to point all of your domains at one WordPress install! You can then control all of your landing pages from one WordPress install, meaning that you save time on updating it and you can use successful page templates with ease. You might not immediatley see the utility of a plugin like this, but after listening to the podcast, you'll realsise that it's a genius idea. Jason Schuller is on the podcast today to talk about how it all works and how you can use it. Go listen...

I have to be honest, I get a tad jealous when people say they aren’t coders, then go out to build a SaaS company as if they have been coding all their lives. My Twitter feed reminds me weekly that someone else is launching a new micro-niche product or app and — dang it —…

I have to be honest, I get a tad jealous when people say they aren't coders, then go out to build a SaaS company as if they have been coding all their lives. My Twitter feed reminds me weekly that someone else is launching a new micro-niche product or app and -- dang it -- I want in on the fun! Take Jason Schuller, for example. Though his recent DSKO.app isn't his first foray into the SaaS world, he doesn't consider himself a full-blown engineer. Like LeefLets and Rivyt before it, he leveraged WordPress as the backend to his products, while concentrating on front-end design to make the "plumbing" look a bit more magical. He's able to leverage core WordPress components like user authentication & management, post types, and custom fields. Nevermind what other "accessory" plugins he might be using, like Gravity Forms. A testament to Jason and WordPress, I suppose. I love niche products and I love hearing the stories behind them. It's even better when you can build something power by teaching yourself how to code, or leverage "frameworks" like WordPress. I hope you enjoy today's episode, please share it with others if you do! ★ Support this podcast ★

I have to be honest, I get a tad jealous when people say they aren't coders, then go out to build a SaaS company as if they have been coding all their lives. My Twitter feed reminds me weekly that someone else is launching a new micro-niche product or app and — dang it — I want in on the fun! Take Jason Schuller, for example. Though his recent DSKO.app isn't his first foray into the SaaS world, he doesn't consider himself a full-blown engineer. Like LeefLets and Rivyt before it, he leveraged WordPress as the backend to his products, while concentrating on front-end design to make the “plumbing” look a bit more magical. He's able to leverage core WordPress components like user authentication & management, post types, and custom fields. Nevermind what other “accessory” plugins he might be using, like Gravity Forms. A testament to Jason and WordPress, I suppose. I love niche products and I love hearing the stories behind them. It's even better when you can build something power by teaching yourself how to code, or leverage “frameworks” like WordPress. I hope you enjoy today's episode, please share it with others if you do! ★ Support this podcast ★

I have to be honest, I get a tad jealous when people say they aren’t coders, then go out to build a SaaS company as if they have been coding all their lives. My Twitter feed reminds me weekly that someone else is launching a new micro-niche product or app and — dang it —…

Thank you for listening to SmashNotes.com - You are awesome! In this warm summer edition: The lost art of apprenticeships, and how and why Dan Mall is growing a new breed of designers by teaching them to do everything. Remote Work Report from Hiten Shah, and advice on how to make your own company more productive. Jason Calacanis on how to prepare your kids for life from the young age, and how the Elon Musk school is doing it. Rosie Sherry, the maker behind the Ministry of Testing, and what she did not expect from a life of a mother. How a failed client relationship catalyzed Jason Schuller to start Press75. If you would like to learn more about your favorite podcasts, take a look at SmashNotes.com and use the new search feature to get just the right set of notes. Don't see what you are looking for? Email me `community@smashnotes.com` and let's set you up with an account. You too could create high quality notes for your friends to follow. Till next week! ~Kirill p.s. This update is brought to you by Crowd Cow, the best way to buy delicious, organic, responsibly grown beef, chicken, pork and seafood. Try Crowd Cow today, and get a $25 credit to your first purchase. Nom, nom!

Jason Schuller is a dad, a husband, and the founder of Press75, a WordPress theme company that he started in frustration, when a consulting client decided to skip paying the bills. That incident caught fire and set Jason on an entrepreneurial journey full of joys and setbacks. His company, and his lessons enabled him to be a successful founder, an engaged father and a thoughtful husband.

Jason Schuller is a designer, maker and minimalist based in Seattle, Washington. His first success was with Press75, a WordPress theme shop that infamously sold $75 themes raking in millions of dollars over several years. However money is no driver for Jason, who sold the business to pursue stimulating side-projects like Leeflets, Droplets, Cinematico, RIVYT and even joined the team over at Plasso for while. Luckily for us Jason isn’t afraid to go deep. We talk about the moment everything changed, finding the right co-founder and the struggle of competing with previous monetary success.Links and transcription:https://onepagelove.com/podcast-004

On this week s episode, we re joined by Jason Schuller, a designer and maker of things for the web. His MO is always focusing on elegant simplicity, endlessly being inspired by awesome creative people, and relentlessly learning by making mistakes. Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By Discover why 201,344 website owners trust StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Launch your new site today! In this episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Jason Schuller discuss: The creative career of Jason Schuller Launching Press75 The decision behind the sale of Press75 The allure of side projects Prioritizing family in business decisions Creating Work/Life balance Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Follow Jason on Twitter Visit Jason’s Website Plasso Follow Jason on Instagram Follow Jason on Dribbble Follow Jason on Medium The Transcript The Creative Entrepreneur: Living the Dream Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, we are joined by Jason Schuller to discuss being a creative entrepreneur and living the dream. Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone, welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner. Today I’m joined as usual, with my co-host, the Vice President of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke. Lauren Mancke: Glad to be back this week again, everyone. Thank you for joining us as we continue our series on talking to members and experts of the design community. Brian Gardner: Today we have the pleasure — are joined by Jason Schuller, a designer and maker of things for the web. His MO is always focusing on elegant simplicity, endlessly being inspired by awesome creative people, and relentlessly learning by making mistakes. On top of that, Jason is a personal friend of ours, and we’re very fortunate to have him on the show. Jason, welcome. Jason Schuller: Hey, thanks guys for having me. It’s good to talk to you again. Brian Gardner: Yeah, for sure. We always like to kick off the show by asking the same question, to some degree: Who is Jason Schuller, and what is your backstory? Jason Schuller: It’s funny, I feel like “who I am” is a lifelong journey at this point. I’m 40 and still don’t know who I am. I was born just south of Seattle, out in the country, and grew up loving the outdoors. Snowboarding, mountain biking, things like that. I had a pretty typical childhood that way, here in the Pacific Northwest. I still enjoy all those things. Just love being out here and being creative out in nature. That’s me. Brian Gardner: Give us a little background then, from where you started — at least from a design and being a creative — because you weren’t always that way. As you evolved through your career it leaned that way and then you became a full-blown entrepreneur. The Creative Career of Jason Schuller Jason Schuller: The first time I realized I wanted to be a creative person … I think it’s always in you. We all know, to a certain extent, that’s in you just growing up. But I think the first time I actually realized it was in high school. I took a drafting class, and with those tools and being the perfectionist that I am — just being able to realize the design of a house and draft it out and see something I’ve made come to life. I think that was the first time I realized I wanted to do something along those lines. I always struggled in school. I’m dyslexic. I have a hard time reading books. I have a hard time with traditional learning. So drafting and becoming an architect was a struggle for me, because I wasn’t able to get through those required courses to realize that dream. That was the start and the end of wanting to be a creative person at that time. Lauren Mancke: I actually have a few dyslexic people in my family, and my dad was always concerned about that when I was growing up. I never really had an issue with that, but I can imagine that would be difficult. At what point in your career did you have creative jobs? Did you start in a normal job environment, or did you always have creative jobs? Jason Schuller: I got married really young, at the age of 23, so I was kind of forced to find a job. Because, of course, you got to pay the bills and you got to move out of your parents’ place when you get married. It’s probably a good thing. I found a job at the Boeing company here in Seattle as a technical writer, and that obviously doesn’t really get the creative juices flowing. I think it was at that time when the web really started to take off. I didn’t have any traditional training or education in web design or development, but I had an interest in it. What I started doing while I was working at Boeing was just finding websites, downloading the source code, and playing around and making things my own. Reverse engineering and learning that way. I think that’s when I really started to catch on to what you could do with the web and how I could apply my own creativity to building things for the web. Brian Gardner: So you and I and Cory Miller — another friend of ours at iThemes who we had on the show a few weeks ago — we all had this same sort of story. Where we were at our day jobs, relatively non-involved with WordPress or development or design or whatever, and we just — maybe out of lack of interest or being bored — tinkered around with WordPress and code and whatnot. You were at Boeing, I was at an architectural firm, and Cory was working in marketing at a church or something like that. Let’s talk about the beginning of your WordPress “career,” because it practically coincided with mine and Cory’s. It’s great to look back on those early days when we all had day jobs and were freelancing to start out our businesses. What stands out to you the most back then and what was the funniest part of what we did as WordPress was really beginning to evolve into something more than just a blogging platform? Jason Schuller: Just like you guys, like you said, I was working at Boeing still when I got into WordPress. Every organizational website at the Boeing company is probably still maintained using Static HTML. I was looking for a solution to that, because it seemed like a dated process for creating and maintaining websites — using Static HTML. I was poking around with Joomla, as I’m sure you did too, and WordPress came around. I immediately was drawn to it because of its simplicity. I was able to take all the website templates that Boeing had created and turn them into themes for WordPress really quickly and put together, essentially, a platform for maintaining organizational websites in the company. That’s when I really was drawn to WordPress and the potential for creating things for WordPress. That’s what spurred me into actually leaving the company, seeing that I could do much more than what I was doing. Start going off into a freelance career. I didn’t expect to sell themes at that time. I think in doing that process — leaving the company, starting doing freelance work — that’s when I saw what you guys were doing with premium themes and starting to sell themes. I think was specifically you, Brian, and Aidi with his premium news theme that he had. That’s what really got me interested in WordPress themes and potentially branching out into that market. What stands out the most was how easy it was to build a following within WordPress just getting off the ground. I went from working at the Boeing company, leaving, and within two months having a pretty strong following already in the WordPress community simply by blogging and sharing what I was learning at the time. That really stands out to me the most early in those days, is how easy it was to build that audience and that following. I think the funnest part — to follow up on that question — was meeting people like you, Brian, and Cory and Aidi, and just sharing the fun in what we were doing. Making things, designing and creating themes, releasing them, and having thousands of people consume them. That was just such an exciting time. It’s something that I had never experienced before — I’m sure you hadn’t either — sharing that camaraderie with my supposed competitors, which didn’t seem like competitors at all. I think that was the funnest part. Launching Press75 Lauren Mancke: Walk us a little bit back through the process of creating Press75. You touched on getting started with WordPress. At that time … you started in 2008, is that correct? Jason Schuller: Yeah, I got started in 2008. Lauren Mancke: Brian, you had the Revolution theme going then, but that was before you rebranded to StudioPress, right? Brian Gardner: That’s for sure. Lauren Mancke: Walk us back through the process of creating the company. You mentioned creating a following. Share with us a little bit about what made you stand out among other theme makers out there. Jason Schuller: Sure, my start in WordPress — I actually launched a blog called WPelements. I think that’s how you came to know me, through a plugin I released. Brian Gardner: Oh, the Feature Content Gallery. Lauren Mancke: I remember that plugin. Brian Gardner: Love it or hate it. Jason Schuller: Oh my god. Again, I was just blogging through WPelements, building that following. People were downloading plugins I was making and it surprised me, because I’m not a developer by trade. I’m not a designer by trade. I was just learning and putting things out there — broken or not — and people were following along. That was just the state of what WordPress was back then. It was growing so rapidly and there was such a growing community around it, it was that easy to build that audience. But again, noticing what Brian was doing, what Aidi was doing, and what Cory was doing with the premium themes, it lead me to believe that with this following I had now I could do the same thing. I think what stood me apart was finding my own niche doing something that I enjoyed doing, which was video. There weren’t too many video themes back then in 2008, so I took a stab at releasing a video-centric theme where you can embed videos and have it displayed in a nice grid. My first theme I put out there on WP Elements for $5 and it sold … it was a crazy number of copies within a couple hours. I remember going for a walk with my wife and our dog and coming back and checking the computer to see if I had sold anything, and it was something like 200 copies had been sold or something like that for $5 a piece. That’s when I realized that this could be something. It spurred me to, over the next couple months, releasing a couple more themes and then eventually building Press75 and creating a dedicated theme shop out of Press75. Brian Gardner: That’s the creative entrepreneurial dream. They say “make money while you sleep” is the big dream. You want to do that while you’re at the beach, taking a walk, or while you’re sleeping. I know when I first started selling Revolution back in the day, it was that. My favorite part of the day was when I would wake up and go to my day job and know that by then I had already made $600 or something like that. It’s part addictive, it’s part inspiring, and it’s part, “can I keep this going?” Obviously you get to that point where you have to decide, “Should I actually leave my established day job as a young, married-type of person?” We had a kid at the time, so even more so. Thankfully, Shelly had a job, and a good job at that, so it was a little bit easier for me to take off. But I think we all as entrepreneurs get to that point where we’re not sure if we should jump or not. I remember, I think it was Chris Cree or somebody told me way back then that they had been doing stuff for themselves for seven or eight years and they just haven’t looked back. When I heard that I was like, “I don’t want to not be at that spot.” Jason Schuller: Right, and I think now you can look back and say the same thing if somebody asked you. Brian Gardner: For sure. Jason Schuller: Literally, I’ve been on my own for almost nine years now, and I can’t imagine doing anything else. I can’t imagine going back to work for a company like Boeing and being in that process of a daily grind. It’s so foreign to me now. I can’t even think of going back. When anybody asks me, “Should I do it?” I always say, “Yeah, do it.” I think where we got lucky is that we did it and it worked the first time. It doesn’t always work the first time for a lot of people. Brian Gardner: All right, let’s take a quick break for an advertisement here, because at StudioPress FM, that’s how we roll. Minimalism plus warmth, a winning combination, Gallery Pro is a theme that features your gorgeous galleries and pages in a minimalist style that features stunning typography. You can make Gallery Pro your own with options for a styled portfolio, multiple column classes, a flexible front page, and full color customization. Find out more on Gallery Pro, head over to StudioPress.com/Themes. Brian and Jason s backstory Brian Gardner: All right, we’re back. Now, as I alluded to earlier, you and I created our businesses around the same time. In fact, what many folks don’t know and they’re not aware of, is that at one point you and I actually formed a partnership for a brief period, which ended not too long after it started. Now, I want us to talk about why that partnership failed. I guess failed is a harsh word, because it obviously wasn’t terrible — we’re still friends and you’re on the show and whatnot. But let’s revisit why we decided it was better to part ways, because I think a lot of people might to relate to that and it speaks to the styles of being different types of entrepreneurs. Jason Schuller: It might be different for you, actually, but for me, I think we are a lot alike in a lot of ways. I think that might have been our biggest problem as partners. We both wanted to do our own thing. We both wanted to lead the charge in what we were doing. I think when you have two partners that are so much alike in that way, it leads to problems. I know for certain the reason my marriage works so well is because my wife and I are completely different people. We balance each other out. And I think that’s true for business partnerships as well. When you have strengths and weaknesses and your partner can balance out those strengths and weaknesses with their own, I think that’s what leads to good partnerships. We were both getting started. We saw the potential, and it was just really good that we recognized so early on in our partnership — because it was only a couple months — that we wanted different things. We were able to split ways before it got dirty and go back to doing our own things. And it worked out for both of us. I’m really happy with how that panned out. I don’t regret having a partnership with you at all. I learned lessons from that, and that’s important as well. Brian Gardner: I guess it’s overdramatic because I used the word fail . I wouldn’t call it a fail. Like we said, it dissolved for very good reasons. Like you said, when you have two like-minded people, it’s tough. We just both wanted to create and do that part of it, and then no one was left to do the administrative or the marketing side of it, because all we want to do is create and move forward. I think that the lesson here is you don’t always have to work with other people. Sometimes there are great fits and there are good marriages. I know that when I merged into Copyblogger — the five of us — that was a situation where everybody brought something unique to the table and it has worked out. Our situation is sometimes when … I wouldn’t even say that the situation came between two friends, because it didn’t. We parted amicably. You did your thing. Because you had stuff you wanted to work on, and maybe it was slightly different than the direction I wanted to go. I think we both split and still continued our success, and that was good. Jason Schuller: I really see that as the beginning of me really branching out and being successful with Press75. I saw it as the beginning, not the end, for sure. It was a good experience for me. Lauren Mancke: At the time, I was curious what had happened there. I think, Brian, you had mentioned to me about this. You were using his plugin on your themes and then something happened, and I never heard what happened. So that’s fun, to hear the backstory after all these years. Brian Gardner: I was a little bit skittish back then in what I should and shouldn’t share with the public and people. It’s different than it is now. Even when Revolution — StudioPress rebranded from Revolution because of a cease and desist letter, and I got squirrelly because I was new to this. I did a lot of, “Well, it was the best thing, the great decision.” I didn’t do a lot of backstories because back then I was less into transparency and authenticity than I am now. Now I think I’m more that way because I want other people to learn from the stuff that I’ve gone through. Back then it was all new and I didn’t have any real knowledge to share other than, “This is weird, so let’s not talk about it.” Jason Schuller: Right. I think I was the same way. You get full of yourself a little bit. You definitely don’t want to share those lessons because you’re not — it’s not apparently clear what the lesson is back then when you’re going through it. It takes sometimes a couple of years to look back, reflect, and realize who you were back then and how you want to be now. The Decision Behind the Sale of Press75 Lauren Mancke: Let’s continue in that vein, Jason. What are some of the biggest challenges that you’ve faced with your company, Press75? I know we had a chance to talk at Circles Conference about some of the reasons you decided to sell it, and you’ve also shared with some others about your frustrations with WordPress in general. Can you give our listeners a bit of a behind the scenes on the decision to sell? And did any of the frustrations you’ve had with WordPress affect that decision? Jason Schuller: Yeah. There’s a couple of factors that went into me wanting to sell Press75. I think the biggest challenge, first of all, of running Press75, was trying to stay true to myself and not giving in to the appeal of doing everything that everybody else was doing at the time. I think that was my biggest struggle. I built Press75 on my own style and my own way of doing things, and that’s what made it so popular. I fell into that trap after a while of noticing what everybody else was doing and wanting to do the same thing. Wanting to grow it beyond what it was. That was one of my biggest struggles. The second side to that is the direction WordPress was taking after a while. I think it was around 2010-2011 that WordPress really started to get, in my eyes anyways, pretty bloated compared to what it was in previous years. It was this perfect, simple, content management system that was easy to build themes for, and it became this massive CMS for doing pretty much anything you wanted to do with it. With that came the responsibility in creating themes that people wanted. What people wanted was basically all the functionality that WordPress provided, plus all the functionality that every plugin available for WordPress provided. That’s where I started to disconnect a little bit. I wanted to continue doing my own thing, which is minimalist, simple design, and it wasn’t jiving with what the market wanted at the time, which was everything under the sun. That’s what really led me to go down the path of looking for a new owner for Press75 and wanting to do something different. Brian Gardner: We had Cory on the show, as I mentioned earlier. He and I and Lauren discussed something very important and something that still is under-discussed, I think, in the entrepreneurial space, and that’s all about mental health. Specifically, how it pertains to being an entrepreneur. Now, after selling Press75 during the summer of 2014, I know you went through a pretty rough time trying to process the end of that and what would be next. You went through a period of time … To whatever extent you feel comfortable, can you just talk about that a little bit? What went through your head and some of the emotions and things that were going on after the sale and before you started the next few projects? Jason Schuller: Sure. Yeah, that was definitely a depressing couple of years for a lot of reasons. I think, primarily, when you’re in that game of building something and it’s successful — it’s the first thing you’ve done and it became a success really quickly — you have this attitude that everything you do in the future is going to be successful just like the previous thing. I kind of had that attitude getting out of Press75, thinking that whatever I did next was going to take off and be successful. It just wasn’t the case. That was a big lesson for me to learn. But with that came a lot of depression. I can definitely say that I was the most depressed in my life — from the standpoint of my professional career — than I’ve ever been. But it was twofold, because in my personal life, my little girl had just been born in 2013. Personally, I was on a high. Professionally, I was on a low. Those two were just clashing in the middle all the time, because I had this great need to provide for my family, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Learning that lesson that maybe I’m not as special as I thought I was and that not everything I create is going to be instantly a success. Looking back on that, it was extremely important for me to go through that period of a reality check almost, and realize that creating successful businesses takes more work than you actually might think. It’s going to be harder the next time around, even though I have had a previous success. That’s where I am today. And that’s when I started opening up to new opportunities of maybe joining a team or working under the umbrella of another company and seeing what that opportunity has in store for me. That’s when I joined up with Drew Wilson and Plasso. I feel like I’ve grown so much more since doing that. It was an important step for me to take. The Allure of Side Projects Lauren Mancke: You’ve also been working on a number of projects like Droplets and Pickle and Atmospheric. Can you talk a little bit about those and what made you decided to do each one of those? Jason Schuller: I think Brian can relate to side projects and wanting to do everything that pops into your head. Maybe I get a little bit less focused than Brian in that way. It’s one of the things I enjoy most, is doing side projects. But it’s also a big drawback for me as well, because it distracts me from doing the things that I should be doing. I take on these side projects. I want to see something come to life and I put it out there. Then as soon as it’s out there, I lose interest. The process of building them, giving it my all and making something work, I think that’s really a healthy thing. But putting it out there and just letting it just go stale, that’s not so healthy. I’ve been trying to learn for myself and my own sanity to focus on important things and not give in to doing everything that pops into my head. Side projects — they’re kind of a double-edged sword for me. Brian Gardner: I for sure relate to the whole, “Have an idea, carry it out, and launch it” type of thing. I’ve had to be very specific with what I do as a “completely outside of the scope of my job” thing. I’ve only got one thing that I do there. But from a creative standpoint or from a design standpoint, I get inspirations left and right all the time. I’m always in my own head thinking, “Ah, I’ve got this great idea.” Even if it’s an idea of something I would do as a true side project, I try to channel it away and say, “That’s not the right time to actually pursue a actual side project,” but conceptually take what you’re envisioning and wrap that into something that then can become a theme that we sell on StudioPress. Some of the things that I’ve done lately have been the ideas or creative endeavors that I wished to live out, but just dial back the execution part and say “Okay, well at least I’ve put forth some time and effort and energy into something that a) is part of my job, and then b) something that hundreds or thousands of people can benefit from and they do.” Jason Schuller: I’m starting to do that same thing. It feels good to be able to refocus that energy in a different way that makes it available right away under what you’re supposed to be doing. Again, I’m working under Plasso right now and designing and making things for Plasso, so every time I have an idea I’ve been exactly doing what you’re saying, rechanneling that energy into something that maybe could work for Plasso. That seems to be panning out for me, because I can use that energy still and not let it go away. Prioritizing Family in Business Decisions Brian Gardner: We talked about some of the stuff you did at Boeing. That worked its way into WordPress and Press75. Then you sold that and you’ve had some of these fun side projects. Some have and haven’t been included or involved with WordPress. And then you’re doing work with Plasso. But there’s more to you than that, though. I know that because I’m a friend of yours, but also because I follow your Instagram feed, which is a total window into the world outside of Jason as the guy who sits in front of a computer and does design and software and creativity stuff. From the conversations you and I have had over the years, I know that the definition of life for you far exceeds running a business and being a successful entrepreneur. I can think of two things — or shall I say two people — that matter to you more than anything. I’m guessing I’m right here. Jason Schuller: Oh yeah, absolutely. The ability to be home with my family, my wife and my daughter, and be with them more than I actually work has been the biggest gift of my life. Again, I can’t imagine going back to working for that company eight hours a day and not seeing my daughter. Only seeing her in mornings and at night. It’s not anything I can even fathom at this point. This experience is something I’ll cherish forever. It’s actually my biggest motivator in life to keep doing what I do. To be creative, to keep pushing, and to keep learning and growing and stay relevant, so that I can maintain that lifestyle that I like so much now at this point. Because I want to maintain being able to spend as much time with my family as I can. Brian Gardner: We talked to Brian and Jennifer Bourn a few weeks back about maintaining a work/life balance, because they spend a lot of time with their kids traveling and doing things like that. From my perspective from the outside, even though I know that personally you were going through some rough times, to see you post pictures or to talk about — even in the context of a sentence — just saying, “This is my dream. This is my world. Spending time with my daughter and watching her grow up.” From my perspective as a dad, it’s awesome. It’s great to see. And it’s also convicting, because sometimes I don’t feel like I have that much of a conviction to be that intentional about spending time with Zach and Shelly and stuff like that. I’m around a lot. I’m here all day when he’s here. I send him off to school. I’m home when he gets home. But it’s a lesson and a great motivator, like you said, to maintain that. Because once you have that … Of course, things will change as she gets older. Because he’s 12 now and he doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore sometimes, and I’m like, “Okay.” Then you think, “A few more years, he’s going to be out of high school.” I look at Shelly and I’m like, “What are we going to be doing all day long now?” There’s that to consider. But you still have plenty of time left with her. Creating Work/Life Balance Jason Schuller: I look back at those couple of years where I was super depressed from a professional standpoint but just living the high life from personal standpoint … I don’t know, I just have to believe that maybe that’s way it was supposed to be. For me to be there 100 percent for my kid those first couple of years that she was growing up and becoming a person, I think that that was such a special time. I reflect and think of it that way, instead of, “Oh, I was just super depressed all the time from a professional standpoint.” I look back at it — at those pictures, all those videos, and all of those trips that we took together — and remember it that way, as the time I got to spend with my daughter growing up. Brian Gardner: Let’s talk to Lauren. Lauren, how do you feel about the fact that you’ve been able to spend a couple years with Fox? Now you’ve got two more coming, and I don’t know if being home will actually be a good thing for you or not with all the distractions and whatnot. Lauren Mancke: I actually was going to chime in. I think that’s one of the things I bonded with Jason over when we first met, was that family-first mentality. We discussed making business decisions based on that. Putting your family first and creating a work/life balance that gives you the opportunity to be home with your children. I think it’s really important. I heard, Jason, that you’ve got a pretty sweet setup for working from home. Brian’s actually mentioned it on another episode. I haven’t been able to set up my super sweet office yet, but I’ve got schemes and I’ve got visions. What is your favorite part of working remotely and working from home? Jason Schuller: I think you have to make a creative space for yourself. Something that inspires you every day. Somewhere you want to actually sit and spend a good amount of time in, so that you can let those creative juices flow. For me it was building this office. It’s literally just a little room on top of my separated garage. I built it in 2009, I designed it myself. My father in-law and I built it together from the ground up. Now it’s just that space I get to go to every single day and enjoy the view from my office and just be creative. It’s quiet and it’s peaceful. I think it’s really important for us when we work at home to have that space that you can go to and feel that way and just work. Brian Gardner: See, I don’t think I have that. Mine’s called Starbucks. I just rent that space, $6 a day. My office isn’t anything special. I’ve actually had — I still probably won’t do this, because it just would cost too much and it would be silly — but I had this vision of designing the office that I have into a Starbucks. I have a friend of mine who his friend is actually one of the guys who architects and engineers the refurbishment of Starbucks. I was actually going to hire him and say, “Come into my room and do Starbucks stuff.” I was going to put a little live-edged countertop. Put in the floor and some lighting. Really try to emulate a Starbucks. Then I just realized that was probably money not well spent. But I do, I see the pictures of your office. It overlooks the lake there, and you’re always posting pictures of the mountains. “Then I took a quick drive up to go mountain biking.” There are people in this world — you are one of them, Jeff Sheldon is another — who I really have envy over their lifestyle and their ability to connect in places that I don’t live near. So good for you, that you get to have that type of space. Jason Schuller: Yeah, man, I really love living here. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I’m sure there are plenty of better places to live than Seattle, but I grew up here. I love it. I love being connected to the mountains and nature in general, and being able to do that pretty much within 20 minutes of my place. It’s super important for me to maintain. So yeah, I love it. Brian Gardner: As we wrap this up, we asked Bill Kenney a few weeks ago — from Focus Lab — the same question. I want to do the same with you, because I got a feeling it might be a little bit different answer. I think it’s really important for our listeners to get different points of view, so here it goes: If you had a chance to speak to a group of young designers or creatives and your presentation was limited to five minutes, what would you say to them? Jason Schuller: Wow. That’s a loaded question. Just drawing from my own experience, I think the most important thing, for me anyways, is moving forward. Is not to forget who I am and what I do, because that’s what lead me down a bad path when I was doing Press75, was paying too much attention to what everybody else was doing and trying to emulate that. When I really sat back and did my own thing and did it in my own way, that’s when I was most successful. That’s the most important point for me. Also, making yourself a little uncomfortable at times. I got really comfortable during those years of building WordPress themes. Living that life for a couple years really didn’t challenge me all that much. I’ve noticed this last year of working for Plasso — being with a team and being challenged on a level that I’ve never been challenged before — I’ve grown so much as a person. As a creative person, as a designer, and as a developer. I don’t think I would be where I am now without that continual challenge. I think getting yourself uncomfortable is also a big lesson that you need to keep in mind as you move forward. Brian Gardner: That’s a great answer. Lauren Mancke: That is a great answer. Is there anything else you want to add before we wrap this thing up? Jason Schuller: No, man, I can’t think of anything. It’s been a pleasure talking to you guys, and I wish I could chat with you more often. Brian Gardner: We can make that happen. Whether it’s on the show or not. Jason Schuller: I miss those WordCamps. I’m not in that WordPress scene anymore, but that was the best part of those WordCamps, coming together. Skipping all the presentations and sitting in those halls and chatting with guys like you. People that were doing the same thing. Brian Gardner: I will say this, Circles Conference, for me, has become the new WordCamp thing. I realized I’m more of a creative than I am a WordPress guy, even though I create WordPress products. I love WordPress and I’m so thankful for what it’s done for my life, but I realized my hardcore passion is about creativity. I will say, there was an empty spot in my heart this past year because both of you guys left me. We had the luxury of being together both — all three of us, actually — last year, and I missed both of you there this year. Hopefully next year maybe we can try it again. Jason Schuller: Oh yeah, I’ll be there next year for sure. Lauren Mancke: I won’t be pregnant. Jason Schuller: But you’ll have three kids running around. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. Brian Gardner: Will’s a soldier, he can handle it, right? Lauren Mancke: He’s got this. Brian Gardner: Well, Jason, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks for being a good friend to us at StudioPress — to Lauren and I — and we look forward to seeing what you come up with next. Jason Schuller: Thank you.

Today we’re joined by Cory Miller. Cory is a former newspaper journalist turned full-time entrepreneur. In 2008, he started iThemes, which builds web design software and offers cutting-edge web design training for thousands of customers around the globe. Cory is a passionate entrepreneur who believes in finding and maintaining work happiness (for himself and others) that aligns with your purpose and plays to your strengths, talents and ambitions, while challenging you to do great things with your life. Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By Discover why 201,344 website owners trust StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Launch your new site today! In this 43-minute episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Cory Miller discuss: The founding of iThemes in 2008 Comradery and Co-opetition in the WordPress community What lies beneath the surface of entrepreneurship The importance of talking openly about mental health How mental health can affect your business How to find lasting career happiness Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Follow Cory on Twitter Visit CoryMiller.com It s Time To Start Talking Openly About Mental Health iThemes Leader.team: A Business Podcast by Cory Miller and Matt Danner The Div The Transcript The Importance of Entrepreneurial Mental Health Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder, Brian Gardner, and VP of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke, share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, Brian and I are joined by Cory Miller, the founder of iThemes, to discuss the importance of mental health in being an entrepreneur. Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner. I am joined, as usual, with the Vice President of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke. Lauren Mancke: Hello, everyone. We are starting a new series on the show this week, one that we’re very excited about. We’re taking a step outside of the Genesis community and talking with members of the WordPress community. Brian Gardner: Today, we’re joined by Cory Miller. Cory is a former newspaper journalist turned full-time entrepreneur, like many of us — the entrepreneur part, not so much the journalist part. In 2008, he started iThemes, which builds web design software and offers cutting edge web design training for thousands of customers around the globe. Cory is a passionate entrepreneur who believes in finding and maintaining work happiness for himself and for others that aligns also with your purpose and plays to your strengths, talents, ambitions, while challenging you to do great things with your life. That’s a mouthful. That’s awesome. Cory, it’s a huge pleasure to have you here on the show, StudioPress FM. Welcome. Cory Miller: Thanks, Brian and Lauren, for having me on the show. Brian Gardner: This is going to be a good one. I’m excited about this, mainly because it’s a little bit of a departure from the stuff we had been talking about, which was general business practice. Covering a number of different things. And it’s something that I know is very important to you, as it is to me. In a way, I’ve almost become envious of the way that you’ve been able to communicate and — I wouldn’t say grow an audience around this, but talk to a very particular topic that I think is important to all of us. I want to get this started by setting the foundation for you and I, going back to the beginning. You and I have known each other for almost 10 years, believe it or not. A time when we were both working normal 40 hour a week jobs. Back then, we were tinkering around with WordPress as a hobby. I think back to that time and remember all of the conversations you and I have had on Gmail chat. I wish I would have somehow saved those, because those were groundbreaking and set the foundation of where we are here today. It’d be fun to look back — almost in a diary sense — to see what were the things and feelings and stuff like that we were talking about. I want to ask you, what stands out in those early years about our relationship, but more importantly, what we discussed and built and started back then? How did that lay the foundation of where you and iThemes and those who work for you — where that’s all at right now. The Founding of iThemes in 2008 Cory Miller: Yeah, those were the glory days, right, Brian? Those were the fun days. How I originally met Brian was I needed a theme for my WordPress blog. I found one of his great themes. I was trying to think what the name of that was. I have to find that. Found this guy named Brian Gardner and decided to read his blog and thought, “Man, we have a lot in common.” I reached out, and before you know it we struck up this great friendship. I think we knew each other probably over a year before we actually met in person. What strikes me about that time back then, Brian, and I hope this is resonating for you too, is comradery. We were one of the first to be doing what we’re doing back then. The theme market was pretty abysmal and you had already released a number of themes. I was behind you trying to do the same, going, “I just want to learn.” You were a great help to me and a resource as I tried to learn WordPress, web design, HTML, CSS, and put out free themes. When I think back — it’s comradery. Our Gmail chats you’re talking about, it makes me smile thinking about those, because it was just another person going through the same or similar experiences I was. We could just go, “What do you think about this?” “Ah, this is what I think.” “Well, what do you think about this?” Being each other’s sidekicks, I guess, is the way I felt about the early days. Of course, that laid the huge foundation for what would eventually become iThemes and StudioPress. You quit your job before me. I quit my job after you. But I think we started on the same date, if my history, my memory serves me correctly. That was just a fun experience of going … Two kids is how I thought of myself, trying to make business of this. Man, looking back, when you said 10 years it’s like, “Holy cow, it’s been 10 years.” It’s crazy to think back about all of that. It’s been an awesome ride. That was, of course, the foundation for everything I’ve done. The success that I’ve enjoyed at iThemes and WordPress. Lauren Mancke: I think a lot of people have a similar story of when they’re starting out in WordPress. That’s a great thing about the community. They’ve teamed up with these other people and they’ve gotten to know people and have helped them along the way. What about WordPress drew you in, and why were you so willing to back then to hitch your wagon to WordPress? Cory Miller: When I found WordPress — I had originally started out on Blogger. I’m one of those original story people that started out in Blogger then went to WordPress and saw the light. The organization I was working for, we were trying to rebuild our website. We were looking at a bunch of options and one of them was Joomla. I thought, “That looks like a helicopter dashboard. It’s so overwhelming.” Then I installed WordPress and I’m like, “This is just easy to use.” I think it was just easy to use software. I think WordPress as a learning tool was the biggest help for me. WordPress is just awesome. I think it’s still a key foundational tool for learning web design and web development, because it’s an awesome platform. Being so easy to use and simple to use. I can write posts, click publish, and I’m going. The five-minute install back then, being able to quickly install WordPress. It helped me become a web designer. Now, I’m not a web designer today. My team keeps me away from code or anything that’s sensitive. It’s just a great tool for learning. Brian Gardner: It’s funny. People could say now the same thing you said about Joomla, that WordPress in and of itself sometimes feels like a helicopter dashboard. That’s just to speak to the evolution over the last 7, or 8, or 10 years of stuff. It’s had to evolve because of the fact that it became more than just a blogging platform, so I say that somewhat tongue in cheek. But you’re right, WordPress back then was such an easy tool. Obviously you and I both learned our way through it. Hundreds and thousands of other community members — both as users, developers, or designers — they’ve all been able to teach themselves that stuff. Yeah, I love that WordPress came into my life and has obviously changed it. The same thing can be said for you as well, Cory, and Lauren — all of us here. Most of those listening — probably the same thing. It’s safe to say we share the start of our entrepreneurial journey together. We talked about the Gmail chats. And in those chats we got really deep with each other. We shared our revenue numbers. We shared business plans. We were close. In fact, years ago — it’s probably been, gosh, 6 or 7 years since we took that cruise together. Comradery and Co-opetition in the WordPress Community Brian Gardner: In the WordPress space, our relationship was probably one of the first examples of what you call that comradery. In layman’s terms it’s called this co-opetition thing, a term that we now use to describe the beauty of the open source community where members who are competitors help each other work through this thing we call life. Talk to us about that. I wouldn’t call it a brotherhood, but how that co-opetiton back then helped start iThemes. More importantly, why it’s been so important for you to continue that over the years. I’ve seen that from the outside as you and I have gone our own ways to some degree. I can still see from where I’m at that that has been an important thing for you and that you’ve maintained that all this time. Cory Miller: I think entrepreneurship is a lonely, tough job most times. In the beginning — you were a few steps ahead of me, of course. You were so gracious and generous to share what you were doing, what you were learning. That helped me tremendously. I think I took that example of being generous from you, and also the spirit of WordPress and open source software, and continued that. I try to help people as best I can going forward. I get real touchy about … I don’t want to say competition or frenemies or anything like that. In my traditional — probably the way I was either built or whatever — is I think of competition and I want to squash competition. I want to beat them. I don’t like that when I have so many good friends that are technically my competitors. I don’t like thinking about people as my competition. That’s always been this hard thing. I think you set a great example in the beginning to say, “Hey, everybody can do good together.” We shared pretty intimate, detailed stuff about what we were doing in the very beginning. I would say, I don’t get to that degree as far as now — business plans and financial stuff with people. I haven’t shared my revenue number, I don’t think, in a very long time. The principles of what are really good for you and I, being sidekicks even though we had separate businesses — trying to help each other and doing good together. What I’ve gotten the most out of the relationships I’ve had with you and going forward has been just knowing I’m not alone. That we can be technically competitors but there’s enough space for all of us to do good and do well. The comradery — back to that — saying, “Hey, I remember …” I think you’re going to ask me about this at some point, but when I was going through my divorce in 2010 I had a good friend of mine named Grant Griffiths give me a call and go, “Hey man, what’s going on? You just don’t look good.” I shared everything that pretty much five people on the planet knew about at that point. That was just one example of saying that I think the most I’ve gotten out of the friendships I’ve had — who happened to be competitors too — has been the emotional support of knowing there’s people going through the same things I’m going through, the highs and the lows. Brian Gardner: Some of these people, would you consider them friends first and then either competitors or business acquaintances second? Cory Miller: I think I’ve tended to always think of them as friends first. Then sometimes I realize that not everyone values that friendship as much as I do. At some point you realize, “If I’m not in the business, are we going to be talking as much and doing all these things?” It’s a reminder. We had some friends in Oklahoma City in July, about 25 people. I realized it was really special that we were able to have our friends come into town and roll out the red carpet for them. But then the question hit the back of my mind, to be honest with you. It was like, “If I’m not the CEO of iThemes and doing this stuff in WordPress …” Those people are amazing people, like you, Brian. I’m like, “We probably won’t have as much in common if I’m not a part of the WordPress community or iThemes.” I don’t know. That was probably a little refresher. I tend to think friend first because I’m a very loyal person. Then realize, “Okay, this is how we met.” Brian, you introduced me to Jason Schuller 00:12:01 back in the day, I think 2008. I count him as one of my most dear friends in life. He lives in Seattle thousands of miles away and isn’t even in the WordPress community anymore, but I value that friendship. I think there are those that have transcended the business competition, partnership — whatever you want to call it. They’ve become really dear friends that I care about and want to keep in touch with. Brian Gardner: We’re going to take a quick break, but we’ll be right back with StudioPress FM. Jerod Morris: Hey, Jerod Morris here. If you know anything about Rainmaker Digital and Copyblogger, you may know that we produce incredible live events. Well, some would say that we produce incredible live events as an excuse to throw great parties, but that’s another story. We’ve got another one coming up this October in Denver. It’s called Digital Commerce Summit, and it is entirely focused on giving you the smartest ways to create and sell digital products and services. To get all the details and the very best deal on tickets, head over to Rainmaker.FM/Summit. That’s Rainmaker.FM/Summit. What Lies Beneath the Surface of Entrepreneurship Lauren Mancke: Aside from iThemes, you are involved in a number of other projects. You maintain a personal blog at CoryMiller.com. A few years ago you started an organization called The Div, and recently, a business podcast at Leader.Team. Can you share a little bit about each one of those? Cory Miller: I think I’m like Brian, if I don’t continue to do new projects I get bored. I subscribe to those newsletters and this podcast and stuff. That’s what we shared a long time ago. “Hey, here’s a new project I’m doing.” “Okay, that’s awesome. I’m going to do this project too.” It’s always having to have a project in front of you, I think. My personal blog is just to share experiences and expertise that I’ve learned that might not fit our iThemes audience. It’s more focused on entrepreneurship and leadership. The Div is something I’m very proud of. It’s our nonprofit we started five years ago. The mission of The Div is basically to teach kids technology, help kids learn code, light the spark that Brian and I began learning 10 years ago or whatever — that lit our fire. Helping do that for kids earlier on. I’m excited about The Div. I’m glad you asked me about it today, because we just got accepted to be a regional partner for Oklahoma for Code.org. Next week, our Executive Director, McKaylan Danner, and I and my partner Jay will be at the White House learning about next steps at Code.org. We’re super excited about that partnership. It’s just trying to do good for the last couple years and then realizing Code.org has everything that we wanted to do here in Oklahoma to help kids learn technology. The last you asked about, Leader.Team, was essentially — one of my best friends, my sidekick, my COO Matt Danner and I just realized we’ve made a lot of mistakes in eight and a half years. We want to share those experiences and what we learned, and let people take the truth or the things that they need from those stories. Again, I think Brian and I are a lot alike. If we don’t have a project in front of us we get bored. Brian Gardner: You said mistakes. This was not on the agenda, but it made me think of last week when I was in Dallas at Circles Conference. I was on a panel onstage and we were asked, “What were the reasons you may have rebranded your company?” I immediately raised my hand and mentioned that for me it was a cease and desist letter that I had gotten way back in the day. That’s why I rebranded to StudioPress. This idea of entrepreneurs and business and making mistakes is fresh in my mind and you just brought it up. I’m going to ask an impromptu question, if you don’t mind. I’m sure you don’t, because you’re such a transparent guy. Give us a few examples of a few mistakes you’ve made over the years. Ultimately, these are probably things that at the core maybe have bubbled up into some of the stuff that we’re going to talk about a little bit later on with mental health and so on. Cory Miller: Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you asking the question too. I remember that cease and desist letter. I remember that chat. You going, “Hey, we just got hit with this.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh. I’m sorry.” All the emotions around that. I felt that empathetically because you were going through that and we were chatting quite a bit. As far as mistakes goes, I try to stay as positive as I can. Mistakes are always learning lessons for me, or I at least try to make them learning lessons for me. I would say the biggest mistakes or learning lessons have been around people. We’ve had to part ways with team members in the past — with customers too. I think the biggest mistakes are probably just making sure we’re doing right by everybody, but thinking through the learning aspects of, “Okay, how do we do this different so we don’t replicate this?” When we have to let someone go from the team or whatever, that’s a tremendously impactful thing — often negatively, but in the long haul positively for everyone involved. How do we get better as we do that? We’ve made some hiring mistakes, team mistakes over the years. We’ve really tried not to do that as much. We’ve made a number of product and brand mistakes. I don’t know if that’s exactly where you wanted the question to go, Brian, but we pulled WebDesign.com into the iThemes brand and we thought, “Yeah, just turn on the domain name and it would go bezonkers,” and all that kind of stuff. It didn’t. We eventually let that go back. Some of the product mistakes have been obviously huge. I don’t know if you classify those as mistakes. Probably in 2008, 2009, exploring movable type themes — that was interesting and costly. I’m trying to think back some. It’s not that I don’t have a wealth of mistakes, by the way. How Mental Health Can Affect Your Business Brian Gardner: Yeah, right. I hear you. Okay, let’s get into the mental health element of it, because that’s really what this is all about and what I want to pick your brain about. It’s safe to say that we can all agree this is an issue we face as entrepreneurs. You mentioned that at the very beginning that being an entrepreneur can be a very lonely job. It’s something I’ve experienced a multitude of times in a number of different ways over the years. Quite honestly, it’s had a significant impact on how we run our business. It’s hard to separate personal from business or mental health from business, because at some point they’re going to intersect. It happens daily and hourly. For me it’s almost every other hour. “Oh my gosh, should I do this or should I go do that?” It’s always at the top of my mind. It’s something that I’ve struggled with over the years. Something that I’ve allowed to affect the relationship we’ve had over the years. At what point did you encounter the initial wave of it’s not just all peaches and roses ? Cory Miller: Gosh, probably that first year as we had to let people go. The whole thing in the background about WordPress and the GPO controversy that was going on around themes. That was the first wave of, “This isn’t all peaches and cream. It’s a tough job. It’s a tough sport. It’s a tough game to play.” Having played it for eight and a half years, both of us, in the ups and downs, it’s a cold shower to say, “Okay, it’s just not going to be all good. There’s going to be some really trying times for that.” I think that some of the ones along the way over the last eight and a half years — the biggest was when I went through my divorce in 2010. That affected the entire team, the business, and me, obviously, personally. Trying to get through that. That’s when personal life and business life — my personal affected business in a tremendous way. Gosh, looking back, Brian, to when we started themes back 10 years ago. Golly, 10 years. There were few people doing themes or even quality themes. Now today, you look and there are themes and premium theme companies all over the place. Not to mention StudioPress’s long tenure in the space. But also you’ve got ThemeForce, which has gotten substantially better. A lot of offerings there. It kind of commoditized that market in so many ways. The constant competition, which is good, I think. I don’t like to admit that always. But the constant competition within WordPress makes everything better. That means we’ve always got to be a step ahead. We derive about two to three percent of our revenue from themes today. Eight years ago we derived 100 percent of our revenue from themes. How much that has changed in the few short years here and how it’s going to change in the future, too. We don’t know where that necessarily is always going to be taking us. To be ready for that. The constant competition — it’s a resetting thing for me every single day almost. You’ll come in from a weekend and look at yourselves in the mirror and go, “Oh, gosh.” You’ll start feeling bad about yourself. You have a down week or whatever that is. I think it happens to everybody, by the way. There are some that are more open with it and honest about it. We all have the down days. That first day probably that happened in the first year, second year, when you’re like, “Is the server down? Are sales not happening today?” You think the sky is falling. When team members leave — either voluntarily or involuntarily — that’s always a down moment in business. I think preparing myself to be resilient. Each issue I’ve gone through over the last few years — trying to build more and more resilient muscle to myself, knowing that it’s only a matter of time when there’s going to be another dip. Lauren Mancke: Being an entrepreneur is definitely a difficult job. It’s really something you put your whole self into, like you said. It’s only natural for that to spill out into other aspects of your life. Your personal life can spill back into your business life. That can happen when you work remotely. Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, if you work remotely. You said that someone saw you and they said, “What’s going on with you? You don’t look well.” When you work remotely, you don’t have people who can actually see you and see what’s going on with you. What do you think is so difficult for entrepreneurs to deal with, and what major contributions do you see? The Importance of Talking Openly About Mental Health Cory Miller: The way I look at being an entrepreneur is when you guys have been asking me about experiences and stories, the down and the highs, I always think about an iceberg sitting out in the middle of an ocean. That’s the way I think most of us entrepreneurs live our lives. At the top is everything you see. That’s the success. That’s the happiness. That’s the, “Hey everything is awesome, going great.” It’s the Tweets, it’s the Instagram posts with cute kids, and being on exotic vacations, or whatever it is. That’s all that success stuff that most of us only see. The other 70% that you don’t see is the suffering below it. How I’ve been able to look at my life as an entrepreneur and deal with it better is thinking of the iceberg and going, “There’s stuff underneath the surface that I’m not sharing that I’m suffering with, struggling with.” Not every single day do I feel depression or do I have some particular pain that’s just killing me. There’s things under the surface that affects the top of the surface. I think the more we can share those things that are happening with trusted like-minded people, the healthier we’re going to be. I talk a lot about having a professional counselor that I see, on average, four times a year. I put it on my calendar every quarter to make an appointment with Kyle, my counselor, to talk through the issues. Just knowing that I needed some outside perspective, a professional that’s trained and licensed to help me walk through some of the things that I deal with on a day to day basis. Even if I think there are not many things underneath the surface, I still try to do that. Going back and knowing that I was very unhealthy in the early part of our business, consumed with jealousy and envy, anger, frustration — all those things. Now I go, “If I’m going to live a healthy life and continue to do this job for the next 10 years, then I’ve got to be healthy.” And I want to be healthy and happy doing that. I think to your question, Lauren, is why don’t we do that? Why don’t we share the issues? There was about a six month period where I was going through a lot of personal pain and didn’t share it with hardly anyone that actually cared about me, that loved me, that wanted the best for me. I kept that in for about six months. I think the reason why is there’s a healthy sense of pride, a healthy sense of ego, and a healthy sense of fear. I think those things get in our way. We don’t want to ask for help but we know we need it. These things of fear, pride, ego, or whatever, they get in the way to be willing to say, “I’m hurting. I need some help.” It took me being on my face and being dragged across gravel to realize I needed to go reach out for help. The first people I asked help for were my parents, then eventually counselors and other friends that rushed into my life as other people were running out of my life. I’m trying to get down to it because I still do it today, let things get in the way so that I don’t share what I’m really going through. I trace it back to fear. “Am I going to be embarrassed? Are people going to use this against me? Will people really know the real me?” Those things that are obstacles to sharing the stuff underneath the surface are the things that I try to work on. I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I’m trying to work on them so I can be healthier and happier as a result of it. Brian Gardner: Yeah. Leo from Buffer set the trend, at least for me, to do the transparency thing more from a business and numbers standpoint. When I think of it in terms of who out there — and not even just the WordPress space, but the online entrepreneurial space — who has started to set that trend of the personal transparency, obviously you come to mind. In fact, as I was preparing for all this I thought it would be fun to Google “Cory Miller mental health.” I know it’s kind of a funny phrase, but I have the ability to be able to find what I need to on Google. I’m like, “That’s perfectly phrased for what I was looking for.” It’s quite obvious how important this is to you, because I see results all over Google with that search term. There’s articles in Inc. Magazine, a podcast you did on Office Hours with Carrie Dills and Pippin Williamson, and a slew of other results that came in like that. The one that stands out to me the most, though, is the piece you just published not too long ago on your own site titled, “It’s Time to Start Talking Openly about Mental Health.” You had just spoken at WordCamp Denver, and in your words, shared the most “personal, intimate, transparent, open, and perhaps the most impactful” talk you’ve ever given. I followed that up with the one on your site. I wanted to read a little bit of that just for our listeners. Cory says, “It’s not too often that I cry, let alone cry in public, let alone cry on stage, but I did. Sharing some of the most personal stories of my life, many of which I’ve never shared publicly was intense to say the least. Thinking about the people who’ve made a difference in my life, often the life-saving difference, just opened up a part of me I don’t share too often … and I lost it.” In that talk, you shared some intimate things you’ve alluded to a couple of times here already on the show with your divorce, the solitary confinement you put yourself in for six months, and your general insecurities, and as you’ve also said, fear. You have thousands of customers at iThemes, more than that who follow you through social media, and a slew of folks who look up to you — what was the straw that broke the camel’s back? Why did you finally break down and decide to go against the grain and set this trend, and just say, “It’s okay to be real and it’s okay to struggle?” Cory Miller: I remember telling my wife Lindsay — we’ve been married 5 years in July — I said, “Hey I’m submitting this talk.” A lot of things I wanted to share earlier but couldn’t for a number of reasons. I said, “I’m submitting this talk and when I push publish here on this talk, I’m afraid they might actually want me to do it. But once I’m done I’m committed.” Sure enough, they did it. There was probably three talks I submitted. Sure enough, they said, “Yes, we want you to do that.” I was like, “Okay, now I got to do that.” Man, leading up to that week to being able to share the story publicly — that basically I had been through a divorce and all the things that you mentioned above. It was just time, I think. I want to be clear. It wasn’t therapeutic. It wasn’t intended for my own therapy. It was intended to help others. I know as I’ve shared my struggles in the past with depression, struggles with divorce, struggles with being an entrepreneur like we talked about, it’s always resonated with people. It always seems to be the most impactful thing I’ve ever done in my life, to share simply my story and being open and honest about it. It was just time. It had been a couple years since all those things had happened. I had put them to rest in my heart and soul. I thought, “It’s time now to share with other people.” Going through and just sharing this story, being on stage and my emotions coming through me, I said, “It’s time.” I’ve experienced more success than I ever could have dreamed of in my life. That doesn’t necessarily mean financial stuff, just more success in my life than I ever thought possible. I’m so thankful for where my life is now and what it would have been five, six, eight years ago. It’s gotten better even through some adversity. I thought, “There needs to be more honesty and transparency and genuineness in entrepreneurship.” We always put these facades up. This mask of “everything is awesome.” And all that above surface stuff. I thought, “There’s a time for vulnerability to share stories that resonates and helps people.” For one day alone, to help somebody else by sharing my story, to go, “I’m not alone, there’s other people going through the same thing.” Pooling some of the impact and the influence we’ve been able to have through WordPress just saying, “Okay, well if someone that’s been in this business eight years and been in WordPress 10 can share their story, then I can go and get help and seek help.” That’s really what it was. It was time to share the story to help other people. Lauren Mancke: It sounds like that speech in WordCamp Denver was very powerful. What kind of reaction did you get from people? Did they come up to you afterwards? Did they say, “You really touched me with this?” Cory Miller: It’s pretty incredible. Not even expected. I’m sitting up there sharing the story, opening my soul to everybody there. I ended up crying, Brian mentioned this. I’m sitting there, trying to get myself together. My wife is in the audience. Our longest-tenured team member was in the audience. Another awesome team member was in the audience. Sharing all that in front of all them was pretty tough. What happened was I shared the story and I’m sitting there basically going, “I want to go in a hole and cry now.” I got a standing ovation, which I didn’t expect. The thing that I wanted to do is just say, “I don’t care what happens. I just want to get this out.” That was incredible to have people really affirm after you’re sitting up there crying at a WordCamp talking about nothing about really technology. The other thing that was one of the most treasured things I’ll take in my life, was there was a Q&A session. I ended early, but people kept coming to the mic and not asking a question of me, just sharing their story, getting it out there. I thought, “Wow, there’s something magical about just sharing your story.” Doesn’t have to have my name attached to it. I don’t need to get credit for it. When you share your story authentically and genuinely, it opens up this humanness between people. Four or five people got up and weren’t asking me questions at all. They would say, “Thanks for sharing your story, and here’s mine,” in front 150 people, whatever was in that room. That was pretty magical. After that was the realization for me that I’m not going to stop sharing my story. If my story helps somebody else, I’m going to keep doing it bigger and broader and better. That’s what I’ve done since Denver, over a year ago now. Brian Gardner: Another quick impromptu question. Have you ever thought of writing a book that speaks very specifically to this? Not just feeling agnostic general business and entrepreneurial stuff, but an entire book either about your story or the importance of mental health through your story and what not? Cory Miller: You’ve been reading my email again, Brian. I totally do want to do that. But I always give the disclaimer, “I’m not a professional licensed or trained counselor. I’m just an entrepreneur sharing my mental health stories.” I want to do something that says here are not just my stories, but other stories. Brian Gardner’s stories. Your challenges with the highs and lows of business. I want to get a bunch of entrepreneurs and get their stories. Then I want to find a writing partner that could be that professional trained counselor to say, “Here are some things.” I don’t want to give advice. I’m not professionally trained, I’m just sharing my experiences and what helped me most. I’d like to have somebody to do that. I want that to happen. I just need a bigger … I need to kick my own pants here and get it going, because it’s a message that needs to get out there. Brian Gardner: I know you’ve gone through a lot over the years. We’re all sorry to hear that in your story you’ve had to deal with those things. We all have our own stuff to deal with. I’m going to try to get through this question. I don’t know if I’m actually going to be able to. More importantly, I’m sorry for anything — this is sort of impromptu. I don’t know. I’m sorry for anything I did back then that contributed to any part of your story that wasn’t happy. I know we talked about how in the early days the comradery was there, and at some point I think I let the bad side of entrepreneurialism and competition get the best of me. I think it ultimately affected where our friendship went. I knew that when I flew to Oklahoma City to talk to you about that and to apologize for that … Sorry, reality TV right here on the … Oh, gosh. Anyway, I think you know where I’m going with this, that I’m sorry. Cory Miller: Absolutely. Brian Gardner: I’m not a narcissist. I’m not going to take credit for all the pain you went through. But I do know that in your early stages, the fear and the competitive or the “I’m not good enough” stuff may have been derived from stuff that I did — whether it was on purpose or not. Anyway, I want to move through that a little bit and apologize for that. I guess I can say that I went through my own seasons, many seasons of online immaturity. It affected our relationship. Moving through that, what I didn’t truly embrace back then was the idea that one plus one could equal three and how important working alongside our peers can be. I know that at the beginning of our relationship it was that way. It’s better to go with people than trying to outrun them, is something that, looking back in hindsight, I wish I would have — especially with you — embraced more. Back to the idea of co-opetition, where do you see opportunities right now in the WordPress space? Things that aren’t happening, but looking outside — if you could play a marionette and say, “Gosh, I wish this person could go with that person.” Or, “I wish these people would get along better.” Our audience is Genesis-specific but also very WordPress-specific. There’s a lot of general WordPress community people who listen to the show. Where do you see those opportunities? Where do you wish things would be just a little bit different? How to Find Lasting Career Happiness Cory Miller: First and foremost, I got to go back to your comments. Thank you so much for that, Brian. But you and I put those things … Forgive and forget way back, a long time ago. I do appreciate that. I totally accept that, and I hope you’ll do the same for me. It takes two, brother. It takes two. I’m thankful that I get the opportunity to talk to you again and hopefully rekindle those things. Anything that happened — which is private between you and I — is all in the past. I so much appreciate you doing that in this venue, even if I feel like you didn’t have to. I do appreciate it. I know I can always be a better friend, better person, better leader. Okay, back to your question. I think the biggest thing is emotional support and friendship, that comradery like you and I had back in 2007, 2008, and beyond. Maybe we don’t have to share numbers and business plans per say, but just going, “Hey, man, how are things? How are your kids?” Taking that cruise with you every so often. I’d pin you and go, “How’s Z, man?” You had children before I did. Seeing him grow up on Facebook and Instgram is pretty awesome. He’s a great kid — young man, excuse me. I think it’s that emotional support and friendship. Along the way, I think there will be times when we can help each other out. Like, “Hey, Brian, I just saw” — just like we did back in the day — “I saw you did this. Would you mind sharing how you did that?” Being generous with those types of things but not feeling that … I’ve got a great business group here in Oklahoma City. We have different businesses. We don’t have anywhere like competitive-type businesses against each other or anything. It’s awesome to have that emotional friendship-type of support to go, “Hey, we’re going through the same stuff. We have the same problems just different names attached to those.” That’s the same with any entrepreneur, I believe. Same problems, different name, whether it’s cash, people, conflict, communication — whatever it is. Same issues, different names. I think that opportunity in WordPress is pretty special because we get together at WordCamps or different venues online or offline. The opportunity to say, “Let’s just be humans” — we sit behind computers and type all day at a desk. We have the opportunity to also be — with the spirit of open source software and spirit of WordPress — to be human to each other too. I think that is the biggest key for the opportunities that happen in WordPress. Brian Gardner: I’ll take that as a swift kick in the pants to go out there and to seek those opportunities. Not the opportunities to take, but the opportunities to give. Thank you for that. Lauren Mancke: Cory, you’ve shared so many great points with us. I know it’s resonated with me and makes me recall a lot of the struggles I went through starting my business. I think that’s the beauty of what you’re doing. You’re letting people know that they aren’t alone, that you don’t have to be a rock. It’s okay to be open and vulnerable. Do you have any other final thoughts you want to discuss about anything we’ve covered? Any words of wisdom for those who are starting or thinking about starting or actually just in the bottoms of the entrepreneurial journey? Cory Miller: There’s typically always a tomorrow. You hear the typical cliché thing, “this too shall pass.” I think trying to — as I’m going through the bad times, the dark times is — savor that for a moment. To say “I’m valuing what my life is. What I’m going through now helps me really truly understand the value of my experiences,” and all that. To be thankful for every moment in life, because even the bad times have shaped me profoundly into a positive thing. I think that’s the key we miss. Number one like you said, “I’m not alone.” When you go through the bad times, you got to remind yourself, “I’m not alone.” The second is there’s something to learn here. There’s something to learn and grow and do and be better about to make sure your life can go on to bigger greatness, whatever that may be. I think remembering those core things, like reaching out to find somebody else to help, whether that be your spouse, your significant other, a professional counselor, another business colleague. The second, to know that “there’s something I need to learn through this experience.” Make sure you savor that and everything that is part of your life. I think gratefulness has been an antidote for a lot of the tough times that I’ve had in my life. It’s hard to remember, but it’s key to do. Brian Gardner: Well, we appreciate you being willing to open up and to share on the show. There’s so much more to you and your story and all the knowledge that you have outside of what you’ve shared here. We wanted to give people an opportunity to look deeper into that part of your life. Cory’s written a number of books on entrepreneurship and career-focused types of things. These cover topics such as young people trying to get hired all the way to the new rules for what you call entrepreneurship and how to find lasting career happiness, which is I think what we all are looking for. If you’re looking for information about stuff like that, I definitely recommend the stuff that Cory writes. You can visit his website CoryMiller.com/Books to see all that he’s written. If you’re interested in interviewing Cory or having him speak at your workshop, seminar, or conference, he’s always open to that. You can hit him up at CoryMiller.com/Contact, I believe is his contact page. Like I said, we’re very thankful to have your story here on the show. Cory Miller: Appreciate you guys being open to share this. Lauren Mancke: If you like what you heard on today’s show, you can find more episodes of StudioPress FM at, you guessed it, StudioPress.FM. You can also help us hit the main stage by subscribing to the show in iTunes. It’s a great way to never ever miss an episode. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Bill Erickson. Bill is a WordPress Developer, an entrepreneur, a husband, a father, a skier, an avid reader, a gardener, and a winemaker living in Georgetown, TX. He s been developing with WordPress and contributing to the community since 2006. Bill has written 20 WordPress plugins, which have been downloaded 668,661 times and has spoken at 13 conferences regarding WordPress. Last, but certainly not least, Bill is a core contributor to our very own Genesis Framework project. In this 40-minute episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Bill Erickson discuss: Bill’s decision to become a freelancer Transitioning from Thesis to the Genesis Framework Building your brand and your business with shareable content Using your website to prequalify potential clients Scaling your business through efficiency The importance of contracts Building a work/life balance that works for you Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes This episode is brought to you by Digital Commerce Summit Follow Bill on Twitter Visit BillErickson.net Bill’s WordPress Plugins Bill’s Code Snippets Matt Report: Systemizing Your Way to More Revenue Freelance WordPress Developer Bill Erickson The Transcript Jerod Morris: Hey, Jerod Morris here. If you know anything about Rainmaker Digital and Copyblogger, you may know that we produce incredible live events. Well, some would say that we produce incredible live events as an excuse to throw great parties, but that’s another story. We’ve got another one coming up this October in Denver. It’s called Digital Commerce Summit and it is entirely focused on giving you the smartest ways to create and sell digital products and services. You can find out more at Rainmaker.FM/Summit. That’s Rainmaker.FM/Summit. We’ll be talking about Digital Commerce Summit in more detail as it gets closer. For now, I’d like to let a few attendees from our past events speak for us: Attendee 1: For me, it’s just hearing from the experts. This is my first industry event, so it’s awesome to learn new stuff and also get confirmation that we’re not doing it completely wrong where I work. Attendee 2: The best part of the conference, for me, is being able to mingle with people and realize that you have connections with everyone here. It feels like LinkedIn Live. I also love the parties after each day, being able to talk to the speakers, talk to other people who are here for the first time, people who have been here before. Attendee 3: I think the best part of the conference, for me, is understanding how I can service my customers a little more easily. Seeing all the different facets and components of various enterprises then helps them pick the best tools. Jerod Morris: Hey, we agree. One of the biggest reasons we host the conference every year is so that we can learn how to service our customers people like you more easily. Here are just a few more words from folks who have come to our past live events. Attendee 4: It’s really fun. I think it’s a great mix of beginner information and advanced information. I’m really learning a lot and having a lot of fun. Attendee 5: The conference is great, especially because it’s a single-track conference where you don’t get distracted by, “Which session should I go to?” and, “Am I missing something?” Attendee 6: The training and everything the speakers have been awesome but I think the coolest aspect for me has been connecting with both people who are putting it on and the other attendees. Jerod Morris: That’s it for now. There’s a lot more to come on Digital Commerce Summit. I really hope to see you there in October. Again, to get all the details and the very best deal on tickets, head over to Rainmaker.FM/Summit. That’s Rainmaker.FM/Summit. Voiceover: StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner, and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, Brian and I are joined by Bill Erickson to discuss how freelancers can scale their businesses. Brian Gardner: Hey everyone, welcome back to StudioPress FM. I am your host Brian Gardner, and I am joined as usual with my cohost, vice president of StudioPress Lauren Mancke. Today we are, as always, very excited about the show, because we get to continue our series with members of the Genesis community, and that’s always been fun so far. Today we are joined by Bill Erickson. Bill is a WordPress developer, an entrepreneur, a husband, a father, a skier, an avid reader, a gardener, and a winemaker, living in Georgetown, Texas, which I think is just north of Austin. He’s been developing with WordPress and contributing to the community since 2006. Bill has written 20 plugins, which has been downloaded almost 700,000 times, and has spoken at 13 conferences regarding WordPress. Last but certainly not least, Bill is a core contributor to our very own Genesis Framework project. Bill, it is a huge pleasure to have you on StudioPress FM. Welcome to the show. Bill Erickson: It’s great to be here, thanks for having me. Beginnings in the Development World Brian Gardner: When I decided to have this series Lauren and I spoke about who we wanted to have on the show, and without a doubt you were on the top of that list, and so I’m thankful you took that invitation to heart and you’re here. I want to start here with a very obvious question, one that helps set the foundation of what the rest of the stuff that we’ll be talking about will be. Tell us how you got into development, and have you always been a nerd? Bill Erickson: Well yes, I’ve always been a nerd, but my past in development’s been a bit of a roundabout approach. In high school I got a summer job working at a print shop where we made brochures, business cards, basically all the print materials for a business. Then some of the businesses will come in wanting websites too, and they didn’t do that. I figured, It can’t be that much more difficult than designing a brochure, so I decided to do it on the side and partner with a friend who knew how to code HTML and CSS. Then a little later on I decided I wanted to figure out the HTML and CSS part myself and realized I’m a much better coder than I am a designer, so I made the switch. Brian Gardner: A lot of people can do one really well. Lauren happens to be one of those people. I knew she was a great designer when she first came around, and as I realized that she was also capable of coding, that’s when the light bulb went off. I was like, “I can let her take over a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing, because she can do it all! Like the Renaissance woman, you know? Lauren Mancke: Sometimes you just want to design, your brain is on fire, and you’re creative. Sometimes development is a good switch, for me, anyway. I like to just, A to B, do exactly what I need to do. Bill, why did you start building your business around WordPress? What is it about CMS that you find so appealing? Bill Erickson: I had been building sites, like I said, with just static HTML and CSS, and then I got into the business of having to do text changes for clients. It was very boring for me, and I’m sure my clients didn’t appreciate paying me to make small text changes. This is about 2006, and I started looking around for what CMS tool I can use. WordPress, at that time, and it still is, one of the easiest tools to use for end user, for the client, but it’s also really easy for a beginner developer to learn. That’s one thing a lot of the professional developers discount, is they say WordPress is messy in its procedural code, but I think it’s one of the keys to its success. It has a low barrier to entry, so if you want to just get started you can find a filter to change Read More text, and then once you accomplish that it’s very easy to work your way up to something more complex, rather than having to grasp a deep knowledge of something. I got into it both because it was something that I could grasp when I was first learning, but also because it was really easy for my customers to use, and it has only become more so. Brian Gardner: The good thing about WordPress, and even Genesis now as a whole, is that there’s so many people who have understood how to do it hands-on by themselves, and then have written about it, that there’s so much documentation. You can go to Google and figure out anything, pretty much, how to do this in WordPress, or how to do that in Genesis. People like yourself who’ve written tutorials, and Jerod and I and other people who’ve done code snippets, it’s very easy for someone who’s new to go in and, kind of behind the scenes because no one knows they’re doing it, they Google, they learn … There’s not just a book you have to read, or a class or a course you have to take, you can Google your way into the community from the development side. That’s one thing I like about it. Bill Erickson: Yeah, and a lot of us got started that way. I know I got started by Googling and searching for code snippets, and that’s how I learned. As I progressed I was developing these code snippets, so I put them out to help others, but also to help myself so I’d be able to find those later. It’s sort of a community where we’re all sort of learning together, and just the knowledge gets documented, so everyone can jump in at any point. Transitioning from Thesis to the Genesis Framework Brian Gardner: We spoke last week with Carrie Dils about just the open source community, and just how that sort of pay it forward mentality really helps grow the product, grow the software and the communities around it. Typically what we do is ask our guests how they got started in Genesis specifically, but your story’s a good one, and something I want to tell, because I was directly involved with that. Before Genesis, or before you knew better for that matter, Bill was working on Thesis, and he was a Thesis developer and had done a lot of client work around Thesis. About six years ago … I can’t believe it’s been that long, Chris Pearson, the developer of Thesis, had a falling out with my current business partner, Brian Clarke. The too-long-don’t-read version of that whole story is that their partnership fell apart. Brian reached out to me and a couple others, and we formed the company that we have now, which is Rainmaker Digital. Bill, you saw the writing on the wall as this was all going down back then, and reached out to me. I think it was on Twitter DM, and asked about Genesis. I knew you as a Thesis developer, so as the opportunist in me, I jumped on that right away. I think we got on a Skype call within five minutes of when you sent that. Is that, how I remember, how you got into the Genesis community? Am I missing anything here? Bill Erickson: No, that pretty much covers it. I just want to say thanks again for all the help you provided in that transition. I’d been building with Thesis for years at that point I think, like two or three years, and every single one of my leads was coming from them. We had this symbiotic relationship where I’d build a really cool site, you get featured on their website, which would then generate more leads coming to me, which worked well, but as Thesis was going one direction and the rest of WordPress was going a different, it was sort of getting stuck in an area where I wasn’t having the freedom to move where I wanted. That’s what I was talking to you about, is I wanted to make the transition to something that was more WordPress based, where it followed more of the WordPress standards. My problem was, all of my work was coming from Thesis, and you really helped me through that transition by sending me a lot of great leads. I think it was about a six-month period from when I was 100% Thesis-based work to 100% Genesis-based work. I never could have bridged that gap if it wasn’t for you sending me all those great leads. Brian Gardner: That’s good to hear. Bill s Decision to Become a Freelancer Lauren Mancke: Okay, so let’s talk freelancing. I think you and I, our paths crossed when you did make the switch to Genesis, so go back a little bit before that and tell us about at what point you decided to branch out on your own and start freelancing. Bill Erickson: It was all about timing for me. I was actually in college getting a finance degree, and building WordPress websites on the side. I was a student worker making about $10 an hour on university websites, but it was something I enjoyed doing. Then the 2008 financial crisis happened, and all the finance internships disappeared, and I figured it’d be a good time to focus on my other passion, WordPress. Right as I graduated college, my goal was just, I was going to experiment for a year and see if I could cover my living costs for a year. Luckily I was a poor college student so those costs were fairly low, and I was able to just make it. Then it worked out, and I just kept going, and got a little better and a little better, and now we’re about 10 years into me being a freelancer, so that worked out pretty well. Or, seven years I think now, full time. Brian Gardner: A few years ago you did an interview with our friends over at iThemes about freelancing. I love how they open up the post. They say, “Bill Erickson is a freelance WordPress developer who gives back.” We just talked about that, and we’ll talk to it a little bit later also in the show. First off, it’s true, as I’ve witnessed first hand just how much you help, both in the Genesis and the WordPress community. You have code snippets on your site, and you publish tutorials and stuff like that, but you also, I see you in Slack, and on our Genesis GitHub repository, and just within the general community, just helping where you can. I know you’re busy, and I know you realize that it’s important, even still, to give back, and I appreciate that. You’re also a busy guy, which of course means you’ve got a pretty long lead time in case somebody wants to hire you as a freelancer, and you’re pretty selective now at this point, which is a good place to be, right? Bill Erickson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Building Your Brand and Your Business with Shareable Content Brian Gardner: It seems like a lot of freelancers these days are kind of in that starving artist mode, where everyone’s starting up and there’s saturated markets and so forth. I guess they’re trying to fight for their food. What’s your secret at this point, to being so busy as a freelancer? Bill Erickson: At this point a lot of it came down to luck and timing. I got started in WordPress, like I said, about 10 years ago, and in that time the freelance WordPress development space was nowhere near as competitive as it is now. There just weren’t that many of them, so I was able to make a name for myself a lot easier. Now that I’ve been doing it for so long, I have a long client list and a lot of those clients really enjoyed working with me, so they keep coming back. About 50% of my work right now is either past clients or people who have directly recommended from past clients. A lot of it is establishing your business, establishing your name, and building that reputation. And I built my reputation by giving back, by writing blog posts and code snippets, and contributing to Genesis and writing plugins. I don’t want to stop what was working, so I do make a point of, even when I’m busy, doing what I can to give back. I find that finding where your … Look at what you produce, and see what you can easily turn into a shareable thing. For me a lot of it revolves around plugins and code snippets, so as I’m building out a project, they need some specific feature, I’ll put in a little bit more time really cleaning up and extending this feature a bit more than a client actually needs so that I can turn it into a plugin that I can then share. I’m going to put in 20 hours building this feature, maybe I could put in 30 and make it something that I can release, and will help others, and will also promote myself, because then people will find it and want to hire me. Right now a lot of my work is based on my past reputation and my past experience with clients, because a lot of past clients are coming back, but I got to that point by giving back, and that’s why I still do it. Brian Gardner: That’s pretty funny. The last couple weeks I have published two different blog posts on my blog, tutorials on how to do something in Genesis, and I was literally in the process of developing a theme and adding that feature. As soon as I would add that and had the code ready, instead of just finishing the theme and so on and going back to it, I stopped right then and there, that evening, one night, and just wrote the tutorial. Because I had just implemented it, it was fresh on my mind, it was something that I knew somebody was going to want. I hear what you’re saying there, which is, it’s kind of cool to document the stuff that you’re doing for something else, and then use that to benefit, a) the community, but also yourself, in that now you have shareable content, yet another thing that could get your name out there. For anyone out there freelancing, that’s kind of unsolicited advice there, how to help build your brand and how to move forward your business by doing things in that kind of way. Bill Erickson: It’s not purely a marketing tool or a self-promotion tool. It’s actually really useful in your business, because I spend a lot of time thinking about a problem and what’s the best way to solve it, so I create that solution. Six months down the line I might need that again. Instead of spending the hours trying to figure out what it is and finding the right hooks and filters, if I’m in that mindset right after I solve the problem, if I document it, I can look back at that so that I know that’s how I do it. I don’t have to keep it in my mind, I just have to remember, yeah, I wrote about it on my blog, so I can scroll through and find it. That’s how it all started for me. It was just documenting what I was doing so that I could find that information later on. The side effect was, other people started using that information and it helped my SEO. Brian Gardner: So you’re your own reader, blogger. Bill Erickson: Yes. Brian Gardner: You bookmark your own pages, how narcissistic. No I’m kidding, I do the same thing with my code snippets too. I put them on my site just so I have a place for me to go back to and say, “Hey, check out this greatly designed site. Oh look, it’s mine.” Stuff like that. Definitely wise there. Using Your Website to Prequalify Potential Clients Lauren Mancke: I want to follow up on Brian’s question from before. We have a page dedicated on StudioPress where we recommend Genesis developers and designers to the community. You’re on that page and you have been for a while. What impact, if any, has that source been for you in terms of acquiring leads and getting new business? Bill Erickson: I still get a ton of great leads from StudioPress. Even though there’s a ton of people on there, it used to be only two or three other developers on the recommended list. Even now that you have such a larger community, and a lot of other great resources, I still get a lot of excellent clients from there. The StudioPress recommended developers page, it’s like a fire hose of leads, and it’s up to you to qualify them. Because the StudioPress community and your customers, they have such a wide range of needs. Some just need tiny minor tweaks like changing some colors, or adding a small feature. Some hear about the benefits of the SEO of Genesis and don’t want to do anything themselves, and they want a custom theme and everything built for them. There’s a wide range of what someone might want, so you need to make sure you’re not just getting a ton of emails and having to filter that. You want to use your website to describe what it is you do, what your expertise is, so that the incoming leads can self-select, and select a person who is best fitted for that job. What I’ve found is, there is a need to qualify your leads, and that’s something you can do with your website. Just review your emails, and if you see that you’re doing a lot of responses saying, “I’m not a good fit for this,” whether it’s for the type of work, or your timeline, or your budget, just make a note to include that information on your site. Because if you’re getting emails about that, that means you haven’t educated the prospect. Lauren Mancke: We had a form on our Northbound site that led people, basically them thinking about their project. A lot of people contact you that haven’t really thought through what they need, so our contact form had different areas that they needed to figure out before they even contacted us, or have answers to. That way we could review those before we got back in touch with the person. Bill Erickson: Yeah, definitely, like a client onboarding process. Because the average person who needs a website, they’ve never done this before, or if they did it was five or six years ago. You do it all the time. They don’t know what the process is. They don’t even know what questions they should be asking or what information to provide, so whatever you can do to help their job of finding someone to help them will definitely help. Brian Gardner: We’ve been asked probably a number of times if there’s a way that we can assist in that process by somehow categorizing people on the developers list, especially since the list has gotten longer and the skills that are on that page vary from technical programming to straight up graphic design. Yes, to some degree that’s our responsibility, to see if we can try to tag that a little bit better. But I like what you said, though, with prequalifying the leads. A lot of people just have a contact form on their website, which is basically, in my opinion, an advertisement to just copy and paste a request for a job, or a submittal or something like that. Then it’s not a great fit. With all the forms out there these days, gravity forms and ninja forms, you have the ability to build a complex form that prequalifies these inquiries, and saves A, you a lot of time, and B, them time too. Bill Erickson: Yeah, it would be nice if StudioPress had some sort of layers of filters to help qualify them, but at the end of the day, every service provider on that page has different requirements, different services they offer, different budgets and timelines. There’s not a one size fits all categorical system that could apply. The easiest thing to do is just give all their information, and then allow those providers to do their own qualifications on their website. Brian Gardner: Aside from the fact that it would take us a little bit of time to do that, that’s kind of what I come down to. Because I realize there’s also a vibe thing, that when you land on someone’s site you get a vibe whether or not, “Hey, this is a person I could do work with. They’re my style or they’re not. I don’t want to qualify anybody out of that by some sort of check system that, Oh, well, I’m looking for a project under $5,000, so immediately Bill Erickson doesn’t show up. Whereas maybe it would have been a good fit, and maybe you’re slow a little bit, and you would pick up a job that might be less than $5,000. I don’t want to take that away from you either. Lauren Mancke: I also, when I was redesigning that page, I wanted to include on the actual page the screen captures of some of the recent projects that they’ve done. Because I think visually that tells someone the types of projects that that developer has experience with, that they can visually scan that and see what might be a good fit in that way as well. Bill Erickson: That’s a great idea. That’s what a lot of people, when they’re shopping, looking for a developer to build their website, they’re just going straight to portfolios. To be able to have that in one spot so they don’t have to open all the sites would be a useful tool. Brian Gardner: I didn’t like that decision at the very beginning, Lauren, because when I first saw the page it was really, really long. Then as I thought through it I’m like, “Okay, this is not above the fold mentality from 10 years ago. This is more about doing what you said, providing little snapshots. Even if it’s just the most recent four or whatever. At least you can just scroll up and down the page and get that vibe sort of thing that I was talking about. Now speaking of people on the page and whatnot, Bill, I know that part of your strategy at this point, because you are so busy, are somewhat selective on the stuff that you take on, you have kind of a … sort of like a little referral system. Not necessarily in exchange for money, but just people who you pass referrals on to that are, a) that you know and respect and feel comfortable passing those along to. Jared Atchison is a good friend of yours and ours. He’s the first person that comes to mind there as an example of a developer you might send client inquiry to. Scaling Your Business Through Efficiency This leads to a bigger question in situations within the freelance world. How do you scale your business? I know you take your projects and pass them on to other people, but how do you scale your business specifically to make more money? Because there’s only so many hours in a day. What have you done over the last couple years, or what have you learned as a more efficient way to do business, so that you can become more profitable? Bill Erickson: There’s a lot of ways you can scale your business. One that I’m particularly fond of is through efficiency. You can build websites a lot faster using Genesis because it does a lot of it for you, and then you can focus only on the custom features. Then the code you build can be reused on future projects, so when I build a great events calendar I can then, six months later, reapply that to a new project and then change the styling. There’s some code efficiencies you can do, and Genesis really helps with that. Another one is moving yourself up the value chain. When I got started I was basically doing just markup. I was doing PSD to Genesis websites. Most of them were $500 to $1,000, and I’d turn them around in a week. As I got more experienced I did work on more complex websites, and built more custom features, and charge more. Now I’m no longer doing just the development aspect. When someone comes to me we offer sort of a full package, so we have a $12,000 project minimum. It’s a team of three: a content strategist, a designer, and a developer, and we typically spend at least 12 weeks on a project. We’re really just working with the client to understand their needs, and design and implement it all in one house. Rather than, a lot of times when I was working with, saying I was just doing development, clients would go off to 99designs and get a design that doesn’t really serve their needs very well. I’d build it for them, but it’s not the best use of my time and the resources they have, so I’ve actually gone out and partnered with designers that I know do a great job of turning that around. Combining our services together we provide a much more valuable service. Brian Gardner: Is that why you took down the PSD to Genesis page? Bill Erickson: Yes and no. PSD to Genesis, it was a fun business to problem. Like I said, it’s the value. As I start charging more for my time, there’s less value that can be got out of that. There was a lot of people who do PSD to Genesis, and if I’m charging three or four times not many people are going to want to come to me, because at the end of the day I’m just converting a design into a website. I’m not providing as much value there. I saw that we could do better in a different direction. I found a designer that I really like working with, and a content strategist that I really like working with. I still do some sites where a design is provided for me, but I’m a bit more selective on that, because I really do enjoy being able to start from the beginning and identify what problems need solving. The change from that start to finish is so much larger than, they hand me a design and then the only measure of quality at that time is, Did you do what we told you to do? Does the design match? Is the site loading fast? It’s a lot more fun to do that problem solving stuff. Lauren Mancke: It’s probably a lot more fun to work with a good design too, than something that might not look very good. Bill Erickson: That’s the other thing, yeah, when you don’t know the design. Especially when you’re trying to provide a quote and the design hasn’t been done yet, and you don’t know who the designer is. You really leave yourself open to some uncomfortable weeks where you’re just plowing through a design that’s horrible. That’s another reason why I stick with one designer for the most part. Brian Gardner: I wasn’t setting you up for anything there, I just noticed. As I was preparing for the show I was actually going to link to that page, and then I kept Googling and I’m like, “Where is it?” I went to your site, I tried searching, and then I figured that at some point you kind of outgrew that. It is sort of like an entry into a community type of play, and I think there’s a need for it to some degree. What that basically does at this point, it frees that up for a few other people in the community to offer that service, which I know they’ve done. Yeah, I wasn’t mad or anything like that. Bill Erickson: No, and I took it down, I think, with the most recent redesign, where I was focusing more on this integration with my current designer. I took it down mostly because I’m no longer focusing on it, but also because I was getting very few projects that actually utilize that. Because like you said, there’s a lot of great people in the community who are providing it, I was charging a bit more for that than anyone else was, and so yeah, I was getting maybe one every two or three months. It didn’t seem like a good reason to focus my sight on that. Tools that Allow You to be More Efficient with Your Time Lauren Mancke: Bill, let’s talk about workflow. This is obviously something that really goes along with scaling your business, you kind of touched on, and it’s something in particular that you have spent a lot of time perfecting, and you’ve taken time to share your processes with others. I know we’ve had a few conversations about it. Can you give our listeners some insight to some of the tools that you use, and some that you’ve built yourself, which allow you to be more efficient with your time? Bill Erickson: Yeah, so like I was talking about growing your business with efficiency. There’s code efficiency, technical efficiency, but then there’s also business efficiency. A lot of your time is spent actually just running your business. Whether that’s responding to emails, or trying to manage projects, if you can find ways to optimize that process you’ll just open more time up for profitable activities. My website is really focused on qualifying leads so I don’t have to spend a lot of time responding to emails that aren’t a good fit. I’m always iterating it, adding or changing features. One that I added in the past year or two that’s been really helpful is the, When I can start, because I’ve found that most of the emails where I just immediately say “Sorry, I’m not a good fit” are the ones where they say, “We need a site live in the next three weeks,” and I wouldn’t be able to start for two months. Things like that, where you can give them the information they need to know you’re not a good fit. Then once I do get a quality lead, a lead that would fit well with me, they fill out the form, it comes to me, and I provide a nice detailed response. The email also shows up in a custom CRM that me and Jared Atchison developed, and we use it for all sorts of things. We use it for tracking lead data, so, Where are we getting sources of leads? Where are we getting sources of projects? You might find that 90% of your leads are coming from Google, but those aren’t really good leads, and that 80% of your work is coming from past clients. Having that knowledge can help you decide where to direct your marketing efforts. We also use the CRM to manage the projects, our active projects, and to track data on completed projects, like overall profitability. Put in the amount we build, what we estimate it would take us to build it out, how much time we actually spent on initial development and changes. Come up with the effective hourly rate, just so we could track how well our estimates are doing. Then on the design side, my team, we use Sketch exclusively, which works out really well. My content strategist uses it for the sitemaps and wireframes, then when we get to the design stage, the designer uses those same files and converts the wireframes into finalized designs, and then I take the finalized designs and turn them into a website. We save quite a bit of time by using the same tool throughout the entire process. We used to use Sketch for wire frames and then rebuild everything in Photoshop, but switching to Sketch has really helped out. Then finally, from a code perspective, I have a base child theme that I’ve developed. It’s very similar to the starter theme from StudioPress, but it just has some of my own style and code tweaks that I like in there. Then I have my code snippets where I keep useful bits and some plugins that I’ve developed. I try my best to, when I build something, build it once really well, and then put it somewhere where I know so that I can access it later. Brian Gardner: That speaks back to the efficiency thing, to have your own starter theme. Because when I start with stuff I pull something down, do all the Brian-isms in it, which takes anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes to knock things out and do things and rearrange things a different way. At some point, I don’t even have my own starter theme, believe it or not, at this point, because we iterate so much through StudioPress, and things get tested and added and whatever, and I’m like, okay, usually I just grab the latest theme that we’ve done, because I know that it’s probably the most currently coded well and tested, and go from there. Lauren Mancke: You start it with the one that I made. I made a starter theme for us to use. Brian Gardner: Like I said, I don’t have my own starter theme. But yes, I did I’m working on two themes right now. One is a free theme that I’ll probably be releasing within the next week or so called 27 Pro, and that was based off of the Genesis sample’s child theme. Then the other one, which will be on StudioPress for sale, and I haven’t named it yet because I’m pondering that, but that one was based off of the base theme that you have developed internally for us in house. The Importance of Contracts Brian Gardner: Bill, you talked a little bit about the data there in your last segment, and you also did another interview with Matt Medeiros over at Matt Report. This was a little bit more on the technical side of business and being a freelancer, talking about systems and data and contracts and stuff like that. Let’s talk about contracts, because you mentioned in the interview that you live and die by them. I thought I would ask you to speak to that, because I think a lot of people get themselves into trouble and become inefficient because contracts aren’t clear and things like that. Is there anything that you want to elaborate on what you mean by that, and why that’s so important? Bill Erickson: Yeah, a good contract is incredibly important. The goal is it lays out what each party is expected to do. You should have a lawyer look it over because it is a legal document, but I also highly recommend you make it not overly complex, because your client needs to be able to read and understand it. It really should be a distillation of all your communication expectations. When there are questions throughout the project you’ll both refer to that document. Refer back to all the phone calls, and your notes, and the emails, take all that information that’s been provided, and come up with a single document that describes exactly what you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it, how much you’re going to charge, and then have the client agree to it. That’s basically what the contract is. The key sections that I include are the scope of work, which is where I say what it is I’m going to do, payment schedule, timeline, licensing of code. I like to be able to reuse my code, and so I make sure I note it that I’m never going to sell their site in whole to someone else, but unique pieces of functionality that I might develop I might reuse. The governing law, which is a legal thing, so that you could say, If we do get in a legal fight, this is where we’re going to do it. And then, any other aspects that you think are important to clarify. I include notes about migrations and phone calls and acceptable file types for designs, because those have all been areas of issues and past projects and I don’t want to repeat them. That’s why I use a contract. I use it as a way to guide the client through what we’re going to do, what he’s responsible for, what I’m responsible for, what we’re building together, so that throughout this three-month process or however long it is, we can all go back to that document and know what we’re talking about. Brian Gardner: Do you have any examples of, authenticity moment here, of an instance or a circumstance, one of the reasons why it became so important to you? Bill Erickson: Yeah, that’s the key of what the scope of work is. A lot of times I’ll get a design, I’ll provide a quote on it. Let’s say someone emails you a PSD file and you’re like, “Yeah, I think it’ll take me X many hours to build it, I’ll charge you $3,000 for this.” Then you’re like, Great, and so you start building it, and then when you send the site for review, the client comes back and was like, “Well, this isn’t working at all as I expected, because I thought this was going to do this, and that’s going to do that.” You might have seen the picture, but you didn’t really fully understand the functionality, or both of your understandings were different. The scope of work really just describes every key piece of functionality in the site, so then when a client comes back and says, “This is missing,” or, “This isn’t working right,” we look at that document and say, “Yeah, it doesn’t match what we describe here? Yes? Then it’s done right. If not, then let’s fix it.” That’s the most common area, is just not describing the functionality as well. The design is usually not a question. We’re both looking at the same designs, and if they don’t look the same then there’s something wrong. But functionality-wise, that’s a key area of issues. Then also just little things, like the acceptable file type. I don’t like working with Illustrator. I just don’t enjoy it at all. So when I get Someone who ll send me JPEG files of a design and I’m like, “Oh, it looks great,” and then I quote on it, and then they send me the final assets as Illustrator files, and I’m like, “Oh, this is going to take me so much longer.” Stuff like that. Specifying what you need. I’ve gotten design files in PowerPoint before, which is not an acceptable format for me. So yeah, it s stuff like that. It’s just, every time you finish a product, do a quick post-mortem of it, see how things went well, what didn’t go well, what could you have done to prevent it, and a lot of that is stuff that should’ve been communicated earlier on, like what is the migration process? How are you going to deal with, it takes four months to build the site, and our content is now out of date because the live site’s been updated, what’s going to happen? You should clarify these things ahead of time. Lauren Mancke: I think from my personal experience, any time a project doesn’t go smoothly it comes down to communication, like you said. It’s usually related to expectations, either from you as the developer expecting the client to do certain things, or the client expecting you to do certain things. Having that on the forefront of the project of communication, and defining the project’s scope before you begin, is really, really key. Bill Erickson: Yeah, I completely agree. Basically, I like contracts because it’s a communication tool. It forces you to verbalize all the things you’re assuming and the client’s assuming. Bill s Favorite Types of Projects Lauren Mancke: I also know from personal experience that you probably have too much work coming in, and so with that I know you have the luxury of being selective in choosing clients that you think would be enjoyable, or you can wait on larger projects like you’ve discussed that might have a bigger budget. What are some of your favorite clients, and what are some of the favorite types of projects you like to work on? Bill Erickson: My favorite projects are the ones where the clients trust our expertise. We have this whole process that works really well, and you’re hiring a great developer, a great designer. Trust them to do their work. Don’t redesign it. My designer will give you a great initial mockup, and then you go through and change up the design in a ton of different ways, which affects the usability, especially on mobile. The ones where they really just sit back and say, “I’m hiring the experts, I trust what you’re doing here, I’ll give you all the information, but let’s see where you can take it.” Those always come out the best. Some examples of that, The Kerouac Project. It’s a nonprofit for writers. It’s basically a place where writers can go for a few months and hone their craft. They gave us, basically, freedom to do what we thought would be best, and we came up with a beautiful design on that one that really emphasizes what they do. It’s like a design based around typography. Another one is Down Home Ranch. It’s a working ranch for Down syndrome people in the Austin area. That’s another one where we had a lot of fun with, and we were really able to capture the essence of the ranch, and provide them a beautiful design that’s really easy to use. Building a Work/Life Balance that Works for You Brian Gardner: You and I met six years ago, as we talked about, and a lot has happened since you and I met. You married Tara, a lovely person who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. You guys have since then had a baby. What impact have both of these milestones had, for better or worse, on your freelance business? Because when you started out it was just you. Like you said, even a long time ago, it was just you in college, and you had little responsibilities and didn’t require a lot of money and stuff like that. As your career has progressed, and I’m not going to say complicated because that’s completely wrong word, you’ve enlarged the scope of your responsibilities by getting married and having kids. How does that affect things now? Because I’m sure it’s different, your workflow and your responsibilities and the way you do things now, is different than it was maybe five years ago. Bill Erickson: Tara and I actually met just months after I started freelancing, so she’s been with me from the very start all the way to where we are here. Yeah, we started with poor college kids who were just having fun and making by, and now we work our own, and we have a family, and we have a house and a baby, and we have a lot of fun. Earlier we were talking about how … different ways to scale your businesses, and I said a focus on efficiency. That’s one way to grow your business, but you can also use it to maintain a certain level of income and work less. That’s one of the things that I’ve found. As my family’s grown I value my time a lot more, and so I focus on work life balance. I’ve found over the past few years, the amount of time I spend working goes down bit by bit, so I’m working a lot less now than I was a few years ago, because I’m able to spend more time with my family. I have to value my time in that way so I raise my rates, because my time is if I’m going to spend this time away from my family I’d better be getting compensated for it. On the negative side, I actually had to move my home office. I was downstairs, and now we have a baby running around, and she’d run, bang on the door yelling “Da-da,” wanting to play, so now I’m upstairs in a small guest room so that they have free range downstairs. Brian Gardner: Hey Lauren, do you know anything about that? Kids running around? With two buns in the oven and one running around already, your life’s about to get … You may need a separate building. Lauren Mancke: I have a plan for that. At our old house we built this really cool workshop in the back yard. It’s got skylights, it’s got everything. I want to bring it over to his house, because we’re renting that house out. I want to bring it over to this house and use it as my office, so I will be in a separate building. But it’s still here, so I can come back if needed. But yes, it is very difficult to focus with little people that don’t understand that the door means that you’re working. Brian Gardner: A great example of that kind of a space is Jason Schuller, a good friend of ours from back in the day. He ran Press75 and sold that, and he’s still doing some stuff online, but he built and refurbished his office on top of his garage. He does have his sort of own space. Back to the work life balance thing, if there’s anybody who I’m friends with online that I’ve seen so intentional about, not necessarily working more, but charging more to have more time for family, it’s Jason, because he’s put so much emphasis on his daughter. Every time I see an Instagram shot, it’s him, they’re there on a trail, or on a beach. Bill, you also spoke to that work life balancing, because I think it’s intuitive to want to just work more to make more money, instead of working more to then actually get to, “All I need is X amount,” and then start working back, and it s freeing up more time to have balance. Because as we know, we can work 24 hours a day if we want online, and sometimes we do, but also, to be respectful enough of your own family and the commitments you have to say, “I don’t need to make more money, I just need to make this money.” Then to become more efficient and charge more and whatnot, so that you can then spend more time with your family, is so refreshing to hear. Bill Erickson: That’s basically my approach. I don t work I enjoy what I do, but the reason I work is so that I can provide for my family and spend time with my family. The more I can make, the less I have to work, and then I can enjoy the fruits of my labor more. Advice for Aspiring Freelancers Lauren Mancke: Okay, so last but not least, what advice can you give a person who’s got some training and experience in development, and they’re trying to branch out as a freelancer? Any pro tips that you think they should hear before we go? Bill Erickson: Network with other freelancers, especially those that compliment your services. As a developer you’re always looking for good designers and copywriters, and on the reverse it’s the same, so just get out there and know people who you might partner with on projects, and who might recommend you. If you’re a developer, contribute to open source projects. When I’m looking for Genesis developers to recommend, I look to those who contribute to Genesis who have written patches or extensions to my personal Genesis plugins, or who’re writing their own Genesis plugins. I like to see their code, but I also like to see how they interact with other developers and users reporting issues. That gives you a little insight on their communication abilities in addition to their coding abilities. Brian Gardner: That’s good stuff, good stuff Bill. Normally we do a little call to action here at the end, and because there’s no PSD to Genesis for me to pitch for you, I’m just going to tell anybody who’s listening, if you’re looking to redesign your website, or start a website, or do something of the sort, we have all of Bill’s links, all the things that you would need to access and contact Bill, down in the show notes. BillErickson.net is his domain name. Bill comes highly recommended by us, all of us here at StudioPress. It’s been a pleasure working with him over the years. If you need anything, Bill is there and he’s the right guy, and if he’s not, he’ll set you up with the right person as well. I just want to thank you, Bill, for being on the show, taking the time out. I know, as we talked about, you’re busy, but I also know that this is your way of giving back, as well as marketing yourself a little bit, and that’s why we’re having you on the show. Hopefully, we can send you some business through this episode. For those listening, if you liked what you heard on today’s show, you can find more episodes of StudioPress FM over at, you guessed it, StudioPress.FM. You can also help us hit the main stage by subscribing to the show on iTunes. It’s a great way to never ever miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

In this inaugural episode of StudioPress FM, we focus on the story of the founder of StudioPress, Brian Gardner. Lauren Mancke and Brian discuss how he started the premium WordPress theme industry, StudioPress, and the Genesis Framework. In this 29-minute episode Brian Gardner and Lauren Mancke discuss: How Brian’s career began His start with blogging, WordPress, and freelance development When Brian and Lauren began working together almost ten years ago The one client that changed everything The birth of the premium WordPress theme industry The launch of StudioPress and the Genesis Framework The biggest business decision Brian ever had to make His favorite parts of the journey and lessons he learned along the way Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes StudioPress.com Revolution Theme Find out more about Brian on BrianGardner.com Find out more about Lauren on laurenmancke.com Follow Brian on Twitter at @bgardner Follow Lauren on Twitter at @laurenmancke The Transcript The Story of StudioPress Founder Brian Gardner Jerod Morris: Hey, Jerod Morris here. If you know anything about Rainmaker Digital and Copyblogger, you may know that we produce incredible live events. Some would say that we produce incredible live events as an excuse to throw great parties, but that’s another story. We’ve got another one coming up this October in Denver. It’s called Digital Commerce Summit, and it is entirely focused on giving you the smartest ways to create and sell digital products and services. You can find out more at Rainmaker.FM/Summit. We’ll be talking about Digital Commerce Summit in more detail as it gets closer, but for now, I’d like to let a few attendees from our past events speak for us. Attendee 1: For me, it’s just hearing from the experts. This is my first industry event, so it’s awesome to learn new stuff and also get confirmation that we’re not doing it completely wrong where I work. Attendee 2: The best part of the conference for me is the being able to mingle with people and realize that you have connections with everyone here. It feels like LinkedIn Live. I also love the parties after each day, being able to talk to the speakers, talk to other people who are here for the first time, people who have been here before. Attendee 3: I think the best part of the conference for me is understanding how I can service my customers a little more easily. Seeing all the different facets and components of various enterprises then helps me pick the best tools. Jerod Morris: Hey, we agree — one of the biggest reasons we host a conference every year is so that we can learn how to service our customers, people like you, more easily. Here are just a few more words from folks who have come to our past live events. Attendee 4: It’s really fun. I think it’s a great mix of beginner information and advanced information. I’m really learning a lot and having a lot of fun. Attendee 5: The conference is great, especially because it’s a single-track conference where you don’t get distracted by, “Which session should I go to?” and, “Am I missing something?” Attendee 6: The training and everything, the speakers have been awesome, but I think the coolest aspect for me has been connecting with both people who are putting it on and then other attendees. Jerod Morris: That’s it for now. There’s a lot more to come on Digital Commerce Summit, and I really hope to see you there in October. Again, to get all the details and the very best deal on tickets, head over to Rainmaker.FM/Summit. Voiceover: : StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, we’ll focus on the founder of StudioPress, Brian Gardner, and his story. We will share how he started the premium WordPress theme industry, his company StudioPress, and the Genesis Framework. Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. This is founder of StudioPress, Brian Gardner, and today I’m joined with my co-host, who happens to be vice president of StudioPress, a killer photographer, a mom, the best designer on the planet, Lauren Mancke. Lauren, how are you doing today? Lauren Mancke: I’m doing good. That’s quite an introduction. Brian Gardner: You know, you’re not following the script. You’re supposed to say, “I’m good. Really excited about this, Brian. How are you?” Lauren Mancke: I’m going to go off script. Brian Gardner: All right. Hey, listen up, everybody [paper crumpling] — that is us throwing the script out of the window. Welcome to the show. Lauren and I have been excited to finally record our first episode. It seems like we’ve been talking about this forever now. Although as creatives, we want everything to be perfect. What I learned last year when I did the No Sidebar podcast is that scripted shows sound like scripted shows. As two creatives, we are going to just fly by the seat of our pants. We are thankful you are listening. We have a lot to cover, just today, in the series, and just on the whole podcast as a whole. How do you want to kick this off? Lauren Mancke: I was thinking I could ask you a couple of questions. This first episode, we want to talk about you, Brian, and maybe I could do a little interview style. Brian Gardner: This is my show because next week will be your show. I guess what we thought was that we would just introduce the StudioPress FM podcast with a little bit about my story, a little bit about your story. Then I think we’re going to go into the redesign of StudioPress. From there, we were going to, after that foundation was set, just go through and cover all kinds of topics — from design and branding and strategy, bringing in members of the community, from Genesis as a whole also. Let’s get this started. Lauren Mancke: Let’s start at the beginning. Even before you became an entrepreneur, how did you get started in the working world? How Brian’s Career Began Brian Gardner: Let’s go back to my job history. I think that’s a little bit of foundation for all of the things that ultimately brought me to where I’m at. Back in high school, I was a cashier and stock boy at a local convenience store. Unlike other people — my friends, they were into sports, and they did their thing — I actually had to work. I spent three or four nights a week, one day or two over the weekend, working at a local convenience store, doing all kinds of things. That was just kind of a get-me-started job. Then I went to college, and believe it or not, one of my jobs was being a janitor of the dorms. When you are paying your way through, you’ve got to pretty much take any job. For me, that was just something I needed to do. It was actually kind of fun because our dorm was one of them. That was an interesting experience. I’ll get to later why certain things like that kind of built into who I am now. Most importantly, after college, I went back to the same convenience store I worked at. This time I was hired on as a manager. I was working 50 hours a week there, pretty much living there and getting to know all of the customers. There was this one experience while I was there that really started the formation of who I am now. That was, somebody had brought they were bringing coffees out to their car. They dropped the tray and spilled coffee all over the sidewalk. She came back in, and she told us, “Hey, I’m sorry. I have to go get more coffee.” My boss at the time said, “Don’t worry about it. Fill your cups up and head out.” I looked at her. I’m like, “Aren’t we going to charge her again?” She said, “No. No, of course not. Benefit of the doubt, it’s a loyal customer. We take care of them.” That was my first experience or the introduction to the idea of customer service and how you take care of people because that type of thing goes a long way. I worked at this convenience store for a couple years as the manager, got to know these customers. We were in a neighborhood, so it was the same people that came through all the time. One of the older gentlemen who came in and got a coffee and donut every morning, one Saturday slipped me his business card. I got to know him pretty well, and we talked when he would come into the store and whatnot. He slipped me his business card, and he just says, “Call me.” I was confused, kind of had an idea of what he was thinking, so I called him. In short, he basically offered me a job at his company, which was an architectural design company and was a five-day work week, eight to four type of thing, holidays off, that type of stuff, which was so different from when I was working at the time. I was like, “I don’t even care what you do, but I’m going to say yes because I just want to get out of this.” I became a project manager at this architectural firm. I was probably the youngest by probably 10 years there. I was kind of seen as the kid, the computer guy who taught himself a lot of stuff on the computer, which will ultimately get to where we’re at now. That’s my work history in a nutshell. Just things there I learned that are much more applicable to what I do now. Lauren Mancke: At that architectural firm, isn’t that when you started writing on your blog? Brian’s Start with Blogging, WordPress, and Freelance Development Brian Gardner: Yeah, let’s go back, I think 2006, 2007 is where it was. I was very confident with what I was doing, but I was also bored. It was a desk job. I was crunching numbers and estimating projects. As even a creative back then, I wanted to start writing. This was back in the day when Google’s Blogger was the big thing and WordPress was very, very new. I started blogging on Blogger. It just didn’t do anything for me. A friend of mine said, “You should check out this WordPress thing because it’s a much better, more sophisticated thing,” which is funny because compared to where it’s at now, back then it was archaic. I installed WordPress and figured out through Googling around how to set up WordPress install and what was web hosting and all of that. I started blogging on the side just as a fun thing to do. Yes, I did a little bit on the clock to kill time. I started blogging, and that was the start of the entrepreneurial journey. Lauren Mancke: Right, because that’s when you started to do freelance jobs, right? Brian Gardner: Yeah, what happened was, I didn’t like the theme I was using. Back then, there was a free theme repository. I had pulled down a theme, and as a neat freak and organizational type of person, I opened up these files that made up this theme. Of course, I didn’t even know what a theme was, or PHP files or CSS, back in the day. I was flying blind and just trying to see what would work and what wouldn’t work. Ultimately, I cleaned up the theme I was using. I renamed it. I thought I was like this real programmer kind of guy and, at one point, decided to make themes available on my site. I would take themes and customize them, got my feet wet with design, and did what I felt was right, and started making these themes available for download for free in hopes that people would use them. The links in the footer would go back to my site, and they could read all about my journal and stuff that I was going through, which I figured people might be interested in. Who knows? I did that, and some of those people who would download the themes would ultimately contact me and say, “Hey, I’m using your free theme. I want to know if you can help me change a few colors or whatnot.” These little freelance jobs that I took, $25, $50, to kind of tweak a few things grew into more of a thing where people would ask for full custom sites types of things, $250, $500 back in the day is what I charged. It was vacation money back at the time. Lauren Mancke: That’s about when we met, right? That’s when our paths crossed? When Brian and Lauren Began Working Together Almost 10 Years Ago Brian Gardner: Yeah, I can’t remember what year it was, but I think it was Wes who reached out at one point, your old boss. Lauren Mancke: It was 2007. Brian Gardner: 2007, yeah, so he reached out and asked if I could do a couple of themes for I don’t know if they were your client sites or even his own site. He contracted me to do a couple of these sites and obviously connected me to you because you were the one who had done the designs for him. I was going to just do the development part. You and I back then, even though, fast forward nine years, we had no idea that we would be really working this closely together. That was the start of our relationship, just kind of on a casual, you were a client of mine type of thing — and look, here we are. Lauren Mancke: Those were some pretty basic sites. I’m glad they are not on the Internet anymore. Besides us being your client, did you have any other clients at that time? The One Client That Changed Everything Brian Gardner: Yeah, there were a couple other people who, believe or not, were regulars that they had more than one project for me to do. It was nice to kind of have a few people who would continually send me work. Moonlighting was pretty much my gig, and I was doing these sites late at night, on the weekends, and a little bit during the day at work, but I don’t ever like to admit that. That’s how those types of things happen. Maybe a year or so into that part of my life, I had this client, a Boston real estate guy, and he was pretty much the guy that changed everything. Lauren Mancke: How did he do that? Brian Gardner: This is a story I tell all the time. To this day, I do not mention his name. I prefer to keep him in anonymity. I think that, at some point, and I’m 95 percent kidding when I say this, but I still think he’s going to come back and ask for royalties because he really was the guy that changed my life, my family’s life, really a lot of the things that transpired since then. I was doing a freelance custom design for him. He wanted a real estate blog. I whipped up this design, and I was like, “I’m going to above and beyond,” and created this template that would work as a front page, so it would look more like a website than a blog. Then I sent him a link to the demo, and I said, “What do you think of this?” He wrote back, and he says, “This is great, but it’s not what I need. I need just a blog, and it’s got to be very basic.” I was crushed. I thought to myself, “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever created. It’s way better than anything else that’s out there,” but he rejected it. He said that it wasn’t that I wasn’t good enough, it was just better than what he needed. It didn’t suit what he was looking for. At that point, I was left with this design, and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. The Birth of the Premium WordPress Theme Industry Brian Gardner: Thankfully, I had built an audience, and I did what felt right. I followed my gut and just wrote up a blog post and said, “Hey, this is something I created. Would anybody buy it?” That risk, that blog post was the catalyst to what would then transpire over the next year or two of my life, which was the formulation of Revolution because people wrote back on the blog and comments and said, “Heck yeah, that’s great. I would love to buy that.” I followed up that blog post with another one. Basically saying, “How much would you pay for a premium WordPress theme?” To this day, it’s arguable that, that is actually how the premium WordPress theme industry was named. Lots of people gave feedback, ranged anywhere between $50 and $100. Even then, I had no business training, no schooling, and any of that stuff, but I knew that was an opportunity. I knew that there was probably hundreds of people who actually wrote on that and said, “I would buy that.” I knew it was an opportunity to create something in a way that could be packaged and resold. That was the Revolution WordPress theme. Lauren Mancke: I’ve definitely heard that you coined the phrase ‘premium WordPress theme.’ I think it’s pretty amazing that you were able to just start an entire industry like that. Brian Gardner: Most of these types of stories, especially startups nowadays, they usually come back to, at the core of that story, some sort of passion projects, something somebody created to solve their own problem. It’s never well, it’s not never, but most success stories come out of the accidental entrepreneur concept, which is people who don’t set out to go do something. It just happens, and then they roll with it. For me, that was totally the case. At the time, I think Shelly was either pregnant or we were trying to get pregnant. I had no interest in leaving my day job because it was stable. I had income. I had vacation, benefits, insurance, and all that stuff. Never in a million years after I started selling Revolution did I think four months later I would be quitting my secure, stable job to do this ‘Internet thing’ — but that’s how it played out. Lauren Mancke: How did Revolution then turn into StudioPress? A lot of our listeners might not know how that transitioned. I know I know because I was there, but give us a little rundown of how that transition went down. The Launch of StudioPress and the Genesis Framework Brian Gardner: The short story is, back in the day, even though WordPress itself was an open-source project, Revolution, I was selling it as a proprietary thing where and I’ll link to a couple of articles around this in the show notes. In short, I decided to take Revolution, which at the time we were selling, and make it open source. In other words, apply the GPL license to it. Part of that process was difficult because I was making a big change and risking potentially a lot of money. I called up Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, and asked if he would be willing to have a conversation with me about this. At the time, there were few other people who started selling themes. They were also doing a proprietary license deal, which was, in a sense, against the ideology of WordPress and open source. I didn’t want to be seen as a black sheep. I called Matt, and he said, “Yep.” I flew out to California and met with him. At the point, CEO of Automattic, which is the company behind WordPress, and the three of us sat alongside Jason Schuller, my friend from Press75 at the time. We sat in a room and talked about Revolution going open source. Out of that conversation, it became Revolution 2, which was sort of a, as I look back, hokey transition. It was just my way of saying, “This is Revolution done a different way.” Not too long into that, I was served a cease and desist letter from a company in the United Kingdom that claimed some sort of confusion with their Revolution software, and again, like I said, I had no business knowledge whatsoever, no legal nothing. I was just doing what I thought was right. I brought that to an intellectual property attorney, and he said, “You can probably fight this and maybe win. It would cost a lot of money, so it might just make sense to rebrand.” At that point, I thought it was suicide, brand suicide. I thought it was going to be the end of the world. I went ahead and looked up some domain names, and StudioPress was one that was available for purchase. I think it was BuyDomains.com or something like that, but I was like, “Eh, it’s got the press studio, kind of insinuates design.” Yes, I did Google StudioPress and make sure that there was no other conflict because the last thing I wanted to do was end up in the same boat. We rebranded as StudioPress, and there was a blog post announcing it, sort of alluding to the fact that it was a necessary change. One thing I learned is when you build a loyal audience, they’ll follow you no matter what. My concern that sales would tank and that the community wouldn’t understand quickly subsided once I rebranded, and StudioPress set itself off at that point. Lauren Mancke: I think at that time, right around then, is when I actually was starting to go full-time freelancing. What year was that? Brian Gardner: 2010-ish, 2009, ’10, ’11, ’12? Something around there. Lauren Mancke: I think maybe 2009. You were one of my clients. I had some steady clients. That was kind of the impetus for me to go out on my own and quit my full-time job. One of those first big jobs I had was with you, doing a few theme designs. Brian Gardner: I don’t know which of the times you are talking about because I think back then I tried to hire you three or four different times, but you were a prima donna. You were charging too much money, and I couldn’t afford you at the time. I think I at least three times you and I tried to figure out a way to work together on a full-time basis. I knew back then that you were a great designer and you still are. I knew that, as an opportunistic person who wants to take my business to the next level, you had to play a part. So yes, we went back and forth a number of times to figure out how you can get involved. It probably wasn’t until the merge with Copyblogger that we were in a position to finally make that happen. Lauren Mancke: You did ask me a few times. Brian Gardner: You know what, I kept feeling rejected — like I was asking the pretty girl to the dance, and she kept saying no for some reason or like that she had someone better. I’m like, “One of these times I’m just going to stop asking,” but here we are. Lauren Mancke: It worked out. The stars aligned, and the timing worked out. Brian Gardner: For sure. Lauren Mancke: A couple of those first projects we worked on, I remember helping with the brand of Genesis. Brian Gardner: Before the Copyblogger merge, I had this idea. I think at the time Thesis by Chris Pearson was sort of becoming the thorn in my side, competitor, impacting sales type of thing. I knew at that point I needed to do something that was a little bit different from where I was doing. StudioPress, we had a number of individual themes that we were producing. I think a couple maybe you designed or I outsourced. The problem became once we had a number of themes that shared some code base. This kind of gets into the history of Genesis itself, which was every time that we would need to update a function, I’d update every single theme. Around that time, Nathan Rice, who is currently lead developer at Rainmaker Digital, our company. He was working at iThemes with our friend Cory Miller. I think I told him at one point — I was outsourcing some kind of code work for him as well — I told him, I said, “Hey, look, if things ever don’t work out between you and iThemes, give me a call,” because I knew that there was this thing I wanted to build. I didn’t know really if it was possible or what it would be called or anything like that, but I had this idea. A few months later, he called back and said, “Hey, it looks like I’m going to no longer be working with iThemes, so here I am.” I pitched him the idea. I said, “Look, all of our themes share code base. Can we build something?” I don’t know even if I knew what a framework was or if it was called that back in the day, but I said, “Can we build something that basically shares the same code base, and then the design is just laid over the top?” I always like to use the idea of an iPhone, or even a car for that matter, where the paint job is the design, and the engine is always the same. You can change the way the car looks without having to change the engine. So I pitched him the idea. I said, “Let’s build something like that.” That was the initial conversation we had with Genesis. Once we built Genesis and introduced that idea and concept to the WordPress community, people bought into it. Obviously, we had a pretty good following through StudioPress and me personally. That sort of transitioned from standalone themes to what’s now Genesis the framework and the child theme system that comes along with it. Lauren Mancke: Then, taking that further, how was StudioPress then affected by the merger with the Copyblogger? The Biggest Business Decision Brian Ever Had to Make Brian Gardner: That’s a fun story. Chris Pearson and Brian Clark dissolved their relationship over at DIYThemes, and Brian reached out to me and said, “Hey, look. I’m looking to do something. I wanted to know if you want to partner together.” Of course I knew who Brian was from just Copyblogger and just the prominence he had in the blogging and marketing world. I knew that that was a huge opportunity to ultimately take StudioPress to the next level. There were lots of elements around StudioPress that I didn’t want to be doing — i.e., support, account management, and things like that. I knew that there was just a next step and that merging into Copyblogger would do it. Him and I and three of our other partners flew out to Denver and formed the company in practically 35, 40 minutes. We sat down and just knocked it all out and said, “This is what we want to do. This is what we want to build.” From there, we merged StudioPress into Copyblogger, formed that company, which ultimately meant that I was giving up full control of what I called my baby back in the day. A lot has happened over the last six years, much for the good, and StudioPress is still going strong. Finally got a chance to hire you. You’ve worked your way up through everything, and now you’re vice president of StudioPress. I like to call you my right-hand man, or if anything, you call me your right-hand man. You’re pretty much running the show now. Lauren Mancke: Over those six years, a lot’s happened. Have you any favorite parts on that whole journey? Brian’s Favorite Parts of the Journey and Lessons He Learned Along the Way Brian Gardner: Yeah, I think what it comes down to is, I’ve always been kind of a gathering type. I love the idea of community and building something that appeals to a lot of people and where people can come together. The company itself has become that for us, where we started out as five partners and a handful of employees. Over the last six years, we’ve grown and evolved and have built new lines of business, and that’s necessitated hiring. Tony Clark, our COO, he’s a really smart guy, and he’s like a company builder. He sets up the infrastructure of the company and the processes. He really helped form the company into something special. Even just in April, we were all out in Denver together. Probably 50 to 60 of us, a lot of people coming from overseas, from south America. It’s crazy to then come together in one room. It feels like a true family. The standing joke kind of within our company is that we’re The Goonies and that we’re misfits creating meaningful work. That’s one part of the last years that I’ve really gotten to enjoy is just working with different people, caring for other people, and so on. The community itself that we’ve built around Genesis is just as awesome. The people who are building their own businesses around Genesis and selling services and products around that has been phenomenal to watch. I’ve met a lot of good people, many of which we’ve been able to meet in person. Some I call brothers and sisters. We’re that close. That to me is, and always has been, the most important part of all of it. It’s really what helps me get up in the morning and why I want to do work and talk to people and help identify where we can promote their work. We’ve done some things lately, like add third-party themes to StudioPress in our Pro Plus package, as well as even sharing their work on our Facebook page. We recently created a newsletter called StudioPress Notes where we talk about the latest things. It’s been just really fun to watch the community, from developers to designers to everybody in between, gather around this product. They kind of serve as what I call brand ambassadors. They are making money and putting food on their table because of something that we started, that they are building upon. Those two parts of all of this is really been my favorite part of it all. Lauren Mancke: I think also having a couple people on the show, too, will be a great idea about where we can take this podcast. Plans for the Future Brian Gardner: StudioPress FM, for me, is really going to be about that same sort of thing. We’re going to extend our platform in the spirit of trying to help other people’s platforms. In other words, yes, you and I are going to talk and riff about things that are happening and things we go through, work in our workday, and identifying design trends and what we should build and all of that. The other part of it, and what I think will be fascinating for our listeners, is to bring in people from the community so we can hear their story, so we can hear what they’re up to and what they think about what we’re doing, but also just what the industry as a whole is doing. There’s all kinds of people that I’ve already got in mind that I want to have on the show. We’ll go through a series probably, a four-part series where we’ll bring in maybe some designers, and then another series would be developers and so on. Industry people that can help bring some wisdom to the show. It’s going to be a fun deal. I’m really excited that we finally did this. I think it all hinged upon the fact that we landed on a great design for the podcast album cover. I think that was something we struggled with a little bit. Lauren Mancke: That did take a few drafts. Brian Gardner: The one thing we learned is that, in some sort of fashion, you and I are a little bit oil and water when it comes to taste. Typically, we resonate a lot, but there are some things and the podcast music itself was another instance where we just had to say, “We love each other, and we’re are going to have to find a way to meet in the middle.” Lauren Mancke: We had to compromise. Brian Gardner: Yeah, and that’s what the whole show is going to be about, where you can do your thing for a while, I’ll do my thing for a while. As long we are relatively on the same page, then things should work out. With that said and on that note, I think we’ll end the show. We’re going to keep our shows typically around 30 minutes, just in the spirit of giving enough information, but not too much to where it takes away from your day. We love you guys. We appreciate your listening. Next week, we’re going to hear Lauren’s story because it differs much from mine. It’ll be fun to hear her talk more and to hear what she went through, how she got here, and all of that. That’s a wrap. Lauren Mancke: So tune in. Brian Gardner: Next week, StudioPress FM.

Jason Schuller joins us to talk about his experience going freelance and making a living building on WordPress.

  Our featured guest this week is Jason Schuller from Seattle in Washington. You may know him from press75.com or you may know him as the guy behind Leaflets or Droplets. Or maybe you know his new project Cinematico, which is a website solution for people who have a video channel on Vimeo or YouTube and want to create a website with all their video content. Jason has spent the last six years in the WordPress space selling premium themes and he's learned a lot. If you're struggling in your business because you're doing everything yourself and you feel like you're treading water then this episode is for you. Jason's got a lot of good advice on how important it is to surround yourself with other people and how important it is to let go of control so you don't burn out. The post Episode #33 – Jason Schuller appeared first on WP Elevation.

  In Episode 11 of the WP Elevation podcast I spoke with Brad Touesnard from Delicious Brains, home of WP Migrate DB. Brad has been through the experience of launching the WP App Store, which included investment from Adii Pienaar at WooThemes and Carl Hancock at Gravity Forms. The WP App Store ultimately failed and Brad has lived to tell the tale. Brad presented recently at the Boston WordPress MeetUp about the evolution of his business and why his pricing model is the way it is. Brad has teamed up with Pippin Williamson and launched a podcast called Apply Filters which is aimed at WordPress developers. I tried to find a screenshot of Flippa.com from 2008 but the way back machine kept redirecting so I gave up. However you can see the screenshots on Brad’s blog. Brad is currently reading Judas Unchained: The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F Hamilton. You can reach out and thank Brad on his blog or on Twitter. Brad suggested I interview Jason Schuller who’s fame includes Press75 and more recently Dropplets and Leeflets. Keep your eyes on your inbox Jason. Hint: to enter the competition, leave a comment below telling us the #1 feature you’d like to see in WP Migrate DB Pro. The post Episode #11 – Brad Touesnard appeared first on WP Elevation.