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In this episode, Matt Medeiros interviews Sara Dunn from the 11Web Agency. Sara is a website maker and SEO Consultant running a remote business based in Battle Creek Michigan. She talks with Matt about her recent use of YouTube and how she is committed to producing regular content along with creating a niche for her freelance business.

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What you will learn from this Episode:

Creating a remote team: * Sara's business team was initially started by hiring a local coworker to do web development and support in the business. (3:54) * Another remote coworker was brought on to help with design. (4:11) * A Virtual Assistant was added to keep projects and everything organized. (4:22)

Lessons learned: * When you are looking to hire a remote worker for your business you can give them a test project to evaluate their skills. (6:40) * A remote worker needs to be able to meet deadlines and communicate well. (6:50) * You need to find people who are comfortable with the remote working lifestyle and are used to working alone or on the road. (7:15)

Challenges of Growing an Agency: * There is a challenge of trying to find the "right" customer who is willing to budget and pay for the level of service that you are providing. (8:26) * Many new customers are found through networking events and referrals. (8:50) * The pool of people who want to pay for a great website gets smaller as the prices go up. (9:00) * It is difficult to find clients from a wide geographic area when you are working as a generalist. (9:19) * It can be very helpful to create an interesting niche for your business where clients take notice. (9:40) * Making the pivot in your agency to a specific group of businesses can be scary. There is a lot of training, marketing and adjusting of internal processes when you make a change to specialize. (11:22) * YouTube is a great tool to use for personal branding and to create a niche for another industry. Sara is focusing on wedding professionals and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). (12:26)

Executing a Business Pivot: * You still need to pay the bills and collect money so launching another business under a new brand and separate website makes sense. (14:29) * Keeping the original brand and business keeps the risk lower and current customers happy. (14:40) * There is not a strategy for using YouTube around a personal brand. (16:19) * The videos are created with a genuine approach with "this is how I feel." (16:52) * The feedback from viewers has been very genuine and supportive around the pivot. (18:11) * Pushing content with a helpful approach can direct the audience to a common thread. (20:06) * The audience seems to find the videos coming from a place of honesty and originality and is keeping people connected. (21:16) * The YouTube video creation consists of 1-3 hours a week. (24:36) * You do not need a lot of equipment to get started with a quality video that is original. (25:01)

Episode Resources: 11web Sara Dunn iMovie Lunch with Brad

To Stay in Touch with Sara: Sara on YouTube

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Today's guest is my good friend Lisa Sabin-Wilson.

She shares her blueprint for increasing profits and client buy-in at WebDevStudios. This is a "lost" episode from a pre-recorded Season 6 of the Matt Report that I was producing during the summer of 2017.

Lots of great lessons here for anyone running a 1 or 40 person agency. Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Listen to the episode:

Watch the episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjL6Nrm1lpo&t=2s

Transcript of the show:

Matt: 00:00 Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel in this episode, I'm unearthing some of the last episodes of Matt report season six and turning them into maybe a small season seven, many months ago. I sat down and record it almost a dozen episodes, six agency folks, five Seo folks, and I was really trying to combine a two story pass or two career paths into an entire season. So those folks who might be running an agency or a small agency or consultancy and the, the information and feedback and experience of Seo wars for folks who are doing that, people are doing seo content marketing or maybe even marketing in general. And I was combining a small sort of conversation interview style and the first half of the show and then moving into a presentation by the guest speaker. So each guest speaker had an individual topic that he or she was going to teach us.

Matt: 00:52 Um, and it just became a techno technological disaster for me. I've been doing this for a long time and you would think that I would have this stuff down. But every time you introduce something new to the mix, you're trying to push the envelope, um, you know, speed bumps happen. And in my case, I lost some audio, I lost some video, um, but luckily I'm able to salvage a few good lessons out of those episodes and I'm happy to bring those to you. Now, kicking things off. I would like to start with my good friend Lisa Sabin-Wilson, who talks about making profit. Should you make profit, what is the most profit you can make in running an agency or maybe even a consultancy? This is packed full of great information. And in the upcoming video she will present this in her slides that she created for the Matt report way back when.

Matt: 01:36 Uh, so I do apologize. There will be some bumps in this video, but the, the lesson here is a must for anybody who's thinking, I am an agency. Even if you're one person, it doesn't matter if you consider yourself an agency, you're one person. Maybe you outsource some of the other work with friends and other colleagues to whatever. You are a digital agency. You're trying to represent yourself beyond just the solo consultant. This is a great episode for you. It's Matt report.com/subscribe to join the email newsletter, which I really have to email out sometime soon if you like. Videos like this. Go ahead. And like this video, if you enjoy and love and want more videos like this, please subscribe to the channel so you don't miss an episode. Sit back and get ready for Lisa Sabin-Wilson.

Lisa: 02:21 Gotcha.

Lisa: 02:25 So yeah, the topic of my presentation here is, revenue doesns't mean shit. And that might be a surprise for anybody who wants to do just to

Lisa: 02:34 make money or it is making money on wordpress currently to understand that revenue doesn't mean shit. But what I mean to say when I'm saying that is you can, you can make revenue all day long, but if you're not profitable with that revenue then it really is not going to mean shit to you or to your employees. Um, so unless you systems that are in place, uh, to really help pull that revenue over into, um, you know, actual profit, then you know, you're not gonna succeed. So a full pipeline is not all you need to succeed and grow. If you've got a full pipeline that's great and that's wonderful, but you also need to have the right systems in place to support it

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In this episode, Matt Mederios is winding down the December holiday season with this interview with Dan Roundhill. Dan is a mobile engineer for Automattic and is the project lead on Simplenote a note-taking product which Matt uses and highly recommends. Automattic acquired Simperium and Simplenote in 2013. Dan shares the ins and outs of Simplenote and discusses upcoming features and what may be added in future releases.

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What you will learn from this Episode: * Simplenote started out as a very basic notes app that provided a user a simple and easy way to take notes on a tablet or phone. (3:07) * Simplenote developed into an app that allowed you to sync across your devices so that you could take notes on any device and work anywhere. The product is stable across platforms. (3:34) * Automattic has made several acquisitions and has many products that are not heavily advertised in the WordPress ecosystem. (ex: Simplenote, Cloudup, Lean Domain Search, Gravatar, and Videopress). (4:58) * After the acquisition for Simplenote was made by Automattic, the focus has been on the app to get more traction with a wider audience. (6:27) * Dan Roundhill is leading the Simplenote team internally for Automattic. (6:51) * There is a new Simplenote app that was released for Windows and Linux that is built on React using Electron. (7:07) * You can publish a note using Simplenote that shows up with a tiny url and is an easy way to share your note on the web. (9:09) * There is a great support team of Happiness Engineers that gathers feedback from the app store and emails and prioritizes the requests. (11:38)

Features and User Requests: * Simplenote is used internally by Automattic and the request has been to sync this with Wordpress. (7:59) * Most features have bubbled up internally from users within Automattic with the requests that people want. (8:20) * The team works from an upvoted list of features such as easily formatting text and support for images. (12:14) * Simplenote's premium version was retired with sending a note to an email and Dropbox sync. (12:31) * Automattic may be looking to add value to users with Simplenote by having it linked closely to Cloudup. (13:58) * There has been another big push for folders from external users but the code has to be added to all the apps when synching. (14:52) * Folder based tags would be a great feature because many users like to organize things using these across platforms. (15:14) * The Native MAC OS app has fallen behind on the feature list because of speed and native sharing capabilities. (16:49) * Simplenote is scheduled for a catch-up release and then premium features such as markdown support. (18:00) * The marketing team is a pretty new team at Automattic and they are responsible for the content of Simplenote. (23:15) * The apps are now open-sourced at Automattic through Github and you can add and contribute for many platforms. (29:18)

Episode Resources:

Automattic Akismet Simplenote Cloudup - allows users to store files in the cloud, synchronize files across devices, and share files.

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In this episode, Matt Medeiros continues the impromptu Season 6 with his interview with Tom McFarlin. Tom is a developer and business owner in the WordPress community but is not solely dependent on WordPress. He balances his consulting and development business along with teaching and blogging with a focus on Object Oriented Programming (OOP) encouraging people to write good code.

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What you will learn from this Episode: * Tom has a membership area with Digital courses on his site TomMcfarlin.com. (1:10) * Pressware has been growing over the past 7 years and provides consulting, custom plugin and development functionality. (2:43) * Tom's blog has moved into a combination of free posts along with paid content for members. (2:28)

Marketing your product: * The marketing strategy is not just a focus this year for the membership site launch. (3:39) * Building strong content will take time and people can sign up as needed or when they recognize the value. (8:02) * Blogging with great content with authority takes a lot of work. (8:52) * The current blog is established and is being published with a set schedule. (9:42) * Word of mouth and posting to Twitter have been the best marketing strategy so far. (13:34) * The blog material is being updated with interesting and new material that is being discovered by new developers. (15:59) * Tom's blog is very genuine reflecting his personality. (19:48) * Networking at events is a great way to meet the authentic blogger or WordPress owner. (21:40) * It is difficult to build an audience using YouTube because the videos come off as being instructional or tutorials on a software product. (23:37)

The Future of WordPress: * Consultants have been the boots on the ground for WordPress. (27:24) * Blue collar digital workers are becoming a commoditized service becoming people who can fix the code of products that were created. (28:40) * There is a consumer level of technology that may always need fixing. (30:09) * There may always be a WordPress but consultants may not be directing or taking customers where they want to go with the software. (31:41) * WordPress is getting wider with the options of where people want to take it. (32:47) * Jetpack (or other WordPress plugins) will probably be part of WordPress moving forward and may not be offered as individual products. (36:07) * The individual user seems to be the new direction for the growth of WordPress. (37:37) * Plugin development and sales may not take the same direction that themes have. (42:17) * Pressware was named without "WP" intentionally even though it is software built on WordPress. (42:54)

Building a Business: * If you are going to be working for yourself you need to learn about running a business and know that you should be able to manage a team of developers, contractors, designers, etc. (44:39) * Understand the value of the dollar when you are in business and understand where the money goes. (46:47) * If you are working in the U.S. make sure you have a great CPA. (48:48) * As your business grows you will need to learn to let go of many things and delegate to good people. (49:49) * Make sure you have a set ending time to the day when the work discussion ends. (52:18)

Episode Resources: Pressware TomMcFarlin.com WordCamp US Troy Dean

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In this episode, Matt Mederios interviews Peter Kang, the partner, and co-founder of Barrel. The Barrel agency has been in business in NYC for about 10 years and works on a diverse range of projects, from helping startups get their businesses up and running to implementing large-scale digital solutions for corporate clients.

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Guests:

Peter Kang is a co-founder of the creative agency called Barrel in NYC. Barrel handles the digital strategy, digital marketing, and analytics for many businesses. They create many sites using WordPress, Shopify, and WooCommerce.

What you will learn from this episode: * Barrel makes the decision between WooCommerce and Shopify based on the requirements of the client. Shopify will be used for many eCommerce sites just selling products. (1:45) * WooCommerce can be difficult to maintain with its add-ons and plugins. (2:26) * Sometimes plugins for WooCommerce will quit working and you need to research why. (2:34) * For most eCommerce, there is value for simplicity and Shopify fits the bill. (4:28) * When a subscription or membership site is needed WordPress, WooCommerce seems to be the better fit for the customer. (4:38) * You need to careful that you aren't giving away the "secret sauce" of your business when you are offering products. (27:20) * Peter believes the "secret sauce" is in the execution of the project when working with clients so you do not need to be too worried about providing too much information. (28:58)

Advantages and Challenges of having an agency in a large Metro area: * Finding office space and negotiating something that is affordable is a real challenge. (6:39) * It makes it easy to schedule face to face meetings with different clients when you have an established office space. (7:06) * When you run an agency in a large metro area you can easily meet people and attend Meetups in diverse areas. (7:12) * You can expand your network easily over time in a metro area. (7:43) * It is easy to schedule kickoffs and meetings with clients when you are located in a city. (8:00) * Remote work can be established with employees and contractors but it is not the standard for the Barrel agency. (9:43) * There is an advantage to interacting with your team face to face. (10:14)

Launching Products: * Agency Docs was a solution created as last resort. It is a product that can produce recurring revenue. (11:27) * New product ideas must have some restrictions and operate on their own. You cannot compete with agency clients. (13:42) * Do not be afraid to launch new products and give them enough time to be successful or to fail. (17:20) * Product development can be very profitable especially if you launch after having the work experience for many years. (18:31) * When info products are done correctly, they can be very valuable. (20:55) * Start by offering free things and the client will come back because they can see the value. (22:58) * Agency Docs is extracurricular to the Barrel Agency. It is there to offer the value of streamlining processes for an agency or freelancer. (24:05) * Services are a still a strong market when executed correctly. (32:00)

EPISODE RESOURCES: Barrel Shopify WooCommerce Automattic Pagely Gary Vayner

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I'm not foolish enough to think that the entirety of WordPress' growth is driven by our love for the software, but that we consultants are responsible for a sizeable portion of it. A portion that shouldn't be ignored and one that should be welcome to the discussion more often.

Under-represented. Perhaps.

You can listen to the audio version

I know many of you are like me, we don't run 100+ person agencies, we don't have 1mil+ plugin downloads, and we haven't been contributing code to core for the last decade. However, what we do share in common is a life of servicing customers in the online business space. Servicing customers or our local community by way of building websites -- helping organizations amplify their message.

This act of service is deeply rooted in using our favorite tool, WordPress.

Sure, we're talking less and less about the tech side of things lately, but we know that it delivers a massive advantage as a platform to our customers. An advantage that might not matter to them in the short-term, but in the long-term sustainability of their business.

While many might join the ranks of offering WordPress services simply for the fact that it represents a big market to cash in on -- and we all know that person -- I believe many of us are in it for the right reasons: * Promote the use of open source software. * Give our customers a chance to own a sliver of their online presence and/or data. * Provide a flexible & sustainable platform for future opportunity. * Earn an honest living through service.

It's at this point where I begin to disagree with a part of Matt Mullenweg's theory of WordPress' growth. Granted, he has a WAY better vantage point from atop a tower of data that I (we) don't have access to. I'm relying on my own gut instinct, naivety, and feedback from my audience to deliver this message -- take it for what it's worth.

Who is responsible for all of this WordPress? A business can't survive without strong sales & customer service, two competencies that are arguably the lifeblood of a company.

Many of you reading this fill that exact gap for the open source WordPress project. I don't mean this as a slight to the thousands of wonderful people that build the software, document it, and support it in the forums, but that consultants (doing it right or wrong) are also fueling this locomotive too.

There are no official sales or customer service channels at WordPress.org and us consultants bear the brunt of it -- for better or worse -- and that's where our job comes in. Just as you trust a core contributor to spot-check her code and ensure that we've sanitized all the things!

Consultants are the boots on the ground, and as you'll see below in my feedback section, represent a disproportionate ratio of launching many more websites than an individual website owner. Mullenweg alludes to the end-user (what I'm calling the solo site owner) as the driving force behind growth. He might (probably does, can we have it please?) have more data than me, but on the flip side, it might be a vanity metric. If you count all the 1-click installs on GoDaddy or .com installs, perhaps, but how many of them were influenced or eventually turned to a professional to take over the reigns?

Just back-of-the-napkin math, a consultant might launch 50-to-1 websites in a year versus an individual blogger or business owner launching their first and only website. What happens when that number compounds over 5 years? On paper, I'm responsible for 500+ WordPress sites in the wild not counting the hundreds of other people online and in my local community I've influenced over the years.

I'm sure you're in a similar boat as an individual or team that is responsible for the growing adoption of WordPress.

Thank you for that. Thank you to everyone else that makes this project possible.

1-to-m

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Matt Medeiros is continuing with Season 6 by interviewing guests as he connects with them in the community. In this episode, Matt interviews David Hayes from WPShout, a premier source for WordPress learning. David along with his partner Fred Meyer also run an agency called PressUp. It is a boutique web consultancy that partners with businesses to create custom websites and interactive experiences. The two publish in-depth weekly WordPress tutorials, WPShout, as well as provide curated links to other cool stuff around the WordPress world. Matt and David share their experiences on how you balance the agency work and the marketing of your brand.

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What you will learn from this Episode: * David Hayes along with his partner Fred Meyer run their business with strikingly good balance. They have a new course out along with publishing a weekly newsletter. (2:37) * PressUp has not had to specialize in a particular industry niche. Enough leads come in through the business as technical requests.(4:23) * WPShout is a WordPress content site that is balanced with the agency and published on Tuesdays. (9:36) * David is able to execute on everyday tasks very well with balancing the agency business. (10:32) * You need to set a goal for the business so that you don't find yourself chugging along and going in many directions. (12:05) * Many WordPress businesses start out as hobbyists working in the web sphere without the strategy and goals needed to run a business. (12:44) * You can follow the success of lead people in the WordPress ecosystem to find a need or market that they need to have served. (19:05) * Pro-Tip: Find the customers before you start the business. Make sure the people need what you are developing or selling. (21:45) * Even though you may have the initial product market fit, there may be a Pivot in that product that can extend the life of your audience. (22:10) * WPShout started out by trying to sell advertising to their audience in a boutique way. (22:47) * Don't be afraid to have many test runs to get that home run. (33:05) * If you are a developer, it is essential that you reach outside the WordPress community. (34:34) * People who find early success may not understand the amount of work that goes into a business. (36:45)

Courses from WPShout: * Marketing is important for any product that you are trying to sell. (Ex: Up and Running was released in 2015) (24:36) * You can find a topic that does not have understandable content to help users learn about it. This is the reason why WordPress Security with Confidence was launched. (26:40) * There are two tiers for WordPress Security with Confidence - User $147.00 and Developer $297.00. (28:29) * Site speed and GIT may be the next topics on WPShout/courses. (30:16)

The Future of WordPress: * The marketing of WordPress is still disappointing. They don't have celebrity advertising like WIX and Squarespace. (39:30) * The WordPress.com and WordPress.org distinction exists for people inside the community. (40:36) * People outside of the community struggle with the idea of how to pilot WordPress. (41:42) * WordPress.org does not make sense to many people outside of the industry. It is still very much a developer tool. (43:15) * WordPress.com is more aggressively marketing against WIX and Squarespace. (43:44) * The average consumer is looking to say "I just spent an hour and now I have a we

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In this episode, Matt Medeiros interviews Nathan Allotey, a digital marketing strategist, web designer and freelancer who has the experience building websites for customers that are not necessarily dependent on WordPress. He and Matt discuss how the project drives the framework for website creation.

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What you will learn from this Episode: * An online marketer does not need to lead their business with WordPress as the focus. (2:37) * Clients really just want traffic to get to their website. (3:40) * Your business structure should be designed to sustain you over the full year. (5:45) * Small businesses often do not have the money or understanding to invest in the long-term strategy. (6:01) * When working with a client, make sure you address additional business opportunities that can come from the discovery process. Nathan often asks the client to define success with the question “If everything were to go perfectly with the project you contacted me for, what would you want to happen?" (6:54) * Ask the client to define failure in the project that you are investigating as well. (7:42) * Asking a client about successes and failures can open up avenues of additional opportunities to working with them. (9:18) * When creating a web presence, small businesses will start up not understanding everything that is needed for success. * You need to discover what is important and crucial to the client. (10:58) * Do what you can to get income and reach your goals. “Hustle” with urgency and extra effort to accomplish what you set out to do. (21:33) * You need to write down your goal and share it with other people. (22:56) * Pricing your services or product offerings is a skill needed in business. (26:00) * Deliver maximum value with higher prices and different options. Show the client how they will make money with the additional investment. (30:15) * Teach what you know right now. Do not wait until you are the expert. (38:04) * There is no quick fix to get traffic to your site. The organic way is the way to grow. (40:00)

Expectations for long-term business: * You need to learn the difference between customer assumptions and customer service. Don’t let the client assume that ongoing updates are part of the website cost. (12:18) * Define future opportunities with the client in a clear manner. (12:46) * It is important to communicate the options with the client for future business. (14:39) * Offer the additional service (ex: Google Analytics) so that the client becomes aware of what it takes to run a business. (16:32)

Tools for keeping organized: * Asana – project management tool to keep track of tasks. * Dropbox – make a folder for each client and place every piece of documentation in there. (18:16) * Record the meeting (with Skype) and make sure you ask the client. (18:50) * YouTube is a great tool to use for personal branding. (33:48)

Episode Resources: http://nathanallotey.com Webinar: The Dating Game – Understanding Price Anchoring Hustle vs. Hope Gary Vaynerchuck's Hustle P

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In this episode, Matt Medeiros interviews Alex Denning and Ben Gillbanks who have started the newsletter MasterWP. MasterWP weekly is the newsletter for WordPress professionals. Each week you can get a collection of apps, tools, and links that will make life better and provoke thought. The newsletter provides a good mix of web standards and best practices.

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Guests:

Alex Denning is the marketing piece of MasterWP and works with small and medium-sized WordPress solopreneurs, agencies and companies on their themes, plugins, and products, solving the marketing problem they don’t want to deal with.

Ben Gillbanks is the other part of MasterWP. He is a WordPress developer, web designer, and part-time Entrepreneur who runs Pro Theme Design, a premium WordPress themes store.

What you will learn from this Episode: * The WordPress Industry has been shifting a bit and showing a downtrend with many WordPress podcasts ending or changing cadence. (01:00) * MasterWP is a high-quality newsletter that you can look forward to every week. (4:36) * MasterWP is completely free. You can sign up for the newsletter for the latest news in the WordPress industry. (6:18) * The MasterWP newsletter was not created as a marketing platform that will eventually be monetized (like Post Status). (7:40) * Sponsorships are currently covering the costs for MasterWP. (8:40) * A large Google doc is used to work collaboratively on the newsletter with links before publishing. (12:50) * The newsletter is copied into a MailChimp template and then sent out. (13:18) * Alex started very early with a Video Game review site and worked out the problems that he was encountering with WordPress as a developer. This is where WPShout started. (14:27) * Alex currently helps out on WPShout with their marketing.(16:16) * Ben runs Pro Theme Design and creates themes for WordPress.com. (17:54)

The Three-Part Plan for MasterWP: * Spend at least an hour each week on the design. (9:56) * Make the content unique.(10:31) * Be consistent by sending the newsletter each week. Have an accountability partner to keep you on task.(11:27)

The Future of WordPress: * Most people want the best for WordPress.(34:19) * The community is not sure where WordPress.com is headed. * Tension seems to be building between Automattic (which is WordPress.com) and the opensource community.(28:17) * There should be clear definitions of what the direction of WordPress.com and WordPress.org is.(23:30) * There is not much notice to developers when things change on WordPress.com.(20:12) * Gutenberg is being built to meet strategic and financial objectives for WordPress.com. * Sales for themes seem to be increasing through JetPack through WordPress.com.(20:55) * Gutenberg seems to be moving to custom blocks and changing how people develop websites.(18:54) * The speed to which Gutenberg is being developed and supported is incredible with John Maeda becoming involved.(27:18) * Theme submission has stopped on WordPress.com.(30:47) * The premium plugin space is also really being impacted. Developers will need to look at marketing to help with sales of their themes on WordPress.com.(33:38)

Episode Resources: Alex Denning

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We live in a world of monetized Jetpack.

Gone are the days where commercialized plugins were looked at under a watchful microscope, and leadership at Automattic felt that charging for plugins was, well, plain wrong. Today we’re seeing Jetpack as the revenue bridge between .org and .com offerings — and a very big bridge at that.

A reading episode of this article:

As the Jetpack team continues to sharpen its marketing fangs around the plugin’s messaging, we’ve seen more meat on the bones of upsell nags.

See, I’ve received an uptick of customers and friends I’ve helped onboard to WordPress, question its security. Why? Because Jetpack is prompting to upgrade users to their paid backup and security services.

Obviously, I have mixed feelings about this, of which, I’ll save for the end of this post. For now, here’s how you can turn off those nagging Jetpack upsell ads. CODE to disable Jetpack upsell ads TL;DR (Sorry, you’ll need to get out your text editor for this one.) Look inside jetpack/class.jetpack-jitm.php, for the filter 'jetpack_just_in_time_msgs' See this GitHub link.

Use this code in your functions.php file: add_filter( 'jetpack_just_in_time_msgs', '_return_false' ); It won’t come easy for the non-technical user to disable these ads, you can’t simply click a button to squelch these pesky messages. How do I know? After poking around through the nooks and cranny’s of the options pages, and expressing my displeasure on Twitter, I took to Jetpack’s official support channel.

A Happiness Engineer responded, at first thinking, I wanted to disable the ads of their monetization network — it’s like a Google AdWords — but for WordPress. After making it clear I wanted to disable the upsell nags, she responded with: Hi Matt, no there isn’t a way to remove those upgrade messages in the unpaid version of Jetpack.

Huh, not possible on the free version. Got it. So again, I expressed my frustration on Twitter, a tweet I’ve since redacted because Elliot reached out to me to set the record straight:

Glorious! So you CAN disable these upsells, through a filter for “just in time messages."

A clever name, really, seeing the messages pop-up “just in time” of the users most aware time on screen, a clickable action. Most notable is when the user publishes a new post, and they are presented with making sure their website is securely backed up, conveniently pointing them towards the Jetpack Pro pricing grid

So there you have it, if you’re sick of Jetpack upsell nags, you can edit the code and it will all go away…for now. Why is this a big deal; what the 1% of 1% care about For most people, it’s a “who cares?!” situation, but, for those of us in the product & service space, it’s an irritating issue.

Let me get this out of the way first: I’m not disparaging the plugin, or the people behind it because I think there’s a need for Jetpack. I do understand that Jetpack is a business, even if it was never formally announced or perceived as one — and that’s the crux.

Issue #1 is it’s an Automattic business, tied too closely to the WordPress brand. “An Automattic airline powering WordPress.com” as their tagline reads, with the little WordPress logo next to it.

For a massive majority of people, that means it’s WordPress, and WordPress is telling them they need to buy something.

Issue #2 is when you already have these solutions in place, non-technical users receive a turbulent experience on that airline. As a consultant who recommends the best WordPress hosting, hosting that does all the backup and security for you, a client now thinks I lead them down the wrong path. The very least, it makes them stop what they're doing, question security, and shoot me

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In this episode, Matt Medeiros interviews Troy Dean, the founder of WP Elevation and RockStar Empires. They touch on teaching entrepreneurs how to productize their businesses. Matt and Troy discuss the differences of WPElevation and RockStar Empires and the challenges of balancing two businesses. They wrap up the conversation with a discussion of where WordPress is headed.

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What you will learn from this Episode: * Membership sites are hard to maintain. * Troy is working this year to balance the work between WPElevation and RockStar Empires. * WPElevation is an existing business with over 700 members and a proven business model. * RockStar Empires is the long game business that concentrates on small business owners. Troy is not in any rush for instant success. * The Internet is a game changer and provides connections with real people running a small business. * The small business is an extension and manifestation of the owner. * Small businesses will start up not completely understanding everything that is needed. * You cannot take your eye off the ball too long when running a business and you need good people working for you. * The meaning of life is not all about money. Don't be in such a rush.

WPElevation * WPElevation teaches business consulting and communication. * Consultants graduating from the WPElevation course call themselves Digital Marketing Consultants. They are providing holistic solutions for their clients. * WPElevation has a very clear curriculum and provides a journey with your clients through your business.

Rockstar Empires growth and scaling the business: * Rockstar Empires teaches you how to reposition yourself in your business to become the expert. * The turnkey solution helps you market and produce your own products. * About 400 members were actively successful after completing the Rockstar Empires program. * Troy promoted people from the community that participated in the live events that he held. * People were placed on retainers and across multiple time zones. * It took the time to turn over the reins of the program and not control everything.

Advantages of using video and podcasting: * A great business strategy is to use video and podcasting to build your professional network. * Podcasting can really help you compete in a local space. * You can "own" a category by inventing it. * Podcasting creates great positioning authority and allows you to package your expertise.

Masterminds: * Mastermind groups are only as good as the amount of time people are committed to putting into them. * You need to find the right people that are willing to share and connect with the group. * Live Mastermind events that you pay for should be events that share information and not be used sell something. * You need to add value before you pitch something for a live event. * If there is no "skin in the game" people may not participate and value the experience. * Setting ground rules from the start with your Mastermind group can help with the participation of everyone.

The Future of WordPress: * WordPress will become less visible in terms of the technology stack. * The open source spirit of WordPress will continue to grow. * WordPress will continue to offshoot to support different verticles. * The challenge of WordPress growth will be to keep a lot of people happy over a long period of time. * WordPress will continue to evolve and become more powerful than what you can do with it now. * The

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On today's episode Corey and Sam interview Brian Casel about his passion for productized services and how you can launch a SaaS product quickly.  They discuss  Brian's newest product, Ops Calendar and how that naturally evolved from Audience Ops.

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Guest:

Brian Casel started out in 2011 with a plugin called Restaurant Engine, a hosted website design service for the hospitality industry.  He grew it until 2015 when it was sold.  Now he is the owner of Audience Ops, a productized done -for-you service which he started in 2015.  In 2017, Brian launched Ops Calendar, a software tool that enables content marketers and agencies to plan a content calendar, schedule social media, and track traffic and conversions from content. Brian's role today consists of strategy for growth, product design, marketing, and customer development.

What you will learn in today's episode: * Audience Ops is a Content Marketing Company focused on productized services for Software and B2B clients. (6:40) * Ops Calendar is a SaaS product that naturally grew and is complementary to Audience Ops. (7:20) * Ops Calendar is a content calendar with smart features built into it. (ex: Social Media scheduling) (7:34) * The Audience Ops service will continue in addition to the SaaS product. (9:02) * The full-service product of Audience Ops will still exist where the research and writing of content is done for you. (9:13) * There is a package called Audience Ops Express that provides all the tools except the writing. (9:43) * Audience Ops Express will launch with Content Calendar but it is a spin on the current service. (10:52) * Audience Ops was built around processes, not writing content. (28:29) * The content calendar came from day to day work of producing podcasts. (29:30) * You do not need to use WordPress to use the Ops Calendar. It is a standalone tool. (36:04)

Challenges and Opportunities of the SaaS Product: * Ops Calendar was pre sold to a beta customers group to pitch the idea. (11:02) * Prepaid customers of Ops Calendar receive a lifetime discount. (14:43) * Public pricing is offered when the SaaS product is delivered. (15:18) * There is a side plugin business that is being created from custom tools used by Audience Ops. (17:10) * Audience Ops solutions are created from customers pain points that are reported around content marketing.  (18:00) * Brian is a big fan of productized services because they can be launched quickly. (20:15) * You can charge for the product right away because it is offered as a service. (21:20) * Pick an audience that you can relate to.  Make sure that audience is easy to reach online or attend the conferences that you attend. (25:05) * Continue to solve problems for the businesses that you serve. (27:34)

WordPress Features: * Ops Calendar will be able to post to your WordPress site. (33:56) * You install the WordPress plugin and connect it to your Ops Calendar account. (34:11) * A user can save the permalink in WordPress. * The composition of the post is still created in WordPress. * If you create the notes in Ops Calendar, it will automatically post to WordPress. (35:30) * A tracking code is put on your site from Ops Calendar. (36:32) * The WordPress plugin is not going to work unless you are using Audience Ops. (37:34)

Lessons Learned: * Do not be overanxious and move too fast when launching a SaaS product. (38:40) * Always remember that there is time ahead of you in the grand scheme of things. The product does not have to be perfect for launch. (39:16) * When problems are being solved for a particular audience or market you can discover the next audience to serv

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I'm excited to release this interview with Jason Calacanis during the launch of his new book, Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups-Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000.

I've been a super fan of Jason since coming across his show This week in Startups when he produced it on set with black curtain backdrops and large wooden dining room tables. A lot of people give GaryVee credit for the foresight of thinking like a media company -- but Jason got to it first.

Behind the bravado is a kid from Brooklyn that worked his tail off to get to where he's at, challenged with lessons of success & failure weaved into the fabric of his story. Today, Jason leads Inside.com with the same burning passion to take on the big platforms as he did with his first startup, Silicon Alley Reporter.

Sit back and enjoy this episode with Jason, as he walks us through the mind of an angel investor and how to start thinking scale in your small software business.

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Interview transcript Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Matt Report season five. We're winding down season five. In fact, folks who were listening, now you should have heard the last episode of season five. But I get a bonus episode with one of my favorite people on the internet, Jason Calacanis. Jason, welcome to the program.

Jason C.: Hey, thanks for having me.

Matt: Creator of Weblogs, Inc sold to AOL. Early investors in Uber, Thumbtack, created a company called Mahalo and fought Google at every turn and corner. Created another company that I originally found you through is This Week In, the sort of all the YouTube stuff and live video stuff you were doing. Now you're running Inside.com, news and entertainment delivered via email. I am a huge fan of that as well. You run LAUNCH Incubator and events, and now you've written the book, the book of angels as it were. It's angels-

Jason C.: Yes, of angels. I like that.

Matt: Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups—Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned 100 grand into 100 million buckaroos. Jason, welcome to the program again. Did I miss anything?

Jason C.: It's-

Matt: I probably did.

Jason C.: Probably. Well yeah, it's one of the great things about history is like people only remember the victories if you have them. Then they forget all the losses. But you brought up Mahalo, so that was great, my PTSD started triggering. Mahalo, we basically pivoted into Inside.com, so the story ended up well. But we're working like dogs, get a return for those Mahalo investors. I never give up. It's one of my either charming or stupid qualities depending on the situation that I never give up.

Matt: Obviously, want to talk about the book. For me, I'm not a super heavy book reader. I got it, I got an early copy. I did a little Jason Calacanis of my own, I just contacted your publishers. I sort of worked my way in through the backdoor and I said, "Hey, I'd love to talk to this guy."

Jason C.: Hustle.

Matt: I definitely want to talk about the book, but real quick. This Week In network, I mean god, you had This Week In Web Design, of course This Week In Startups. You had I think This Week In Movies as well. Do you think that you were just so early, like the technology wasn't there?

Jason C.: Yeah, for sure. What we did was we tried to do a network of shows seven years ago. It was a little experiment. Me and a couple of my friends put 100k in each. We got to the point where it was making some money and there were two breakout shows, Kevin Pollak's Chat Show and This Week In Startups. All the other

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In this episode Sam and Corey interview Thomas Griffin from OptinMonster. The discussion is how you can successfully shift your business from a plugin model to SaaS model.

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Guest:

Thomas Griffin is the co-founder of OptinMonster and CTO of Awesome Motive which houses the brand. Prior to OptinMonster, he founded Soliloquy, the fastest WordPress slider plugin, and Envira Gallery, a revolutionary gallery solution for photographers. He is an expert developer with deep knowledge of building products for mass-market. Thomas knows firsthand that software for marketers is generally poor in quality. He’s proud that OptinMonster is changing that by creating extremely easy to use and technologically sound SaaS (Software as a Service) that works for users outside of the WordPress framework. Thomas is a frequent speaker on topics of performance and scalability.

What you will learn from this episode: * The decision was made from Awesome Motive - which houses the OptinMonster Brand to move to a SaaS product in January 2013. (4:56) * OptinMonster used to be a WordPress plugin managed through the dashboard. (6:03) * The product was tested out from the WPBeginner website when it was realized that there were problems scaling. (7:24) * Data portability was available in WordPress and Thomas had that experience from the Soliloquy product. (7:40) * The demand to use OptinMonster was coming out of the WordPress ecosystem, so it was profitable to look at the product as a SaaS. (9:15) * The host partner for the SaaS is Pagely and they have the expertise to scale the product quickly. (13:00) * Your website visitors need to have meaningful data available. (21:18) * You can have page level targeting and categories on your site with a lead magnet. (Ex: Target baseball enthusiasts instead of all sports). (21:20) * You can segment your list to get immediate value out of your subscribers. (22:18) * The technology exists in OptinMonster called the display rules engine with very powerful targeting that can be used by people outside of WordPress. (22:52)

Challenges of going from a WordPress Plugin to a SaaS: * The onboarding was very critical and the focus is on clear documentation when the product is purchased. (24:49) * You bypass the WordPress download, install, etc. (25:00) * There is strong documentation on connecting to the WordPress plugin. (25:06) * The SaaS provides the user with a dashboard and a guided tour of the product. (25:56) * Most questions about WordPress connectivity come through the presales calls. This is where the education of how OptinMonster works with WordPress is handled. (11:36) * There is a strong user base that uses Shopify and other CMS platforms. (28:30) * Moving to a SaaS product for OptinMonster was a necessity and an organic migration. (29:28) * OptinMonster is powered by WordPress but scaled without "using the WordPress way" with the SaaS product. (30:42)

Pricing from the WordPress Plugin to the SaaS: * The WordPress payment ecosystem was not mature when the SaaS product was launched. (31:55) * There was not a good WordPress solution for subscriptions. (32:00) * The SaaS subscription model was difficult. OptinMonster was established from the start as a premium paid product so you started by buying a one-year license with support. (32:46) * It was discovered that the yearly subscription was not a way to build business and continue to add value. A subscription service was added where you paid every month or for the year. (34:09)

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

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Guests:

Garth Koyle is a Co-founder of Event Espresso and has over 15 years of experience in business management and Internet marketing. He competed in the 2011 Utah Entrepreneur Challenge for Event Espresso, taking home the grand prize of 40k for the business plan. Garth has spoken at several WordCamps on entrepreneurship and plugin development.

Darren Ethier has been developing websites for over 18 years and has been a fan of WordPress since (WordPress 1.5). Darren is the founder of the WordPress development shop roughsmootheng.in, and creator of the popular WordPress plugin Organize Series. Darren first started working together with the Event Espresso team to help develop the new website and implement things to work with automatic updates. Darren still believes that all things are possible with WordPress.

What you will learn from this episode: * Event Espresso is a WordPress plugin that specializes in online events for registration and ticketing. (4:51) * Event Smart is the SaaS - the online registration product running in a WordPress multisite platform. You sign up, create an event, start selling tickets and get paid directly. This product is more economical and less technical. (5:29) * The plugin version is currently Event Espresso EE4. It is a total rewrite of the code and is not backward compatible. (8:11) * There is a migration for events from EE3 to EE4. (47:31) * There are a lot of add-ons for EE3 which were requested by users that still need to be supported and available for EE4. (9:34) * The requested feature sets have been reviewed and decided on before the rewrite of the object-oriented design. (12:26) * Users wanted improvements from EE3 so it was decided to improve the framework. (13:09)

Supporting EE4 with SaaS (Software as a Service): * The SaaS platform was in the future for the growth of the product. (14:27) * Developers wanted to work and build a scalable product. (14:54) * The original SaaS Event Smart was delivered January 1, 2015. (15:35) * It takes awhile (approx. 6 months) to set up and get the processes in place for users, etc. (15:56) * You have to believe in the philosophy to launch and manage the issues as they come up. (16:28) * The SaaS product needed to be responsive to allow users to sell their tickets quickly. (17:30) * The SaaS solution needs to address people that do not know WordPress and Event Smart is not marketed as a WordPress plugin. (19:09) * As the user base grew the platform was designed and developed to be platform agnostic. (20:33) * When you build in SaaS you need to approach development in modularity. (42:41) * The Saas support allows you to improve your customer experience. You can get to the customer’s issue right away because you are in the same environment. (43:31)

Challenges With Wordpress: * The admin panel is not customized for the SaaS model. (23:43) * The SaaS product does not necessarily need to have a custom UI to be successful to grow. (24:42) * Challenges exist configuring options around the interface. (27:31) * Most issues are around payments so most of the support is specific to API keys. (28:00) * The SaaS application is looking to focus around a wizard to fit specific types of events with a tailored setup. (28:41) * The scheduling service of WPCRON to the WordPress API does not scale well. It does not run in a multisite well. (30:52) * Finding a solu

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On today's episode, Sam and Corey hit the halfway mark of Season 5B by interviewing Tom Willmot, the CEO of Human Made. Tom talks about the agency along with the Happytables SaaS Product which has been the niche product when Noel Tock joined Human Made as a partner in 2013.

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Guest:

Prior to founding Human Made with Joe in 2010, Tom cut his professional teeth with lead technical roles on some of the earliest examples of large-scale sites built with WordPress, including the ground-up rebuilds of both Geek.com and Digital Trends. In addition, Tom sits on the board at Happytables and has had advisory roles with Rufflr, Market Realist, United Influencers, and Clickbank. He’s a regular public speaker, both offline and online.

As CEO Tom splits his focus between the big-picture vision of where Human Made is going and how they will get there along with the day-to-day support of their amazing humans and clients.

What you will learn from this episode: * Happy Tables is a website builder platform for the restaurant niche.  (4:33) * More recently there is a pivot to SaaS with the Restaurant Command station. (5:26) * There are many restaurants running the WordPress version. New signups for the "older" WordPress version no longer exist. (5:58) * It is difficult using WordPress for your SaaS without it dominating your UI. The most valuable part of the web builder platform is the dashboard with usable, presentable data.

Supporting a SaaS (Software as a Service for WordPress): * The pivot to the SaaS was inspired out of necessity. (6:34) * Some needs of a restaurant are generic and they can get websites for minimal cost. * The UI of Happytables was before Human Made moved to the restaurant niche. Human Made partnered with Noel Tock in 2013. The customized SaaS product became a website builder now into several versions. (8:02) * The most valuable tool with the restaurant dashboard is the analytics and the restaurant data. Restaurant owners want that data. * Happytables v2 is still built on WordPress in addition to other technologies. The dashboard uses custom Javascript and a different database using APIs back to WordPress. (11:28) * Managing some things like users and website posts allows you to get to market quickly using WordPress as the application framework. (11:52) * The JSON API in WordPress core has just come out so there is not a lot of repeatable development and process in the open source yet. (12:46) * HappyTables v2 is multi-network which WordPress supports internally. (14:51) * To scale the SaaS you need to solve problems at the software engineering levels to address scaling and security. (29:35)

Why Stay With Wordpress: * Happytables is already developed in WordPress. * It makes sense to use the technology that does the job best. (ex: user management, publishing, workflow, etc.)  (18:55) * The SaaS application can use what WordPress offers for free.

Decision Making for a Custom Admin: * The standard WordPress admin seemed complicated for new users. (18:56) * Noel designed a new admin that was much simpler based on the user’s needs. (19:18) * The product is not a large complex product. (21:00) * In some cases, you are pushing ahead of WordPress with best practices, which may not yet exist. (22:22)

Future of WordPress: * There is a need to document best practices in WordPress. (ex: If you are building in React and connecting to WordPress you need standard libraries and workflow. (24:32) * The current API does not have all the features to take advantage of the additional functionality. There is a lot that has not been exposed in the WordPress API.  (26:21) * The API infrastructure was addressed with WordPress c

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On today’s episode, Corry Maass and Sam Brodie are interviewing Bryce Adams. Bryce is the creator of Metorik. Bryce had been running the largest WooCommerce store for Automattic and became increasingly frustrated with the lack of reporting that was available. During the evenings and weekends, Bryce spent his time building WooCommerce extensions, WordPress plugins, and small SaaS products. The simple Metorik app was built to address the frustration around reporting needs for a WooCommerce store. Bryce’s passion has always been around the metrics for WooCommerce stores. That was the start of Metorik.

Guest:

Bryce Adams is the founder of Metorik. He developed an app that provides analytics, insights, and reports for WooCommerce stores through a user-friendly dashboard. The single dashboard unifies your store orders, customers, and products to help you understand the data and to help you make better decisions with your WooCommerce store.

What you will learn from this episode: * Metorik is a SaaS-based WooCommerce Analytics platform. * Bryce concentrates his efforts on a great customer experience through his company Metorik. (4:00) * Bryce uses an onboarding process for each new customer which improves the experience. (4:47) * Metorik will show you how much you made in your WooCommerce store and other metrics that you could not get from WooCommerce alone. (5:28) * There are two parts to a store: How you run it and how you grow it. (5:53) * Metorik addresses what the store owner needs to make sense of it all. The software provides metrics, KPIs, and allows you to filter through your orders. (6:20) * Metorik grew unintentionally as a management suite to analyze customer data and provide reporting. (6:50) * Metorik helps with integrations pairing your WooCommerce store with Google Analytics, HelpScout, ZenDesk, and Slack. (7:23) * Many features were developed from the pain points that customers were experiencing. (17:23)

Supporting a SaaS (Software as a Service): * Connecting WooCommerce to SaaS can be complicated because the user experience is different from downloadable plugins or themes in a typical WordPress environment. (9:20) * The WooCommerce API (which is an extension of the WordPress API) is how the user's site is connected to the SaaS product. (11:20) * The Metorik SaaS solution provides an elegant way to connect and add a store without the typical license keys. (13:24) * The environment is not standard for authentication and servers. (14:30) * SSL needs to be handled differently for a WooCommerce store. (14:42) * Every single site is effectively a different API with different endpoints and running with different versions. (15:50) * SaaS allows the complete control over the product that the customer is using. (20:00) * SaaS Metorik allows you to enable data to stay in sync and maintain the orders of the store. (23:59)

Future of Metorik: * New features are being added that are the highest impact to the user. (26:36) * Metorik is addressing and improving the experience for users of subscription sites. (28:04) * Features that are being added are not being shown to all users if it is not needed. (32:00) * Metorik has always been deeply integrated with WooCommerce but the expansion out of WordPress is not a priority. (34:26)

EPISODE RESOURCES: Follow Bryce: Metorik WooCommerce Showcase Facebook group

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On today’s episode, Corry Maass and Sam Brodie are talking with Brad Touesnard. Brad is an entrepreneur, developer, and designer living in Nova Scotia, Canada. Brad runs a successful business called Delicious Brains which is known for two popular products called WP Migrate Pro and WP Offload S3. Brad discusses his approach to SaaS (Software as a Service) and the challenges of getting users to participate in a beta release and provide productive feedback during testing.

Guest:

Brad Touesnard is the founder of Delicious Brains Inc. Brad wears many hats; from coding and design to marketing and partnerships. Before starting Delicious Brains, Brad was a busy freelance web developer, specializing in front-end development. Brad also has a podcast which he co-hosts with Pippin Williamson called Apply Filters which is dedicated to WordPress development.

What you will learn from this episode: * Delicious Brains has two successful products Migrate DB Pro and WP Offload S3 * Delicious Brains has now grown to eight full-time employees and is working on a new SaaS effort called MergeBot. (4:27) * There is always the problem of how do you merge database changes from the local site to the live database? (7:30) * When merging data in a database, most people keep track of all changes made and differences from the local to the live database. All these changes become the deployment list. (8:28) * Developers have been asking for about four years for a way to merge local and live databases for their web customers.(9:50) * Mergebot launched early and was created from requests made to the Delicious Brains support channels to address database changes between local and live databases. It is now in an open beta with a limited amount of seats. (11:03) * The modifications that are made to Mergebot are prioritized through the support channel and then added to the beta to address the amount of pain that the customer is experiencing. (13:00) * The limitation to Mergebot that needs to be addressed is the 1000 query limit and the multisite restriction. (16:46)

Building a SaaS (Software as a Service): * There is hype around SaaS right now. (13:48) * SaaS is a good fit for Mergebot because it provides a platform for collaboration for changes between users. (14:11) * Changes to the database can be streamed to the cloud application where conflicts can be addressed. (15:00) * Merging data is CPU intensive. (16:22) * When selling products SaaS is a safer business model allowing you to get more money up front than you can from a WordPress plugin. (18:23) * SaaS applications are often being offered with annual plans. This helps with having the cash needed for marketing your product up front. If customers do not renew the subscription, they will not have access to the software. (19:33) * As more and more businesses are moving to SaaS you will see more sign-ups for annual subscriptions. (20:36) * Starting a business from scratch without an existing customer base is difficult. (24:43)

Marketing Validation when consideration SaaS for Mergebot:

• The Mergebot launch relied on the current customer base of Migrate DB Pro. (28:38)
• When you are launching something new you are constantly making assumptions. (31:00)
• The beta of Mergebot is a charged service. You want the active participation of early adopters and have their commitment. (32:33)
• When you purchase Mergebot’s b

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On today’s episode, we’re talking to James Law. James talks about how to prepare your product for SaasS (Software as a Service). He is an accomplished developer who built Ninja forms in 2011 with his business partner Kevin Stover even though there were many form builders in that space.

Guests :

James Laws from Ninja forms is interviewed by Corey Maass and Sam Brodie. James honestly shares his experience in the forms builder space and where he sees the move to SaaS in his future.

What you will learn from this episode: * A business model and marketing strategy did not exist for Ninja Forms. (4:38) * Ninja Forms was launched even though there were a lot of successful form builders in the space. (4:50) * Ninja Forms was originally a premium plugin with a lifetime subscription. The lifetime subscription was honored although it was not a successful model for the creators. (5:18) * In 2011 a light version of Ninja Forms was available with a pro upgrade offer. This was done to get a presence on the Wordpress.org website. (6:24) * Most users that use Ninja forms do not use everything that is sold with the plugin. This gave the owners the idea to segment the options and sell it through the EDD (Easy Digital Downloads) plugin. (7:33) * James reached out the Wordpress development community to offer partnerships with add-ons. (8:57) * Pippin (from Pippin Plugins) built the Mailchimp add-on after reviewing the code base and signed on with the Ninja Forms partners. (9:15) * The ecosystem for splitting the profits was set up using the Trello system. (10:25)

Marketing a Move to SaaS: * Struggles that people say exist in a saturated market may be a false standard. A saturated market proves that there is a viable market. (11:45) * You need to look at plugins to service anyone. The plugin becomes a connector to the service. (22:18) * Ninja Forms is looking to take a two-prong approach for SaaS. If you are using the plugin in the WordPress space (it will function the same) and there will be a fully hosted SaaS version providing just the features that you need. (17:32) * Build your product so that you can easily pivot. (35:15) * Keep an eye out in your space and make sure you are watching what solutions are growing. (30:17) * Be passionate about making the leap into the next space.

Unique qualities of SaaS: * Higher end hosting companies are starting to partner with businesses that sell and market software products. (13:56) * The platform limits who you can sell to when you are concentrating just on WordPress. (15:33) * You need to have a strong hosting partner that knows DevOps and server scalability well. (24:15) * In a SaaS environment, you can control the interface that the client works with. (16:33) * Branding becomes very important to get visibility in the forms space outside of WordPress. (26:30) * The code needs to be written to exist outside of the WordPress space in order to expand the business. (32:40) * The Ninja Forms partners are doing research with calls to other businesses to see if they can start with a wrap around business. (33:30)

EPISODE RESOURCES Ninja Forms Corey Maass Kanban Sam Brodie Offsprout

Follow James: James Laws Ninja Forms Ninja Forms on WordPress.org <

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On today’s episode, we’re talking with Brent Jett. Brent is a lead designer and WordPress developer at Nehmedia. He is an accomplished photographer who loves taking photos. He also loves his beagles and drinking coffee. Brent spends a lot of his time bridging the gap between good design and development at Beaver Builder during his evening hours and weekends.

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Guests :

Brent Jett works for a digital agency called Nehmedia. He is also a major contributor and developer for Beaver Builder working on the 2.0 release along with the Themer development.

What you will learn from this episode: * A day working with clients at Nehmedia goes from project discovery all the way to development and launch. (6:35) * Working with a team at an agency provides all the expertise needed to build a successful business website for a client. (ex: SEO, design, and development). (9:13) * The balance of tasks and persistent knowledge in a project needs to be balanced with the team and the right tools. (11:11) * YouTube videos were originally created to share how content creation and curation is done. (13:54) * Resist the impulse to be perfect. The web is informal so just be OK with your videos. (17:16)

Lessons from Building a Software Interface: * Beaver Builder is a complex application to build where the User Interface (UI) mapping needs to be constantly addressed. (28:09) * When developing an application you need to have logical systems in your interface. * The math should not drive the design of the product. (29:05) * Pagebuilder features should provide power and flexibility. (30:48) * You want to do your best to get inside a person’s head the first time they use your product. (37:11) * The onboarding experience for the end user is a huge consideration when delivering your software. (39:10) * There is nothing better than demonstrating your product. It is better to have a screencast than animation. (40:56) * The length of your videos should be measured on where you are going to post your video. Tolerance on YouTube is longer than Facebook. (41:43) * A user’s interest needs to be hooked in the first 20 to 30 seconds when presenting video content. (42:50) * One-take videos are too hard to record. Pause the recording but do not move the mouse so you can easily edit the screencasts. (45:46)

Advantages of using Beaver Builder * A YouTube channel was created for Beaver Builder to provide users with a deeper knowledge of the product. (25:00) * The Beaver Builder slack channel extended the WordPress community for Brent. * The Beaver Builder page builder addressed the frustration around the fragmentation of WordPress. (21:24) * Balancing field testing with users will provide you with the data to show you where you may be hung up. The challenge is finding the balance between the feedback and development. * The design of Beaver Builder 2.0 will have many color choices that were derived directly from the WordPress color guides. (23:26) * Workflow needs to be in place and be understood in order to take full advantage of Beaver Builder. (32:31) Beaver Builder is great for the first time user all the way to the seasoned professional. (36:00)

EPISODE RESOURCES DropBox Paper Nehmedia

Follow Brent: Brent on Twitter Brent on Facebook YouTube channel

Stay connected with the Matt Report by

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On today’s episode, we’re talking for the first time with Davinder Singh Kainth. Davinder is an author and has been published on many sites including BasicWP, Simple Pro Themes, and ProBeaver. Davinder has been creating and implementing online spaces for over a decade. He has experience with web design, development, blogging, and SEO. Recently Davinder is very prominent in the Beaver Builder community and has been creating goodness at ProBeaver.com.

Guests :

Davinder Singh Kainth – Lives in India and is an author at BasicWP, Beaver Builder Pro and Simple Pro Themes. Davinder started his career as a successful technology blogger. He migrated to the Genesis Framework and has created several Genesis themes that can be found at Simple Pro Themes. Davinder has a lot of experience with writing, client products, and services.

What will you learn in this episode

• In addition to web design, development and agency work Davinder has created a successful niche product called ProBeaver.com. (5:20 )
• You can start your career by working with Upwork (used to be Odesk), freelancer.com or Fiverr. You just need to be competent in the area where you are applying. (7:50)
• You can become a regular on somebody’s team when working through Upwork. You start low and show your value through your work and build trust. (11:31)
• In order to not always be competing at bottom dollar projects, you need to be competent in estimating. As the scope and cost of the project increases, your estimate must also increase. (12:00)
• Balancing work with clients, products, and content is an art. Davinder does not work for longer than 2 hours of focused work without a break. He has to adjust his work schedule to accommodate the US and Australia. (17:11)
• It helps to get a partner on large projects that complement your skills. (18:09)
• Davinder’s work is split 60/40 between client work and his personal blog. (19:06)

Lessons from running a small business

• Have a Plan B when starting out freelancing. It is very helpful to have another source of income or savings until the freelancing takes off. (20:00)
• You should stick to one page builder when building client sites. It is fine to experiment with page builders on your personal site. (29:57)
• While experimenting with AdSense from Google, Davinder found that you are 100% dependent on Google for your success. You have to constantly be changing with Google’s updates. (35:06)
• It can be profitable to start a niche for your business. Davinder used to link to Amazon for his first business centered around toddler potty seats. (35:59)
• Affiliate links with trusted WordPress products can be another revenue stream for your website. (37:00)
• If you approach something with your heart, you will find success. (37:31)
• Be confident about pricing your product. You know the value of your work. (39:00)

Advantages of using Beaver Builder

• Beaver Builder is helping developers create powerful websites and clients can easily manage their sites. (24:24)
• Themes are leaning toward builder themes or feature themes that work very well with Beaver Builder. (25:57)
• Beaver Builder is perfect for the small client that just wants a website with a few pages.
• Beaver Builder is releasing a new plugin called Beaver Themer that should make building themes even faster. (42:02)
• The community around Beaver Builder is passionate and very loyal.

EPISODE RESOURCES

Follow Davinder ProBeaver.com

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On today’s episode, we’re talking with Chris Wallace of Lift UX. Chris has been a partner of Lift UX where he has been running a high-end agency with Brad Miller for seven years. Lift UX specializes with WordPress and has realized the benefits of using Beaver Builder for smaller web projects where a lot of custom designs are not needed.

Guest:

Chris Wallace – Lives in Texas and is the Creative Director at Lift UX running a boutique agency that also provides client services for customers. Chris shares his excitement for Beaver Builder to help you build WordPress websites easily and responsively.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• The Lift UX agency successfully launched major projects for GoDaddy, Campus Insiders, Pressed Platform, AMC Networks, and others. (5:00)
• Boutique agency life can be successful with big brands without having many employees. (6:14)
• It takes a long time to build a network with expert professionals and clients. (11:23)
• Balancing time between paying the bills, product efforts and new client opportunities can be difficult but clients come first. (15:17).
• Everyone's business is different. What may work well for finding the value for one client may not work for everyone. (25:24)
• The future (or flavors ) of WordPress seem to be growing in several ways. There are agencies that already have customers and are trying to expand their customer base. ex: GoDaddy.
• There are the niche providers where there is a market that is underserved. Beaver Builder works great for this market segment. (39:00)
• The products will eventually merge where they will all be running WordPress, using themes and the same plugins. (40:00)
• WordPress will be dominating. All in one packages seem to be expanding in the market for small businesses. There will always be a need for experienced consultants. (42:47)
• There are ways to research how businesses work together. Remote jobs was created to help partners post jobs for employees. (47:00)

Advantages of using Beaver Builder:

• Beaver Builder is not paired with a theme and is not complex to use. (29:38)
• Beaver Builder is very easy to use, is responsive and is great to try out on a personal project. (30:33)
• Beaver Builder is a design tool, a wire-framing tool and also can be used for development. It really cuts down the time spent on the design phase of a project.
• Beaver Builder is a great tool to create a product and provide service for smaller clients in a niche market like churches. This was how Faithmade was launched. (32:41)
• Beaver Builder is great to use for the clients that have budget restraints. The tool helps you sell the concept that the web is fluid. (35:41)
• The ease of Beaver Builder can help the “do it yourselfer” get a web site up easily and inexpensively. (43:00)

Lessons for boutique agency success:

• It is important to build a relationship network with expert professionals and know the best person in your industry. (10:00)
• There are numbers that need to be hit but a smaller agency can invest time that allows exploration of many opportunities. (14:15)
• You need to build capital and invest dedicated time that finds its ebb and flow in agency work. (16:50)
• It is tricky to balance client work with products.

EPISODE RESOURCES

Follow Chris and Lift UX Lift UX Chris on Twitter Faithmade Remote Jobs

Stay connected with the Matt Report by joining the email list over at mattreport.com/subscribe.

If you lik

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Jonathan Perez has been running a successful side hustle called SureFire Web Services. He shares the lessons he has learned about running a business and how you should never be afraid to try new ideas and pivot when you need to. Jonathan has started a Facebook group called 0to30K, now called Devenaires. If you create websites full time or as a side hustle, there is plenty to learn from other people who have been there. Jonathan’s benchmark to success was getting his first 30K so this is where the name 0-to-30K originated.

About this show:

On today’s episode, we’re talking with Jonathan Perez of SureFire Web Services. Jonathan is a consultant/web strategist specializing in WordPress, the Genesis Framework, and now knocking it out of the park using Beaver Builder (which he considers the best page builder period).

Guests :

Jonathan Perez – Lives in the New York and is a WordPress superhero who runs SureFire Web Services. Jonathan is a Beaver Builder evangelist who is always trying new things and loves sharing how you can use Beaver Builder to create big business. Jonathan is a father and considers his family as one of the best things that have ever happened in his life.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• Beaver Builder has empowered businesses and has had a strong community grow around it. (6:15)
• You can make good money running a side hustle. (8:40)
• Never be afraid to fail and try many things. Having a full-time job gives you the security and allows you to experiment with many different WordPress things. (11:28)
• Everything in WordPress is related so it is easy to grow in development, design, and marketing. This helps build a full-service shop offering many services. (15:00)
• Theme building is very different than building a site for a client.
• You can put a lot of work into building a Theme and the return of investment is often not there. (16:55)
• Don’t give up too quickly when trying new things in your business and do not be afraid to pivot and try new things. (20:00)
• Patience is the game when running your business. (21:00)
• Staying visible helps your business. Ads are a great way to measure your ideas and work with your services. (25:00)
• You can look at a sales cycle for products. (28:00)
• The Beaver Builder community grew quickly and has exploded with content and videos. (32:00)
• Growing an audience and staying in front of people takes constant work. (42:00)
• Pay attention to being your authentic self. Sending e-mails or “cold calling” is not always a successful marketing strategy. (44:00)

Lessons for side hustle success:

• Reach out to people and get out of your comfort zone.
• When starting out in a WordPress business, just hit the ground running and then work on processes (50:00)
• Success is not measured only by having 150,000 subscribers. (55:42)

Client Onboarding Tools:

• Project Huddle
• Sprout Apps
• Project Panorama

EPISODE RESOURCES

• SureFire Web Services
• Jonathan on Twitter
• Simple Shop Theme

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Page builders have become very popular in the last couple of years. We are discussing how Beaver Builder has had explosive growth and how it impacts the user experience. What will the impact be for WordPress users in years to come?

There are two guests on this show that have a very strong presence in the Beaver Builder community.

Listen to the episode:

Guests :

Nathan Wrigley – Lives in the Northeast of England. He can be heard on the podcast wpBuilds with David Waumsley. He loves talking about why Beaver Builder is the number one page builder for WordPress. Nathan owns a business called Picture and Word that designs and builds websites for clients.

David Waumsley – Builds websites with WordPress, lives by the beach in Goa and is a road warrior traveling to many countries with his wife. David is the second half of the podcast wpBuilds and is another Beaver Builder enthusiast. David creates many YouTube instructional videos using Beaver Builder.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• How Beaver Builder has a passionate supportive community around the page builder (03:05)
• Scaling to an agency level takes a huge amount of time that requires additional skills around people management. Having an agency can take you away from the work that you love, such as development or design. (8:37)
• When considering scaling your business, make sure you have systems and processes in place that are very well documented. (10:11)
• You need to get the processes out of your head and down on paper. One way to do this is by explaining difficult things through courses. (12:57)
• In a small agency, you need to have the flexibility to hand off the responsibility to key employees. (15:38)
• Outsourcing certain skills is an option for a small business but it is still very important to manage the project and have a way to measure success. (17:44)
• When looking for an open source CMS, it is helpful to have a business community supporting the product (22:36)
• Beaver Builder has opened up many business opportunities for website clients. It is a great tool for the low budget everyday client and provides a competitive edge.
• Beaver Builder allows you to quickly build a website and often eliminate the wireframing process. The client can easily update their own content.

Advantages of having a podcast:

• A podcast can be created to cover the need of answering questions around a product. It allows you to get the information out to many people.
• Podcasting indirectly raises the profile of hosts.
• Podcasting is fun.
• The production of a podcast takes about half a day.
• When working on your podcast, bundling seasons and episodes helps with the production of podcasts.
• When producing shows, unexpected things happen.

EPISODE RESOURCES

Nathan Wrigley

• wpBUILDS
• Picture and Word
• Nathan on Twitter

David Waumsley

• wpBUILDS
• davidwaumsley.com
• David on Twitter

Other resources

• Facebook Beaverbuilder community
• Gen

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It's that time again where I catch up with my good friend, Jake Goldman.

Jake runs a distributed agency called 10up, well known for their contributions to WordPress core and portfolio projects leveraging our favorite content management system. It's been two years since the last time Jake was on the show, plotting out the roadmap for his then recently launched products.

Today, we cover how agency life has treated him over the last six years, along with his latest launch, ElasticPress.io.

I hope you draw some great insights from today's discussion!

Interview with Jake Goldman

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It's been nearly three years since I last interviewed Mason here on the show, which is far too long for someone that delivers great insights into our industry.

Mason runs a company called Valet and recently rolled out a new SaaS offering called Valet Metrix, which literally makes the web a better place. Full disclosure, they were also a sponsor of Season 4 of the Matt Report.

Warning: There are some audio issues for the first half of the show, which I'm guessing were related to our live simulcast to Google Live & Facebook Live, which the recording derives from.  Normally I would re-record, but due to a time crunk and Mason's amazing answers, I didn't want to lose this episode.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and we'll see you in Season 5!

Interview with Mason James

The links

• Conductor plugin - content blocks for WordPress
• Valet
• Valet Metrix
• Mason on Twitter

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Getting a lesson on open source "laws" from Richard Best of WP and Legal Stuff is the perfect way to end Season 4 of The Matt Report podcast.

I've admired Richard's work from afar for quite a while. His e-book, A Practical Guide to WordPress & the GPL, is a must-have for anyone launching a product business within the WordPress marketspace. We distill the tricky GPL topics like, forking someone else's product and using it for your own business, and what exactly do you have to attribute with the GPL.

While our conversation is oozing in legal goodness (is that a thing?), please consult your own private attorney on these matters. The Matt Report cannot be held accountable for the actions you take after consuming this episode -- but I will take credit for non-legal related wins. :)

At the end of the day, Richard is a great guy, and it was my honor to have him spend time with us today, closing out the season.

Follow Richard on Twitter.

Interview with Richard Best

THE END of Season 4

Make sure to thank my sponsors Pagely & Valet. Without them, this season could not be possible.

If you want to sponsor the show, or know someone who does, please contact me. Podcast sponsorships are a huge part of how I feed my family these days, so supporting the show however you can is GREATLY appreciated.

Season 5

Planning is already underway! First recordings are happening at the start of February, so look for new episodes to ship around the half-way mark.

I launched a book about podcasting

Things have been super-busy around here -- I launched my first e-book! Want to start your own podcast? Pickup the The Podcast Starter Kit today. I plan on writing more about this experience later.

Thanks for listening, and be sure to get notified when the next season launches.

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Doubling your agency rate is a great way to grow your business. Even if you're a beginner freelancer, moving from $50/hr to $75/hr can start to move the needle considerably. Sounds obvious, but so many people that I talk to still won't take the leap.

Which totally makes sense, it's a move filled with fear and uncertainty. You've been selling your work at a set price, for the last 3 years, and asking clients for more money can be jarring. Further, moving your price up will also change the expectations from clients, and you'll discover new issues like more legal paperwork or insurances.

In today's episode with Josh Strebel, founder of Pagely (sponsor of this podcast) we'll discuss all of the intricate points of moving your business up channel, and how to shift your mindset to focusing on customer service. We'll also dive into the deep end of where WordPress is going from a user experience perspective, and how WordPress hosting companies have a particular advantage in shaping it's future.

Make sure to buy your tickets for PressNomics 5

Enjoy the episode, don't forget to thank our sponsors Pagely & Valet.

Watch the live stream

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCqCaYPpkN0

Interview with Josh Strebel

Photo credit Brian Krogsgard

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WordPress support companies are one of the fastest growing business models that I've seen in our space in quite some time.

The concept being, for a monthly fee, you get a dedicated WordPress support company that can tackle all of your technical needs -- around your WordPress website. Here's the issue, it's easy to start a company like this, but it's not easy to keep it sustainable.

How do you survive as a business owner? That's what Ryan Sullivan of WP Site Care joins us to talk about on today's episode.

Interview with Ryan Sullivan of WP Site Care

WordPress support businesses

My first Matt Report Startup challenge featured WP Curve, who entered the market offering a shockingly low-cost monthly offering. A price point that spurred attraction to their services, ultimately lead to fast-paced growth and a recent acquisition by GoDaddy.

On the flip side, their growth spawned a lot of "me too" companies, that simply copied their model and charged a dollar less. I commend Sullivan for his ability to navigate these waters, and continue to find growth. It's a testament to sticking with something, and realizing you're in it for the long-haul, not the short-term cash grab.

If you enjoyed this episode, watch: 15 Ways to make money with WordPress

The links

• WP Site Care
• Ryan Sullivan on Twitter

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Everyone loves a good “how to make seven figures in software sales” story, but not every business owner desires to claim that headline.

If there’s one trend throughout season 4, it’s that we don’t need world domination as a driving force to grow our business. Throughout my conversations with guests on the show, and business owners at local WordCamps, there’s a renewed sense of small business ownership in the room. A fundamental shift from flashy TechCrunch growth, to running a manageable and profitable business — with purpose.

I’ve been trying to connect the dots for a while now, comparing a “traditional” business owner, to the new age owner. An owner that places their craft, and customer, before the bank account. Which isn’t to say that this owner is against growth, it’s just her approach isn’t going to include growth-hacks or app sumo deals.

Interview with Naomi Bush

I enjoyed this conversation of small business ownership in the WordPress space with Namoi, owner of GravityPlus.pro. There isn’t a rush to scale or 10x revenue, but to provide great customer support, while discovering new opportunities by interacting with them.

A great lesson for us all.

The links

• Naomi on Twitter
• GravityPlus.pro

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Shawn Hesketh is the creator of WP101, an online library and learning resource, for WordPress.

When you don’t want to spend the time training your clients, or answering the pesky support e-mails, you use a service like WP101. Shawn and his team tirelessly script, record, edit, produce, and publish top-notch training materials for the newcomer to the WordPress world.

Sounds like easy money to me.

Interview with Shawn Hesketh of WP101

Open up your favorite screen recorder, dust off you headset, press record and the money flows in -- right?

Not so fast.

If you’re looking to earn a living teaching WordPress, even supporting it, today’s episode is an absolute gold mine — or mine field, depending on your perspective — for the eager entrepreneur.

Shawn brings a boat load of business acumen, and a down to Earth approach to making a living in this space. The inside baseball of it all is pretty darned interesting, too. Like, what happened when Shawn expanded to a Spanish version of the product? Tripled his audience? Quadrupled his revenue? You’ll have to tune-in to find out. :)

I hope you enjoy this episode, and don’t forget to thank Shawn on Twitter — and our sponsors (they made this possible!) — Pagely & Valet!

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AJ Morris, Product Manager at Liquid Web, shares the lessons he learned from running his own boutique agency before joining the web hosting company.

There’s a lot of little lessons threaded throughout our conversation, but there’s one stand out point, every WordPress business owner should be thinking about.

Interview with AJ Morris of Liquid web

Know your limits

Limits in terms of customers you want to serve, and customers you can serve. I run into a lot of freelancers, or boutique agency owners, that don’t have a clear understanding of their own limits.

Here’s an example, a local colleague reached out and asked me if I knew of anyone that "did Visual Basic coding."

I don’t.

He explained that it was how they managed their website internally, and they needed to make changes. Some convoluted system that someone built in-house, which hasn’t been touched in years, now needs repairs. The original creator? Not there anymore.

I briefly explained that it’s time to sell them on moving off of that platform, for obvious reasons. He said just wanted to get it fixed for them and move on, by either trying to get someone on his team to figure it out or hire someone.

If the problems aren’t obvious by now, I’ll highlight a few scenarios:

1. He’s about to make promises, and get paid on them, of which he doesn’t have the slightest clue on how to deliver or support.
2. If he doesn’t explain a better, more open, solution for the customer, he’s doing them a long-term disservice.

If you find yourself in this situation, I highly suggest that you know your limit, and don’t take a project like this. At the very least, don’t try and put your brand in front of it, and represent the work being done. Be transparent with your customer, and advise them that you’re probably not the best fit for this job.

Focus on your core competencies, and be great at them.

I hope you enjoy today’s episode with AJ Morris, and always, thank our sponsors, Pagely & Valet!

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The word of the day is: Evolve.

Beka Rice, WooCommerce Team Lead at SkyVerge, joins the Matt Report to discuss the makings of a modern day WordPress agency. SkyVerge is a WooCommerce service agency, the largest developer of 3rd party add-ons in the WooCommerce marketplace, the company behind SellWithWP.com, and they've expanded into the SaaS market by forging a new branded app, Jilt.

They evolve -- a lot.

So let's take a step back and break this down:

1. Client services
2. WordPress plugins
3. Content media site
4. SaaS app

Each forward step is an evolution of the previous, and that's the lesson that Beka teaches us in today's episode.

In my opinion, client services life isn't as linear as it used to be. That is to say, it's not about filling the pipeline and doing the work anymore. Partly because the market has become much more competitive over time, and clients require a wider range of deliverables. Who cares about designing a website, putting current web technology and social technology to work for it, is the real goal.

Building a smarter, more measurable solution for our client, not just a brochure.

You're probably going to want to queue this episode up more than once -- it's that good. Hope you learn something today, and if you do, please thank Beka and our sponsors -- Pagely and Valet -- on Twitter.

You should subscribe to my newsletter, I send personal videos out, one of which is for WordCamp US this week!

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Remember that line in the Social Network, "A million dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool? A billion dollars."

Well...maybe not for all of us.

Dan Cameron of Sprout Apps, is a great example of an entrepreneur that wants to stay small and isn't motivated by the billion dollar dream. That's not to say he doesn't want to see his revenue move up and to the right, but it's not his motivating factor. There's a certain level of control that one has in business, by not scaling as fast as possible.

You don't worry about hiring, paying more taxes, and expanding the product line. You do what you do, and you do it well. Storylines that won't make the rounds on TechCrunch, but serve as positive dialogue for those of us embracing a lifestyle business.

In today's episode, we'll unpack the reasoning behind Dan's decisions, both good and bad. We'll also explore some of the growing pains Sprout Apps has experienced in the marketplace, like when a big brand started buying adwords with his branding.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and don't forget to thank our sponsors Pagely and Valet!

The links

• Sprout Apps
• Dan Cameron on Twitter

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Have you ever wondered how WordPress is made?

Today's guest, Helen Hou-Sandi of 10up, is leading the WordPress 4.7 release and joins us to discuss how the pieces of the puzzle come together. If you're curious on how features get decided or how it's all managed, this is a  great episode for you.

Interview with Helen Hou-Sandi of 10up

I can't thank Helen enough for taking the time to do the show, I learned a lot, I hope you do too!

The links

• Helen on Twitter
• 10Up
• WordPress.org Make blog

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Debating WordPress Page Builders is like your crazy uncle talking politics at the holiday dinner with the family. But let's do it anyway?

Full disclosure, I sell a plugin called Conductor, that often gets confused as a page builder.

There's a lot of noise in this space, and lots of strong opinions. For good reason. A page builder changes the way someone experiences WordPress - for better or worse. It's how, when you're using it across your website, you create your content, generate sales pages, or sell products. It removes the need to learn coding, placing that power into the hands of someone who can navigate a drag-and-drop interface. Hopefully.

And that's the problem.

Purists are outraged that a site owner would choose to overlay all of this technical debt to WordPress, when whipping out SublimeText and crafting a template.php from scratch is so much more "right."

FFS do it the right way

Which is the secondary argument to all of this, are page builders "doing it the right way?" WordPress isn't easy, and builder plugins can help ease some of that pain. But the right way, would be to to code it from scratch, or at least that's what some will lead you to believe.

1. Less code is used when you create it from scratch, naturally.
2. Builders add more complexity to a theme, as to say, a theme dictates how pages are created -- then you inject a builder's layout logic.
3. Your competing against the WordPress experience. WordPress is moving to page building, you heard it here first.

Purists also feel burned (heck, frightened) about builder plugins.

Here's a story about how I saved $300 by NOT calling a professional

I own a home with a steam furnace. I don't fully know how it all works, but I do know it fills with water, the water is set to boil, creating steam that is pushed to radiators throughout the house.

Winter is coming; it's getting cold. The first night we turned the heat on, the furnace didn't "boot up."

Did I call an HVAC professional, on a Sunday? Last time I did that, it cost $300, so I took to YouTube. I researched all the possible issues with my furnace:

1. The thermocouple might be bad.
2. The water basin is too full, or not full enough.
3. The vent to the chimney isn't open.

I found out that the venting system was stuck, and replaced the part -- myself. A small business HVAC person never received my call. I saved over $300.

Software is getting easier, education is everywhere -- now what?

Page builders usher in a new kind of DIY'er to WordPress.

Clients no longer need to call us for emergency coding work before a big sale weekend, and inexperienced consultants can portray themselves as having more coding experience than they actually do.

Heck, maybe I could do house-calls now to fix furnances that don't startup -- for a limited-time only $97.

It's seen as a threat to our revenue, our livliehood. So what do we do about it? Embrace the change, and find new ways to enhance your value. I'm not saying this is happening at a rapid pace, and that page buidlers are to blame -- ALL of the plugins and services being created in our industry are getting easier, empowering a larger group of users. As they should.

I have some thoughts on the topic, which I'll save for another time, but I'd love to hear from you in the comments. I hope you enjoy this episode with Robby from Beaver Builder.

The episode

The links

• Robby McCullough
• Beaver Builder
• A (semi) critical review of Page Builders from Pippin Williamson

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Hooray! Season 4 is here!

First and foremost, thanks for always tuning into the Matt Report, and craving great stories and how-to from our guests. Second, thanks to my two content sponsors for this season: Pagely.com & Valet.io. Without them, the Netflix style release wouldn't have been possible.

Kicking of Season 4 is my friend Logan Nickelson, founder of MusicForMakers.com. He built a recurring membership business built on WordPress, Easy Digital Downloads, and Restrict Content Pro enabling him to sell his royalty-free music.

You might be thinking that a musician turned digital product seller, might not relate to your more traditional WordPress product or digital marketing product -- oh, but it does!

The parity between a music artist, and today's freelance developer/designer, is uncanny. He pulls on a lot of similar threads that we in the freelance consulting world experience in our own business. He's also a digital content marketer by day, and he's building this business in his spare time. And when you're making the music, building the website, marketing the goods, and supporting your customers -- it becomes quite a feat!

I hope you enjoy Season 4 Episode 1 with Logan Nickelson!

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Wrapping up the gap season, I've invited Diane Kinney to host her very own Q&A on the show.

I met Diane a few years ago, after launching my now failed Matt Report Pro membership. We chatted at WordCamp Miami, and she shared some of her own opinions on how I could (have) made the membership a success. Looks like I should have taken her advice. Diane is proficient in project management, branding, and customer onboarding. It's an honor to have her presence on the show today.

Now, we all have a chance to take the advice she shares today.

WordPress Q&A with Diane Kinney

Gap season recap

I had a blast allowing some of my friends and colleagues takeover the show, and I hope some of these episodes brought new perspective into your business or freelancing career. I know it did for me!

I'm looking forward to launching Season 4 on October 20th!

The Links

• Diane on Twitter
• Diane's website

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The main goal of my gap season is to introduce new ideas, conversations, and concepts from around the WordPress community.

Today, I'm proud to have had the opportunity to share this episode with Morten Rand-Hendriksen, Senior Staff Instructor at LinkedIn Learning and Lynda.com.

The show

If you don't follow Morten, you probably should follow him on Twitter. Like, right now, I'll wait...

See, I've followed him for a while, exchanging an occasional tweet here and there, but we never had a "real" conversation before. When I thought about introducing new views to the show, he was the first person that came to mind. I wanted someone with a strong opinion, who would give us a new angle to think about -- not just another tool or tactic.

When I say, he delivered on this promise, is an understatement. I could have titled this episode: "How to 10x your closing rates" or "Land $50k projects like a fighter pilot" but that, that would be doing the content an injustice.

What we have in this episode is like finding that loose strand in your favorite sweater, and when you pull it, the whole thing becomes unraveled. That single thread of fabric that is the link to the entire garment. Understanding how another person views your ideas, your work, is the key to anything.

The key to a healthy relationship, the key to landing a project, the key to getting your voice heard in a political movement -- anything.

It's such an oversight, for most of us. Why doesn't the client like our design, or, why don't they understand how to use WordPress -- it's right there! If you've found yourself thinking that, or have a tough time getting your message across, this is the episode for you.

The links

• Morten on Twitter
• Morten on Lynda
• Morten on LinkedIn

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I met Topher a few years back when we were plopped down near one another at a WordCamp after party. We never met, or crossed paths before. In fact, I think our beards dueled for a bit before we started chatting -- or maybe it was the ice wine?

To my delight, I enjoyed the conversation we had, inspired by the work my new friend was doing in and for WordPress. A few years passed and we kept in touch, even catching a Skype call here and there to discuss some of the new work he was challenged to embark on.

HeroPress? Is this just another -- dare I say -- entrepreneurial spotlight shining on the well-known business builders of the WordPress community?

No. No, it isn't.

HeroPress embodies more than the shallow wins, even I'm guilty of showcasing on this show, to it's readers. Topher reaches out to all corners of the world, producing a healthy mix of diversity within the stories published on the blog. This is the real nitty-gritty of how people find their way in our community, be it for business or pleasure.

Topher's an original, something you're sure to pick up on in his conversation today. I'm honored he graced our airwaves, and I hope you enjoy his story of diversity, challenges, and success with HeroPress.

Who knows, maybe you'll publish your own essay on HeroPress someday?

The links

• Topher on Twitter
• HeroPress
• Like this content? Rate us on iTunes!

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Have you been planning to launch that brandy new online course of yours? Who better than Carrie Dils, WordPress podcaster and Lynda trainer, to teach us the ins and outs of setting up your first course.

She'll take us through the mindset of planning, all the way through production of our educational material. I've invited her to "takeover" my show, steering the audience to online course production success.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and can't wait to be back in Season 4!

Welcome to the GAP!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQK-LLGVZ1o

Carrie Dils on Creating an Online Course

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I love a good actionable story about how to grow your business, especially in the competitive SaaS space.

If you've been into digital products over the last few years, you may have heard of Nathan Barry, and his success in the e-book space. Surely not his only accolade over the years, but one where I first discovered his work. What attracted me was his attention to design and the details around it. Meaning, every piece of his product, brand, and funnel is expertly crafted. All the while, other internet marketers were lifting the same copy and landing page templates from each other.

It was that same effort which brought him to designing a rapidly growing e-mail automation platform called, ConvertKit. Book ending this show along side my last episode with Rob Walling of Drip, really helps us understand what it's like to not only grow a SaaS business, but to grow a SaaS business in the e-mail marketing world.

Interview with Nathan Barry of ConvertKit

This is the season finale! We'll be back in late October, read more below!

6 actionable steps to launch your product

First and foremost, this episode is a fantastic season finale for us -- I'm glad I could book Nathan to teach us through his words of wisdom. I want you to listen to the entire episode, but here are 6 actionable steps I was able to pull out of our conversation, if you found other great nuggets of wisdom, post them in the comments.

1. Teach everything you know

In my recent live show, WordPress plugins to power-up your blog, we discussed some of the pitfalls young bloggers encounter in the beginning -- that of -- not knowing what to blog about. Look, if you're launching a product, chances are you know a little something about the space you're getting into. You can at least teach us how you got to where you are, and what went into building that product.

So teach us all of it, will ya?

1. Start 90 days out

If there's anything I'm guilty of, it's not promoting a product launch long enough. Sure, I did $5k in pre-sales for my Conductor plugin, but imagine if I invested 90-days out. Surely with the proper messaging in place, I could have doubled, if not tripled, that pre-sales launch day.

1. Find a niche in your customer

I know how hard it is to niche down a product.

To-do list app > Simple to-do list app with sharable lists > To-do list app for parents > To-do list app for parents of newborns.

See where I'm headed? Even if you struggle with the niching on the product, try and focus on niching on the actual customer. Find cross fit trainers and target them. Locate the Facebook group that mom's of newborns dwell in.

Ask that specific customer avatar to try your product. Here's a great video I did about building your perfect customer avatar.

1. Blog post the hell out of everything

Struggling to get that content marketing wheel spinning? Just write.

Write about everything you're doing. Post pictures of wireframes and new mockups for your upcoming product. Creating a clear line of communication will help resonate with your target audience. It seems silly at first, but you'd be surprised with the results after a few months.

1. Get specific with your goals

Is it 1,000 visitors to the website in the first month? 500 YouTube subscribers? Maybe selling $2,000 in pre-sales? Whatever it is, you need to write it down, and get specific on your goals. If it's simply "world domination" you're going to get burned out pretty quick.

1. Everyone wants to help someone in motion

This might be the key takeaway here: not everyone wants to help you on day 1, but on Day 57 when you have traction, or when you have that working prototype. I'm a busy

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Rob Walling has been building online businesses for years. His latest venture, Drip, an e-mail marketing automation SaaS, has been the standout win within his portfolio of seemingly smaller projects. That's not to say Rob's other companies weren't special, or less profitable, or even less fun to work on for the serial entrepreneur.

Growth is hard

Drip achieved a scale that his other offerings hadn't reached before and even to Rob, a veteran in this space, found growth challenging. The allure to SaaS businesses, that's software as a service if you're not familiar with the term, is quite potent in the startup scene. I'm not just talking traditional funded startups either, I'm talking solo entrepreneurs that have an idea and put the pieces of the puzzle together to grow a software business. What once took a small team of devs, marketing, and CEO-types to build, can be recreated by one person.

Drip achieved a scale that his other offerings hadn't reached before and even to Rob, a veteran in this space, found challenging

If you've been following along with season 3 of The Matt Report (and how could you not?!) you may remember the stories from Justin and Paul, two young Canadians that are actively growing these so-called new-age businesses. Both bring a certain artisanal flair to the game. They'd probably laugh (or cringe) at that statement, but it's true. In my opinion, over the next few years, we're going to see the start of more "locally grown" software businesses sprout up.

Quality vs. quantity

I live within a mini-crusade against "get rich quick" web marketers. People that run Facebook ads promising you to land $10-$20k web design leads, and their own website sucks. It's a poison that dilutes quality work, honest business owners, and just takes away from those of us delivering with integrity in this complex web world.

I know you're sick of hearing me say it, it's getting harder out there. It might even be harder to make money in WordPress. That's not to say it's getting harder to make the products -- tools are getting easier, cheaper, and faster -- it's just getting harder to do it better than the next person using the same stuff.

And while starting a small business might seem easy-ish, what happens when you grow too fast? That's the lesson Rob and I dive into, on today's episode. For a lot of us in the WordPress space, we're accidental entrepreneurs. We launch our products, and when we achieve product/market fit, we -- gasp -- start selling more!

In the SaaS world, or at least for Drip, that meant re-investing in more engineers, more servers, and better marketing. It wasn't just about optimizing for more margin and coasting comfortably, in order to make it work, Rob needed more -- everything. That's when Drip looked more attractive to be acquired.

Acquisition for more resources

LeadPages, a popular landing page marketing company, acquired Drip roughly two months ago. Rob is now VP of Engineering for Drip, and has found a renewed sense of excitement for growing the product, my words not his.

Backed by a bigger team, more resources, and more marketing dollars, Rob has a new chance at growing Drip to become an even greater market contender. Not that it wasn't before, but imagine what an eager founder can do with more resources has his or her fingertips.

I hate to use the word "interesting", but it will be, to see how all of this plays out.

Interview with Rob Walling

The links

• Rob wall

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For me, and hopefully for you, this episode opens you up to two areas of WordPress interest:

• Learn what it's like to be the Lead Engineer at The Wirecutter. Hear all the fancy things they do with WordPress.
• Learn what the REST API is, what it can do, and kinda-sorta grasp why we don't have it yet.

Let me get this out of the way first: If you're interested in learning how high-traffic WordPress websites and larger publishers use the popular CMS -- this episode is for you! How Rachel and her team bend WordPress to to their will is quite impressive. In fact, it was even more impressive to learn what WordPress doesn't power at the popular review blog, and how they've solved those particular challenges.

Interview with Rachel Baker

Learning more about the REST API

The second part of this conversation is all about the REST API. Over the last year or so, some of you have asked me what the REST API is, what it can do, and how could you leverage it in your own WordPress business. Rachel helps define some of that for you, and debunks the myths surrounding it.

Again, if you're here to learn about that, queue this up!

Why can't we have the REST API?

I'm not in the trenches like Rachel and the team behind the REST API initiative, but I do know that it's been particularly challenging for them.

I wish I had better insight, I wish I knew the answers, but all I can do is speculate. Well, speculate and have intelligent conversations with people like Rachel. Which leads me to another thing: Humans.

Or, maybe it's politics? Human politics?

My friend Jeff posted a piece on the Tavern, Us vs Them, not-so-hinting at the fact that core teams shield the rest of "us" out. The way I see it is, sometimes it's Them vs Them, Us vs Them, and even Us vs Us.

It's been said before, but a lot of WordPress community "problems" are natural human problems. Look at Federal Government, your place of work, heck even your softball team can't get out of it's own way half the time -- this is humans being humans -- not core team versus contributors.

I'm excited for the REST API, for what it can do and where it can take WordPress, but I don't have skill set or the credentials to talk about it in core meetings. The nature of this software community is very much that -- software. For folks like me, there is no outlet for non-tech speak, there is no "Super-fan" Slack channel.

I show my support by blogging, podcasting, and taking the occasional survey. It's not much, but it's the best I can do. Maybe the best you can do too?

Like you, I don't know why, but I know I want the REST API, and I'm glad folks like Rachel are pioneering it for us. Perhaps the best way to show support is to thank Rachel and the rest of the team on Twitter.

The links

• Rachel Baker
• The Wirecutter
• The Sweethome
• The REST API

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What's the secret to freelancing success?

Deliver. Good. Shit.

Let's be honest, Megan Gray's work deserves more than that paltry summary, but there many freelancers who forget the foundation of a sustainable business. They often get lost in how to create bigger profits, rather than putting out respectable work.

Some time has passed since I've harped on the five-hundred dollar website being delivered by the consultant, and not based on the client's budget. That is to say, if you want to have a real career, you can't treat "building websites" like a part-time gig. Something on the side that nets a few hundos every month, just for you to spend it on margaritas. Not that there's anything wrong with margaritas. What's more badass than sipping on a margarita? Owning the margarita machine, or hell, the bar!

In today's episode, Megan's going to teach you how she bought the bar and works from the beach.

Megan Gray on being a freelancer for hire

I remember a time where they said you needed to be great at one thing in order to be successful.

Who are they anyway? I never do know ...

Are we moving back to being solutionists?

You could argue you never moved away from offering an all encompassing service, and that might be true, but I bet many of you cut the fat and focused on being great developers, great marketers, or great designers at some point over the last few years. It just made sense. You could market yourself easier, tell the pitch in an elevator, and create squeeze pages like a boss. Creating a nice little package to offer to customers at an affordable price.

I know I did.

Here's the thing, I've started to notice a trend with clients -- they want more. They want to spend more, get better service, and grow their business leveraging new technology. In the years after the financial collapse, folks tightened both their wallets and their willingness to invest in new ventures. Now, I see more of a trend to move faster, be more agile with their web and marketing, and hire a team to do it for them.

But they want it all, not just a piece of it.

Moving (back) from specialist to solutionist

Here's the deal, you might listen to our podcast today and think Megan is a specialist. She does great design, and that's "it."

Au contraire!

While she might be handing off more advanced development pieces, social media management, and ad buys, she certainly designs with that in mind. If you need her to pull the pieces of that puzzle together for you, she's perfectly capable of putting the teams in place to get it done. That's the role of a great solutionist.

What keeps the business on autopilot?

We said it before, she designs great work with a portfolio to back it up. To the point where she doesn't worry about a pipeline or devising schemes to find new clients. They find her. House of Gray’s focuses on providing value, delivering work with integrity sewn in, and the clients come-a-knocking.

It takes time, don't think it happens overnight, but investing in this now -- for your own business -- pays off in the long run.

The links

• Megan Gray on Twitter
• House of Grays website

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What does being a freelancer mean to you?

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Paul Jarvis, or as I like to call him -- the epitome of a freelancer. That is, if you define a freelancer to be one not only engaging in work for hire, but also creates product, has recurring revenue services, and staking claims in the hot software as a service market.

I can relate.

I’ve been running my own company for well over a decade, employ a small team, have hundreds of clients, thousands of product customers and still consider myself a freelancer. I say that because I am not married to one type of work. While it’s all relatively similar, web services meets digital products, I’m not against changing my direction at any given time and finding something that better serves my business goals. I don’t consider my work, a singular job.

Interview with Paul Jarvis

Most pundits recommend uncovering a vertical and formulating a system to serve that vertical -- I fly in the face of this advice. To some degree, if you build yourself to serve an exact customer set, with an exact system in every engagement, it quickly evolves into a job — a repeatable task. What I enjoy about being a freelancer-for-hire is, every engagement is new. It is a means to use the creative chaos of wrangling in a new project — and getting paid for it. A salary, that you determine, as the freelancer.

Learn from Mr. Jarvis -- the buck doesn’t stop with client services, God help you.

The new-age freelancer should be agile, creating new revenue streams, different from trading time for dollars. For some it’s creating a course, for others creating a private membership of like-minded people. Further, whatever your digital download might be, it doesn’t stop at one — but many. Some will fail, others will skyrocket, most will be fairly mediocre. That’s okay, it’s why you need to focus on the sales cycle, the marketing, and the promotion.

Oh, you hate marketing? You’re not good at it? I’m sorry, but, I hope by now you don’t subscribe to, build it and they will come.

In my interview with The Freelancer we’ll chat about what it takes to stand apart from the crowd, create engaging content, and embrace the salesperson within. It’s not just about making products anymore, but breaking through the noise barrier that is the Twittersphere or meme-laden Facebook feed. I’ve said this a million times, if you’re not a big brand, you’re up against every GIF meme or link shared on the Internet. Including but not limited to, new Netflix releases, Buzzfeed articles, or Kevin Hart pics on Instagram — all grabbing for your potential customer’s eyes — stealing the attention you need to sell your stuff.

You might not like this, but I don’t think making products and selling digital products as a part-timer work will work much longer.

The more us freelancers flood the market with content to consume and products to purchase, the more the bar is raised. You either need a kick-ass quality product, or be a tremendous marketer with an even more engaged audience. Put it this way, I’ve been producing a podcast for the last three years, publishing engaging and opinionated WordPress-related audio and video, and I rarely sell anything of mine on this show. Until I tried selling 12 t-shirts, in two weeks. I barely made it by the finish line, with two days to spare.

Which boils down to this:

• No one really liked my t-shirt.
• I didn’t market it hard enough.
• No one gives a damn.
• (My audience) / (product market fit) = 12 sales.

But, what the hell do I know about selling t-shirts? Nothing, I’m just happy that it’s going into production. All of this is to say, even with the audience and a product made, you can’t always win big

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Marketing sucks for (most) WordPress developers.

Two major issues being there's not enough time to do it, and there's a certain stigma that it becomes to sales-y. Throughout my travels, I've noticed a lot developers that have successful products -- still -- are afraid to really build up the marketing arm of their business. Even when they know they need to do it, they become paralyzed to take action.

Today I'm stoked to interview Tonya Mork, electrical engineer & software engineer since the mid-80's, experienced with managing multi-million dollar robotic projects, and now recently launching Know the Code membership site on today's show.

Hands down, this is one of my top shows of 2016. Tonya brings a wealth of knowledge and actionable advice that will inspire you to get out there and conquer your business -- or at the very least -- today's to-do list.

Take action in your business with Tonya Mork

We wear many different hats as freelancers & boutique agency owners.

You might be developing and designing a website, but you also need to market yourself as the complete solution to continually attract customers. That is to say, you have no choice but to dive into some facet of marketing and promoting yourself, if you want to build a sustainable business.

What's the best way to do that?

Tell your story. Be different.

[Tweet "It's not about your framework or what your dev environment looks like, it's what makes you -- you."]

And guess what, it's not which framework you use or what your dev environment looks like, it's what makes you -- you.

Here's an example: At my studio, we're just as capable as the next agency, but I don't focus on that. I focus on the fact that we're a family owned business with a small team, working out of the same office. That customer service comes before our development prowess, and that building a trusting long-term relationship is paramount to success.

Oh, and we also get the job done.

Sure, we sprinkle in our technical know-how and send over referrals, but I want customers to understand who we are and how we operate first and foremost as what sets us apart.

What makes you different?

Some might look at what I just mentioned as a weakness -- and they very well could be to a variety of potential clients -- but it works for us. It defines us and defines the vertical of clients we like to serve.

So what about you? What chapter in your journey can you polish off and display to your would-be customers? Dig deep and find the uniqueness in you and your organization.

Get the eyeballs on your (membership) website that you deserve

All of this boils down to trust.

As Tonya puts it in this interview, building trust is the first step to driving traffic. The more you can do for other people and serving them, the better you do at gaining that trust. Tell your story and take action -- no one else is going to do it for you.

It's also just as important to focus on your customer's story as well. Listen to their needs and be open to working with them at a new capacity. I know that systemizing and productizing are all the rage right now, but sadly, we can't fit every project into the same template.

The links

• Tonya on Twitter
• Know the Code
• WP Developers Club
• Finding your purpose in life
• Like the show? Please rate us!

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Today I'm joined by my enemy, I mean friend -- frenemy? -- Brian Krogsgard.

All joking aside, I have an enormous amount of respect for what Brian has created over at Poststatus and for his outlook on the WordPress space. If you don't know who Brain is, he's the publisher behind Poststatus. Poststatus is a mix of WordPress and industry news, with a paid for membership component. Those that join the ranks of the site, receive a members-only e-mail newsletter and access to a private Slack channel where other like-minded WordPress people hangout. Brian has been blogging about WordPress, at some capacity, for over a decade and this latest effort (the blog and the membership) is his all-in bet for making a run at becoming a full-time owner.

WordPress as a platform for paid content

Like previous guests on The Matt Report, we dive into what it's like to plan a membership website launch, and the specifics of revenue/cost structure. More importantly, the intestinal fortitude one needs to become an owner no matter what the business model looks like.

• $100k in second year revenue
• $30k in secured "startup funding" (e.g. sponsorship)
• 1 employee (himself) & 2 contractors

These bullet points provide a glimpse of business facts associated with Brian's new membership + partnership venture. My last guest, who recently purchased WPLift for $205k, generates a bulk of his revenue through affiliate linking and paid content spots. Poststatus plans to be part of a modern movement where independent content publishers create non-traditional revenue streams. And by non-traditional, I'm generalizing the typical ad or PPC model.

If you're thinking about starting your own membership site, or WordPress news site, this will be a great episode for you.

Interview with Brian Krogsgard of Poststatus

Subscribe on iTunes

The links

• Brian on Twitter
• Poststatus
• Stratechery
• Bill Simmons Podcast
• Subscribe to my new YouTube channel!

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WPLift, a popular WordPress blog/review site, was recently acquired for $205k USD through a sale on Flippa.

It's one of the few WordPress blog sites that was able to "stick around" and survive the noise of this crowded publishing market. One reason being Oli, the creator of WPLift, put in the effort and dedication to publishing content. That dedication and consistency is what drove up the value of the sale -- something that could be quickly overlooked.

I've tried a handful of times to book Oli on the show to no avail, but excited to meet the new owner, Daan Tol.

Interview with Dan Tool owner of WPLift

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Common sense business building

Imagine a world where we could buy a single blueprint that lays out the plans for growing a business. It might include important areas like:

• Defining the audience
• Planning the workflow
• Automation
• Growth hacking
• Sales

Without a doubt, there are plenty of "entrepreneurs" trying to sell us on this fantasy, but missing one important fact that isn't as sexy: hard work.

There was some astonishment swirling around Twitter when news broke that WPLift had surpassed $100k during the original sale auction. That is to say, people could not believe a "WordPress blog" could reach that price-point, let alone sell for twice that milestone number.

But put this into perspective (Daan also expands on this in the episode): Oli wrote every single day about WordPress themes, plugins, and services.

Between paid reviews and other secondary income streams, he had to show up every_day to build the business. Creating content isn't easy, and achieving what Oli did is quite a feat. Congratulations to Oli on the sale and Daan for picking up a quality property.

The next challenge for WPLift: Can Daan maintain and exceed content quality to continue to grow? Tune into today's episode to find out!

The links

• WPLift
• Daan Tol on Twitter
• TOL e-commerce

My new podcast is live

My new podcast, PluggedIn Radio, is live! You can subscribe here: http://plugintut.com/subscribe and do read about why I started PluginTut.com.

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Can you believe it's been nearly three years since I last talked to Chris Lema?

Just like last week's guest, Brad Williams, many years have gone by since we last checked-in and there's a lot to talk about. Chris is well-known in the WordPress space for providing tremendous insight for us product and service owners. He recently exited his CTO role at Crowd Favorite and is taking to the internet to tackle new opportunities as a "freelancer."

There's a wealth of knowledge in this episode and I really hope you enjoy it!

Interview with Chris Lema

The reality of running a business

It's going to require a lot of work.

If you've been following along with my story (and this podcast) for the last few years, you'll know that success in this industry doesn't come easy. As much as the alluring internet marketing expert pushing Facebook ads might be trying to tell us otherwise. It takes more than just putting in the work too -- it's the emotional toll of running a business, that many of us aren't ready for:

• Bad clients
• Hiring
• Cash flow
• Losing out on jobs
• Missing good opportunities

I know I dig on "experts" a lot, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt, even though they make for good fodder. That said, one thing an expert can't prepare you for, is the emotional side of the points I mentioned above. In my opinion, while you might be open to learning "how to run a business", no one can prepare you for the feeling of it. You're only going to sharpen that by going through the paces.

It's not that I'm trying to scare you away from running a business, and owning your success, quite the opposite. Yes, there's a lot of responsibility for owning something, but you get the creative control. Don't want to work today? No problem. Want to launch a new twist on your marketing message? It's yours.

Pricing advice for WordPress product owners

The answer to our pricing woes are right in front of us.

Chris is very passionate on the idea that if our customer makes money with his or her website -- they should pay you for the value our product provides. I'm in, 100%. The challenge is: traditional WordPress plugin installation and activation. There would have to be some form of SaaS (Software as a Service) baked into our products to manage non-paying customers.

Maybe your website doesn't make money right now, but in the future it does. If owners can identify that and trigger an upgrade path remotely, everyone benefits. Customer receives more features and support, while the product becomes sustainable.

The call to action for us owners: let's make clear(er) distinctions to our customers.

Bonus Advice: Take care of your customers

Something I'm guilty of: Keeping up with your customers.

Chris brings up a great point of keeping clear and consistent lines of communication going with our customers. Not just when we need them to re-up their license, but a consistent delivery of value.

Simply put yourself in your own customer shoes:

• Day 1: You purchase a premium plugin.
• Day 2: You receive a thank you e-mail and some links to documentation.
• Day 349: You receive a warning that your license is about to expire.

Whoops!

What happened during the last 347 days?! Who are you again? A constant stream of connection to the customer and providing value will (should) increase your renewal rates.

Something to think about.

Links

• Chris Lema
• ChrisLema.com
• BeyondGo

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Nearly three years ago, I sat down with Brad Williams, CEO of WebDevStudios, to talk about his journey in the WordPress business world. A lot has changed since our last discussion, and today he's here to review where his business has grown and the lessons he's been able to learn.

Season 3 Episode 2 - Brad Williams

On larger WordPress projects & teams

Over the years, his team has been lucky enough to work on much larger projects with well-known enterprise clients. What we learn from this discussion is: client expectations change dramatically.

Even with a team of 40, Brad still faces size issues in the "big business" world. There are agencies that are thousands of people strong and are preferred over "small" agency like his -- let alone a boutique agency like mine or yours.

That said, it's not about the size of the agency that Brad's after, it's about being the best and putting out a great product. I can't agree enough. As an agency owner, I can get "jealous" of my peers that are constantly hiring and growing their team, but that doesn't help the clients that I serve now. Like Brad, I care about putting out the best possible product and support that I can for my customer, not how big my company retreat is.

Focus on how you can do great with what you have.

On launching products

Brad's team has been publishing a mix of free and premium plugins for years, but never had a centralized brand to house them under -- until now.

The launch of Pluginize not only places the plugins under one umbrella, but also kickstarts the formation of an entire product team at WebDevStudios. That team is lead by John Hawkins accompanied by 2 - 3 developers backing up their initiatives.

Brad has recognized the struggles of running an agency and a product business at the same and has dedicated this team to just the success of products. As he mentions in the episode, it's nearly impossible to split the time and dedication of improving product with the same group of people who also serve clients -- a dedicated team will solve that.

A lesson on forming a product team

Support is the cornerstone of a successful product. It's important that everyone that touches the product, in any shape or form, is exposed to supporting it. That means everyone from marketing to sales, should be aware of customer requests and desires surrounding the product experience.

The more your team understands product from the customer's eyes, the better off your product will be in the long run.

Show links

• Brad Williams
• WebDevStudios
• Pluginize
• Dradcast
• WordCamp US
• How to start a WordPress theme business
• PluggedIn Radio

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With so many WordPress themes available on the market, it might sound crazy to even try and start a business selling your own. There are super-huge, multi-purpose themes selling $100k worth a week with option panels the size of their revenue charts, others with big passionate communities supporting them, and countless other shops just as successful in their own right. How can you compete?

What would make someone choose you over anyone else?

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? What makes you different? As you will find out in this episode with Mike McAlister of Array.is, that’s the key ingredient in today’s theme market. It’s not just your theme’s code, your support, or even your price point -- give your customer a new reason to choose you over their never ending suite of choices.

If I haven’t scared you off by now, let’s dive into how to start a theme business.

Interview with Mike McAlister of Array.is

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I’ve been a big fan of Mike’s work for a long time. In fact, I’m using one of his themes for my new podcast, PluggedIn Radio -- but more on that later.

There’s a short list of theme companies I recommend, given that I own one myself, and Array.is is in the top of that list. When it comes to someone that cares about every pixel, I let his portfolio speak for itself.

Mike and I chat about his experience building the Array.is business and how it’s taken shape over the years. If you’re thinking of launching your own theme shop, this interview and my guide below should be a great kickstarter.

If you enjoyed this episode and the launch of Season 3, “Getting back to the roots,” I’d love a review on iTunes. I’ll read new reviews on the next episode.

How to start a WordPress theme busines

I’ve created the following guide as an overview of sorts to starting your WordPress theme business. I’m sure there are some finer details that you might consider, but consider this your bootcamp style guide to launching.

Step 1: Decide on your theme type

Multi-purpose. Food blog. Photography focused. E-commerce. The daily blogger.

Decide on what vertical you plan on tackling with your new theme. Once you define that, you set yourself up to build a workflow or blueprint taking you from concept to promotion. Knowing what kind of theme you want to produce helps you answer the following:

• How big is my audience?
• What kind of developer experience do I need?
• What kind of design experience do I need?
• How many options will this theme need?
• Will this theme need to work with other plugins on the market?
• Does this theme need to integrate with third party services?
• How much support will this theme require?
• At what price can I sell this theme?
• Will I be able to craft a solid marketing and promotion plan for this theme? Should I use a theme framework?

These questions may be the tip of the iceberg, but they are certainly questions I would ask myself if I were to develop a new theme.

A multi-purpose theme may have a larger audience than the photography theme, but it’s much harder to support and go to market. Similarly, the photography theme would face said challenges compared to a theme made for food trucks selling tacos -- but way easier to find a direct audience.

What type of theme will you build?

Step 2: Define your development skill

I am not a developer, but I play one on TV.

Many of you starting WordPress product companies are developers and designers by trade, so finding a developer isn’t necessarily a challenge, until you want to s

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I’ve been in the business of serving web clients for well over a decade, and I can say with resounding confidence: it’s not getting any easier.

Digital service businesses are not exempt from the same challenges that traditional businesses face. There’s always a need to find more customers, the market is increasingly competitive, all the while, more and more information and tools are made available to our potential customer. For those of us in the digital service space, WordPress isn’t easy for everyone -- even agency owners.

How can we continue to grow our practice and wrangle enough revenue to reach healthy and sustainable revenues? Kronda Adair joins us to provide her “blueprint” on approaching this problem head on.

Constantly evolving

Amongst the many awesome tidbits of knowledge shared in this episode, one thing Kronda mentioned was that of constantly evolving.

• Learning more
• Refining process
• Changing the pitch

These are all important traits of not only a healthy business, but of a great entrepreneur. As I walked into my coworking space today, I thought about how so many of us become dormant in our offerings. Even worse is when we feel our business is “just right.” If you’re feeling that level of comfort, I’d challenge you to dissect it and uncover what you can do next to push the needle further.

If your business is on autopilot, believe me, someone is coming after your piece of the pie. Hell, I could probably buy a class on your niche through one of the many Internet entrepreneur ads on Facebook I see on a daily basis.

Continue throwing some resources at research and development. They won’t always work out, but those that stick tend to become part of core competency of your offering -- channels that grow the business. To me, this is the natural evolution of your message or brand statement.

On failure

I’d rather learn from someone that struck out 100 times but still gets up to bat, then someone that hit a home run on their first try.

Failure brings the great lessons to the surface, the actionable stuff showing us what not to do next time. Don’t get me wrong, I love a great success story, but often we hear how much luck played a role in one’s success. Even Jeff Bezos noted how lucky Amazon has been in the opening of his letter to shareholders.

Give me the breakdown of the hard lessons learned -- that’s what I want.

They say we all have a “superpower,” and one I’m constantly refining is my awareness of the business. Knowing failure will come, and when it does, understand how to deal with it. To remind yourself of the hard parts and flipping your thoughts from, “Why is this happening to me?” to “How do I navigate through this?”

It’s funny, in business, we either hear that business is going great or it sucks. In reality, I bet there’s a whole lot more “normal” time than we realize. I don’t want to go all Zen state on you, but it’s during these times we need to appreciate when a business is healthy, carving out the time to invest in new opportunity.

Podcast episode

Show notes

Fundraiser: https://igg.me/at/websites-that-work

Business Website: http://karveldigital.com

Personal Website: http://kronda.com

On getting fired: http://kronda.com/11-awesome-things-after-losing-job/

Hierarchy of Website Needs: https://karveldigital.com/the-hierarchy-of-website-needs/

10k Bootca

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Creative accounting.

Have you heard that phrase used before? I certainly didn’t until I met today’s guest, Jason Blumer. Jason runs a virtual accounting practice specifically designed for creative agencies and development firms. I love this business idea because it focuses on a specific vertical, with a specific customer type, translating to a better level of service -- something we can all learn from.

He wraps it all together nicely by producing a podcast called, The Businessology Show. A podcast I got hooked on quite some time ago. He speaks to his potential customer and provides value at the same time, it’s genius. He offers a wide-range of guests that have boutique agencies (like me), all the way to larger 40+ person shops, each producing their own unique product or service. I have no issues if you add his show right next to mine on your playlist!

We cover a TON in this (almost) hour-long podcast. From team building to the client sales process and everything in between. This has become one of my favorite conversations on the show, and I hope you enjoy it too!

Jason Blumer on building a digital agency

Nobody knows what they are doing.

What an important takeaway for me. As we (my company) move upstream in the client services market, it’s becoming increasingly obvious a lot of folks don’t know what they are doing. The client isn’t always sure what they want or what they need, and other agencies producing work for clients don’t have a clue either. We’re even finding companies that have charged our client 10x what we would have charged for lesser quality work.

I think a lot of your listeners are already doing the things that represent a higher value, they’re not just putting a higher price on it.” - Jason Blumer

I’ve been talking about the negative impact envying other’s successes has on your mental and emotional health for a while now. Jason and I both agree this is one of the most dangerous traits an entrepreneur can carry during their journey of building a business. We’re our own worst enemy when it comes to the success of our business. Often we can drown ourselves in the emotional factor of success and wanting it before we’ve really put in the hard work. The real hard work, not to be confused with just getting the tasks done.

What makes this easier? Finding the right people to work with on both sides of the project -- client and team.

If you’ve been following me for a while you know I use a belief document to get a potential client and I on the same page. This introduces our internal belief and culture to the client before we even talk about the project itself. This allows me to gauge whether or not the client and my team will work well together. My strategy is to get on a sales call and ask questions relating to some of the information in the document to see if the customer actually read it. At that point, we’ll know if the customer actually values our time and values the way we work together.

Other topics we cover in the show

• Team building
• Supporting customers
• Defining your unique value proposition
• How to discuss pricing

Show links

• JasonBlumer.com
• The Businessology Show
• Blumer CPAs

Listen to the audio

Subscribe on iTunes (p.s. We’d love a five-star review!)

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WordPress has allowed me to kickstart and foster my own career in the digital age and I'm betting it has for you too.

That's the beauty of such a highly-adopted open source web publishing platform, there's always a layer of service or support that the market needs. Sure it's free, but we all know what that really means. Over the years, businesses and organizations have called upon the likes of freelancers and agencies to aide in extending WordPress to fit their unique requirements.

But what if you're not a developer or a designer? Heck, what if you're not even a traditional consultant, how would you launch your own WordPress career?

Today I'm joined by Bob Dunn who built a career off of training and educating around the WordPress ecosystem. I'm bullish on this space and if you're looking to dive into the deep-end -- this is the episode for you!

Options for the non-technical WordPress business owner

Listen to the show

Making a living in the WordPress space without having to ship a line of code sounds like the good life, doesn't it? There's a certain freedom when you're not constantly pressured to balance client expectations for the services you deliver.

Bob and I cover some of the most popular ways for you to monetize your info-based WordPress business. This is a must-listen and one of my favorite episodes that I've recorded, enjoy!

Affiliate sales

An age-old way of making money in the WordPress space, linking to affiliate products. This is the lowest hanging fruit and something you could dip your toe into by simply recommending your favorite WordPress products.

Paid reviews

Something I'm currently offering, paid reviews. Bob has also started doing paid reviews, amongst other notable blogs in our space. Of course, I'd challenge you to find a unique voice and point of view if you pursue this route.

Advertise/Sponsorship

A traditional method which requires you to really jump on the consistent content publishing routine to drive loads of traffic and build an audience.

Membership/Courses

This is a very common route for today's online entrepreneur to pursue. It's something I've experimented with here on the Matt Report with some limited success. The most notable success in our space, would be Post Status and WP Elevation.

Workshops

The most intense of the bunch, workshops can be a lucrative venture, but require a lot of hands-on time. In today's episode, Bob shares his own experiences with running workshops and why he's decided to wind them down in 2016.

What are you doing to monetize your business?

I'd love to hear what steps you've taken to monetize your business. Especially since I recently published my first paid WordPress review. Is it a new members-only course or a more traditional hands-on training consultation? Share your experiences below.

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Are you part of a local WordPress meetup and you're interested in growing that into an annual WordCamp? Or maybe you're generally interested in what goes on behind the scenes for our heroic organizers?

If so, I've brought on David Bisset and Ptah Dunbar, part of the organizing team for WordCamp Miami 2016 to chat about their experiences planning their next event. They've been successfully involved with the Miami Meetup & WordCamp for the last 8 years, which is quite the milestone. Kudos to them and their contributing team for keeping an amazing group running for such a span of time.

We were a bit short on time, so this is quite the lightning round discussion where we provide tips for an organizing a team, how WordCamps can break down (technical) barriers, and how we hope to make a real impact within local communities.

If you're looking to make an official start, check out the Become an Organizer page on the WordCamp planning site.

Watch the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gd-FuYPtPg

Listen in

Subscribe on iTunes

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What is a website teardown?

A common practice in which someone evaluates a website “line-by-line” and provides feedback to the website owner within a given context. For instance, in today’s episode, Devin and I teardown four unique commercial WordPress plugin websites submitted by listeners. We’re looking through the lens as if we were landing on their respective sites for the very first time, as an interested customer. The feedback we provide should be used as a guide to help the owners improve messaging, design, and overall usability of the website. At the end of the day, hopefully, this advice proves valuable and increases sales for their business.

Critical website feedback through teardowns

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The process of a teardown is to get feedback that you, the website owner, may not have been able to see with your "business blinders" on. Some of it hurts and some of it makes sense, just know that getting an outsider to look over their interpretation of your design, layout, or messaging is a valuable investment.

A few notes about this episode:

• We had no prior knowledge or relationship with the products or websites evaluated. I knew of one, but had never purchased or used their products before.
• We don’t expect our word to be taken as gospel. As to say, who the heck are we to give advice?! Devin and I are plugin creators and struggle with the same issues we’ve outlined in today’s show. It was an exercise/experience for all of us.
• Life. We realize that some of the KPI’s (key performance indicators) we point out are a result of everything else that’s going on. Folks are building products, supporting products, possibly working day jobs — so we can’t expect every T to be crossed and every I to be dotted.

Interested in having us look at your site for a future episode? Contact me.

Websites we evaluated in this episode:

• http://jem-products.com/
• https://www.rsvpproplugin.com/
• https://sproutapps.co/
• http://quizandsurveymaster.com/

Bonus podcast:

We had some audio issues earlier in the episode, so I decided to keep that out along with the time consideration. In this bonus episode, Devin and I recap our 2015 and plans for 2016 ahead.

Using our free Baton theme to redesign Quiz and Survey Master

Here’s a bonus video tutorial of how I use our latest free WordPress theme, Baton, to re-design Quiz and Survey Master website.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWFHSSeueuw&feature=youtu.be

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With so many tools and communication channels available to us, choosing how you support your WordPress product can be a real head-scratcher.

Luckily, in today's episode, Devin and I are here to explain the best methods we've found that work in our respective businesses. If you've been in the WordPress product business for a while now, you know how interesting support can get. Depending on your product, your support channel can span fairly broad spectrums. From supporting agencies that are using your plugin for client work, all the way to first-time WordPress users that just purchased your theme.

Bridging that gap is always a challenge. Our products are expected to work in an ecosystem that we have very little control over. Think about the various hosts, versions of WordPress, and conflicting plugin code a user might be running. It's actually quite scary when you think about it. Recently the team at Yoast wrote about their headaches launching a new version. A good read for anyone considering pushing out a major update.

Support channels mentioned in this episode

While it's best you listen or watch the video, here are the areas of support Devin and I discuss:

1. Documentation
2. Blog post
3. Seminars/webinars
4. Helpdesk (like Helpscout, Freshdesk, intercom.io, etc)
5. Forums (BBPress, Discourse, etc)
6. Ongoing training videos (like an "academy")
7. Live chat plugins (Zopim, Olark, etc)
8. Provide a solid upgrade and development path
9. Provide industry knowledge relative to your client
10. Automation (for segmentation and follow-up)
11. Content marketing in the form of blogs & educational shows/podcasts

Listen to the audio

Watch the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmLR2fSySfA

Like the show? Consider joining the newsletter.

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Can authors still make money selling WordPress themes?

In today's episode, Jonathan Atkinson an Envato Exclusive Author, joins Devin and I to discuss the current state of affairs in the WordPress theme marketplace. Atkinson shares some deep insights into Envato's recent corporate restructuring, impact of multipurpose themes, and progressive competition in the space.

Envato isn't the only distribution point lacking balance either. I discuss some of the challenges with the freemium-to-premium theme business model that I experience at WordPress.org with Slocum Themes. Top spots are worth a lot of money on WordPress.org and with recent findings of automated downloads knowingly -- or unknowingly -- gaming the rankings, it can be a disheartening experience for authors trying to run a respectable business.

Of course, Devin and I update you on the status of our plugin businesses and more! Enjoy today's episode? Consider leaving us a 5-star review on iTunes or join the newsletter to stay connected.

Listen to the episode

Links mentioned

• Jonathan Atkinson
• Cr3ativ theme shop
• Envato
• Creative Market
• Mojo marketplace
• WordPress.org Themes
• Slocum Themes
• Devin Walker
• Theme Isles' 8th Transparency report
• The WordPress theme directory no longer counts automated downloads

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Rachel Carden is a web developer & designer within the student affairs division at the University of Alabama. Carden is also the driving force behind the latest WordPress conference, WPCampus. In today’s episode, we discuss the different challenges of managing web projects at large universities and the challenges that come with starting a new community movement. The insights shared in this episode will help WordPress consultants and community organizers alike.

It’s common for the average WordPress consultant to stick with small business websites as their core competency. Clients aside, these types of projects aren’t very complex and they don’t require over-the-top deliverables. It’s familiar territory: a responsive theme, traditional navigation, and a standard content layout. Apply the talents to build websites like that on repeat, coupled with great customer service, and you’ve created a strong business model for yourself.

Moving up market to service higher education and offer premium WordPress services takes a different route, however. Deliverables become more robust and often need to scale well beyond a shared hosting account of your normal mom-and-pop shop. Moreover, fully understanding how these organizations function becomes more important than how well you can write scalable code.

When folks wonder why they can’t write proper estimates or lose out on project bids, it’s often because they don’t fully understand their customer’s market. This goes further than just your customer’s customer. The more you know about how these organizations move and decide on web projects, the better prepared you will be for the next big sales call. If you’re looking to service more higher-ed clients, Rachel dives really deep in this episode.

Listen to the episode

WPCampus

Where WordPress meets higher education

From a one-page website and slack account, to a global movement of over 300 members in a matter of months. If you’re in higher-ed as a WordPress user, consultant or job-seeker this is going to be an amazing community to stay-tuned to. If you want to have your hand in deciding the direction of topics and the first meetup location, I strongly suggest that you join their slack channel and get to know everyone. This is one event that I’m eagerly watching and excited to see succeed.

Important links mentioned:

• Rachel Carden @bamadesigner
• http://bamadesigner.com/
• University of Alabama
• WPCampus
• http://wpcampus.org/data
• A WordPress conference for higher education: coming to a campus near you?
• Using WordPress in the World of Higher Education

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I've only geeked out a few times when booking someone on the show - this was one of them.

I was excited for the opportunity to sit down and dive deep into learning how Justin approaches his work-life balance, because with, Marketing for Developers, and countless other products for sale, he also holds down a day job.

Crazy, right?

One important aspect that really draws me to Justin is his authenticity. I know, I know. I’m sick of hearing that word too. But seriously, I feel like I know this guy really well. I love listening to his Product People podcast because he is realistic and down-to-earth.

A lot of people in the marketing or product development world are really just putting on an act for us. They are all trying to stay on the current trends to make themselves seem relevant, or creating a Facebook page so they can push ads on us. That’s not the case with Justin. He's openly experimenting with all of his product launches so that we can take away some really actionable advice.

Even though you might think that with his good looks, amazing beard, and type-A personality, selling a product would be second-nature, but this is not true. Just like us, Justin has had to overcome the same self-doubt and fear that we all go through. He has just learned how to push past this fear and use what he has to succeed. In today's episode we'll learn how he creates, and the difficulties and triumphs he has faced along the way.

In a world of market research and A/B testing, building a product (or service) might feel too black & white. Justin's approach is simple - build something that solves a problem. It's a very organic and grassroots approach that I certainly appreciate. Focusing on solving problems means that you already have a market. Plus, when you can solve a problem that you may have in your own life, well that’s just the whipped cream on top.

Build something you enjoy. This may seem obvious, but too many people think abstractly when they are creating a product. Try not to think too big. Just try to think of something that you can create and put your own spin on. Think of something that helps you grow an audience organically, because when you have an organic audience you have a community; and when you have a community you have loyalty, and loyalty is gold. You'll grow a raving fan base, a referral machine, and a product that will keep gaining revenue long after you created it.

Listen to the episode:

Learn more about Justin:

• Marketing for Developers
• Product people podcast
• Follow him on Twitter

Julep Beta is out!

What are you waiting for?! My new product, Julep, is ready for your eager beta-testing hands!

Download it now.

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Who knew that getting married and going on honeymoon would take up so much time?

Devin and I are back to recap where we've been and what we've accomplished over the last month. One of the biggest lessons I've learned? Business and life are going to constantly challenge you -- sometimes at the same time.

Give yourself some breathing room and if you can avoid it, don't jam-pack yourself with what can be avoided. If you can carve out some buffer time for the unexpected, you'll be able to handle things that crop up a little bit easier.

Enjoy this episode and we'll see you next time!

Listen to the latest episode

Subscribe on iTunes

Links mentioned

• Julep plugin
• Conductor plugin
• Slocum Themes
• Maps Builder Pro
• Give
• Beaver Builder
• Caldera Forms
• Justin Jackson

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I turned to Facebook ads this week in my quest to grow the Julep beta list to 100 subscribers.

If you’ve been following along, I’m actively developing a new plugin that will make your WordPress images a little more fun for readers. The plugin hit a bit of a snag these last 2 weeks, with a critical bug that is stopping me from shipping the first version.

I’m in a bit of a time crunch as I’m ramping up for my wedding at the end of the month and then off to honeymoon. I’m looking forward to getting this bug squashed and releasing it within the next week. Getting a workable version before I leave is an important goal for me so I can hit the ground running when I get back.

Currently I’m sitting at 87 beta subscribers which isn’t too far off from my short-term goal.

Listen to this episode

Results: $20 Facebook Ad

Here’s a screenshot of the $20 ad spend on the Julep video introduction.

Performance wise, I was satisfied.

Even though the ad didn’t have a huge impact on overall list growth — about 6 to 10 subs — it reached a decent number of viewership, which at least broadened general awareness. The takeaway from this? Create a more optimized ad next time, something with a call to action to subscribe to the list.

Perhaps a direct link in the copy or embedded in the video/image will do better. Facebook does offer a one click call-to-action on their video ads now, so I’ll give that another go and see if I can’t hit that 100 subscriber mark.

Announcing a co-host for Season 2

Since the start of Season 2, I’ve been searching for someone to share in similar business-building experiences along the way.

Finding someone that was deeply interested in growing a product company, while they still operated a general practice agency, was very important to me. After searching high and low, I finally found someone that aligns well with what I’ve got going on in my own business.

Meet Devin Walker, founder of WordImpress, a theme and plugin shop.

Devin recently launched Give, a plugin aimed to solve donations for WordPress powered websites. Together we’ll share our stories — good, bad, and otherwise — about running a WordPress product business.

If you have any immediate questions for us, let us know below.

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This isn't your typical how-to select a WordPress theme tutorial. Instead of comparing and contrasting features, we're comparing and contrasting the expectations of a theme buyer and a theme seller.

This article should serve as a guide for buyers to understand where they should invest their money and for sellers to ease the pain points of selling themes in ruthless marketplace.

I’ve been selling themes for a while now, dating back to 2007, when I sold Drupal themes for the real estate market. Slocum Themes launched in late 2009 after I started my WordPress development shop, Slocum Studio.

Since then, we’ve been moderately successful with themes. The first year was abysmal, but as we’ve progressed, created new themes, and became more known in the WordPress space — it’s turned into a nice revenue stream for our overall business.

And that’s exactly how we (currently) look at our theme shop — as an add-on to the overall business. We’re not living off of theme sales, but we’re also not struggling to stay afloat just selling them. When it comes to marketing our themes, I take a very organic approach:

• Content marketing
• Podcasting
• YouTube channel
• Free distribution via WordPress.org

This nestles in nicely with our overall mission of being a client services company & a product company.

tl;dr Audio Version

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Current state of the theme business

"Commoditized. Cheap prices. Too much competition. Dominated by crapware.

Selling a WordPress theme is akin to selling a new car.

If you’re a Chevy dealer, chances are, there’s another Chevy dealer within 20-40 miles of you. You both, for the most part, have the same inventory available. If not, you could certainly get whatever it is you’re customer is looking for. Because of this, new cars, in terms of profit, are always the slimmest.

Everyone’s got ‘em and everyone’s looking to move ‘em. Even different brands have identical looks and features. Does this sound familiar yet?

For the buyer, you’ve got plenty of choices — and that’s great. It also means prices should stay pretty low — and they are. If you complain about a $59 purchase for a website that powers your business, dive into what should be right up your alley, Building Websites All-in-one for Dummies. This 747-page read is what you’ll have to plough through to get a better understanding of what went into building a theme. That and over a decade of learning & improving the craft.

What is a theme?

Before we go too far, let's define what a theme actually is.

It’s the presentational layer of your project’s content, data, and media across many devices. Most commonly presented as a marketing or presentational brochure and increasingly becoming a way to present products for sale.

It's the pretty front-end of your website.

What about the concept of a theme or the utility, as it were?

For me, it’s very much the essence of the 80/20 rule. Something that is going to accelerate a project 80% of the way, with very little effort and at an affordable cost as it relates to the overall budget. A theme should be a fraction of your overall budget, while you spend the rest on expanding it, consulting, and building out the website.

That's the final 20% and the phase that is sorely overlooked.

When adapting a theme to your needs, that last m

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We're back with Season 2 Episode 2 documenting the launch of my latest product, Julep.

This week I've invited returning guest, Troy Dean of WP Elevation, to talk about the fears of launching a product. We also get into providing some advice for growing your e-mail list for a product launch.

Sit back, take a sip of your favorite summer cocktail and let's get into the show!

Overcoming our fears

If you're not embarrassed of your first product, you've launched too late. I love that line.

So many of us are paralyzed while in pixel perfect mode, that we never ship our next thing. From blog posts to products, it's not easy to launch. I get it, it's human nature, we want to be accepted. I know as a founder, when asked what my 10 year plan is, it's to make things people love. When people don't love my stuff, it hurts.

More often than not, this journey is going to come at the cost of some egg on our face. However, our best lessons and growth opportunities come from failure.

Listen to Season 2 Episode 2: Overcoming product launch fears

Like the show? Leave us a review -- it takes 43 seconds!

Gathering your first 100 e-mail subscribers

I've already surpassed my short-term goal of 50 subscribers to the Julep e-mail list. I wasn't going for astronomical list growth. I'm sure there are some that laugh at 68 subs -- but hey, no fear, right?

How did I get the list to 68

• Announced GetJulep.com on Carrie's podcast
• Announced it on my podcast
• Sent an e-mail to my Matt Report Newsletter list
• Wrote a blog post on GetJulep.com here.
• Tweeted about it (roughly 6 times)
• Posted the announcement article on ManageWP.org

My next goal is 100.

Seeing that I've hit a snag in the development of the plugin -- can't move text 100% across the image -- I'll have a bit of delay. I'm shooting for beta announcement in a week. By then, I hope, I'll be at 100 interested folks.

When Troy and I chatted about growing an e-mail list, he mentioned creating a downloadable "style" guide of sorts. Some PDF or checklist of sorts to help bloggers create more engaging photos. Your typical "lead magnet" strategy.

Here are some of the e-mail platforms we mentioned:

• Mailchimp.com
• GetDrip.com
• MyEmma.com
• Infusionsoft.com
• ActiveCampaign.com
• AgileCRM.com

Should Julep go freemium or paid only?

Have you seen what's available for free on the internet? - Troy Dean

I'm still exploring the business model of Julep, but I'm certainly leaning towards the freemium model. I think the interesting thing, as it relates to add-ons, is the price point. I think add-ons in the e-commerce plugin space can be priced a lot higher than more of these "accessory" add-ons I have planned for Julep. As to say, a payment gateway is a "must-have" versus with Julep, a new font is a "nice-to-have."

Either way it's going to be fun to explore that!

Learn more about Julep at Get

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Launching a product isn’t easy.

I announced a new plugin called, Julep, which is going to help make your WordPress images more fun and engaging. Unlike my other digital products, Julep was born from a nagging frustration I have with manipulating my own blog post images. No market research, no client pain ponts — just my own.

I’m sick of uploading my featured images to another service or into Pixelmator to embed headlines or quotes to make my posts a bit more -- fun. It becomes clumsy and my desktop ends up being cluttered with cropped images and duplicate files. Why can’t we do this right in native WordPress?

With Julep, you can. That’s the challenge I’m tackling. I expect it won't be easy.

Journaling every step of the way — just for you.

I’ve been fascinated with Justin Jackson’s Build & Launch podcast, a commentary about the many phases of launching something new. Providing listeners with enormous value through a raw look into product creation and exposing the emotions throughout the process. Value, not just for the listener, but for the creator as well.

Transparency can be a killer.

We (creators & onlookers) can become so overwhelmed with success as it translates to money, that it could manifest itself as depression.

I’d like to explore journaling as a form of education. A way that is useful for the reader/listener and useful to keep the creator (me) grounded. You won’t find boastful revenue charts or encouraging “entreprenurial quotes” in this story.

Just the now and where we’re going next. Let’s begin.

Launching Julep Episode

Listen on iTunes and leave a review!

Here's what went into building and launching the first iteration of Julep.

The idea

As I mentioned earlier, I was looking for a native WordPress solution for embedding text into a featured image. Part of our content marketing plan for Conductor, is to create relevant content for our target audience.

With so much content fighting for reader's attention, you have to get as creative as possible to earn that click. One strategy, is to embed the post title or alternative title into your featured image. That often means I'm uploading photos to an external service, making my images there, downloading and then uploading to WordPress.

It's fine if you don't blog a lot, but when you're running multiple blogs and posting multiple times a week -- it can get clumsy fast.

Give me that power power natively to WordPress.

The name Julep - Cost: $9

I feel like people put too much thought in naming.

In fact, a few people pinged me when I launched and said, "I don't really get the name."

That's fine and you don't have to. Too many creators in the WP world give their plugins a static name. Some spin on "wp" or "press" and that's fine, I get it. Sometimes it makes sense to align with that for marketing purposes.

For instance our Custom Post Type plugin is called, Custom Post Type Maker. Our child theme plugin is called, One-Click Child Theme. Names just come to me. Julep is, in my context, a tasty summer drink primarily made with my favorite Bourbon. GetJulep.com was registered.

Fun. Light. Refreshing.

It's how I envision manipulating your images to make them more engaging. It's also not WP'ish and I think there can be some fun things done with branding.

If it g

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“I created a WordPress plugin and sold $4k of licenses in the 1st hour of launch."

We’ve heard it all before and you probably tuned into this very podcast to learn how someone went from eating ramen noodles, to living on the 4-hour work week island.

As entrepreneurs, we’re not just looking for a big payday, but also to see our product adopted and loved by the masses. It’s an earmark of success that drives us to do what we do. Getting mixed up in just thinking about the money, can cause unnecessary burden and stress.

But along the way, if we don’t convert our failures into lessons — as my friend Cory says — we’re doomed to stay trapped on the hamster wheel of launching a product business.

Today, I’d like to share with you the lessons I’ve learned launching one of my products, Conductor plugin.

Product Launch Lessons Video Presentation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anQglk01PQs

Listen to the audio

10 Lessons Learned Launching Conductor

In February of 2014, we decided that we would turn our simple minimize blocks plugin (internal name) into a product.

Six months later, we launched a paid-beta program that generated 4 thousand dollars in revenue in it’s first hour. Here are the lessons we learned:

Lesson 1: Knowing when you have a product

There’s an implicit challenge to running an agency and a product company — time.

To that point, you need to make up for lost R&D product time that you’re spending on deliverables. I like to leverage our client work as part of our product research. It’s important to look at everything in scale:

• Can we turn this into a plugin?
• Will another client ask for this?
• Does this help our internal workflow?

If you find yourself answering yes to the questions above, chances are you’re onto something that could be your next new product. Warning, checking those boxes off, isn’t the only task at hand — you still need to build a good product.

Scratching your own itch first:

When we were building Conductor, we looked to improve our own internal workflow first before taking customer feature requests. We saw commonalities across client projects we were building and looked at our sales pipeline to see what potential a new plugin could solve.

This effectively saved us time and allowed us to make more money on projects in the long run. And because we ALL suffer from Imposter Syndrome, I thought:

“If it doesn’t sell, at least we’ll still use it internally."

Lesson 2: Start promoting ASAP

As soon as we had a working model of the plugin, I started creating teaser videos. This wasn’t a targeted marketing campaign, it was just general coverage of our upcoming product. I simply wanted to gauge if people were listening, was there any interest, and what was the reaction.

Each new feature would get a new video or talked about on one of our podcast episodes. It started to build the anticipation I was looking for. The last thing I wanted to do was build a product behind the proverbial curtain, only to ship my product and then have to educate my market on our offering.

Starting out early built the hype and the curiosity, which ultimately lead to a successful launch day.

Lesson 3: I formed an advisory board early

I was able to recruit 6 super-talented folks from around the WordPress community. Each brought their own unique voice and talents, which helped tremendously with positioning the early product for further development.

It was important that I secured people that believed in us and the product. It was an early boost to confidence, which is just as important as having early customers. It also delivered some (small) marke

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I'm a firm believer in fully understanding the essentials (or fundamentals) of any problem you're trying to solve.

For instance, you might not be a designer, but you're quoting design work for your digital business. It's imperative you understand the scope of work the design process covers and entails. This will help you formulate better proposals, articulate the pitch to your client, and work seamlessly with a design partner.

Rafal Tomal of Copyblogger Media joins us for Part 5: Web Design Essentials & Designing For A Platform.

The Matt Report Web Design Series

• Part 1: Discovery Process
• Part 2: Setting the budget & expectation
• Part 3: Managing the $5 – $15k web project
• Part 4: Managing the $50k web project

Interview with Rafal Tomal

I always enjoy talking to my friend, Rafal.

I'm a huge fan of his work, but more than that, he's a great guy. He has, what seems on the outside, a very subtle and methodical approach to his career as a designer. His work has a distinct level of detail that you would expect from a company like Apple.

So, as you can imagine, I was excited to find out that he was publishing a book about this while I was recording the season. We're going to talk about that, the lessons he's teaching, and what his journey was like selling a new product.

Interested to learn what the design process was like for the Rainmaker platform?

For Matt Report listeners only: Save 20% on The Essential Web Design Handbook! Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on Soundcloud

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Enter part 4 of our web design series, Managing the Fifty-Thousand Dollar Web Project.

The Matt Report Web Design Series

• Part 1: Discovery Process
• Part 2: Setting the budget & expectation
• Part 3: Managing the $5 - $15k web project

I’m stoked for this episode, not just because of the size budget we're discussing, but because we aren’t focusing on WordPress.

Carson McComas is founder of Shopify Custom, a (you guessed it) custom Shopify agency. He recently re-designed Andrew Youderian’s e-commerce site, which included a $50k budget. He’s joining Matt Report today to discuss that project and others that move through the pipeline at his agency.

Why you should listen if you're a client: At first the budget might scare you, but you will quickly realize there’s a lot more value included in a project of this size than just pushing pixels. We explore how we focus on your business goals and put a plan in place to reach them.

Why you should listen if you’re an agency: Carson brings a healthy perspective on delivering the value our clients want. We explore the best phases to invest time and money into, with all roads leading back to a solid ROI.

By the way, if you’re not just a little attracted to the Shopify ecosystem after this interview — you might need to check your pulse. :)

This is a must-listen episode. Enjoy!

Web Design Series Part 4: Carson McComas and the $50k budget

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Welcome to part 3 of our web design series, Managing the $5k - $15k web project.

The Matt Report Web Design Series

• Part 1: Discovery Process
• Part 2: Setting the budget & expectation

Today’s guest is the founder of 9Seeds and recovering podcast host, John Hawkins. I can’t remember exactly when I came across 9Seeds, but I do remember following their work ever since I stepped into the WordPress scene. I really enjoyed talking to John because his day-to-day and businesses experiences are a lot like the rest of ours.

He’s servicing clients in the the sweet spot price-range that most boutique agencies run in. He’ll share his insight into that market and why he has chosen to stay within it. John is armed with some great advice for those of us that are just about to make that leap from a solo-shop to a partnership. I particularly liked his take on helping non-profits when their expectations align with their budget.

If you’re finding yourself with a small team and launching WordPress sites in this range, this is the episode for you!

Managing WordPress website projects up to $15k

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It's easy for us to sit back and tell consultants to raise their rates and set better expectations, but it's another story when we are the customer.

Today’s guest is re-launching his company website and he’s here to tell us how he approached the process. Meet, Jason Resnick, expert WordPress developer, consultant, and business owner.

He's in a special segment, as a developer who is routinely hired to build a solution like this, it is not unfamiliar territory for him. However, stepping outside of his comfort zone and setting a realistic budget is new to him. Interviewing designers that understand his goals and branding needs is new to him. Giving up the control of branding while letting someone else drive the bus — new to him.

When you know how the sausage is made, things tend to taste a little bit differently. Let’s dive in.

Web re-design project: Setting a budget & expectations

Hot points:

• Why he's not worried about spending more than $5k
• How he's going to measure ROI
• How he chose his designer out of 20 candidates
• Looking back at bad designer to client relationships
• Setting up proper communication
• Outline the goals for marketing and content at launch

You have to be willing and open to listen to the expert. It's their lively hood. -Jason Resnick

Listening options:

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The podcast is back!

We’re (finally) entering into that web design story line I’ve been promising you for quite some time now. I’ve been sitting on the entire series for the last 2 months, wrestling with ideas on how to release it.

• One at a time?
• In episode chunks?
• Netflix style?

I’ve settled on doing a hybrid approach. We’ll do some chunky-Netflix. In today’s new episode, we uncover the 3 critical phases to the perfect discovery process. This is a complete walk-through of the Core OS process with a twist from Angie Meeker.

Here’s what we cover:

• How to build your customer’s brand statement, even when they won’t tell you.
• Reverse engineer your perfect customer profile.
• Prioritize goals the right way.

“Doctor” Angie sits through a 2.5+ hour session to help me identify an upcoming redesign of ConductorPlugin.com.

Two-point-five hours?!

Don’t worry, it’s edited down in the audio podcast, but if you want ALL of it, you can head over to the YouTube channel. It’s a very interactive discovery process and seeing the pieces of our talk move around her diagram is very important.

Stop! This is important to you if...

• You're about to launch a website
• You consult with people to define their business
• You're trying to get team & client buy-in
• You're about to launch a product and need to define your audience

This isn't just for web designers. This is for anyone launching a business and trying to understand the best path to achieve perfect messaging. The methods we practice in this call work for various digital business owners -- I urge you to watch the video!

Enjoy the show!

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Resources

Learn more about the Core OS Interview with the creator of Core, Jose Caballer Angie Meeker Designs Full episode of the discovery process

updated: added iTunes podcast media

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Life has a funny way of introducing you to a perfect stranger, forming that into a strong bond, and then ripping it away from you at the blink of an eye.

Last night, I learned of the passing of my friend Clint Warren a month ago to this day. Still beside myself of the news, I’m pressing publish in honor of his spirit.

The hardest part of this was not knowing of Clint’s passing until a month after it happened. I feel a deep disrespect for not honoring his passing when it happened. But what could I do? This is the new world we live in. A world where you make connections via tweets, hangouts, and e-mails. There is no alert when a tragedy like this happens. We just deal with it. It’s cruel, isn’t it?

I had the pleasure of knowing Clint over the last year and a half through our private mastermind group, the WordPress community, and as a guest here on the show.

We shared many private conversations about success and the hard work it takes to achieve it. He reminded me about how to stay in the moment — something we both struggled with. Making sure that if I truly wanted to reach my goals, I needed to be present and live within each step. Wether it was a business goal or a fitness goal, Clint was the symbol at the top of my proverbial mountain.

I will be forever grateful for you, big guy. I hope you’re still rocking the v-neck, wherever you are.

Rest in peace.

Clinton Warren Chizinski 1984 - 2015

http://wordpress.tv/2014/06/08/clinton-warren-an-accidental-career-in-wordpress/

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Today, I'm excited to finally have Matt Mullenweg join us on the Matt Report podcast.

We're going to satisfy our typical entrepreneur appetite by diving into his day-to-day routine and we'll learn what it's like being the CEO of Automattic. Want to know where Mullenweg's vision for WordPress is going to take us? No problem, we've got you covered.

For those of you interested in the nitty-gritty of the WordPress community, we'll discuss his take on .com vs .org and our latest debate -- the purpose of the Jetpack plugin.

My interview with Matt Mullenweg

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The WordPress Entrepreneur

Booking Matt on the show was a result from one of my more spirited comments over on WP Tavern's piece, How important is Jetpack on WordPress' road to 50% market share?

I've told you how to make it in WordPress and achieving Greatness here isn't easy.

My thoughts expressed in this discussion with Mullenweg are a culmination of my experiences in the WordPress marketplace over the last few years. We all walk a different path in our professional journey and that's what creates our unique finger print or identity.

My intentions in this episode are that of someone who continues to work hard to build a brand and attractive product offering for my customers. Though I love WordPress and it's community, top-down decisions can be a bit scary for a bootstrapped business person like me and I suspect, some of you as well.

Remember, I grew up under the boot of General Motors.

Can you afford to give back?

Five for the future was one such topic that left me thinking like I was pulled from the game too early. Freelancers, consultants and boutique agencies are sure to feel the pressure of dedicating 5% when they are still very much feeling the growing pains of organic growth. Will Mullenweg's response surprise you?

You will have to listen in. :)

On Jetpack and 50% adoption

According to Mullenweg, greater general adoption of WordPress will bring more developers to the platform. Fairly straightforward.

Is Jetpack the answer though?

My concern is the priority of Jetpacks distribution for every new WordPress site installed. Getting found in the .org repo is already a challenge and if Jetpack moves into, say, the famous five-minute install - what domino effect will that have on the rest of us?

In the interview I asked Mullenweg about that and generalized a scenario where a user chooses Jetpack forms over Gravity Forms. According to Mullenweg, plugin offerings like Gravity Forms have actually prospered since the release of Jetpack.

I reached out to Carl Hancock to see if he had any data that matched up:

As for Jetpack's impact on Gravity Forms? I certainly wouldn't say that Gravity Forms has prospered because of Jetpack. I don't think there is anyway to quantify or establish that as being true. While it is true our revenue has grown tremendously since Jetpack was released, our revenue had grown every month from the time

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Last week I showed you how I reverse engineer my competition in 10 minutes.

Today, Nathan Wright of Theme of The Crop joins the Matt Report podcast to tell us how accurate my findings were. We'll also explore what he's doing to improve on the weak points I had identified in this analysis of his digital business.

So how did Nate react to my "take down" of his website? Let's find out!

The Painter's House is Never Painted

When I created this analysis of Nate's business, I wanted to explore this as an exercise of the discovery process. It isn't just about finding weak points in your competitor's marketing plan, but a method for researching a market for your own unique marketing initiatives.

I want you to walk away with a new found respect for just how many moving parts there are to make the digital marketing wheel spin.

• Content marketing
• Call to actions
• Proper messaging
• Design
• Site speed
• SEO
• Link building
• Branding & awareness
• Social channels

These are the core concepts Nate and I chat about in this episode. Recently I wrote about the Plight of the Cobbler, which depicts entrepreneurs as tinkerers consumed by the process and the tools we use. We could spend hours or days obsessing over finite details that barely move the needle of our business. Why? Simply because we enjoy it -- which is okay -- but doesn't allow us to achieve scale and clarity in our business.

There's nothing wrong with being The Cobbler and I'll argue it's the most important phase we go though. The problem is, The Cobbler will immediately try to consume all of the areas I outlined above as her immediate task list. "I must tackle all of this!" she screams. Not so.

It is to become refined and great in a few of these areas and then scale to the next level. As we'll learn from Nate, he's currently working on a new design and messaging for his website. He's not actively trying to approach all of this as one big problem and that's smart.

Interview with Nate Wright

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Resource Mentioned: Yoast eCommerce Tracking plugin

What about you? What area are you struggling with and what are you doing to address it?

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I don’t recall exactly how I stumbled across Andrew’s podcast, eCommerceFuel, but when I did I was hooked.

Here’s an entrepreneur talking strictly about the e-commerce market, with a strong focus on physical goods. Normally in our space, we’re hearing all about the ins and outs of digital product sales, so it was refreshing to hear how traditional store-fronts are doing this. All the while, he’s not even a WordPress user! Hard to imagine right?

In today’s discussion, we’ll cover why Andrew has recently switched to Shopify from Magento and his thoughts on WordPress as an e-commerce platform. As a Youderian fan, I was really excited to record this episode so I hope you really get something out of it.

Listening options

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Viewing options

http://youtu.be/vr82Qj6wS0g

Stay connected w/ my YouTube channel

Feedback welcome

What are your thoughts on e-commerce? Which platforms or plugins do you prefer?

Previous Matt Report Episode mentioned

Zoe Rooney

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In just over two years time, I've finally accumulated 100 published iTunes episodes of the Matt Report. It's been a fun ride and I'm looking forward to the next 100.

The WordPress podcasting space is very interesting. It's getting more competitive as I predicted and more WP focused podcasts continue to come to the airwaves. In fact, read David's post and how he predicts we are (or should) mature this year. I'd venture to guess probably another 3 or 4 (podcasts) will hit before the Q3 mark of 2015.

Lots of inventory for a small market of interested listeners. I'll reiterate, it's very interesting.

Take someone like John, blanketing the coverage of the entrepreneurial space and producing $250k+ in monthly revenue. Is it all about revenue? Certainly not, but podcasting is a grind and at some point a host needs to keep food on the table. Sponsorship is something I've always wrestled with especially since I have product to sell.

It will be interesting to see how many of us are here in 2016.

2014 Matt Report Year In Review

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Do we need more WordPress in our podcasts or just more podcasts?

I think the answer is, it depends. Back to the WordPress podcasting space.

I've done a lot of WordPress podcasting content, even outside of this show. At the end of the day, my agency clients don't care that I do this, just that I know how to deliver what they need in a project. A majority of Slocum Themes and Conductor Plugin customers do not know about this podcast either -- should they?

Does it matter that we talk about WordPress, or is it just the gateway to building an audience?

I'm talking pure business here. Again, back to that bottom line thing. If advertisers are going to laugh at us and direct sales take a toll on our soul -- is this an effective channel for WP podcasters to impact their bottom line?

In other words, how sustainable are WordPress podcasts?

I don't have the answer for you yet. I do know that the podcast has opened doors for me in the WordPress networking space, but so could have blogging and so could have -- ahem -- networking.

So to the 3 or 4 of you that are starting your new WordPress podcast this year, do something different.

Challenge me. Challenge the status quo of podcasts. Challenge yourself.

Drop me a comment, what's your favorite podcast going into 2015?

Update: Now with mp3

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Update: It's with heavy-heart that I mention Clint's passing. He will be missed.

Think about why you ventured into client services.

Did you quit your cushy day job for extravagant visions of the 4 Hour Work Week? Perhaps you are purposely driven to help others accomplish their goals through consulting and technology.

Whatever might be at the root of your calling, today's guest will put you in your place. He'll challenge you to think of the why you're doing what you're doing. Force you to realize that no one other than yourself -- not even me -- can help you achieve your level of success. So where did he learn these lessons?

Jail.

Still interested? I thought so. Meet my good friend, Clint Warren.

The Hustle

I remember my first talk about the Matt Report podcast back at WordCamp Boston 2012. There was this jacked dude, sitting in the front row, with laser beams in his eyes. I tend to walk side to side during my presentations. I don't know why, it's just this thing that I do. As I moved around the floor, he didn't drop eye contact for one single second, which lead me to wonder:

1. Is this guy going to rush tackle me?
2. Is he calling bullshit on everything I'm saying?

After my talk was finished, I saw him approaching me. Shit. Here we go. Can I hide behind Jake? He reached out, shook my hand, and said that he really enjoyed the presentation. Phew! We chatted about his business and what he was up to. He had a real passion in his voice and determination to make it successful. If there was anyone in the audience that was going to make a splash, it was him.

That guy, if you haven't already guessed it, was Clint.

Since our first meeting, his hustle has brought him to a new level of success. He runs his own digital agency, has a WordPress training platform, successfully ran WordCamp Connecticut 2014 and now is set to win in the coaching space.

Enjoy this episode and be sure to leave a comment below.

Listening options

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dwna_iUdaOY

Resource mentioned:

Clint Warren's Six Figure Freelancer book

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I invited my good friend, Brian Casel, to return to our airwaves and teach us a new lesson -- productizing.

Brian, like most of us, started as a "web designer" then made the shift to product via Restaurant Engine. This is not -- let me repeat -- not an easy task. If you've been following me for a while, you know this is something that I'm working on day in and day out.

In this episode, we'll dive into his latest launch, Productize. It's a based on a very popular hybrid model of today's digital product offering. Brian is offering up the course content with a healthy mix of video, consulting, and private membership. Sound familiar?

If you're looking to productize your consulting services , this episode is for you. Join us as we unpack the methods of productizing and how you can apply this to your business.

Listening options

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Viewing

http://youtu.be/9NcmukJ43X4 What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and Brian Casel

Resources mentioned

Twitter: @CasJam Matt's interview on Bootstrapped Web Podcast Episode 46

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Leadin is a project that was conceived and continues to be nurtured at the Hubspot headquarters. While there is a plugin to integrate WordPress with the Hubspot system plugin, Leadin was expressly created to use as a standalone WordPress marketing automation plugin for small businesses.

The creators, Nelson Joyce and Andy Cook, were given little guidance about exactly what functions Leadin should address and how it should work. The Leadin duo invested time listening to prospective users. They engaged in discovery conversations to uncover if the prototypes they had created solved problems that were meaningful to the audience.

Nelson and Andy had a variety of ideas to start but only one of their ideas generated the type of feedback and signals to move ahead and become more refined. The creators share how they gathered and compiled unfiltered user feedback by focusing on an interviewee’s actual usage scenarios not hypothetical ones.

Interview takeaway lessons for launching a product:

• Get excited about the problem you are working on not the solution you have created.
• Get paid early in the product development life cycle to validate your idea.

Listening options

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Viewing

http://youtu.be/e03mevJvARo What was discussed during the conversation between Matt, Nelson Joyce and Andy Cook times correspond to video 2:00 What is Leadin and what do you do everyday to work on it? 2:40 How did you decide on the product to pursue? 5:00 How did you get Darmesh Shah as your investor in your first start up? 10:30 Nelson, why did you partner with Andy? 11:25 How did you use sketch to start planning out the product? 13:30 What was your process like to get feedback from potential users? 16:00 What are the first steps to use when you are creating a solution to a problem with a new product? 17:35 How should you go about finding a problem to solve in the market? 19:25 how did you track and organize the feedback you were receiving? 21:30 Did you present several mockup products to your test audience? 24:10 What was the conversation like to select the product to move forward with in production? 25:40 Is there anything you would change about the early development process? 27:20 Do you think the customer would be more committed to the product if they had to pay for it early on? 28:45 What is the pricing model now for Leadin? 31:00 Are WordPress products priced too low relative to the value created? 32:00 What is next for Leadin? 34:25 Do you think the WP plugin repository has been critical to growth of Leadin user base?

Resources mentioned

Email: andy@leadin.com and nelson@leadin.com Twitter: @leadinapp Website: LeadIn.com Hubspot Darmesh Shah Sketch Lean Canvas Basecamp

Get notified when Matt Report WordPress Startup Challenge #3 is actively being planned.

Use this link to fill out a form indicating your area(s) of interest.

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This is not the first time Dan Norris has been featured on Matt Report. In November 2013 Dan applied and was accepted as one of the 4 business contestants featured in the first Matt Report WordPress Startup challenge. In this interview Dan gives a glimpse into the progression at WPCurve and his other active projects.

Dan explains how it is possible to run a successful business supporting WordPress users and business owners for 14 months before attending his first WordCamp in September 2014. At WordCamp Sydney Dan was a presenter of workshop: The 7 Day Startup, How to build a scalable WordPress business in 1 week. His book 7 Day Startup was successfully released on Amazon around the same time as his first WordCamp experience.

Dan emphasized that it is not necessary to focus early in your business' life cycle to find the perfect tools cover all future growth scenarios. Expect to find new tools to support your customers as your business evolves.

Listening options

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Viewing

http://youtu.be/odafi7IpeB0

Get notified when Matt Report WordPress Startup Challenge #3 is actively being planned.

Use this link to fill out a form indicating your area(s) of interest.

What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and Dan Norris

(times correspond to video) 1:25 What has happened with WPCurve since you were on the Matt Report start-up challenge last year? 2:50 Can you tell our listeners a little bit about about each of the things you are involved with and how you manage your time among multiple businesses? 6:40 How do you look at starting up a business now? 9:40 How do you know it was the time to get away from your original manual processes in your business?

"Fix problems as they arise."

19:40 Are you looking to not have your name so closely attached to the brand? 20:30 What is the day look like for Dan? How do you prepare for your day to create content? 22:25 How do you divide the responsibilities with your US based business parter? 23:30 Do you follow the WordPress news closely? 27:10 How was it to get exposure on ProductHunt.com? 30:30 What parting advice do you have for freelancer Dan Norris WordCamp Sydney Slides 37:30 Where do you see yourself in 2 years?

Resources mentioned

@thedannorris WPCurve Helloify Black Hops Brewing 7 Day Start Up Matt Report Startup Challenge Interview Informly Give Matt Report a 5 star review on iTunes Learn about Conductor Plugin

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Zoe Rooney's business niche has evolved into being known as the designer's developer. Shaping a narrower focus has helped Zoe's business grow in a sustainable way and has allowed her to work on the problem solving part of website projects she really enjoys.

Zoe's primary specialty is websites for eCommerce product sales. While most of Zoe's work on informational websites is built on WordPress,the actual eCommerce transaction functionality is built using a non-WordPress solution. Zoe has a multi-point rationale for reaching outside of the WordPress ecosystem to help clients sell their products.

Listening options

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http://youtu.be/1Yqp4lUBwMw What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and Zoe Rooney (times correspond to video) 1:20 Give us your 2 minute elevator pitch. 2:30 How did you become the designer's developer? 4:30 Do you still go to designer focused conferences today? 5:45 How does the process work between you, the designer and the client? 9:30 How do you negotiate getting paid up front? 10:15 What are the characteristics of the ideal freelance designer you like to work with? 13:00 What do you do when the client requests a change to the project mid-stream? 14:45 How do you scope out the project with the designer? 16:00 What tools do you use to manage projects? 18:25 Are you planning to grow your business into an agency? 21:45 Do you use WordPress for all client projects? 25:00 how do you explain to client about the pricing to customize low cost software? 30:00 How can WordPress get better in the area of E-commerce plugins/systems? 33:00 What advice can you give to freelancer developers?

Resources mentioned

zoerooney.com @zoerooney Shopify Slack Pancake Invoicing

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Several years ago Amure Pinho started as a Blogo user and now is the CEO @GetBlogo.

Amure shares his experience with growing Blogo and provides insights for you to include as you fine tune your product offering. Invest in yourself before going after investors for your product. Get a good team together and produce a starter version of your product. Amure held Blogo Day, an event to highlight the first version of the product, and invited investors to attend. There is nothing like good product and interested users to get the interest of angel investors.

Look beyond what your users are doing directly with your product. Examine what other products and services are part of the workflow before customers use your product. Taking the time to get this deeper understanding can help you to be proactive in making connections and finding partners to integrate with your product.

The Blogo team escalated a relationship from being a fan of Evernote to becoming a partner of Evernote. Don’t sit back waiting for things to happen to get your product noticed. Be sure you are creating a two way street and be creating value for your partners.

Amure shared some lessons learned from creating products in Brazil markets: * Be profitable from day one. * Be sure your product solves a problem and is not just something cool. * Get traction. Don’t just copycat. * Find a niche. Don’t just create a tool for everyone. * What is the solution you are providing? Be able to talk more deeply with your users.

Congrats to Blogo for being the silver platform award winner at the 2014 Evernote Conference! Listening options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Viewing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaGYHBxxhfc What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and Amure Pinho 1:10 How did you end up building a product around WordPress? 3:15 What was Blogo like before you took over the CEO role? 5:40 How is Blogo currently funded? 7:20 What words of advice do you have for freelancers that are doing client services to fund product development? 13:45 Is there a stigma connected to WordPress with angel investors? 18:15 How did you partner with Evernote? Blogo wins Silver Award at Evernote Conference 2014 25:40 What's the difference between U.S. and International or Brazil start ups/entrepreneurship? You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.-Zig Ziglar 36:00 How did you determine Blogo's price point? 41:30 How did your team come up with the design of GetBlog website and press kit? 43:45 What's next for Blogo? Resources Mentioned GetBlogo.com @getblogo Evernote Conference Award Winners Blogo in Evernote App center UserVoice

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For Tracy Levesque co-owner of Yikes, the details make a difference in the delivery. Beyond adding a client's logo to the WordPress login screen, it's about really listening to how your client will use the new WordPress website you are creating for them. Tracy explains how she fine tunes the dashboard elements to give comfort and ownership to her client. By changing small details of the dashboard, it can speed up the onboarding and training process. The admin settings can speak in the client's terms instead of the standard WordPress jargon (which is often meaningless and possibly confusing to the users that may be new to WordPress).

Yikes is a thriving family business. One of the two main business segments is focused on WordPress: creating custom themes for clients, giving back to the WordPress community in several ways, and supporting a free plugin with more than 50,000 downloads. Tracy and her wife Mia, as business partners, strive to balance the challenges of separating work life and home life. Listening options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Viewing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhnItV9wy64 What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and Tracy Levesque 1:30 Tracy please give us your 2 minute elevator pitch 2:00 Do you talk about WordPress to your clients and in your agency life or do they not care and just want a solution? 2:40 What is it like for folks to hear about WordPress in the early stage selling process? 3:40 Do you feel like WordPress is becoming more of a household name with your clients? 4:45 How have you focused on non-profits? 5:40 What do you think non-profits are looking for with agency partners? 9:30 In your agency, what is team Cold Fusion and team WordPress? 12:00 How do you deliver your WordPress websites? 15:45 How did your Easy Mail Chimp Forms plugin get created and how do you maintain the plugin in the context of agency life? 19:30 Matt reads a review of the Easy MailChimp plugin from 2013. 21:50 How do you manage agency life as a family business? Our skillsets and personalities really complement each other in this business. 26:45 How important is client communication? 28:30 How did you get involved in Girl Develop It? 30:15 What are you speaking about at WordCamp San Francisco 2014? 30:40 What parting advice would you give to our audience? 33:00 What did you contribute to WordPress version 4.0? Resources mentioned Yikesinc Liljimmi ColdFusion Oncolink Easy MailChimp Forms Plugin Make.WordPress.org/training Girl Develop It Philadelphia chapter WordCamp San Francisco Dashicons WordPress 4.0 contributors

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Since the early days of BuddyPress plugin, David Bisset has focused his freelance developement business around integrating it into his highly customized client projects. He has been able to add value to his client projects by suggesting the addition of a social layer using BuddyPress during the early stage of development. Considering the additional specifications of BuddyPress in the early planning stage of a web project is important since it is more difficult to add later.

David Bisset is well-known in the WordPress community for the time and energy he has dedicated as one of the founding organizers of WordCamp Miami. WordCamp Miami celebrated it's 5th anniversary in May of 2014. In 2013 and 2014 David included a BuddyCamp component in the WordCamp Miami program to create more conversations and learning about using BuddyPress.

In addition to organizing WordCamp Miami, David Bisset is an advocate for getting out to participate and organize local WordPress meetups and create working connections between WordPress professionals. The connections made at WordPress gatherings can be a source of new business for developers.

Listening options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Viewing http://youtu.be/gxpDRAHClJo What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and David Bisset (Times correspond to video) 1:20 Tell us about David Bisset. 3:20 What sparked the initial idea to start a WordCamp in Miami? How did starting WordCamp impact your career? 5:30 Why doesn't the rest of the world know about WordCamps? 8:20 Should WordCamp advertising and marketing budgets be increased? 11:45 Why did you focus your freelance business on BuddyPress? BuddyPress picked me. 15:15 How did you implement BuddyPress on a car parts website? 17:00 How do you introduce the social layer in BuddyPress into the project? 20:30 What should freelancers know if they will be working on a project that will include BuddyPress or a social component? 25:00 Do you have a minimum project price level? 27:15 What advice do you have for a freelancer that is struggling to find the right clients? Resources WordCamp Miami 2015 BuddyPress DavidBisset.com @DimensionMedia

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How Josh Broton (along with co-founder Kiko Doran) came up with the the idea for Prestige Conference might suprise you.

After speaking 20 conferences over the last year, Josh noticed a trend. He was bad at selecting good sessions at conferences, especially inexpensive, multi- track tech conferences. To solve that problem, the idea for Prestige conference was born. Two primary issues were addressed in the planning of Prestige conference: * Create focus around a single stream of sessions that all attendees would partake in. * Arrange to bring in the best speakers, not just those speakers that could afford to pay for traveling to the event.

The first Prestige conference "A premium interactive business and career development conference" is happening in October, 2014 but more locations and dates are already in the formulation stage. All of the speakers for the October 2014 conference are leaders in the WordPress community.

Josh's professional development experience at Lemon.ly has parallels to his experience working on Prestige Conference. At Lemon.ly Josh Broton has been involved in creating solutions to in-house problems and refining those solutions into product offerings. Even if the product offering does not catch on in the open market, it still can have value internally.

Listen to this interview hear how to estimate a time budget if you are thinking about creating a new event to connect members of a new or established community. Listening options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Viewing http://youtu.be/gJ-mlZjnFjw What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and Josh Broton (Times correspond to video) 1:30 Who is Josh Broton? 3:00 What's going on in the Dakotas? Startups on the coast are making no money very loudly. Startups in the midwest are making alot of money very quietly. 5:00 What kind of splash are you trying to make with Prestige Conference? 12:25 What are the other goals for Prestige Conference? 14:30 What do you produce at lemon.ly and what is the profitable product that you are building? 16:40 At lemon.ly is the business model set up for bootstrapping product/app developement with client services at the same time? 18:50 Is product building to solve your own company need ingrained in the culture of lemon.ly's? 20:45 How can you determine if problem is scalable or can be productized? 24:45 How do we launch a Beta round and do we charge for it? 26:45 What is the takeaway lesson for a freelancer or small agency is looking to launch a product? 28:00 What is the takeaway lesson for a freelancer or small agency is looking to start a conference? Contact Josh Broton: @joshbroton joshbroton.com Lemonly Purchase a livestream ticket for Prestige Conference Resources: Full App KikoDoran Related MattReport Interview interviews Garrett Moon Dusty Flywheel

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Imagine you are working with new client and during your discovery meeting the business owner tells you they want to work with you to fix up their website, especially the area for to be used for blog posts.

The business owner shares their commitment to writing weekly content to increase awareness about their new product line. The content will be shared on their website, in an new email newsletter and on social media channels. You set up a nice space for the new content but after a few weeks you check back to find that nothing has been added beyond the original set of articles provided to you at the start of the project.

In a conversation with the business owner you find out that other pressing issues came up which diverted attention from creating the weekly articles.

In this Matt Report interview, Dayne Shuda of Ghost Blog Writers shares how his company helps business owners maintain their commitment to sharing regular updates with their target market. He takes a long term view on creating regular blog content for his clients. Dayne focuses his efforts into working with clients who want regular content created that can be used in various marketing channels but don’t have the resources to do it in-house. Interview Dayne Shuda Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Viewing http://youtu.be/q7Ykd9kyWXw What happened during the conversation between Matt and Dayne (Times correspond to video) 1:45 How do you find clients that need content work for their blog? 2:50 Is blogging the primary place to start with for content display? 5:20 How do you manage when a client asks for extra services that are outside your primary focus? 6:50 Do you remember the time you started to say "no" everything else besides creating blog posts? 8:30 How do you find partners to hand off work to? 9:45 Were you every reluctant to get out from behind your desk? 12:20 How do you onboard a new client especially for an industry you are not familiar with? 15:00 How do you educate clients who are fixated on the inexpensive approach? 17:40 How do you find clients that have a longer term approach to the project? 19:40 Do you use a questionnaire for clients to fill out before working with you? 21:00 How do you find freelancer writers to work with you in your business? 24:25 How do you manage a remote/distributed workforce? 27:00 What technology do you use for the displaying blog posts? 30:00 Is there one technical thing that WP could do better? List of Resources Mentioned Book: Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain Plugin: Yoast SEO Hosting: Synthesis Backup: VaultPress Plugin: Co-Schedule by Todaymade Twitter:@dayneshuda Website:GhostBlogWriters.com Join Matt Report Pro and connect in with our Mastermind Group Call

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Attention WordPress agency owners...or hopeful owners!

In today's episode, I sit down with Jennifer Bourn of Bourn Creative and hash out what it takes to go from freelancer mode to agency mode. One of the lessons I'd like you to take away from this chat is sharpening your onboarding process.

That subtle, yet oh-so-important phase from the first e-mail contact up to price negotiations round. We'll cover that and more in today's episode!

Interview with Jennifer Bourn Can you purchase one specific software package and get the magic key to organizing your business, getting more clients and generating more revenue? Acquiring a software package is just a the first step to creating a path or process called client onboarding. As Jennifer Bourn explains, she spent a year setting up the software package she selected for Bourn Creative with heaps of customized materials. She built a procedure to escort her carefully screened new clients through their journey of creating and launching their new website. Listening options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Viewing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpsNvB3BdUg What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and Jennifer Bourn (Times correspond to video) 2:00 When did you change your mindset from being in the freelancer world to the agency world? 3:45 How important is trust when you are bringing on freelancers or part time employees? 6:10 What do you look for when bringing on a developer to a project 8:30 How do you introduce the team concept to the client? 10:45 What is your new client onboarding process like? 14:00 How and when did you realize you needed to charge for discovery process with clients? 17:00 What are the red flags that stop you from working with a client? 18:30 How do you structure your payment terms? 21:00 How did you decide that Infusionsoft was the proper long term solution for your business? 23:00 How does Infusionsoft replace the need for hiring additional staff members? 31:00 What is your best channel to find new clients? 32:20 What other software do you use that pairs well with Infusionsoft? List of Resources Mentioned InfusionSoft Prestige Conference (Matt and Jennifer are both presenting) Examples of User Onboarding for popular Apps Join Matt Report Pro and connect in with our Mastermind Group Call

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Being a freelancer means you get to run your business your way.

More than likely you start by building your personal brand. You take a deep breathe and look at yourself in the mirror. Who am I? What do I offer? How can I deliver value? What is the purpose?

When you meet Ozzy, you get a feeling that this guy gets it. As well he should, being a seasoned WordPress freelancer and all. He's been in the game a while and I want you to take away a few key lessons: * Confidence * Finding clients that fit your process * Have a purpose

I've had the amazing opportunity over the last two years to talk to a lot of amazing WordPress people -- Ozzy is no exception. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.

Interview with Ozzy Rodriguez Ozzy Rodriguez is known for his work as a Genesis-loving custom developer and co-host of the unique and sometimes irreverent WPBacon podcast. To keep things interesting, Ozzy works with a diverse client based from startups to dog walkers. Ozzy's role as part of the WPBacon podcast started small and grew into being a co-host until the ultimate winding down of the program. WPBacon's podcast started off with monthly educational programming. The audience requested more frequent episodes which the creators willingly accommodated. Listening options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Viewing Option https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXsSyA0AsN8#t=542 What was discussed during the interview (Times correspond to video) 03:00 Why should someone new to WordPress use Genesis? 05:45 How can developers and implementors work together? 09:15 At what point do you conclude that Genesis would not be the right tool to use for a client’s project? 11:30 What steps should freelancers take to be noticed and found in the community? 16:00 What role does content marketing play in your business? 18:00 How did you decide which services to offer to your clients when you started out as freelancer? 21:30 How do you decide which clients to work with? Do you have a specific industry? 24:45 What’s the story behind the WPBacon podcast? 27:20 How did you differentiate guests and content of the WPBacon podcast stand from other WordPress podcasts? 31:00 What did you do to keep consistent publishing schedule for WPBacon podcast? 33:45 Are we still just talking to ourselves when we are podcasting about WordPress? 35:40 What are your words of advice to people thinking about starting a podcast? 36:50 If you could rewind, how would you build or run your business differently? List of Resources Mentioned Ozzy Rodriguez: Twitter- @ozzyr Website-Ozzyrodriguez.com WPBacon past episodes on itunes Article by Tom McFarlin: WordPress Developers: The Programmer and the Implementor Find a WordPress Meetup in your area Find a WordCamp in your area Article by Brian Krogsgard How much should a custom WordPress website cost? Scrapebox (use it for good, not for bad intentions) Let me know when more MattReport.com Pro content

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Shawn DeWolfe, co-founder of ThoseDeWolfes Creative, reaches his hand into both the WordPress and Drupal "cookie jars" depending on the nature of the project he's working on. With WordPress, you get the illusion that you can do something complex real fast. In early July 2014, Shawn released his product Share Cluster plugin into the WordPress repository and also offers a premium version, Share Cluster Prime. Listen to this interview to learn why Shawn thought WordPress was the right choice for his plugin instead of creating it as a Drupal module and why sometimes using an off-the-shelf system is a wiser choice even when you have the experience to build something from scratch.

Interview with Shawn DeWolfe: Share Cluster plugin Listening options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Viewing option https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w3MgMRH8v8 What was discussed during the interview (Times correspond to video) 2:00 What is the biggest difference that you see in the use case of Drupal and WordPress, especially for large amounts of content? There is a weird inverse relationship that happens with client work-the more money you ask for, the less trouble the project is. 9:30 Is there a clear difference between the work you do with Drupal vs. WordPress? 10:45 What would you want inside of Drupal that WordPress does really well? What would you want inside of WordPress that Drupal does really well? 15:40 What did you create Share-Cluster as a WP Plugin instead of Drupal Module 17:00 Is the WP market is easier to enter? 17:40 What was the experience like for you submitting the plugin to WordPress.org? 21:20 What are the immediate challenges you are working on for launching your product ---ie marketing, pricing. 27:30 How will you manage the new feature requests and ideas related to Share Cluster? 28:45 If you could Rewind 1, 5 or 10 years what would you do differently with your professional life? List of Resources Mentioned Shawn DeWolfe-Co-Founder Those DeWolfes Creative Shawn's 90 days of posts challenge Trello Share-Cluster on WordPress.org Share Cluster Prime Ryan Sullivan's article: "Why We Love the “$500 Client” Garret Moon CoSchedule interview Woo Commerce Software Add-on EditPlus for text editing Join Matt Report Pro and connect in with our Mastermind Group Call

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Ben Fox co-founder of FlowPress, WPUniversity.com and Sidekick.pro shares smart ideas about pricing, building a team and having a greater vision for his new product offering. * Embrace and address the challenge of pricing your new product by talking directly to your prospective customers to fine tune your offering to the needs of your different customer segments. * Build a successful, sustainable product by finding engineers that are dedicated to your project and will stick with you for more than just the product launch. * Even if you start building a product around needs in the WordPress universe, consider if your idea has application beyond the WordPress circle.

Listening options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Viewing option https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9kOnIOMZPc What happened during the conversation between Matt and Ben (times correspond to video) 2:10 What's happening with WPUniversity? 3:30 How do you balance your time between client services, product development and new business development? 5:10 What was the genesis of the idea for Sidekick Pro? 6:55 How did you set up your partnership? 8:40 What is it like working in an business incubator or accelerator? 11:20 What kind of advice did you get from the accelerator group when WPEngine contacted you? 13:00 How are you setting the pricing for Sidekick Pro? It's easier to price on the enterprise level 15:45 How are you getting feedback from customers? 17:30 How are you balancing/managing the customer's requested features? 19:10 How are you using PivotalTracker to manage your process? 21:45 What is the biggest benefit to using PivotalTracker 23:40 How did you fairly assess what your team was capable of? 28:30 Why is it important to use a Service Level Agreement with clients? 32:00 What is a good way to craft a Service Level Agreement to use with your clients? 36:30 How much detail do you put in your statement of work (before the deposit is paid)? 41:15 How did you decide to reach beyond WordPress with Sidekick Pro? 47:00 What is planned for the EastMeetspress event?

Resources Ben Fox @benjaminefox email: ben@sidekick.pro Sidekick.pro FlowPress (there is no website) WPUniversity.com New Rainmaker LeadPages Event: East Meets Press Trello Teamwork PivitalTracker Freshdesk Wave Accounting Leadin Acronymns Used SLA: service Level Agreement MRR: monthly recurring revenue SOW: statement of

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It has almost been 1 year since I met Troy Dean as a guest on his own WordPress podcast.

Shortly after that, I met him at PressNomics, where we became great friends and chased after the same guests for our audience. In between sessions, we plotted our podcasting world domination scheme. We've kept in touch talking strategy, doing a host-swap, and I made an appearance on his WP Think Tank show.

Today I'm honored to have him on my show to talk about how he got started, what his business is like, and ask the question -- do we really compete with one another?

Enjoy!

Interview with Troy Dean of WP Elevation Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Viewing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXYR7wh6g_4 Resources Episode #2 of WP Elevation with Matt Medeiros WP Think Tank PressNomics Host Swap, I interview Jason Cohen Host Swap, Troy interviews Japh Thomson

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Want to know how to make $5,000 dollars in a weekend via a $10 Facebook ad?

Too bad. You can't.

If you're like me, you are probably so numb to these type of flash in the pan marketing schemes. Even more so, sick of seeing ads from "web marketers" that are renting 7 series BMW's to shoot infomercials with. 1-click WordPress install, some FB ads here and a squeeze page there...

It's so easy!

Pat Flynn is NOT that marketer, but he does use WordPress and he's launching a new product for it. I've been a fan of Pat's for a while now and I respect his approach to our industry. His authenticity bleeds into his brand which is something a lot of us are afraid to do. We're going to talk about that and how this web marketer has transitioned to software as a business.

Sit back and relax -- this is a great episode!

Interview with Pat Flynn: Smart Podcast Player Pat Flynn is not a typical webmarketer. He is expanding his operation into the technology arena of webmarketing. In addition to his website being powered by WordPress, Pat engaged his developer to create a custom function that supported his own need of the for sharing his podcast content. After getting requests from his audience about the podcasting function, Pat decided to offer the function as a plugin. The plugin is appropriately named Smart Podcast Player. During the development of Smart Podcast Player Pat acquired a new appreciation about the amount of time and effort needed to product a quality WordPress software product. Software takes time and money to create a great user experience. It's not a quick way to make money. Focus on a specific business niche. When you are able to speak in your customer's language, you will be able to help them better define their problem and accept your recommended solution. Listening options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Viewing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AYvz6NuHBo What was discussed during the interview (Times correspond to video) 1:45 What differentiates Pat from the typical web marketer? 4:30 How is Pat putting together a local team to scale his business? 6:30 What lessons did Pat learn from his recent DDOS attack? What good thing came out of it? When you rely on your website to run your business, be sure you are proactive not reactive when selecting the supporting technology tools. 10:45 Is creating and selling software the next frontier in webmarketing? 15:00 How can you use a Minimium Marketable Event to engage your audience? 16:30 What are the legacy issues with offering lifetime support to earliest customers? What is a better approach? 21:15 What would Pat have done differently in selling the initial group of licenses for the podcast plugin? 24:00 How does Pat see his company growing into a software company? 26:15 Which resources does Pat use to keep new feature ideas organized and prioritized? 27:30 As a freelancer, how can you promote your WordPress business idea when you are very new to the marketplace? 31:15 After building the plugin, how has Pat's perspective changed towards WordPress community? List of Resources Mentioned Smart Podcast Player SPI Episode 119 SPI Episdoe 78 James Schramko interv

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Curtis McHale is a returning guest on the Matt Report. In this return appearance on the Matt Report, Curtis shares how and why his rule of no weeknight TV watching, reading business books, finding clients that view hiring a WordPress developer as an investment, and being candid with clients about understanding software bugs has helped double his income.

Communication is the essential factor to having a successful local or remote outsourcing relationship. If you decide you want to use a source from a place like Elance or oDesk, you need to set up a solid process to find the qualified individual.

As an experienced developer Curtis has a sweet spot for plugin documentation. A plugin with great documentation is a valuable gem. While auto-generated documentation is not enough. Listening Options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Viewing Options https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqoTy0p7R7w

(Enjoy the unedited intro! :) ) Here's what you can expect in the interview (times correspond to video)

1:30 How did Curtis double his income? 6:00 Create a product from a presentation 7:30 Splitting time between business tasks vs using the overlapping technique 10:00 Building a team-virtual or in person 14:00 Outsourcing work to O-desk-putting a process in place to find good match 20:00 Point of failure when delegating 22:00 Hiring a project manager 24:00 Being a developer "in demand" and asking the right questions 26:00 Working with clients that view their website as an investment instead of an expense 31:00 Curtis' advice when you realize the client's project will take longer time and more money 36:00 Pay for the business tools that will save you development time 38:30 What makes a well built product that an advanced developer would purchase 41:00 What is a reasonable response time for support to advanced developer Books and Resources Mentioned Get Clients Now-CJ Hayden Book Yourself Solid-Michael Port Getting Real View Curtis McHale’s original Matt Report interview in November 2012 Scrivener-for composing long content Overlap Technique Contact Curtis curtismchale.ca sfndesign.ca Featured image source

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Here's a special episode today hosted by my good friend Troy Dean.

We chatted a while back about putting on a"host swap" of sorts. I interview a guest for his show, he interviews a guest for mine. I had a great time and he really knocked it out of the park on this episode. You can also head over to watch my interview with Jason Cohen on Troy's site.

In today's episode we're hearing from one of my community fave's Japh Thomson of X-team. He shares his story about developing the WP-Stream plugin with folks like Frankie Jarrett. Sit back, relax, and get ready to listen to the Matt Report hosted by WPElevation!

Interview with Japh Thomson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSwfo4L8SBY Listening options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Let us know what you think! Want to see more host swapping going on? It was very insightful to see Troy going through the paces of my process and question list. I know I had a bit of a challenge running through his framework, but in the end, the interview still came out great. Go ahead and check it out here.

Attn Pro Members: Get your Google+ Pro community invite

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I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I sat down with the founder of Flywheel.

I did my usual routine of background checks, blog post readings, and Twitter stream scanning. I knew going into the interview that he did A LOT. I was most interested in how he launched all of these "valley-like" startups from the midwest. But when I got to know Dusty's story is the hard work he put into all of his efforts. Simple and down to earth efforts of building something great.

Ship it, talk to customers, polish it, rinse and repeat. All of this in the super competitive WordPress hosting space. I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did!

Interview with Dusty Davidson The WordPress website hosting industry is a crowded space. However, Dusty Davidson and his team are positioning Flywheel as a software company providing managed WordPress website hosting for designers.

That has been a very important approach to the companies success thus far. Make a beautiful product for people that instill the same values with their own work. WordPress is already a passionate space -- appealing to designers is just icing on the cake!

Takeaway messages from Matt's conversation with Dusty: * To validate your business idea, chat directly with the people who have expressed inbound interest in your service. Don't avoid calling just because it will take an extended period of time. * Do the things that do not scale to understand the customer's pain points. * Stay focused on what you do best, your customer and your product to build your business. * Large markets have room for many participants that are differentiating themselves and capturing passionate users. * Respect for your competition breeds innovation which benefits the end user.

Listening options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Watching options

Times Correspond to Video 0:30 Why another WP Managed host 5:15 How do you build a 10X better host 9:00 What was it like to get your 1st 100 clients? 11:30 How did you reach out to the 1st dozen designers? 13:30 How are you marketing to designers/developers so they will refer clients? 16:00 What is the current roadblock to your growth? 21:00 Advice to plugin developers for pricing to properly account for support? 24:00 Wish for plugin developers to do 26:00 Has Flywheel recently automated some processes? How to roll out features 28:00 Did you have a backup plan/MVP/Pivot point? 32:00 What next for Flywheel 33:30 What else do you do Get in Touch with Dusty @DustyD Resources Mentioned Heroku CPanel Flywheel Big Omaha Silicon Prairie News Garrett Moon interview on MattReport Boomerang Featured image source

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Looking to work up a sweat optimizing your next WordPress website launch this summer?

Of course you are!

In this premier of The Startup Platform, we cover the major building blocks of launching a successful web project from bottom to top. Kristin and I take you through this fast paced boot camp of goal setting, content planning, and measuring results.

Look for more of these free sessions in the future and drop your requests in the comments!

The Startup Platform Episode 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9gyOlbG89k

Download the audio version

Find all of the resources mentioned here: http://thestartupplatform.com/resources

Read more on Kristin's blog post here. Highlights * We prepped listeners with the top questions and strategies to think about before even choosing your platform or writing the first word * We discussed just HOW important it is to align copy, design and development, and what comes first * Matt explained how to define your audience and how that translates to your website design and layout, as well as copy * Next, we explained how to prioritize different aspects of your website * Because there are SO many website platforms to choose from, Matt explained why you should (or shouldn’t) choose WordPress * I then dove into how to plan for and write the most important pieces of your web copy, including headlines * Matt explained why the fold is DEAD * We then wrapped up the intensive bootcamp with details on testing and iterating on your design, layout and copy

Slides [slideshare id=35799430&doc=thestartupplatform-webinarslides-140612104011-phpapp02]

Did we miss something? Let us know in the comments. Know someone that could use the help offered in this episode? Share it!

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Back at WordCamp Miami, I had dinner with my new friend Topher, where we shared some great food and conversation.

In typical podcaster fashion I asked, "Who should I interview next?"

Topher said that I HAVE to talk to Frankie, lead on the WP-Stream plugin. Having just found out about the plugin and really loving the power and simplicity it delivers, I had to find out how this product was built.

Get your pen and paper ready, in today's episode, Frankie will teach us all about building a successful product from the ground up. Enjoy!

Interview with Frankie Jarrett Frankie Jarrett is the Head of WordPress product for X-Team, the company behind the WP-Stream plugin. (At X-team)We are not afraid to offer the best solution for client-even when it's not WordPress. Applications and markets seem to be constantly expanding for X-Team's project WP-Stream. WP-Stream is not even available for every website powered by WordPress. The plugin is free and available in the WordPress repository, but you must have PHP 5.3 running in order to use WP-Stream. Frankie describes why his team decided to create the product with requirements that are higher than what is normally needed for a WordPress installation and why you should be delighted when a plugin updates daily. don't be afraid if things are broken Frankie has established Churchthemes.net, a specialty theme shop focused around his personal passion. In turn, he gives back to the community related to the market for his themes. 3 years old. Success is driven by really understanding the market. Put your heart behind your work and share your motivation. Listening options Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport

Watching options https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e503JT1DU3Y Interview Contents: (times correspond to video) 1:00 About Frankie Jarrett, Head of WordPress Product for X-Team 6:30 What was the need and how did the Stream idea move forward 7:20 Launching before Version 1.0 was "ready" 9:45 Use a daily release cycle to get regular feedback 14:30 Why should you launch a plugin using WordPress.org? 27:00 Frankie's Entrepreneurial spark shines through his work at Churchthemes.net 33:00 Backwards compatibility-why you need PHP 5.3 to use Stream 36:00 Innovations and opportunities with WordPress and WP-Stream. Use audit trail as customer service tool. 41:30 Using GitHub for customer support Put EVERYTHING in GitHub Get in touch with Frankie Jarrett @fjarrett frankiejarrett.com Resources mentioned during the interview WP-Stream X-Team is a WordPress VIP featured partner GitHub for collaboration Churchthemes.net JSON API Namespacing O2 WordPress plugin for internal saving high level ideas Lean Startup Methodology

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Today I sit down with Cody Landefeld of CodyL.com fame.

You may be familiar with the User Experience of a website or app, but what about your business? That's what we're focusing on today. How do clients interact with us from the pre-sale, to the mid-project, all the way down to support phase?

It might mean WordPress isn't the answer for them. Yikes. Let's dive into today's show and soak up all of the great knowledge Cody has to offer.

Interview with Cody Landefeld https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjOCt41fWx8

Listen to the audio version

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Want to listen to me on iTunes? Matt Report on iTunes.

Important slides by Cody

If you're building more involved client sites or applications, check out this presentation.

[slideshare id=35600069&doc=uxforwordpresplatforms-140607104240-phpapp02]

Besides listening to this podcast, you will find this presentation useful for your business.

[slideshare id=26629896&doc=building-your-start-up-with-wordpress-130927151833-phpapp02]

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Daniel Faggella is the founder CLVboost of a boutique marketing automation and strategic email market consultancy based in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Daniel originally started learning and using WP when he was running a martial arts academy. As his professional focus evolved he started offering internet marketing consulting services. WordPress is still Daniel’s web building platform of choice for his business ventures. Daniel was originally told that WordPress was "easy" to figure out and use by watching youtube videos. However, Daniel realized that he would need to hire professionals to build stuff more customized and complex elements for his web 40 properties.

Listen to the interview to find out the unsolved WordPress administration issue for website owners that Daniel outlines. It could be an opportunity for you as a developer to address.

Interview with Daniel Faggella https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqykQNobG7g

Subscribe via iTunes Resources mentioned Outsourcing hubs

Fivrr Odesk Elance

Landing pages/Squeeze-Sales pages

OptimizePress Instabuilder Marketo

Security

Sucuri

Email Marketing/CRM

Infusionsoft Mailchimp Aweber Getresponse

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Adam Clark's journey to becoming the WordPress-loving freelance developer he is today took a detour. Adam started out in the field of journalism and moved into using and modifying WordPress code. Adam took a detour down the path of using Expression Engine to customize client projects. It wasn't until after WordPress 3.0 came on the scene that he decided to check out how WordPress had changed.

Today, Adam's primary business, BottleRocket Creative, is a development company that produces websites powered by WordPress.

Interview with Adam Clark http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmyoVtCJZlw Listen to the audio version

Subscribe via iTunes One Day and Done I can't really think of anything that I wouldn't do with WordPress at this point? Adam shares his recent experience experimenting and fine tuning WPTheory, his recently launched productized service business. Adam has focused WPTheory around designing smaller projects with shorter project turnarounds. Adam thinks WPTheory will work well for WordPress website redesigns and for clients with budgets around $1000. Adam acknowledged the need to iron out a few wrinkles to make the pre-project intake process more streamlined. Building themes for churches In the past, Adam had not been involved with other developers in the WordPress community and has not (YET) attended a WordCamp. However, he recently started to make connections to other WordPress developers via the Genesis platform community. His church focused themes will be created as Genesis child themes. Creating a show even his wife would listen to. In December 2012, Adam was feeling frustrated and wanted to launch SOMETHING. He decided to give himself a self-imposed deadline by starting to book guests for podcast interviews---even before creating a website or designing a logo for his new venture. The current format of the podcasting venture, on Goodstuff.fm, was started with several partners in 2014.

Best way to reach Adam is on Twitter: @AVClark Learn more about Adam's projects Bottlerocket Creative WPTheory Lift Themes The Gently Mad podcast Resources mentioned Genesis theme framework Alfred App productivity application for Mac OS X Expression engine (alternative CMS) Appe Diem (not a WordPress app) Articles related to Adam's projects Recent WPTavern.com article about WPTheory.net Creative Bloq Article mentioning Adam?s podcast Here's a list of a few spaces where you can connect with others in the WordPress Community WPmentor Find a WordCamp to attend WordPress Entrepreneurs on Google + MattReport Pro Forums

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Do you have to train your clients on using WordPress after a site launch?

In today's episode I get to sit down with someone I have a ton of respect for, Bob Dunn. Bob runs a site called BobWP.com where he educates newbie WordPress users on using themes, plugins, and general blogging practices.

As advanced users, sometimes training can be daunting for us. Why don't they get it? This is so easy!

Bob preaches about patience as a virtue and how that resonates with his clients. This creates a customer base that really fall in love with Bob and his process, which keeps the referral engine going.

Interview with Bob Dunn of BobWP.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePbhPdljlts

Subscribe via iTunes Upfront and personal In a world of passive income and six-figure theme sales, Bob has a lot to teach us about creating personal relationships with our customers.

It's not much different than building an audience and that's what I love about what he has going on. He openly admits that he operates under a different "style." A style that is more hands on, longer duration tutorials, and thorough discovery of client needs. This attracts a demographic of non-technical WP users which commonly need a recurring amount of help. At the end of the day, he's building up a loyal following of repeat customers that have no trouble referring him to others. Finding focus Thousands of themes and thousands of plugins.

Bob has set a core focus on producing tutorials for Genesis and WooThemes. While he get's a lot of requests to cover other themes and plugins, he's realized that setting a vertical early on is a must. This opens up the stage for digging into the "data" of WP products. Common questions and repeat frustrations can be a tremendous asset to product developers.

I think this is where Bob and many of us training users can find leverage with our businesses. What are your WP training tips? I'd like you to share your stories and tips for training the clients you work with. Let us know in the comments below!

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You might refer to it as crushing it or pushing through or even the grind.

Determination is often overlooked in the entrepreneur's journey. Some will fold when faced with the slightest friction of startup life. Others will give up when they can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Dre Armeda, co-founder of Sucuri, joins us to talk about determination and preparation when starting your first business. He's also half of the talent over at the DradCast a popular WordPress podcast.

Get ready to be pumped up by this interview!

Dre Armeda of Sucuri security services

Subscribe to my YouTube channel

A story of determination and perseverance Many of you might know Dre form his podcast, but you might not know the genesis of his startup Sucuri.

A bootstrapped security company that helps protect WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla sites from being hacked. I actually subscribe to their service for this site and a few of my client websites -- I'd suggest taking a look at their offerings if you're in need.

Like many of us in the early days, Dre and his team were faced with making the decision of going all in on the company. Even with full-time jobs, decisions had to be made to quit and focus on growing the business. Tune in to find out what that was like and how they went through the steps to get there.

Leave your comments and other news

Enjoy the show? Post your comments below and let me know what you think!

Also, I've made some changes to WP Mentor including a new community forum and listings for code reviews. If you're looking for help or want to become a WordPress mentor, go check it out!

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Fan favorite Carrie Dils joins the show today to talk about GiggleSnort -- I mean WordPress freelancing.

Carrie brings us through some amazing stories, from bootstrapping a greeting card service to working at StarBucks and how both experiences impacted her career. If you're just starting out or working a day to day that you're trying to get out of, this episode is for you!

Carrie Dils Genesis Developer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64-uITAokRA Listen to the audio

Lessons from GiggleSnort

I love stories about people beating the street to earn a living.

I'm a solid believer in learning the "cold call" before launching yourself into the entrepreneurial journey. Carrie ran a greeting card company called GiggleSnort that quickly exposed her to the hard lessons of small business. Failure is great. You learn from it, get thicker skin, and find new opportunities.

Fail fast, if you can.

Finding Genesis

Once Carrie found StudioPress & Genesis there was no looking back.

She has leveraged the product to build custom solutions for her clients, while continuing to elevate her expertise over the years. You can find her as one of the recommended Genesis developers and recently launched two commercial themes. Utility can be found in her store and Winning Agent over at StudioPress.

Aside from all of the great WordPress code Carrie develops, she's also an awesome person. I've been a fan for quite a while and wish her the best of luck in her business.

Matt Report Pro

It just so happens that Carrie and Tom McFarlin taught a course about starting and running a WordPress theme business in the Pro forum of the site. Become a member and get access to that and a lot more!

Join Matt Report Pro

(updated for iTunes)

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I've had the chance to talk to some really smart and down to earth people lately.

Today's guest, Marcus Couch of WordPress podcasting fame (though don't say that around him), joins us to chat about the ups and downs of running your own business. From landing large national client's with hundreds of websites, to losing ten's of thousands of dollars betting on the wrong partner.

This episode is about as real as it gets, narrated by a guy who knows his stuff. Enjoy!

Interview with Marcus Couch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaXy9kuPJVg Listen to the audio version

I'm just a member of the community. ~ Marcus Couch I wanted to open up with that quote, as it paints the picture really well about our friend Marcus.

I joked at the top of the show (as we WordPress podcasters do) and mentioned that he was the Simon Cowell of WordPress podcasting. Marcus parried and stated he was just a member of the community -- not a celebrity.

He's doing things for the love of the software and for the love of the job. It inspires him, allows him to create and he can do all this while making a living. I relate to this very well , as I'm sure you do too.

So many of us get caught up in the money and the "fame" of a startup that we burn out or find ourselves not loving what it is we do. Curtis McHale recently wrote a post about this that you should read.

Hard lesson learned

There's a point in the episode that things get real. Really real.

This is another lesson I sorely relate to -- as I fear some of you have learned as well. I couldn't write about it on this post to do it justice, so you'll just have to listen. I can say, pick the right partners and hire the right people for the job -- it could cost you more than you think.

You can find Marcus Couch at his website, marcuscouch.com

Join the Pro community!

Last week Carrie Dils posted a great article and at the end, we're offering up a chance to win a free year of Matt Report Pro. Go on over and leave a comment for your chance to win.

Want to dive right into the fun? * Members-only content * Free Lesson Friday * Private forums * Free "stuff" monthly * much more * Join Matt Report Pro!

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There's a great resource that so many of us overlook.

It starts with the time you spend invoicing, speaking on the phone and training clients. It's the time it takes to update a plugin starting from the first click to login. There's top pages, posts and podcasts that your audience consumes on a monthly basis. There's the monthly recurring revenue and new product sales numbers during a launch.

Have you guessed it yet? It's data.

We have all of this data right at our fingertips and we're still unsure how to price or estimate hours. Mason James of WP Valet joins us to talk about that and more in today's episode.

Sit back, relax and get your stopwatches ready for your next client project!

Interview with Mason James https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHvDGJHr0II

Filling a gap Finding customers, better yet, finding the right customer is no easy task.

I think that a lot of us are afraid of the sale. We're so afraid of the possible "No!" we're going to hear, that we don't prove our value well enough. We're not telling the right story from the onset.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say we don't give ourselves enough credit. I think that before our businesses get rocking, we're a bit timid to approach someone and attempt the sale. We're more concerned that they will say no, than getting them to understand the value we bring to the table.

Mason approaches this by proving the value before the sale happens. In fact, he's really focused on clients that want a relationship and not just a 2 month engagement.

Educating a customer on the process, people involved, and support level of your team should begin to raise the price in their mind. Remember, this isn't just to raise prices for the fun fact of raising prices. This is because you value your time and employ a team of professionals dedicated to the project's outcome.

You must truly believe that you are offering a service that no one else is. The next challenge is to actually deliver on your promise. Fill the gap no one else is.

Audio

Looks like I had another fault at the mic on this one, which was recorded right after the previous episode.

I hope you're liking the Soundcloud embeds. Folks are starting to follow me on there which is great. I use Soundcloud when I'm out running and at the gym -- I really love the app. You can also download the mp3 from the embed above if you need to.

I was able to buy a Soundcloud Pro account thanks to folks who support me by signing up for Matt Report Pro. THANK YOU!

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One day I'll write a book about how the experience of selling cars should be a precursor to becoming an entrepreneur.

In fact, I've put some thoughts together on that topic before. There's no better training than working with cold calls, negotiations and rejection that the car lot affords you. After a few years, you just "get it."

Our guest James Dalman gets it.

In this conversation we'll cover his journey as a freelancer, to working at WebDesign.com with Cory Miller and his latest launch HappyJoe.co. Here's a service poised to disrupt recruiting and education of US Veterans looking for a career in web design/development.

James Dalman of HappyJoe.co http://youtu.be/CQF8apGn6nU

Listen to the audio version

Subscribe on iTunes! What matters at the end of the day We talk a lot about pricing in this interview. * Value based * Hourly * Project based

James reminds us to gut check our work at the end of the day. No matter how much or how little you charged, do you feel happy with your work? Did you deliver with integrity? Are your clients happy?

So often we overlook this simple formula in place of pricing strategies and negotiation concepts for better returns. If you're happy with the work you did and your client is high fiving you -- you done good.

Real good.

Forming a strong bond and trust with your client will pay off in the long run. It might not come in the form of immediate dollars, but referrals or strong positive reviews. Word of mouth is still the most powerful form of marketing. Disrupting the freelancing industry We rely on the generous contributions of corporations and individuals to offset the costs of training and mentoring veterans who make it through a tough and strict application process. Veterans who are accepted into our program are provided with these resources for free. Remember when I said James gets it?

His latest business HappyJoe.co is pairing up veterans with web tech mentoring and providing services for businesses. Oh, and it's non-profit.

In this interview you will learn how he ended up during his long journey in the web design space. This new form of mentorship and collaboration is sure to be a massive success and I wish him all the best.

Enjoying the podcast? Join the newsletter.

Looking for a mentor? Join WPMentor.

Want monthly business advice from a great community? Join Matt Report Pro.

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I have the honor of sitting down with legacy WordPress entrepreneur Alex King of Crowd Favorite in today's episode.

Rounding off my release of big name WordPress agency founders, Alex paints the portrait of his 10+ year WordPress career. We cover the recent acquisition from VeloMedia to learning the hard lessons of building a team.

Many successful founders find themselves faced with new challenges that were not listed on the roadmap to success they were carrying. Mr. King is no different and we'll hear how he navigated that terrain.

Alex King of Crowd Favorite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4gfIZSo_Pk

Also subscribe on iTunes! Do interesting stuff, create value, and success will happen Here's what I have never heard from a successful entrepreneur:

"I looked at what the other guy was doing and copied them."

Now, that's not so say you can't look at the competition and do it better - but that's a different discussion. Enter in Alex King who has been working with WordPress before it was even WordPress. Building plugins and products based on his own desires and then finding a customer fit secondary.

If you're naturally interested in building solutions that are creating value for you, chances are it's solving this need for someone else in the world. So while you might find it advantageous to scour CodeCanyon and pick the top seller, remember that's a short game maneuver.

Investing in a team

There's a strong undercurrent of the right team and culture across many of the guests I sit down with.

Founders like Jake, Brad, and Shane all echo the importance of investing in the employee (read: team) before anything else. Arguably this is the biggest challenge of a small startup to century old businesses.

Here's the thing: It's going to change over time.

As you evolve, as your company evolves, so will the culture and the people. You need to be aware of this change and embrace it when the time comes.

I want you to really listen to the tone of Alex's voice and you can hear that there are hard lessons learned. Rightfully so. If there was a starter guide to all of this, the whole game would be quite boring wouldn't it?

Apologies on the recording

Looks like I messed up the audio and recorded with my webcam and not my Rode podcaster. Sometimes the USB cable pulls out when I move the boom. I hope you do make it all the way through because it was a great one.

Matt Report Pro

If you're looking to join a community of awesome WordPress entrepreneurs like yourself -- checkout MattReport.com/join and become a member! * Private forums * Monthly mastermind calls * Special content for your eyes only! * Get it now MattReport.com/join

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In today's episode I finally make it around to inviting my good friend Jake Goldman on to the show. If you don't know Jake, he's running one of the largest WordPress agencies on the planet.

If you're looking to scale your own shop, we talk about some very important steps starting with recruiting the right people to offering more than just web development.

Jake Goldman founder of 10up.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqh8UJ2fiBQ

Listen to the audio version

You can also subscribe on iTunes. What's going on at 10up? You might recall I recently did an e-mail interview with Jake covering seoslides.

More recently he and his team launched a new product called PushUp a plugin that will enable you to push notifications to a reader's Mavericks desktop. In fact, if you're in Safari now, you should have been prompted to subscribe to my site.

However, today's episode will focus more on 10up the agency, as Jake promises to return to chat about the product side of things at a later date.

Growing an agency

One of the most important elements to a successful agency are the projects and accounts they work on, however, this should not overshadow the importance of hiring great people.

Jake shares his thoughts and process on hiring great WordPress developers and embedding them into the 10up culture.

Another important note, which I learned early on as well, do not stop at just web development.

Sure it's going to depend on your goals and resources, but if you're just pumping out projects and not building multiple revenue streams of support and strategy -- you might find it difficult to grow.

Growth doesn't seem to be easing up for 10up as they recently announced a new CEO.

Finding the right client

Another equally important note: find the right client that wants to scale.

Jake admits that early on, you have to take what you can get to pay the bills. I agree with this, so long as you know that you have a preferred client in mind. Client's that want to sign support contracts or retainers because they have a need to scale and they want you to be a part of it. Let's hear from you What were your thoughts on the interview?

I'm going to have Jake back to talk about his products and I'd love to gather some listener questions now. Post them in the comments below.

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There is managed WordPress hosting and then there is the VIP platform.

Ok, so maybe you don't make the leap THAT fast, but if you're a Fortune 50 looking for a strong SLA tied closely to Automattic, you might choose VIP.

Paul Maiorana, VP of Platform Services, joins us to talk about what it's like to work at Automattic and wrangle the large Fortune clients. We'll discover some of the future vision of WordPress and what enterprise clients expect from an agency and what VIP expects from a developer.

I had a great time in this interview and I hope you enjoy it!

Interview with Paul Maiorana

Listening to a client I was really interested to learn how Paul's sales team interact with larger clients.

It came down to one simple rule that even smaller agencies struggle with -- listening. Mark Suster refers to it as The Danger of Crocodile Sales. Like a croc, you might have a big mouth and little ears. Talking the talk, spitting out lingo and simply not listening.

If you're looking for more clients, you need to listen to their pain points and needs before you begin.

More money more problems?

As you scale up these fundamental lessons carry over to larger clients.

You're still waiting for project contacts to sign off on changes and you're still waiting for everyone to be "in the same room." Just because you're charging more doesn't mean you will be changing your overall process. In fact, it will be your unique process that will get you through the door.

That's not to say the larger account doesn't come with it's red tape. Listen to CC Chapman talk about that and what he forgot to do before landing a big client.

Want to hear Paul's Pro segment? Join Matt Report Pro membership and grow your WordPress business!

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It's not often one has the chance to share a stage with guru of responsive design Ethan Marcotte, as I did during WordCamp Boston 2013.

Ok, so it wasn't a stage, it was a podium. And we didn't share it, I just came on after him -- but I digress.

In this episode of Matt Report, our animated GIF hero and I chat about the fundamentals of usability and how responsive solves a lot more than just pretty browser snapping fun. Ethan isn't a die-hard WordPress user either and he sheds some of his perspective on how WordPress could improve in some key areas.

Hands down a great guy to talk to with a fresh perspective on our digital world. Enjoy!

Interview with Ethan Marcotte

Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes! Want to hear the Pro Version? Start a membership! With a strong process and understanding

There are those that simply do work and those where the work is part of their fabric.

Ethan is certainly the latter.

Take responsive web design for instance. You might be selling brochureware sites that require the design to load "safely" on an iMac, tablet, and a cell phone. That's great, it's what the client wants. Everyone is happy and it's off to the next web project.

What about if that same technology could save terabytes of data across a wireless network for developing countries? Now we're talking about a usability and experience that's slightly different than how you stack your grid of homepage photos.

These are the challenges that inspire Ethan on a daily basis and we're going to chat all about it.

WordPress

Believe it it or not, he hasn't touched WordPress in a while -- or perhaps now since we originally recorded this -- so his fresh perspective on our beloved platform shouldn't be missed!

We're also going to be giving you advice on landing that next big client and how the conversation in the room might be shockingly similar to what you're already experiencing.

What's going on in Matt Report Pro?

Here's what members are currently enjoying:

• Access to the pro segments recorded in the interviews
• A short actionable lesson every Friday, taught by yours truly.
• Interaction and advice from the members only forum
• So much more
• What are you waiting for? Join today!

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Are you afraid to start because you're not in San Francisco, New York, or Austin?

What if I told you that today's guest is doing just fine out in North Dakota?

Garrett Moon is co-foudner of Todaymade a software company that launched CoSchedule a few months back. And by a few months I mean October/November of last year -- yes this interview is a bit late.

None the less it is jam packed with great advice from this passionate and very talented founder. We're going to cover a wide range of startup challenges like launching outside of a major metro market all the way to negotiating client services contracts.

Don't miss it!

Launching a startup outside of a major market Listen to the audio version or subscribe on iTunes

Want to hear that Pro segment at the end or join a mastermind community of WordPress folks like you? Don't forget to use the promo code and join today!

In today's startup world

Considering I run a distributed shop in today's startup world, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that a talented team can find success no matter where they are.

Today's guest shares what it's like to launch a new product alongside a client services business and all the juicy details in between. One thing that really sticks out is building a product that solves your own need first.

Sounds so cliche, but it's a great way to test and validate a new idea. At the end of the day, at least you can still use it for your business and that's how Garrett and his team launched CoSchedule.

An alternative to WordPress

Something else that might come as a surprise -- Todaymade has their own CMS.

Gasp! You're not using WordPress?!

Some of the projects they launch do not require the overhead or standard features of a traditional WordPress install. Though they often integrate the blogging platform with their content management system it's not always the perfect fit. We'll discuss what that's like when negotiating with customers.

This interview is a bit late

We recorded this back in November when I was first outlining the foundation of Matt Report Pro and embarrassingly I'm just airing it now. I do apologize to Garrett and his team, but this is still a great episode for all to enjoy!

Soundtrack: One Way Heartbeats

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Some of the best conversations I've had with WordPress entrepreneurs are those coming from a military background.

Embrace the suck is a phrase that today's guest Nathan Hangen introduced me to as we talked about his time serving and his journey of building Ignition Deck.

There's a lot to learn in this episode so I want you to dive right in and enjoy.

Interview with Nathan Hangen of Ignition Deck Listen to the audio version

Want to hear the Pro only clip? Join Matt Report Pro There's a challenge in everything This is the undercurrent of the interview.

It's no easy task to start a business, promote your product and continue to grow. Embrace the suck as Nathan warns us. We explore what Nathan and his team had to do to launch his product while battling off cease and desist letters, including the usual the organic growth issues.

One question I was always curious about -- How do you price a plugin that enables folks to raise millions? Hit play for the answer :)

From there, we move into discussing how he handles features, upgrades and new product launches. If you find yourself going in 100 directions, you're not alone and hopefully this interview helps you deal with that pressure.

I'm going to go on record that this is one of the best interviews I've done. There's so much good discussion here. Don't miss it. Matt Report Pro I recorded this episode WAY back in October when I first started outlining a Pro version. I mention in the interview the URL is /register but it's actually /join -- sorry about that!

I'm going to release another post diving into the features of a Pro version, but for now here's what you're getting: * Members only WordPress entrepreneurs forum * Access to the Pro segments that I record with each guest (including Nathan!) * Monthly training/webinar calls about various topics * Monthly ProCasts that are special episodes with some of the top WordPress experts * Access to myself and my guests prior to the interview

This month's ProCast is with Chris Lema, Tom McFarlin and Pippin Williamson! It's over an hour of talk about finding better clients, scaling your business and increasing your rates. 

So if you want more Matt Report content, the Pro plan is the place to be. If you simply want to support my efforts, this is another great way to show your support. This does not mean I'm going to stop the podcast or hold back from creating great FREE content for you. By monetizing I can build a better product, hire staff and serve you in new endeavors.

Again, you can signup for the Pro membership with a special discount (For the next 30 days) here: http:http://mattreport.com//join

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What do you get when you combine 3 awesome WordPress startups with 3 awesome WordPress proven entrepreneurs?

The Matt Report WordPress Startup Challenge of course!

This is one of my favorite events that I do and I hope you enjoy it just the same. This episode is FULL of awesome WordPress goodness. Tune in to see 3 great startups trying to make it in this crazy world and the advice our judges panel has to offer.

Startup Challenge 2 https://vimeo.com/84812610 Listen to the audio version

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[/one_half_last] An international affair I'm pumped to release episode 2 of the startup challenge and this time it went global!

Five different countries were represented in this hour long show of entertainment, education and WordPress goodness. Congrats to everyone who took part in the episode and I wish them the best in their entrepreneurial journey.

Startups in this episode * Jordi Cabot of WP-abtesting.com * Jordan Gillman of Churchsites.co * David Locke of FreelanceWP.com

Thank the sponsors! [full_width] [one_half]

[/one_half] [one_half_last] Carrie Dils Brought to you by Carrie Dils and the Institution of Supporting the Things You Enjoy Twitter: @cdils Website: CarrieDils.com [/one_half_last] [/full_width] [full_width] [one_half] Louis Reingold Sponsored by Louis Reingold & Soflyy . We actually make money instead of just listening to people talk about it. Get back to work! Twitter: @soflyy Website: wpallimport.com [/one_half] [one_half_last]

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[one_half_last] WP Sitecare WP Site Care provides proactive updates, backups, security, and support from real people to keep WordPress websites and their users happy Twitter: @ryandonsullivan Website: wpsitecare.com [/one_half_last] [/full_width] Honorable sponsors * vesbyte * Joel Eade * Joan Boluda * Kevin McKernan * Warren Croce * Nate * Dave * Pippin Williamson * Jonathan Kay * Scott Bolinger * Phil Derksen

Just 5 bucks (or name your price) If you're a fan of the show and you want to see it continue, that's all I'm asking for. What will that $5 score you? * In the credits of the next episode * Membership access to the uncut version of the pilot episode * Access to the the contestants "biggest challenge" questions and the judges response

Sponsorship Want to sponsor the next episode? Contribute $200 for... * Same access as above * a 140 character ad read in the episode * Banner placement on the show page

Questions? Contact me.

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Who wants to be in the client services field when you can be in product? After all, the road to the Golden Chalice is lined with riches and bountiful treasures.

Create an MVP, launch it, and splash into your pool of coins like Uncle Scrooge.

No one ever warns you about the long weekends, iterations, support and the hurtle of marketing. Who will pay us for our goods? There's a lot more sweat equity that today's startup buzz doesn't warn you about. Not only do you have to build the product, but you have to build the platform you plan to sell and promote it on.

Then there's the task of choosing the right price to support growth and your existing customer base. Phew, just when we thought it was easy peasy.

Today I sit down with famed WordPress developer Andrew Norcross to discuss his journey and the launch of Genesis Design Palette Pro. He's here to share his insight about all that good stuff and more!

Interview with Andrew Norcross http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgyTLcm92Tg Listen to the audio version Also find me on iTunes

Understanding your customer If you're a WordPress developer or a product lead -- don't miss this episode.

Understanding the customer is a recurring trend that I'm picking up on with featured Matt Report guests. We're talking deeper than just understanding the customers problem you're solving. I mean really know them and how they will interact with your product. How will they request support from you and your team? What's their level of expectation?

All of this should go into the planning, marketing and promotion of your product. This isn't rocket science, it's been around since the 1960's as the Four P's. * Product * Price * Promotion * Place

But as developers we get lost in the mix of building.

We like code. We like tight, clean, efficient code. Even if it works we want it to be better. Why? It works for the customer, just let it go.

After all, everything on the web is iterative. Isn't this why we have versions and github?

My advice to developers

At least from the business and marketing side -- don't forget about the little people.

People that don't understand what's going on under the hood and don't care for that matter. They bought your product to solve a specific problem but once the purchase is made, you have to take off your engineer hat (in most cases) and throw on the white gloves. * It's about customer service. * It's about getting feedback. * It's about business development. * Oh, and it's also about your next version.

Provide great customer service to get better feedback and ask for referrals (biz dev). Use all of this cache to enhance your next version.

Granted you will have some customers that don't alight perfectly and that's OK. It's business. Invest in your first 100 customers and roll from there. About the featured guest * Andrew on Twitter * Reaktiv Studios * Genesis design palette pro

What are your thoughts on launching an MVP vs a refined product? Let us know in the comments below!

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Dare I say it's easy to launch a product when there's a competitor in the wild?

How about easier?

It's one challenge to build a competing product and grow a business, it's a whole other challenge to create something new with no competitors.

Today I sit down with Scott Bolinger and Lisa Sabin-Wilson to discuss the launch and future plans for their AppPresser product.

If you're cooking up you own product or service that's scaring the bejeebus out of you -- you probably want to listen to this episode!

AppPresser with Scott Bolinger & Lisa Sabin-Wilson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R6MhB4Kegw Listen to the audio version

This is scary stuff Let's face it, being an entrepreneur is scary stuff.

You set out, sometimes on your own, to face the great unknown that is the market. * Who's my customer? * How do I reach them? * How much do I charge?

Let's say you wanted to launch a contact form plugin. You would look at Gravity Forms or Ninja Forms and see what they were up to. Your team would probably start by saying, "How can we make this easier?" or "Can we make a better UI?" Then you're off to the races. You've got a foundation and a blueprint to work with.

Well, what if you don't have a competitor to base your version 1 off of? What if no one actually wants to buy your new idea?

The greater the risk the greater the return.

As for AppPresser, they have no model to work from. There's no standard for building iOS or Android apps based on WordPress because it doesn't exist -- until now.

In this episode, we're going to look at how Scott hooked up with WebDevStudios and why it's important to work with other teams on projects this size. A feat that I tip my cap to, as most folks charged with a startup idea want to control it all.

I hope you enjoy this special episode with the team from AppPresser! Launching a product that has no competition If it hasn't been created yet - ask yourself why. * Too challenging? * Too costly? * No market?

However, if your gut is telling you to build this, here's a few methods that I recommend to test your market.

I've talked about it in this post, but your first step should be to start growing an audience today. Take your idea and chisel it down to the most consumable pill to swallow. If you've got plans for every feature and every platform, pick the most popular and roll with that. Start the elevator pitch to friends, family and your Twitter following. If no one gets it or isn't too convinced, throw it back in the oven.

You don't want to launch half baked.

If you can't put it into words, try using a presentation or video demonstration using Screenflow. Slideshows with big simlpe text and keywords work great. If you can't dive into code right away, simulate your clicks or product screens using animation. This is another great way to demonstrate a walk through without having to actually code something.

It's all about the pitch and presentation when you don't have a similar competitor to tackle.

"We're just like Easy Digital Downloads, but easier!" Imagine that, but you get my point.

Do you find yourself in this position? Tell us in the chat below!

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Running a WordPress business?

Of course you are! If you're not, you can use these services for any form of online business.

In part 1, we'll briefly cover WordPress hosting, a few plugins, and a couple or my choice productivity tools. There's some cross compatibility from the blogging tips post, but I've wrapped some new context around the areas that apply. This post was inspired by Carrie Dils and her review of SaaS software for her own WordPress business.

I hope this helps you make some new decisions and enables you to run a better WordPress business.

Tools of the WordPress trade http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVUJB3fJEPY Listen to the audio version

Some of the following links are affiliate links. They help pay for the show and put food on the table for my family. Thank you! WordPress hosting As I stated in the podcast and in the video, this is not an in-depth review of WordPress hosts. This is a quick fly-by of hosts I've use and how you can use them too.  I do plan on discussing WordPress hosts more in depth in another post. Linode Visit website

Linode is a great VPS service if you're looking to get your hands dirty. Their offerings are powerful and affordable. If you're looking to host many WordPress websites and you know your way around Linux security give these guys a shot. In terms of uptime and performance I've had great results. Their support is also fast and friendly which is very important.

Pros: * Affordable * Powerful features * Great support

Cons: * Support is not WordPress specific * You have to know how to configure your own linux instance * Your on the line for major performance or security issues

Digital Ocean Visit website

A $5 a month stomping ground. There's a handful of localhost development environments, but there's nothing quite like the real thing. Digital Ocean provides little droplets for running various flavors of Linux. Like Linode, you will need to be up to speed on setting up a Linux environment and locking down anything you don't want the bad guys to get. I think this is a great solution for testing plugins or running dev environments.

Pros: * $5 a month * Fast * Easy

Cons: * Not sure how their product will scale compared to a Linode * You still have to configure/support yourself

SiteGround Visit website

Support. Support. Super fast support. This is the most important factor for me. Period. This site has run on SG for the last 3 - 4 months and I've been blown away by their level of support. I'm not just talking talking level 1 "we got your message and we'll work on this" SOP responses - I'm talking full blown, in-depth responses. Backups, staging servers, and WordPress specific optimization plans are also available.

Pros:  * Awesome support * Affordable * Feature rich

Cons: * Still a shared environment * Not your typical "managed WordPress" host

Namecheap Visit website

Not much to say here other than it's my go to source for registering domains. Easy to use control panel with zero fluff or complexity. They also have an awesome API to tap into if you're into that kind of thing.

Pros: * Unadulterated domain registration * Affordable

Cons * They don't give me free domains

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During a pre-sale call for my consulting service, a client asked me if I did content marketing "campaigns."

Now there are PPC campaigns, impression campaigns, and even some podcasting could be looked at as a campaign -- but not your overall content marketing.

Here's why: If you're looking at content creation as as this thing you "do" and not an expression of yourself or the company, the passion isn't there and you're just flipping switches. Content has to be compelling, informative and most of all authentic. You can't just bust out a stencil and trace the lines to create your blog post -- if you did everyone would be pumping out the same thing.

Content Marketing for Entrepreneurs Listen to the audio version

Subscribe on iTunes

The best time to create content is right when you start that next big idea. I'm not just talking about the blogging daily, I'm talking about publishing content on various channels -- start your a media empire.

"But I'm not ready for marketing!" you shout.

That's, ok, in fact it's perfect! So, many of you have heard of the lean startup methodology, start with something that solves this small problem and get it into the hands of others as quickly as possible. This production line validates the business and the product with a niche market or case study.

You can validate your idea with content marketing before you even begin to put sweat equity into coding. Validate your idea with a blog post Recently, I posted about the benefits of becoming a mentor. If you haven't thought about sharing your experiences with a young padawan, head on over to that post and consider it -- mentoring will change your life.

That little blog post, or seed as I refer to it, had some great feedback. Folks were leaving comments and connecting with each other to help out. I received a bunch of e-mails from around the world looking to see if they could get help.

Ok, this idea is validated.

I launched an MVP of the mentor program over at WP Mentor and as of this writing there are 17 listings for mentors and mentees. More validation, now with actual results and practice. Gauging design feedback on Instagram https://cloudup.com/cxdzDJr9rrz

I see Brian Gardner do this a lot. Now, I'm not saying he does this on purpose, but it's something you can certainly leverage. Use Instagram to post design concepts or mockups. Look for comments there and grow an audience. It's a great channel to add to your media empire.

Lastly, cool design photos are perfect for that medium and it's not out of place. Look at each channel you create content as if it were TV. Would you put the same advertisement out for your company during an episode of Walking Dead as you would The Today Show?

More channels + diverse audience = quality feedback. Screencasts for beta plugins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w6UDVEsajg

Got a plugin or SaaS business that's still not ready for the public consumption? A screencast is a perfect piece of media to shed some early light on your product.

The above example is a 3 minute walk through of BackupBuddy, not an actual product demo, but you get the idea.It doesn't have to be long and detailed -- remember your plugin is still in it's early days.

What you want to do is give someone

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Think about the high performing companies you subscribe to and the image they portray on the web, in social media, and within your inbox.

I'm a raving fan of a company that uses a monkey as part of their brand. Can you guess who that is?

Mailchimp.

Where the name might sound foolish and playful, it's one of the smartest pieces of software I use on the web. I'm not embarrassed to refer you to their site and I know your entire experience will be a delight -- then there's the product -- it just works.

Do the same principles apply to the tight knit WordPress community? Let's discuss.

Public Relations for a WordPress business Your first thought might be, public relations is the same no matter what business or organization you're running. That might hold true, but the WordPress community is a funny duck.

When we evaluate our market, a lot of our customers are our peers. We're following each other on Twitter, we're meeting up at WordCamps across the world, and we're enjoying monthly meetups. We know the quality of your code, the type of business you run, and often your favorite beer.

Connection is made: we come together to invest in each other's skill and often the product that we develop.

You throw down your hard earned cash for a plugin you need or perhaps recommend a client purchase that theme own their own. You might be speaking at a local event and rattle off your favorite WordPress shop for those seeking help on a custom project.

I'd say 9 times our of 10 you're doing this because of the bond you forged by following this company (sometimes, individual) online or at the very least, a colleague mentioned them.

Until WordPress is a household phrase like, I need to build a website, I think PR in our space is very important. You are what you eat I'm not saying that this is the be-all end-all of your business. I'm not saying it drives the bottom line either.

This is an evergreen, long tail or full brand strategy for the life of the business. In fact, it's something that should come natural to a founder or to a team's culture.

If there's ZERO regard to one's image -- I'd say that there's very little regard to satisfying one's customer. At the very least, there's little care to on boarding NEW customers. The attention economy I've been using this phrase for the last 6 months. This is an attention economy. Not just about wether you saw my blog post or listened to my podcast versus another -- but that people are paying attention to you.

Competition can come out of thin air and no one is isolated from it.

In the end, here's what I want you to do: 1. Build a great product 2. Nurture an audience

There are finer details that go along with building a great WordPress business, but to me, that's just filler for this easy 2-step process. * Awesome new features in the roadmap? Sweet, can't wait. * Works across all platforms? I'm excited. * You seemingly care about the audience that helped build the business? You've got a life long customer.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on Public Relations in your WordPress business. Fire away in the comments.

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I'm really excited to sit down and chat with the developer of wpForGlass, a WordPress plugin for publishing via Google Glass.

When the news broke, the first thing that came to my mind was, "Who is Ozzy Farman and this agency Weber Shandwick?"

Why is that important? In my humble opinion, this type of plugin is forward thinking. We're not talking about another social share plugin or can someone theme the admin better -- this is the practice of fusing two great technologies together for the enhancement of publishing.

Why didn't innovation like this come from one of the "well known" WordPress agencies? Should it have? We'll learn about that and more in episode 57!

Interview with Ozzy Farman of Weber Shandwick http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiXJWw_DwrQ Video quality isn't that good while recording via a hangout Listen to the audio version

Publishing with WordPress This isn't the only foray into fusing technologies with WordPress. John Saddington is doing this with photography and his iOS app Pressgram.

I still feel that we've yet to really harness the potential of using WordPress as a publishing platform for individuals and large media organizations alike. WordPress is poised to be the central hub for an individual's social publishing -- not Facebook, not Twitter -- your WordPress blog.

https://twitter.com/sarahpressler/status/411181929703038976

You own the data, the traffic and you call the shots. Look for innovative plugins like this to heighten this experience over the next year. The Business of big agency This wouldn't be a Matt Report episode without talking business.

Ozzy shares some insight into the 300 person PR agency(there's 300+ in the NY office) Weber Shandwick, that fronted this open source plugin development. I did some research before the show and their landing some rather large deals. With deals reaching intp the multi-millions, Ozzy explains how we should position our own sales pitch. Some great advice for us to elevate from the $500, $5000, and into the $50,000 projects.

Takeaway: Telling a story

You know what is great about WordPress? It allows us to tell a story.

We can draft short posts, long form content, or publish a podcast. Now, with Google Glass integration, telling a story becomes easier than ever. Ozzy views the investment in this technology as paying it forward for future client relations. You might not be able to walk into a Best Buy and pickup a Google Glass today, but you can be assured that when your media team is looking for an agency to deploy 100's of them for a big media push -- Ozzy will get the call. Welcome to the community Welcome to the community Ozzy!

I mentioned that his agency isn't one of those we normally hear of in the halls of a WordCamp -- at least, I haven't.

So when he announced his project on Github, he was really surprised to find that WordPress folks were helping him out and guiding him to do it the "WordPress way." It was great to get that first person perspective on our little community.

Grab the wpForGlass plugin here: http://labs.webershandwick.com/wpforglass/2013/10/27/introducing-wpforglass/

The featured image was taken by Ozzy on his Google Glass device!

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Sometimes I should learn to keep my mouth shut. But if I did, we wouldn’t get awesome interviews like this one with James Schramko of superfastbusiness.com.

I was listening to James interview on another podcast and he lead in to how easy it is to launch a WordPress website. Even more so, how fast and cheap it is.

Call it passion or call it crazy - but I called him out on why folks launching their new website shouldn’t just skimp out because they can.

Long story short, he contacted me and this episode was born. Join us to discuss the steps it takes to build a great WordPress website!

How to build a great WordPress website with James Schramko

I like to think that these sort of lists are subjective to the type of website you’re building. In your case, you might focus more on the pure design aspects of the site or the mobile usability.

Either way, I hope you find this list and collection of links useful for your WordPress business -- or even more important -- your customer's. Speed Speed is an important factor across the board. It will improve our bounce rate and help mobile networks tolerate the access to your content.

Oh, Google loves speed too.

Plugins that help: 1. W3 Total Cache 2. Smush it 3. Cloudflare

Other services: 1. WebPageTest.org 2. Your Web host - This should be your first stop ;)

Usability When a visitor lands on our site are they able to use it properly? I don't just mean they can scroll or links work (though do make sure that is possible!) but that they can find the content and resources they intend to.

We need them to take action because that's how we measure the success of our efforts.

Plugins that help: 1. Google analytics by Yoast 2. Yet Another Related Post Plugin 3. SearchWP

Other services: 1. CrazyEgg 2. Google Analytics

Mobile If you don’t have a mobile accessible site you could be losing out on revenue. God forbid you're a restaurant or brick and mortar store surviving on foot traffic. Luckily WordPress makes this easy -- but not too easy, right James?

Plugins that help: 1. Jetpack 2. Wptouch

Other services: 1. Viewport resizer

Content Have you heard of content marketing yet? Don’t cringe at the word "blog" or "podcast" - it’s new media publishing. Use your WordPress site as your homepage for all things online publishing.

Plugins that help: 1. Yoast SEO 2. Watch our review on EditFlow

Other services: 1. Scribe

Value proposition So many sites have become "own

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Am I the only one that has an urge to start writing a book when the winter time rolls around?

Brian Casel returns to The Matt Report to discuss his latest Launch Design for Conversions.

This isn't a typical interview, we're getting right to the good stuff including planning your book, marketing, sales expectations and supporting customers.

Learn from Brian's success and failures in episode 55!

Episode 55: Brian Casel & Design for Conversions Listen to the audio version or subscribe on iTunes!

There's a long road ahead Brian set out with a very rigid scheduled -- then chopped it by 2 months.

When he looked at the project from a 30-thousand foot view, he was a bit overwhelmed. Who wouldn't be when all you see is a blank canvas needing to be filled with all of your thoughts.

But what did he attribute his success to?

1. Blogging

Brian has been bogging for some time now. If he wasn't already producing content regualrly, this book writing task probably would have been a touch harder. On the flip side, guest blogging also helped him find success with marketing the book.

So get your blog on already!

1. Planning

Planning every step of the way. Admittedly this is my weakest point. He sat down and formulated a strong plan and mapped out milestones for himself. Along the way, he crossed off these accomplishments which became great motivating points. He drilled down to the day, which I don't think I could do, but certainly on a weekly or monthly basis. How would you plan your book?

1. Hard work

There's no other way around it. This is going to be hard work.

We chatted about the days that he had to sit down and just write. Mentally exhausted from the day or just not in the mood, he still stuck through it and pounded through the hard turns. I've heard this from a lot of authors out there and it's quite a challenge that I'm wondering if I could live up to.

There's a whole heck of a lot more in the interview so be sure to tune in. A special offer for you Brian is giving you 20% off any book plan you purchase. You must use the special link and the coupon code below. Because of this nice gesture, I'm giving you $10 bucks off the Socialize theme that powers this site! Both offers are good for 1 week only. Save 20% on Design for Conversions Use link: http://casjam.com/mattreport

Use offer code: mattreport Save $10 off of Socialize Use link: Socialize Responsive Blogging Theme

Use offer code: MATTREPORT10

Hope you enjoy this episode and the special offers. Don't forget to subscribe to my mailing list for all the great stuff going on in the WordPress entrepreneurial world!

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After a month of post production it's finally here!

Wondering what the WordPress startup community is up to? Check out these 4 new startups and join in to hear the judges rate their pitch and business model.

Listen to the audio version

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What's this all about? If you didn't catch the original post, I've been working on a Shark Tank or a Demo Day like show for young WordPress startups. Along with coaching and consulting WordPress startups, I receive a lot of pitches for new ideas and business models.

So why not create another piece of great Matt Report content?

Enter the WordPress Startup Challenge!

I invited 4 early stage WordPress startups to pitch to a panel of veteran WordPress entrepreneurs. In the pitch, they tell us what their product or service is all about, what pain points their solving and how they plan on growing. The judges provide their feedback about the pitch and pick their favorite at the end. The pilot episode (I feel) was amazing.

It was great to have 4 contestants share their ideas and business plan along with the judges providing excellent actionable feedback. Everyone did an amazing job and I can't thank them enough for working through the pilot episode with me.

That said, there's a lot of logistics and time spent to put together a show like this and it's why I'm opening it up for "donations" and sponsorship. Just 5 bucks (or name your price) If you're a fan of the show and you want to see it continue, that's all I'm asking for. What will that $5 score you? * In the credits of the next episode * Membership access to the uncut version of the pilot episode * Access to the the contestants "biggest challenge" questions and the judges response

Sponsorship Want to sponsor the next episode? Contribute $200 for... * Same access as above * a 140 character ad read in the episode * Banner placement on the show page

Questions? Contact me. [/tab] [tab title="Episode 1 The Pilot"]

The Judges: * Bill Erickson (interview) * Syed Balkhi (interview) * Eric Hamm (interview)

The Startups: * Angie Meeker of YourCrimeSite.com * Ben Sibley of SupportDash.com * Dan Norris of WPCurve.com * Jonathan Kay of WPStageCoach.com

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Well, it's finally happened. I interviewed Brian Gardner.

If you don't know who Brian is, where the heck have you been? He's the first WordPress entrepreneur to pioneer the premium theme business as we know it today. He started StudioPress over six years ago as a passion project and soon became the de facto site to purchase premium WordPress themes.

We're not just talking selling themes in this interview. We're talking about becoming an "accidental business owner" and team leader to a large distributed staff.

See, Brian didn't set out with plans to scale, grow a a multi-million dollar business or partner with Copyblogger media. These pieces of the puzzle sort of fell together and we're going to learn what that ride is like. Interview with Brian Gardner of Copyblogger founder of StudioPress Listen to the audio version Subscribe on iTunes

Can there be another StudioPress success story? There's no doubt about it, the theme market is a big scary place. With the likes of Woo and Brian's CopyBlogger market cache, how can you compete?

Brian provides some great advice to those of us up to (crazy enough) for this challenge.

One key takeaway, that I feel gets overlooked often, is partnering with other shops. Either designing child themes for a framework like Genesis or getting a helping hand from another designer/developer type if you need it.

But what about the customer? Can we find a niche to exploit?

The answer is, yes.

Even CopyBlogger's audience is fairly diverse, so pinning down a vertical is still a totally acceptable strategy. Finding Inspiration Spoken like a true founder, Brian says anything is possible with Genesis. That makes starting a new canvas to a design much more attractive.

Couple that with a desire to publishing his thoughts and getting bored of looking at the same old website, he's constantly under the hood tinkering with his theme.

When asked if he looks to any other designers for inspiration, he confessed he tries to keep his blinders on. He doesn't want to get labeled as too inspired or down right copy another design. The power of a personal blog Being transparent is healthy.

For those of you following Brian, you know he wears his heart on his sleeve and that's a good thing. His passion for writing isn't that of his partner Brian Clark either.

This is growing an audience for other reasons than just business. If you're not focused, you're not efficient It's an outlet for any form of emotion, be it creative or personal.

It's an audience for the gut check you might ask for from time to time. I love this concept and I think it's over shadowed by the typical web marketing crowd blogging for dollars.

I really enjoyed talking to Brian in this episode and I hope you feel the same. Take a moment to subscribe to my e-mail newsletter and share this with a friend.

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Just getting back from PressNomics and flipping through my Rolodex of awesome new connections.

Oh and catching up from jet lag -- sorry Rebecca. :)

If you're interested in attending PressNomics or learning what it's all about, check out my review here. Loads of good comments there too. So what's up in episode 53?

I had a chance to sit down with Josh Strebel founder of Page.ly at the event and chat with him to find out what's going on in his world. If you're thinking about starting your own managed hosting WordPress service you'll want to tune in.

Episode 53: Joshua Strebel of Page.ly and what's going on at the Matt Report Listen to the audio version

PressNomics founder Josh was super busy at the event so I really appreciate the time he took to share his thoughts with us.

He's seemingly playing the long game -- heck, he was the first in the managed WordPress hosting space so he knows a thing or two about historical trends. I even asked him what happens when 3 managed WordPress hosting providers walk into a bar -- you might be surprised with his answer.

But here's my take away from the event and my time with Josh:

Give back to people however you can and good things will happen.

In a world of lean startup, MVP and analytics we get blinded by all of this data. We are trained to think our customers are 1's & 0's driven by keywords and algorithms.

If you do get a chance to attend his WordPress business conference, you'll see that's not the case.

Handshakes, hugs and laughs is what spread around. No mention of partner or white label accounts for his business. Just put out really good stuff and connect people. Which is just amazing and a motto I try to follow. Matt Report listener survey If you're on my newsletter, a while back I pinged you about what your #1 challenge was.

I cover the top 3 in today's episode and provide some of my own feedback within their respective areas. So here we are a few months later -- are these still your #1 challenges?

Have you found a new one? Let us know in the comments below. Loving what I do here It's not a question, it's a statement.

I met so many awesome people out in Arizona last week that tune in week after week. THANK YOU!

It was great hearing that I've connected with so many of you and have helped in some small way or another. I really want to kick things up a notch and create even better content for you. Stuff that you really want every week -- heck every day!

Let me know what I can do better around here. A lot of folks asked me if I had been charging for anything and I said no. That's not to say it hasn't been on my mind and I would love to introduce a "Pro" version of Matt Report.

I don't know what it is yet, aside from my 1 on 1 consulting I've been doing. A membership or mastermind of sorts is the first logical step -- but I don't want to be just another drop in the bucket. I want to make lasting impressions and provide real return on an investment.

So have any thoughts? Drop me a line. Guest blogging Want to publish your WordPress business case study? Contact me.

I'm looking to grow this community of WordPress entrepreneurs and invite you to use this blog as your platform. I chat more about that in today's episode so give it a listen.

Til next time!

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You're an entrepreneur still trading time for dollars -- how do you get out of that?

You launch a new WordPress website for a client and everyone is excited to go live -- but wait, they wanted you to upload their 1,000 pages of content.

It wasn't your responsibility.

Months later you realize you've been teaching them the same steps over and over -- when will it end?

Cliff Seal joins us to talk about automating your way out of these tasks. We'll look at it from the actual practice of training someone all the way to bending WordPress to do the job for you.

But that's not all.

Cliff is a super smart guy and we're going uncover his entrepreneurial drive and what new projects he's launching.

Interview with Cliff Seal Listen to the audio version

So much stuff, so little time You know exactly what I'm talking about.

You're going to amazed at how much Cliff can handle at once and hopefully you learn a thing or two along the way. How does a guy build themes, amazing WordPress SaaS products, freelance and work a full-time job?

Guess what, he also refuses to work nights.

Really.

He also wrote this epic summary for my show, so I'm just going to repurpose it for the blog. Hope Cliff doesn't mind :) Who is Cliff Seal? 1. I left the position I automated myself out of about a year and a half ago. I basically worked on the idea behind the scenes for 6 months or so, knowing I could either move on to work elsewhere or shift my duties (as I did design, some marketing, and some video animation as well). I literally attached a proposal to dissolve my position to my two-week notice, breaking down how to move forward without losing productivity and calculating the amount of money they'd save.

1. I work at Pardot which is a part of Salesforce. I'm a Senior User Experience Architect, but I've also led (and built) a total redesign and rebuild for us (with one sort-of mini-redesign recently)—all our external sites are built on WordPress, so I get to dabble and do fun things every day. I've released a couple of plugins that came from small projects at Pardot, and I've also built some other really cool plugins that aren't quite ready for public release. On top of that, we have an official Pardot plugin which I picked up development on when I arrived, and I get to maintain it and build new features into it.

2. I've been doing WordPress development for about 5 years now, and continue to do contract work. I've been working completely off referrals for all those years, and I've never had a lull in business or had to lower my rates or work on projects I don't want to.

3. I'm the Product Lead at MusicGrid.me, a project that my friend Kyle and I co-founded back in 2010. It's a miracle of modern WordPress. :) I built in on WP simply to see how far I could stretch the capabilities of the platform, and it's amazed me every step of the way. On top of it being a cool community of music lovers, we also use the platform to provide paid advertising services in the form of embeddable widgets that record stores put on their website.

4. I'm probably going to be releasing a sweet, free theme between now and our interview. It's not a secret, but I'm not ready to push 'go' just yet, so I'll spare you the details. As well, I've been doing market research on a WordPress-based 'product' for the entire year, and have begun the pilot program with interested clients. It's a product designed specifically for clients with sub-$5k budgets who need to use the power of WordPress, but may not be able to afford extensive custom research and design. As well, it's built to allow them to grow in WordPress later on without

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I can't believe it took 51 episodes to get the guy who puts the hustle in being a WordPress entrepreneur.

Meet Syed Balkhi the man behind WPBeginner.com, one of the world's largest free WordPress resources.

How does he manage this publication, monetize and build a team around it? He's also spearheading a new SaaS app built on WordPress and managing two other web properties that he's managed to monetize and become profitable with.

Tune in to find out the full story from a true WordPress entrepreneur!

Interview with Syed Balkhi of WPBeginner.com Listen to the audio version

The art of hustle Syed shares some great insights for those of us looking to land that next opportunity.

"It's not rocket science, just go out and do it."

He once called Robert Scoble's phone to talk about his WordPress site. Shocked that Robert actually picked up the phone, but it worked!

I've talked about not attending a WordCamp to find your next client and this rings true for Syed as well. Spend time where your clients are and not just networking for the sake of networking. Don't be afraid to approach folks and be approachable at the same time. The OptinMonster SaaS app & giveaway! When we recorded this, his SaaS app OptinMonster was right around the corner.

We'll talk about the benefits of running a SaaS service on WordPress and what that means to the bottom line. The giveaway! Leave a comment below about how using OptinMonster could benefit your business and we'll chose a winner! What you will win: * A free "Basic" version of OptinMonster good for your site, unlimited forms and 1-year of support. * My very own Minimize Pro theme great for powering your blog or next WordPress project.

Example: "If I had OptinMonster, I could capture leads for my __________ business!" So what are you waiting for? Comment below and enjoy the show!

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A while back I said Shane Pearlman is the Godfather of Freelancing.

If that's true, than Bill Erickson is a made man.

I've been a fan of Bill since I stepped on to the scene of WordPress some time ago. From a distance, he has a really lean and mean service product.

"Your WordPress website in 5 days all for twentyfive-hundred smackaroos." My headline not his.

How does he achieve that AND land $20k clients?

We're going to find out in this episode!

Episode 50: Interview with Bill Erickson Listen to the audio version or subscribe on iTunes

Systems, data, and more data People thought I was crazy when I recruited my cousin, former VP of operations for a manufacturing company.

What does he know about tech and WordPress?

Nothing. That's the point.

What he does know is how to analyze where our time and costs are going and how we can improve in those areas to help build a sustainable system.

This is exactly the approach Bill uses to run his day to day operations.

With anywhere from 8 to 20 projects in the pipeline, Bill has fine tuned his process to accommodate scheduling and execution. It's not all guess work either, he studies the data like a mad scientist to understand his most profitable areas with the intent to drive revenue.

Oh and he's a one man band -- very impressive. Contracts Live and die by them.

After hearing how Bill structures his client contracts, you might feel a bit inferior. It's OK, that's why this podcast exists!

Learn from the "war stories" he shares and pay close attention to his method of collecting payments. He ties payments to productivity and not an arbitrary payment schedule based on time.

Invoice client's on the start of work vs waiting until a set calendar day. Loved this.

What do you think? Are you going to change anything in your business now?

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Roughly 2.2 million total free downloads across 9 themes and monthly revenue upwards of $35k a month.

Meet Trent Lapinski, CEO of CyberChimps themes.

I invited Trent on to the show to tell us all about what it's like to earn a living selling premium themes and supporting such a large install base. Aside from the massive responsibility of sites powered by their product, it's also looking like a business with plenty of room to grow.

On to the episode!

Interview with Trent Lapinski CEO of CyberChimps Listen to the audio version or subscribe on iTunes

The cost of free We've talked about the freemium model in past interviews, but this is the first time I've heard someone refer to it as a great responsibility.

And when you have one theme that powers more than a million websites -- yea, I guess he's right.

Trent doesn't seem to mind the freemium model he's been able to capitalize from either. In a world of seeking a sustainable WordPress theme business, he seems to strongly believe that a pay once for the download can work.

At the time of this interview, he was exploring paid support models and other upgrades to add to the revenue. What do you think? Can freemium + pay once for download work?

It should be interesting to see what he and the team comes up with. Mergers and acquisitions One of the strongest moves Trent has made in the market so far was acquiring the Responsive theme from Emil.

The deal made sense and only fortified the existing theme set CyberChimps had been working on.

Now with roughly 2.2 million total free downloads and 20,000 paying customers, CyberChimps is on track to reach annual revenue of nearly half a million dollars. Fun and games Trent isn't all business.

Like a lot of us growing up in the 80's and 90's -- he enjoys a video game or two.

He leads CyberChimps as a company that inspires the team to enjoy their work and build a camaraderie with one another to enjoy success as one.

There's even plans for everyone on the team to get a game console to bask in the glory of online gaming.

Hope that was public info Trent ;)

Hope you enjoyed this episode! Like what I'm doing subscribe to the newsletter!

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If there were ever a mob or "Family" of WordPress freelancers, it's a safe bet that Shane Pearlman would be head of the family.

I had always known about Modern Tribe and their successful plugins, but I never knew much about their progressive take on the WordPress service business. Now that I've had the chance to sit down and talk to Shane for about an hour, I'm seeing things in a whole new light.

I hope this interview is as game changing for you as it was for me.

Episode 48 Shane Pearlman of Modern Tribe interview Listen to the audio version

You can also subscribe on iTunes or Podcast RSS. Money, power and respect Prior to this interview, my thought process was very simple.

Raise my rates to bring in more revenue while being able to expand into other verticals. With that revenue, increase the power of my team by recruiting more talented developers and designers. Play that game right and you're on the road to respect.

Or so I thought...

Shane plays a different game and that's one of building the lifestyle that affords him happiness.

Let's be clear, I'm happy with what my team produces and especially in our products. But can I run things smarter like Shane? Do I need to accrue the overhead of a large staff similar to 10up?

It's debatable, but I hope the 12 years of knowledge Shane shares with us casts a new light on your WordPress business as well. The hustle I recently wrote about the hustle and what it means to me.

I think the mantra of hustle is a bit scary and maybe irresponsible for the newbie entrepreneur. If you have a short runway, you might burn yourself out by working harder and not smarter. In this episode Shane shares his stories of hustle and where it landed him today.

Running a high profile WordPress shop while having the time to surf and spending time with his family.

See, I think hustle could be different for each of us and I'd like to explore that more in the future. No regrets It's easy for us to look back and bookmark the chapters of our failure.

If we don't fail, we haven't pushed ourselves to the edge and more importantly we haven't learned from these experiences.

Don't get me wrong success is glorious, but failure is important and humbling.

Live your business life without the regret of failure.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this interview in the comments. Please share what you think of Shane and this interview. Tell a friend and subscribe to the newsletter!

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How long have you been freelancing? Long enough to think you're the man?

Brian Richards is one of the keenest entreprenerus that I've interviewed. The funny thing is, he never set out expecting to be one.

See like most of us starting out in WordPress, we did some favors, got paid a little bit and then realized that we could make a living doing this. Brian joins us to share his #1 lesson before starting your own gig.

Episode 47: Interview with Brian Richards of StartBox, WPSessions and WebDevStudios Listen to the audio or subscribe on iTunes

Working for someone else There's a collection of great lessons in this interview for those of you just starting out in the freelance world.

First, you might think it's going to be super easy. You're going to live on an island, bring in clients and live the good life. It's just what you always pictured it to be.

Wrong.

Second, you're not going to bring your talents to some agency that is going to 5x your rate to their clients. YOU want to make that money. After all, this is easy.

Surprise, surpirse. You have to work for the man before you can be the man. That's a quote that drives Brian's entrepreneurial efforts. He's very humble and realizes not to take advantage of any situation and at the very least, use it as a learning opportunity.

He's so passionate about this that he took a job that had a 3 to 4 hour commute just for the opportunity to work at a progressive web agency.

Some @rzen resources

http://rzen.net/life/working-from-home-is-not-for-the-faint-of-heart/ http://rzen.net/development/developing-for-success/ What else does he do? For a guy who never fancied himself a real entrepreneur, he sure does do a lot of awesome stuff. He's the creator of StartBox and the founder of WPSessions.com. He spends his days developing for WebDevStudios and is the co-organizer of WordCamp Grand Rapids -- wow.

I won't get much more into it here, but he shares all of the juicy details in this interview!

Like what's going on here? Share it with your friends and join the mailing list!

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What goes up must come down or in our case, what went down came back up?!

You be the judge in my latest interview with Brad Touesnard of Delicious Brains and WP Migrate Pro plugin.

Before Brad was helping you migrate WordPress databases, he had visions of bringing an app store like experience to WordPress. It's what he described as a failure to which has brought him new sucess.

Perhaps the idea was too early for it's time? You be the judge in Episode 46!

Interview with Brad Touesnard of WP Migrate Pro Listen to the audio & subscribe on iTunes

The journey of success and failure Sound familiar?

That's right, it's the intro of the podcast.

Brad knows this all too well, but it's something that has brought him on to new roads in the WordPress marketplace. Without the failure of his first product, he wouldn't have made the pivot to his new widely popular product WP Migrate Pro.

Something new to my cache of interviewees? The angel funding and advisory role Carl Hancock of Gravity Forms along with Adii Pienaar of WooThemes play to the success of Delicious Brains.

We chat about how they got invovled and how that experience has shaped Brad's role from developer to entrepreneur. Methodical success Our favorite part of the show is when we get into the nitty gritty and how-to of launching the product.

Brad shares his secrets for capturing leads, marketing and determining price. If you follow WordPress news, you know there's a healthy debate going on about sustainable WordPress businesses and we'll chat about that with our hero today.

Random fact, Brad spent hours on crafting an e-mail that was no longer than a couple of tweets put together. Learn why he did that and if it was worth it in this episode.

Outro music: http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/1120/jaoranary

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Oh the WordPress media industry -- how we love thee.

When the news of WPDaily.co shutting down landed on us so abruptly, it left a few of us scratching our heads to say the least.

What would happen to it? Who would buy it? Where's my WordPress news?

Well it's been a few weeks since the announcement of it's new home TorqueMag.io and I've invited the woman behind the scenes to tell us all about it.

Meet Michelle Oznowicz former journalist, celeb ghost writer and now the future of WordPress news. In this episode we chat about how she found this job, what the plans are for Torque and offers advise to aspiring journalists using WordPress.

Enjoy!

Interview with Michelle Oznowicz of TorqueMag.io http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwUCBC8UVTk Listen to the audio version

(Hooray video again! I figured it was important for the audience to see the face behind the news site. Since she's fresh to the WordPress scene and all. What do you think? Keep doing video or audio is just fine?) Why Michelle? A common question I saw fluttering around the Twittersphere on their launch day.

Why Michelle? What does she know about WordPress?

Well nothing really and that's the point.

In an attempt to stay unbiased and have a platform where WordPress news can be curated by the community -- WPEngine hired Michelle.

She brings her strong background of community building and a dedication to journalism up to bat for the new slugger in WordPress media.

Can she hit a home run? You be the judge.

Let me know what you think in the comments. My opinion WordPress media.

That's what this is all about and I shared my thoughts in that previous article. I think Michelle is in an interesting space like the rest of us.

On one hand folks say we don't need WP news, on the next there's more and more of it being slung at us.

I think she's going to do a great job at building her own voice in our community and I wish her the best.

It's not going to be easy, but as entrepreneurs we know this. On ads There's no ads on Torque...yet.

We talked about her experience as a journalist and how ads can lesson the integrity of a publication.

While I don't necessarily think ads are a bad thing, it's going to be interesting to see how WPE handles this in the months to come.

What are your thoughts on ads? Let me know in the comments. Video, themes and e-mail lists -- oh my! Now that it's been a while since I've uploaded to YouTube, is it refreshing to have it back?

By the way, if you like this theme we unveiled it to the world on WordPress.org.

Lastly, if you like what I do please share it and sign up to the newsletter.

Outro Music: http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/1017514/ready-set-stay

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What do you do when your agency is burned by bad service and unlucky outsourcing?

Roll your own offering.

Our latest guest Robert Neu of YouNeedFat.com takes us down the journey of starting his WordPress agency and why web marketing along with seo services became the cornerstone of his success.

Armed with a developers background and the hustle to do things right, he declares when you want something done right you do it yourself.

Let’s go!

Interview with Robert Neu of YouNeedFat.com

Making it happen My favorite type of WordPress entrepreneur story is one that starts from a passion to put out a damn good product or service.

In my humble opinion, we’re living at the tail end of the minimal viable product or MVP.

As of late, I'm seeing that theory flood the market with half baked products and niche services that can't sustain past a short shelf life.

Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s a use case for MVP but I think it gets trumped by good old fashioned elbow grease and a desire to put out something great. AsI mention in the interview, Fat Media's website is one of the best around and it’s success pays tribute to that attention to detail.

Not a slapped together theme or landing page but a well though out funnel. Why listen to this episode? We’re going to learn from his story of getting burned in the past by well known SEO firms promising results and not delivering -- to the point they fudged their reports.

This hits home with me because I fell for the same pitfalls when I started Slocum. I relied on 3rd party vendors to deliver a service that never really helped my client or my bottom line.

Hopefully in today's episode we all learn from this mistake.

Realizing this wasn't going to build a healthy and scalable business, Robert did something about it. Armed with a cache of tools, the Genesis framework and WordPress dev skills he now brings a strong offering of home-brew services to his client's. Work life balance It’s been a while since we talked about enjoying the work you do. “You need a fat presence on the web to succeed.” A call to action that really sets the stage for Fat Media's clients and brand alike.

It's the type of twist on things that sets him apart and lures the kind of client that is willing to have some fun with the whole process.

Why so serious?

After this interview you might not be offering up such dry geek speak anymore.

Want the secret to long term success? Enjoy what you do and make your customers experience your service the same way.

How do you fuse your lifestyle with your business? Yo, you like this theme? Something I'm really proud of is our new Minimize theme. I plan on writing more about this launch, but I wanted to let you know you can download it from the WordPress.org repository or contribute on GitHub.

Maybe you know someone that could use the pro version packed with premium support and more colors? Send them here.

So if you're looking for something lightweight, responsive or just want to dig into our code and #DramaPress it up -- go nuts! :)

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At the MattReport, we're always looking for new and interesting ways folks have launched their WordPress business.

Some people believe that there's no difference in a WordPress business, than say, a banana stand -- I disagree.

Enter Eric Hamm creator of the Catalyst framework and the Dynamik Website Builder to challenge just that thought.

Eric has a tremendous story about starting out as a web marketer who taught himself how to develop a free WordPress theme that matured to a $20k monthly revenue business.

WordPress entrepreneurs unite! Let's dive in...

Interview with Eric Hamm of CobaltApps.com

(upset there's no video? Sorry! My laptop died last week and good ol ex-IT manager forgot to backup his files! So potentially I've lost my last 5 interviews and that's going to cause quite a headache for my past guests. Here's to Apple being able to fix everything...)

Eric and I had a chance to chat before the interview and it was clear that he had a TON of stuff to talk about.

We fly through the history of his WordPress career starting from consulting on WordPress sites with bigger name bloggers like Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.com and others that are popular today and saw tremendous growth back in 2008.

The concept of Frugal Site Design was born and Eric quickly realized he needed to shift to a digital product. Not only was his own brand name hurting him, but he wanted a more consistent passive income.

Thus, Frugal theme was born and received a good boost from the connections he made in the internet marketing space.

I love the idea of connecting with folks that have a larger audience to get your name out there. Service is like running; Product is like riding a bike I loved this little analogy that Eric brings up.

Think about running up a hill on a hot summer day.

It sucks right?

If you're on a bike, once you get to the other side of the hill you can coast a bit. That doesn't mean you can give up on peddling, but to gain momentum is going to be a lot easier.

On the flip side, as someone who enjoys to run, finishing that 5 mile run and tackling the hills can feel really rewarding.

What do you prefer? Finding a new audience So I don't want to ruin all of the surprise, but there's a big lesson in cultivating an audience in this episode.

That's exactly what Eric is leveraging by moving his Catalyst customer base of around 6,000 to StudioPress more dominate pool of 90,000.

Find the right audience for your product or service and capitalize.

I hope you enjoyed the first audio only episode of the MattReport -- if you did consider subscribing to my newsletter or tweeting this out to other folks who might find it interesting.

Thanks!

What's in your toolbox: Forklift 2

Outro music: Pain and Jeopardy by Just Plain Ant

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If you're a premium WordPress shop or just running your own business, where do you set the bar?

My next guest has a relentless pursuit to create something awesome that his users will love.

But hey, that's easy when you're total revenue from a premium plugin exceeds $1 million in sales right?

Not so much.

Meet Dale Mugford co-founder of BraveNewCode the developers behind the WPtouch mobile plugin. We chat about launching the company, supporting customers and introducing the new pricing structure of version 3.x.

This is going to be a fun ride so I hope you're strapped in!

Interview with Dale Mugford of BraveNewCode http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-ImaGyORzo Listen to the audio version

The relentless pursuit of perfection You might be familiar with that phrase from the Lexus brand.

When I listen to Dale's story and hear the devotion he has to his product -- that's the first jingle that comes to my mind. Next would be an almost Apple-esque approach to finer details and packaging.

This is very apparent when you visit their newly designed website and watch their brand video. They are telling a story about the product and what it solves without focusing on WordPress -- amazing.

If you're going to be in the premium WordPress market, I'd say BraveNewCode sets the bar for brand experience. Looking for feedback As I approach 50 published episodes, I want to hear from you.

Do you like the direction of the podcast? Are you looking for something more?

Let me know in the comments or contact me. I'd love if you joined the VIP mailing list or shared this post with your Twitter peeps!

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Every now and again you come across an individual who is just knocking it out of the park with awesome stuff.

Recently for me, it's Chris Lema an author, speaker, coach, VP and WordPress blogger. If you don't already subscribe to his blog or follow him on Twitter -- you should make a point to do so.

Chris joins us today to talk about becoming great at our craft and offers actionable advice for those of us looking to stop trading dollars for hours.

Even if you're a long time follower of Mr. Lema, he never ceases to amaze us. Carry on to the show!

Interview with Chris Lema of ChrisLema.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A67uzAM5bE

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Start talking business and stop talking technology How do we deal with the $500 client?

You know, the mechanic that just wants to get his coupons online. No social media, no inbound marketing and certainly not publishing a YouTube series.

Just get the coupons online.

If we're stuck talking about all this technology and marketing lingo then the chances are we're not talking about their business. The value of getting these coupons online and driving real customers into the mechanic's shop.

Let's break down that conversation:

"Hey can you get me a site with coupons that my customer's can download?"

"Sure can!" you respond. Upselling from the $500 What's the value of this to the client?

If 50 coupons were downloaded a month, what's the overall gross? Let's say 50 x 24.95 for an oil change? So we're already roughly $1,200 in gross sales.

So Mr. Customer are you willing to invest $500 to make $1,200? Sure that's easy.

But what if that's 50 coupons a month for 12 months? Now we're talking nearly $15k in yearly revenue.

Now their initial budget of $500 is something like a 3% investment with that kind of annual intake. Well sure that sounds great for the business owner -- but what about you?

Sweeten the pot.

Mr Customer, I think we can generate you $15k a year with these coupons but it's going to take at least a 10% investment to make that kind of money. Now the wheels are turning.

But what about supporting and scaling this, how can we add even more value?

Mr Customer, if we add lead capturing to these coupons we can do some direct marketing and sell packages like maintenance and other higher price tag items. If we landed ten $1,000 maintenance jobs per year through this list, that's another $10k in potential revenue.

Now we're at $25k in potential income -- do you think this is all possible on a $500 budget?

You see where I'm going with this. Sell on value, not the technology. It also dosen't have to be monetarily based -- the value could be your process, your knowledge or support.

Capitalize on the value proposition of your engagement. What Chris taught me Chris and I are alike.

We both talk about the business end of WordPress and we're both trying to leave an impact on the community and this world.

I'm sure I have a lot more to learn from Chris, but the first lesson he's taught me is the importance of connecting others.

It's always been on the back of my mind with Matt Report -- to find people doing awesome things with WordPress and expose them to an audience that otherwise might not have found them anywhere else.

In my recent trip to WordCamp Chicago (a great time by the way) I was able to meet Chris in person. He was constantly making sure I met other folks he knew I should be meeting. I know these relationships are going to beneficial moving forward for everyone and I appreciate all that Chris has done for me and the community

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Brad Williams founder of WebDevStudios joins us to give us a behind the scenes look at this fast growing WordPress agency.

He's also a fellow WordPress media man and hosts The Dradcast another WordPress podcast. (It's great, just don't tell him I said so.)

Here's a fascinating journey of an entrepreneur who picked up his whole life to start his company. If you're thinking about quitting your day job, sit back and relax as Brad shares his stories about the climb to the top.

Brad Williams co-founder of WebDevStudios http://youtu.be/4s0so_aVoSc

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Process of elimination A lot of "web 2.0" web marketing entrepreneurs are looking for the quick start.

Get 10,000 fans. Keyword stuffing. Over seas outsourcing for SEO.

Wrong.

Brad's going to take us down a path of hard work and elbow grease. There's no magic potion to grow something organically. WebDevStudio's started with the $500 client and now operates with a team of 12 talented programmers, designers, and project managers.

What does this mean? You can do it too.

Do good work, plan as far ahead as you can, and understand you want to scale. Brad knew he wasn't a designer and made that one of his first long term goals.

As you complete a project and move on to the next, you're going to find what works and what doesn't. You may stumble along the way, but learn from these experiences and focus on what you do well with.

I'm listening to this podcast as I'm writing this outline and I just can't keep up. There's so much great conversation going on that you I just want you to dive in to the episode.

If you love this interview -- please, SHARE IT!

Had some video technical difficulties in this episode -- sorry about that. Audio works fine and you can get it on iTunes. How about leaving me a review?

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Yes, I jumped Jeff of WPTavern ahead of the line!

The orignal WordPress media man has been all in the news lately.

One fascinating thing about Jeff is, he never fancied himself an entrepreneur. Like many of us, he stumbled upon WordPress and started using it on his own. He fell in love with writing about tech and then that passion transitioned over to WordPress.

Continue on to the show to learn more about his adventure from the ground level to now working for Matt Mullenweg!

Interview with Jeff Chandler of WPTavern.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S73nMxUD1rI

Watch on YouTube

Is there money in WordPress news? Are you sick of hearing it yet?

On my other show, Week in WordPress, I invited Syed Balkhi of WPBeginner.com and Adam Warner of Foo Plugins to dive into this topic a bit more.

DramaPress perhaps -- but listen to what Jeff has to say. It's not easy and starting 5+ years ago is certainly no easy feat.

I really enjoyed learning about Jeff's journey and I hope you do too. See, he didn't set out with an end game in mind. Times got tough -- real tough -- but his perseverance pulled through in the end.

What do you think of WordPress media? Here to stay, just getting geting started or ready to fizzle out? Discuss!

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I found Brent through this article, where he told us never to say WordPress in our web project negotiations.

We want to leave the tech out of the conversation and focus on what we're solving.

After 15 years in the business and selling his agency in 2012, Brent has an interesting story to share about his new pivot into an education product over at Ugurus.

Join us in episode 38!

Interview with Brent Weaver of Ugurus http://youtu.be/VUwwzzwcreQ

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Don't say WordPress I think we get so excited about using WordPress for a new solution, we spend so much time talking tech we aren't talking about the value we're providing.

Why is this important?

The customer's don't live and breathe this stuff like you and I do everyday. Basic client's might balk at hearing too much about responsive design, widgets, and custom post types.

We want to avoid "the geek speak" and focus on what pain we're solving for them. Setting expectation I know when I started out, I was so excited to land a job that I just wanted to start working on it right away.

One of the lessons we learn as young entrepreneurs is to set the expectation with the customer. Be it in the design, the function of the site, or as we talk about in this episode -- when to get paid.

I couldn't agree more with Brent, that these expectations need to be set before signing on the dotted line. It's not just for the sake of the customer, but for the health of your business and sanity.

What did you think of this episode? Do you like it when I bring in people from "outside" of our community? Let me know in the comments and subscribe to the mailing list!

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I invited Adam Warner on to the show to talk about his revenue at FooPlugins.

For this episode, I was looking for someone who has grown their WordPress business to $60k in annual revenue.

What I wasn't prepared for, was his story about losing $30k+ in his first business. Get your notepad and pen ready, there's a ton of good advice here.

Don't miss this episode!

Adam Warner Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5aiFLZ7AaI

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

If you're launching a product -- do NOT miss this episode Adam has an insane story to share with us.

The first story that came up -- how he literally watched his first $30k in annual revenue crash and burn. A story of failure, but a lesson learned that set the stage for his success with FooPlugins.

After picking up the pieces of that journey, Adam takes us down the path of growing his new revenue stream and getting it to hit the $5k+ a month mark.

Key points we talk about for growing the new business: * Marketing * Reinvesting into the company * Cash flow * Setting up legal entities * Extra costs from 3rd party services * Tons more

Adam has visions of growing FooPlugins to a million dollar business and he shares some of that insight with us. This is an amazing episode and I'm so thankful for the honesty Adam shares here.

Now go say "Thanks!" to Adam on Twitter!

If you liked this episode, consider joining the newsletter.

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With so many WordCamps and new WordPress meetups cropping up it's hard to decide where to spend your frequent flyer miles.

But, what if you don't have to leave your couch?

By day Scott Basgaard serves happiness at WooThemes -- by night he's bringing the entire world together in a 24 hour marathon of WordPress sessions on WordSesh.org.

Pretty darn amazing if you ask me. Let's dive in!

Scott Basgaard interview about finding a WordPress career and WordSesh http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE5j_jCPNcw

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Learn more than just what happens to the body on no sleep Poor Scott didn't sleep for like 72 hours with anticipation and preparation of WordSesh.

But that's not the only thing we're going to learn about. Scott's a bit of a WordPress career globetrotter. He's going to share his story about finding that first gig, to working at one of the largest growing WordPress companies -- two of them.

"If you feel like everyday, you don't enjoy what you're doing, you need to make a change." -- Scott Basgaard

Something I didn't know going into the interview, Scott also worked for a large media site in the corporate world. It paid well and he learned a lot, but it wasn't making him happy.

If you're just starting out, it's important you know what you're capable of and the value you bring to the table. A worldwide entrepreneur I think Scott's goal is tremendous.

He's putting together a global audience in a format we've never seen before. Producing something like this on such a scale and have it launch for the first time with very little blunder is an accomplishment on it's own. Overtime, WordSesh will be one of the WordPress events to attend.

What do you think?

Did you like this interview? Help me out by spreading the word and subscribing to the e-mail newsletter!

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The thought that's been floating around the #DramaPress twittersphere -- Does the business track belong at WordCamp?

Chris Lema and Jake Goldman join me on a live Google hangout to chat about this topic and more. I'm not going to waste any time here, so let's dive right in!

I've made the YouTube video available here along with an MP3 download. This is also available on iTunes.

Does business belong at WordCamp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAJOi_DZCnA

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Little c vs big C I'm just going to make way for your comments...

After reading this post on WP Daily, I asked Jake and Chris to join me in a roundtable talk about the business side of things. In the end, I don't think we're very far apart.

What do you think?

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I'm always trying to find new blood for our little community here.

Today I bring you John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire fame. Here's a local New Englander that started almost a year ago with 0 fans, followers, and podcast downloads. He managed to build a podcast and community to over 100k downloads a month and connect with some of the top entrepreneurs in the internet business world.

You should really copy the foundation to his success -- or are you afraid? Let's go!

John Lee Dumas Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jegkQQB5G6k

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Are you supercharged yet? I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Matt Report isn't all geek speak and pixels. It's about helping you become a better entrepreneur.

You know I love guests like Saddington, C.C. Chapman, and John Morgan -- the folks who push us to go further with our talents.

John's story is great because it's organic with a touch of early stage planning and a dash of hard work. There's no snake oil here and it's not a get rich quick scheme. You can't build a house without a foundation and we discuss his blue print for creating his success. Copying John is scary It's not going to be easy -- you might be a little afraid:

1. Persistence -- He's producing a a daily podcast. If you don't already know, that's a ton of work.

2. Cold calling -- In the early stages John was cold calling some heavy hitters. Now that he's cultivated his community, folks are reaching out to him.

3. Rubbing elbows -- We can't do everything behind a computer screen. In this interview John talks about how he got out of his seat and made some of the most important connections in his career.

4. Passion -- If you don't know what makes you tick yet, you haven't challenged yourself enough. Once you strike that chord, your world is going to become a whole lot brighter.

So what do you think?

How will you break for the pack and flip the switch on YOUR success?

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Every now again you come across an entrepreneur who's doing things a bit differently.

Meet Blair Williams founder of the WordPress membership plugin Memberpress.

Blair joins the program to talk about his many entrepreneurial ventures in the WordPress space including Affiliate Royale and Pretty Link Pro. Catch this episode to find out what it's like pricing multiple products and growing your next WordPress business!

Blair Williams Interview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z5uDbT9i_A

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

What I call 'Full circle' I like what Blair has done by making complimenting products.

It's probably the marketing/business side of my brain that get's all excited to see how we can connect the proverbial income dots. WordPress is a great platform to build a suite of plugins that work together for our customers -- see Pippins interview about this.

Want more founder talk from membership plugins? Also see my interview with Paid Membership Pro founder Jason Coleman.

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I found Paul Goodchild when someone tweeted: "Do we really need another WordPress management tool?"

Well, if you listen to Paul's interview, you're going to find out why we do.

When we recorded this, his product was called Worpit and has now rebranded to iControlWP. Paul's a great guy and has a great story to tell about his software -- along with how he affords offering his product at 60-cents a site!

Don't miss this episode!

Interview w/ Paul Goodchild co-founder of iControlWP http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAEZueNvd38

Watch on YouTube

David vs Goliath Paul is like the rest of us.

We know there's big name competition, implanted in the market and we're crazy for going after it.

Here's my new saying, "It's a pie party and everyone is welcome to a slice."

Paul and his brother are putting together a unique service offering, with technical capabilities unlike the competition, trying to win on price AND service. So give him his slice of the pie!

On the outside people see it as, "oh just another service" -- but on the inside and to Paul's team they are innovating and creating something really special.

What do you think? Why hiring isn't always a good thing Paul shares another great lesson in this interview and something that hits close to home.

He talked about hiring another developer when iControlWP was really ramping up and the downfalls that came from it. Like many busy entrepreneurs, they found their "rockstar" and threw that person into the fire.

So what happened? Well you'll have to listen to find out! Two great tools mentioned Paul turned me on to two great tools that I use daily for my support:

FreshDesk - A great customer support portal and ticketing platform. I was using ZenDesk at the time, but I found this to fit our needs better than what ZenDesk was doing.

Zopim Live Chat - A live chat web service that sits on top of your website. Another great tool for talking live with visitors of our website -- very handy!

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Learn what Adam Pickering did to grow his WordPress theme shop and build his brand.

Adam is co-founder of Mint Themes and designer of the Astoundify crowd funding theme. We have a great discussion about how he built his companies, leveraged SEO to drive traffic, and how to price products.

If you find yourself sitting in a similar seat -- don't miss this!

Interview with Adam Pickering of Mint Themes and Astoundify http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3PxIWe51-k

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

How to drive more traffic to your theme site You're going to learn a lot in this episode, so I hope you have a pen and paper ready!

Adam discussed that targeting niche theme markets was the stepping stone for Mint Themes. When he launched his first theme SoundStage, he actually had experience with being in a band. He knew what folks looking to launch a music site wanted. He was able to create great blog articles and keywords around the niche.

What do we call this? Content marketing!

He slowly started building out other niche sites for WordPress themes -- including Church based themes. Eventually to wrangle all the marketing under one roof, he needed to build a brand. Thus, Mint Themes was born.

This is a great journey to listen to if you are wrestling with your marketing efforts. Learn from Adam and put it to use in your own WordPress business.

What do you think about Adam's adventure? You're not charging enough for your theme Oddly enough, my good friend Chris Lema just posted this today.

Adam also felt like we were in a race to the bottom. Mint Theme's pricing is on the higher side of the average and he justifies it. Adam's point is to let customers know, you're a real person or team with real expenses -- this is a real business.

Take pride in the product your offering and the price will reflect that.

Your thoughts on pricing WordPress products?

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Do you know how hard it is to craft a headline about a guy who spends his time writing headlines?

Introducing Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger Media, is down right nerve wracking. I don't even want to type anymore, that's how badly I think I'm going to get criticized.

I digress.

Here are a few headlines that danced around my head:

"Episode 30: Watch Brian Clark ride a Unicorn and throw a kitten" or "Episode 30: Jeff Bridges as Copyblogger founder Brian Clark" and lastly "Episode 30: Guy blogs, builds million dollar WordPress company"

Enough! Let's get to the show!

Interview with Brian Clark founder of Copyblogger Media http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3BSSe7Ll8Y

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Know, Like and Trust Know, like and trust.

This is the mantra of the Copyblogger team and my takeaway from this interview.

It's not your PHP chops, Photoshop skills or the size of your WordPress team -- it's that folks know you, like you and trust you.

Forget sales revenue for a moment. Forget building a massive WordPress website. It's about forging the relationship of a client that will stay with you and work with you for years to come.

Not just a one off project.

Here's the way I see it -- if you're spending time applying this mantra, chances are you're also going feel the same way about the client.

Working together will be frictionless. There won't be awkward talk about payment or timeline. You won't have that weighted feeling when the client e-mails in for a new project update. The relationship you created doesn't have room for negative feelings -- this is how you do business now.

What's the best way to let client's know about the new you? Content marketing! Copyblogger is different This interview isn't about how StudioPress themes are designed or how they run their support forums -- it's a look into their diversified products and services.

Personally, I'm really excited to see where they go with the Scribe software they produce. I think it's smart, possibly necessary, to diversify yourself beyond WordPress to achieve higher levels of scale and growth.

There's no surprise that with a recent redesign of their website, they are all in on content marketing.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: We're in an interesting phase of the WordPress growth spurt. It's only a matter of time until we see some larger WordPress companies really break away from the pack and follow the traditional path of a silicon valley startup.

Could Copyblogger be the first?

(I'm speculating here, but someone's gotta do it.) This interview You know I like to pop in from time to time and share my feelings about my progress as the host of the podcast.

If you couldn't tell I was nervous in this interview. Brian's just one of those super smart guys that should be on a Wheaties box. Interviewing a guy like him as a newbie podcast host and then having to write about him in this blog post as someone who sucks at writing -- not fun.

I want your feedback. Did you like this episode? Do you want something different?

I'm grossly behind on publishing episodes, but it's because I want the lessons to properly sink in. This was recorded almost 2 months ago and I have 15 to publish. I'm working on it.

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Have you ever had that mouth wide open, I just met a celebrity feeling?

That's the way I felt when I interviewed Rafal Tomal lead WordPress designer at Copyblogger. Ok, you might not love WordPress themes as much as I do, but if you do, I bet you love the stuff Rafal has put out.

If you're a fan of his work and you want to dive into the mind of lead designer -- don't miss this episode!

Matt Report Interview with Rafal Tomal http://youtu.be/a5MhogzU0Y4

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

What it's like designing WordPress themes at Copyblogger I enjoyed learning how some of my favorite WordPress themes are being designed over at StudioPress.

Brain Gardner refers to Rafal as his diamond in the rough and I don't disagree. This opportunity at learning the process, thoughts, tools, time and fun they have putting into building themes is just great.

Aside from working at Copyblogger, we talk about supporting customers, looking for inspiration and some of his future plans -- including a book!

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. If you have questions, post below!

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A lot of the entrepreneurs I've interviewed started in the last economic downturn of 2008.

So that got me thinking, is WordPress recession proof?

WordPress services can be sliced and diced in many ways. It's not creating "work" that's the hard part, it's finding the right vertical.

Rebecca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing joins us to share what it was like starting out in the recession, finding a niche and building an awesome virtual team.

Interview with Rebecca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing http://youtu.be/ZYf5yGszffo

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Recessions, niches and teams -- oh my! Can we say AWESOME interview?

Rebecca shares a ton of great info about her journey as a WordPress entrepreneur. If you're just starting your business or you're a seasoned veteran, you're going to get a lot of great info out of this one.

It seems a lot of great WordPress companies came out of the recession. Folks like Cory Miller and Rebecca saw great opportunity and growth and dove in head first when the rest of the world was running away.

These economic swings are like huge reset buttons. You will hear people say no one is spending money, but that's just wrong. When one door closes another opens. They might not be spending money on the "usual" products and services but now is the time to offer an alternative.

WordPress was and is poised to do just that. Offer up a complete solution for any size business at any budget with a community to see it forward.

When did you start your business? What was your biggest challenge? Let me know in the comments! Friendly reminder Hey, I'm on iTunes and if you love the show -- I'd love a review! Head on over to The MattReport on iTunes

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These are the stories I love.

Folks who are honing in on one vertical industry and putting out a great product or service.

Angie Meeker of Angie Meeker Designs walks us through her journey of starting out in the WordPress world to finding a niche vertical business. If you're all about focus and growing -- don't miss this episode!

Interview with Angie Meeker http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axKpfPDJoX8

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Finding your niche A lot of us start out trying to grab as much business as we can. Who can blame us? We need to pay the bills and generate revenue.

There's nothing wrong with it, you just have to be prepared to scale in some vertical. Some expertise that sets you apart from the rest. What can you do really really well? Great even.

This will be your value proposition in your market. Your edge to landing the deal.

What niche are you in? I'd love to hear in the comments below!

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You have to wear many hats as a freelancer.

The question is, do you really want to?

Ryan Duff joins us in Episode 26 to discuss his journey from freelancer to working at WebDevStudios one of the fastest growing WordPress shops around.

Don't miss this episode if you're looking for a change in your WordPress career!

Interview with Ryan Duff, developer at WebDevStudios http://youtu.be/ozm7dcwlWjg

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Freelance vs Agency One of my goals for Matt Report is to help WordPress entrepreneurs choose the ideal path to success. I do however, leave the definition of success up to them.

If you're going to be a freelancer, there's a lot to consider before you even being working a project. Here's just a few: * Finding clients * Negotiations * Contracts * Expectations * Project management * Billing and receivables * Cash flow * Customer support * Doing it all over again...

"But I don't want to deal with that Matt!" you might be saying.

Well then listen to what Ryan has to say about agency life. There's a lot of positives to working with a team and not just for getting the work done -- but handling all of the overhead of client services.

Positive reinforcement

I've received some great feedback lately and I'm really happy people are enjoying the show. If there's another angle you want me to include, questions I should ask more frequenetly or you simply want me to stop the "ahh's & umm's" let me know in the comments!

As always, share this with others if you can -- I appreciate it!

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Looking for ways to find more clients, land bigger projects, grow a network of trusted peers and increase revenue?

I sit down with Aaron Holbrook of A7 Web Design to discuss how he's doing just that and more.  Aaron shares his unique story and how it has unfolded into building his virtual agency.

Don't miss Episode 25!

Interview with Aaron Holbrook of A7 Web Design http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7fGLTH0kSA

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

How is your brand perceived? Here's what I found interesting when talking to Aaron -- I mentioned I loved his site and it made his agency feel bigger than just one person.

He laughed and said that wasn't the plan. In fact, he wants to convey quite the opposite. He wants to be the face of the company. The familiar voice on the phone supporting the client or in the e-mail drafting the first proposal.

It made me think, are we losing leads by presenting a brand persona that's out of reach for some? "I don't have the budget for these guys.", they might say?

Or is this exactly what quality work should be doing? Finding clients with bigger budgets and bigger projects.

I would love to hear your side of the story!

Side note: What was up with my hair in this episode?! Ha!

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Keep it simple stupid.

Take your idea and cut it and half and then cut it in half again. Then pick the top 3 features of you product and cross off 2 of them. What do you have left?

Buttons.

I love the idea of Max Foundry's button plugin because it solves such a simple problem. Don't have the design chops or time to code some sweet CSS buttons? Let's see how Dave Donaldson solved this issue and built a business around it.

Interview with Dave Donaldson of Max Foundry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocmo0JGc2A0

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Keep it simple stupid A popular Matt Report interview is with John Saddington -- we chat about the power of focus and simplifying your message/product.

One of the hardest things to do as an entrepreneur is to "say no" to all the wonderful features and functions we want to build. Once we start adding more "stuff" to our products & offering we start getting spread thin. Not enough vertical focus or rinse/repeat systems are in place.

Here's what I think you're going to love about this interview -- Dave started with buttons as his first product. Buttons!

From there, he took this simple solution and grew other products. Built a nice base of folks to market to and then capitalized.

Don't miss this episode especially if you're just launching your new business! Like what I'm doing? Can you share this on Twitter or Google Plus? Share this if you love to talk WordPress shop!

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Have you noticed an increase in WordPress media lately?

Podcasts, YouTube channels, weekly newsletters, and recently a 24 hour live marathon are all on the rise.

It's why I produce this podcast and why many others are starting to turn the camera and mic to WordPress. My latest guest runs a very popular WordPress podcast called Your Website Engineer.

Meet Dustin Hartzler!

Interview with Your Website Engineer Dustin Hartzler http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO9GKDp36e8

Watch on YouTube

How producing WordPress media can help you A lot of my guests talk about marketing strategies, SEO tactics, and creating your own marketplace.

Dustin found his niche in producing a helpful WordPress podcast after he was fielding a lot of the same questions from clients. Much like how I started Matt Report -- I was getting a lot of "How do I do X in my WordPress business?"

What do you think about WordPress media? Do you watch any WordPress shows or podcasts other than Dustin and I?

Have you thought about creating your own?

Let us know in the comments!

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We hear it in blogging all the time. Find a niche and you will find your market.

Meet Thomas Griffin author of Soliloquy a powerful responsive WordPress slider. In this interview we discuss what it's like to start off small and continue to refine to find the success you're looking for.

Don't miss this episode!

Interview with Thomas Griffin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5enH0cSMEgw

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

The power of one A slider seems pretty basic right? A couple of images rotating across the screen -- no big deal.

But when you're building a plugin for the world's most popular web publishing software, especially in an ecosystem of free, the business is tough.

Thomas takes us down his journey of starting the business, finding focus, refining product, and marketing to WordPress users.

I really enjoyed this interview and I hope you do too. Feel free to share this on the Twitter and join my mailing list -- every little bit helps http:http://mattreport.com//subscribe

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Ever wonder what it's like to work at Automattic?

Not sure what or who Automattic is?

Meet my guest Erick Hitter as he introduces us to the life of an Automattician. Parent commercial company behind WordPress software and one of the largest virtual working companies on the planet.

Episode 21: Interview with Erick Hitter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUAnRFvvAoY

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Becoming an Automattician Let's face it, who wouldn't want to be on the team of the most sought after virtual workforce? Especially the team that is one of the main driving forces of WordPress.

If you're a freelancer or someone starting out with WordPress -- you're going to want to listen in on this interview. Erick and I talk about all the fun stuff at his job, how he got there, and how WordPress continues to evolve.

Erick also takes us down his journey of the early days of coding, working at large WP shops, to now finding himself at the home of WordPress.

Still loving these interviews? Let me know!

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WordPress is an amazing platform when it enriches the publishing power of a business or an individual.

It's even better when it empowers an entrepreneur to find a niche market and build a real business. This is exactly what Stephanie Schechter is doing with the popular software. She's fusing her experience with industrial design and graphic design to produce awesome WordPress solutions.

I love the story and the entrepreneurial drive Stephanie possesses and I'm sure you will too.

Interview with Stephanie Schechter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzqyvKUA9h8

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Fusing Industrial Design with Web Design Stephanie's roots are in industrial design and we chat about how that relates to a better product.

If the Devil is in the details, then Stephanie's middle name is evil.

We'll talk about refining your product or service offering and how it equates to finding better more informed clients. If you're looking to grow your portfolio and your bottom line - do not sacrifice your talent. The most real interview to date I've had the opportunity to sit down with many WordPress entrepreneurs and get them to reveal what it's like to run their business. Things like monetizing your plugins to increasing your freelance rates.

However, my talk with Stephanie was a bit different.

WordPress is not the core offering of her practice. She's focused on consulting startups to grow the potential of their brand. Her and her team leverage WordPress as one of the tools to help them succeed.

It gets even more real when we start talking about some of the fears of running a startup and how to overcome them.

I think you will really find a connection with Stephanie and her story. Let me know in the comments below!

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What happens when your plugin business outgrows itself?

What about if the WordPress plugin model turns your business into a commodity?

Learn how Travis Ketchum the founder of Contest Domination built his product as a plugin and then transitioned to a traditional SaaS model.

If you're looking to scale your WordPress business or grow revenue outside of the standard theme & plugin business -- this interview is for you!

Interview with Travis Ketchum founder of Contest Domination http://youtu.be/St9R7vbKFs0

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

"I knew my plugin would become a commodity" Travis recognized that his contest plugin could be copied and turned into a commodity really fast if it stayed in the repo.

His transition to SaaS isn't leaving WordPress behind however. He's still building for WordPress and enhancing the product so it does work flawlessly with our favorite CMS.

Travis says he sees a melding of WordPress plugins and SaaS solutions becoming more and more popular in the ecosystem.

If you're looking to scale your business do not miss this episode! Some of my favorite quotes from this interview: "The code I got was absolutely unusable"

"I knew my plugin would become a commodity"

"Use the best developers and designers money could buy" Do you like learning about all things business for WordPress? Let me know below and share this podcast with others!

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Want to land the big client? What happens when they ask for a $1 million insurance policy?

Welcome to the big league.

My next guest is C.C. Chapman author of Content Rules and Amazing Things Will Happen. In this interview we talk about what it's really like dealing with a big client and how you should be ready for the challenge. C.C. used WordPress for big brand projects and then later sold the agency in 2009. Let's dive right in and listen to this great story!

C.C. Chapman interview: landing the big client and getting ready to scale http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPWZXyCuzGU

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

What we're learning in this episode I didn't know where to begin summarizing this episode (because it's so epic), so I'll do a bullet point outline: * There's snake oil salesman in every industry - how do we deal with it in WordPress? * Running a big brand creative agency and then selling the business. * Build your brand by doing great work and good ol fashion networking. * If you're not ready or willing to scale, you could get screwed with a big client. * Have a goal you're trying to achieve. * Hand shakes and hugs trump likes and shares. (think about it!)

His only regret, not self promoting harder Everyone is afraid to sell and it drives me nuts.

C.C. knew his first book Content Rules was top notch - but even he admits he didn't push it hard enough. When you know you have something great, tell the world. Why not? What do you have to lose?

You don't have to be all, "Pitchy pitchy, selly sell." about it. (Thanks Chris Brogan)

Promote with confidence knowing that your product is better than it's competition. If you have something with very little or poor competition, why wouldn't you want to shout it from the roof tops?

You're just a freelancer offering services? Why are you better than the next person? What's the value you bring to a project? Tell us! Amazing Things Will Happen It's the title of C.C's second book and it's the mantra of many entrepreneurs.

If you're busting your hump, putting out great work, and letting the world know who you are the path to success will be prosperous. We're not just talking money in the bank, but finding what you want in the life/career balance and forging great relationships along the way.

What do you think? Are you on the path to amazing things? Let us know!

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Let's cut to the chase.

WordCamp's are great, but it's a breeding ground for our competition. I know, I know -- we're all friends here. Just hear out my next guest.

John is a master marketer and business builder. He uses WordPress to write his blog which ultimately lead to publishing his book, Brand Against the Machine.

He joins us to talk about improving our business and ultimately our bottom line. If you're someone who dosen't want to come out of the basement from coding, don't bother pressing on to this interview. If you're ready to kick ass and take names later, potentially saying goodbye to your coding buddy at the next WC -- hit play now!

John Morgan on bullshit radars, understanding customers, and quitting your competition http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG3AR9O5Z1w

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Are you ready for the cold hard facts? What do I love about John? No bullshit, straight talking, all around awesomeness.

But he's not all flash. He's been marketing and building businesses for 12 years. So yes, there's plenty to learn from him. Knowledge vs know how If you're someone looking to hire a WordPress developer or designer, listen up.

John makes the point, with WordPress at such a low barrier to entry, there are people that know about WordPress "stuff" and then there's the people that have the know-how and there's a big difference.

Ask your next WordPress hire if they have actually built, supported, and launched the knowledge they posses. Bullshit radars are better than ever If you're a freelancer applying for the above job, be on the lookout: people's bullshit radars are better than ever.

You might not get by with some complex jargon, flashy portfolio of themes, and free shared hosting. People want quality work and if you're pitching them cheap solutions, you should learn how to raise your rates. Customers don't know you have the solution for them This is a biggie.

We (as in the WordPress community) spend so much time with each other, we never reach our clients. Sure there's the argument that you might find some low hanging fruit at large WordCamps and I'm sure there's a case for finding an enterprise client or two.

But John's point is, if you're looking to drum up business, spend time at other venues where your clients will be. If your niche is restaurants, is the WordCamp audience good for you? Think about it. If you want better clients, build a better brand This is obvious, but overlooked quite often.

Partly because it's not easy and the other part is we're so busy working we forget to elevate ourselves.

First you need to be honest with yourself and understand that you want to grow. Second, you need to start taking those action steps to charging more and growing the brand. I need to know Do you like hearing from "non" WordPress people? Are you enjoying interviews like this that help you improve your WordPress business?

Are you a freelancer getting some value from the podcast? If you like what I'm doing, consider hitting this link to join the FREE VIP list: Join VIP Now!

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Want to learn how to be more productive in your freelance career or WordPress business?

If you answered yes, you've come to the right place.

Meet Mike Vardy a productivityist by day, author and blogger by night. I invited Mike on to the show to talk to us about becoming more lean and mean with our daily work habits and freelance business. That's not all Mike is good for -- he's been using WordPress for years and has some amazing feedback.

Let's dive in!

Mike Vardy interview about using WordPress as an Editor and Productivityist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP75dbNqwo0&feature=youtu.be Listen to the audio version

"There's nothing worse than submitting an article to an editor and it's written in Word" Why I interviewed Mike and why you should care Aside from the fact he's downright awesome -- he's giving us another angle.

I think it's super important to talk to the users of WordPress so we -- as the "pro" -- can fully understand how the people on the outside view the software.

You might be doing this already with your own client base. Listening is a very important piece to becoming a better freelancer or small business entrepreneur. We need to take into account how the people are interacting with the product and service we put out.

What does WordPress mean to my client?

Do they care it's WordPress or just that it will get the job done?

What is WordPress solving for this particular project?

What do you think? On productivity Productivity porn. Yep, he said it.

There are a TON of productivity apps, resources, videos and so on.

We talk a lot about that in this interview, so make sure you give it a listen. Mike recommends getting a good feel for what works for you.

If it doesn't feel right, don't force it into your daily routine. This is something I try and practice everyday.

How do you stay productive? Did you like hearing this 3rd person view? Are you going to be more productive? Let me know in the comments!

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Literally, the lights went out in this episode!

But hey, if you're listening to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher - you won't even notice.

Seriously though, what happens when the lights go out on your client's WordPress website? Mika leads the WordPress support team at Dreamhost and is part of the core WordPress team reviewing plugins into the repo.

If you're looking to learn more about supporting clients, dealing with shared hosting and the WordPress community - this is the episode for you!

Mika Epstein Interview. Supporting WordPress at Dreamhost and the community http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzNM9XX_8t0

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

When the lights go out on your client How do you handle support issues with your client?

What happens when the problem isn't on your end, but the 3rd party you host with?

Mika is the head of Dreamhost WordPress support, so we get into a lot of the behind the scene details at the popular hosting company. We're also taking the lessons learned from a big company like Dreamhost and filtering them down to the ground level of supporting your own client base.

If your practice is a large agency or you're just a single freelancer with a dozen accounts -- this is the episode for you. The WordPress community Are you looking to give back to WordPress and the community?

A lot of folks are always looking to give back. Andrea Rennick and I talked about this in our interview. You don't have to be a developer or designer, you can contribute in other ways.

Documentation. Support forums. Evangelism. There's plenty of ways to give back and Mika and I chat about that in this interview.

[photo source] How do you support your clients in their time of need? Post your tips in the comments!

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I don't like to play favorites, but this has been one of the best interviews so far.

Cory Miller has built a massively successful WordPress business over at ithemes. In my eyes, he is the quintessential entrepreneur. He embodies talent, drive, and the desire to succeed.

If you want to learn how to get your business to the million dollar mark, strap in and get your notebook ready!

Cory Miller on building a multi million dollar business http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UaBU0MDxSs

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Every day is a new challenge If you're an entrepreneur or looking to grow your business -- this is an amazing interview.

I'm not just talking WordPress either.

Cory is giving us advice that will work in life and in business. That's what makes him successful. He's seeing past clean code, optimized frameworks, dollars and cents. He's speaking to us on a real human level. Chris Brogan would be proud. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Passion is something that every single person on the team should have. The hardest part of this roller coaster ride of building a business is building that team. It's not easy and it's going to take it's tolls - but the reward is amazing.

Skills can be taught, but the drive to get someone to be successful for the organization is what needs to be found. There are no rock stars, everyone is in it together.

What do you think about Cory's story? I would love to hear your comments below. Now live on iTunes and Stitcher radio! Are you enjoying MattReport as much as I am?

I hope so -- these interviews are for you.

I'm now on iTunes and Stitcher radio. Search for MattReport or WordPress and you will fine my blue and red avatar. I'd love a review on iTunes, if you're liking this stuff, won't you drop a few stars my way?

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Becoming an entrepreneur takes a special person.

Some might say passionate, driven, and even crazy.

I only have two words to describe Mr. Saddington: Focus and clarity.

If you're running your first startup or third, you need to watch (or listen) to this interview with creator of the Standard theme, founder of 8bit, and now Chief God Mode of WPDaily.co.

John Saddington interview http://youtu.be/sRZ9vcZ8aRE

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Focus and clarity This interview brought me down memory lane. Standard theme was my very first premium theme for WordPress.

Five years ago, I never thought I would be interviewing the creator of this powerful theme let alone interview the lead the developer of the current version.

During this interview, John made me realize the power of a focused mindset and having a clear vision of where you're going.

We must clearly define who we are, what we want, and how we're going to get there. The vision only makes the prize juicier. If you're not constantly challenging status quo - you're going to be stuck in the middle for quite a while.

Noticed I said, "who we are."

I feel this is the most underrated part of our careers. If we can not properly define who we are, how can we define what we offer clients? If we don't fully understand what makes us tick, our products and services are doomed to stand the test of time.

What do you think? Hey, we're on iTunes! Last week, I introduced the audio player and today we're on iTunes!

https://twitter.com/mattreport/status/303684834780405761

If you're enjoying this podcast/web show - would you mind leaving a review on iTunes? Thank you! I always ask folks to say thank you to our guests on Twitter or wherever they are online. I've been seeing a lot of tweets saying thanks and I really appreciate it!

https://twitter.com/wpmodder/status/303325356037914625

https://twitter.com/rezzz/status/301009158445076480

https://twitter.com/SchechterDesign/status/298464628890030081

https://twitter.com/jeffgolenski/status/293810282600476673

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The Matt Report is all about learning from other WordPress entrepreneurs and their respective business.

We're not just listening to the journey of designers and developers -- but also marketers, author's, and today's guest a marketplace founder. If you're thinking of starting your own marketplace or just about to start selling your first plugin, you want to tune into Pippin Williamson.

Pippin Williamson of Pippin's Plugins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMBx2C6Vtf4

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Starting a marketplace What comes first? The chicken or the egg?

That's the age old question of starting a marketplace. So how did Pippin start his WordPress plugin business?

For starters he created well crafted plugins that were needed in the WordPress market. Second, he backed up his promise with amazing customer service. If you're a developer looking to start your business, pay close attention to the value of customer support. If you're someone shopping for a WordPress plugin, evaluate who you're purchasing from and their commitment to supporting clients.

Pippin brings us through an amazing journey. From starting out as a freelancer to becoming a well known WordPress plugin developer and a leading plugin marketplace site. It's not all rainbows The passive income world can play tricks on us. Some folks lead us to believe that we just upload our digital product and the customers will come. Never mind the startup media covering startup's landing millions in investment for the most simplistic of ideas.

Running a business that scales is hard work.

In the interview we talk about scaling a support team, bringing on more staff, compensation, and reinvesting into new product. You don't want to miss all the juicy details in this episode. Side note I was feeling quite sick when I recorded this episode, so I apologize for all the sniffling. I still hope you enjoy it! Hey even if I was sick, this was great stuff right? Please share this with your friends and jump on the VIP mailing list http:http://mattreport.com//subscribe Photo source

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Every business is faced with the question, "how are we going to make money?"

The web app world is no stranger to this question. A majority of startups go the freemium route. The model that offers a free or limited access level to a product, with an up sell to the paid premium accounts.

If you're new to the WordPress entrepreneurial space you might be researching the success rate of this model. So today, I introduce you to Jason Coleman of Paid Membership Pro. He's created one of the leading WordPress membership plugins with a freemium model to generate more interested leads to convert to paid.

Watch this interview and learn how Jason has taken charge with freemium!

Interview with Jason Coleman of Paid Membership Pro http://youtu.be/xPQAw0TR38c

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

The freemium model for WordPress plugins What do you think of Jason's model of going freemium?

Here's what it all boils down to: support.

Folks are really paying you for support of the plugin or theme you're providing. Even if it's a service you're offering, there are plenty of other competitors to turn to. My pal Andy talked about the value of customer service in this interview.

So if you look at capturing more downloads (read: leads) of your plugin or theme perhaps freemium is the way to go? If the end user needs help, they can pay you for that support moving forward. Jason also has a paid install "white glove" option.

I really like the concept of white glove. It says, "here's a chunk of cash, go install your product, I need to move on to something else." This is smart, especially if you're another designer, developer, or consultant. You're charging the client for a service and if you're still making money, what's the big deal?

Plausible deniability. You turn someone like Jason into a vendor.

He supports it, he's responsible. It's the added bonus of saying you work with vendors. Making you sound cooler and bigger than you really are. ;) Did you like this episode? Tell your friends! Tweet the link or share on Facebook. If you're really interested in getting more awesome stuff like this, sign up to my newsletter! mattreport.com/subscribe

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How do you land the $100k project? Watch this interview with Jose Caballer.

If you're a freelancer, startup, or growing agency one thing you will always face is how to charge more for your work.

In today's startup scene and rapidly growing WordPress ecosystem we hear how many of us are turning to a product business. No more trading time for money. No more client services and what color blue you should pick.

What if you didn't have to stress when dealing with web design clients?

Nirvana you say?

In the latest episode of the MattReport I interview Jose Caballer founder of The Skool and The Groop to teach us how he started to land $100k+ projects.

Interview with Jose Caballer http://youtu.be/NQyN51ruKxg

Watch on YouTube

Listen to the audio version

"I thought I had a tumor." - Jose on client work There were so many great points about client work that Jose brought up in this interview -- but one that struck a chord with me was how it affected his health.

There was a time in his career that he constantly had headaches. Unsure of what was happening, he spent thousands of dollars to get himself checked out. The hospital and doctors couldn't find anything.

Shortly after a project he was working on was over, the headaches vanished.

Coincidence?

I think this speaks volumes about the amount of stress we put on ourselves when we aren't adhering to the right kind of client with the right process in place. These experiences drove Jose to start the Skool and deliver a set of process tools for all of us to learn from.

Throughout many of my interviews, when I ask "how do you deal with the $500 client?" the common answer is "find one that will pay more."

I realize this isn't easy when you're just starting out and trying to put food on the table. However, if you want to scale and grow an agency, these are the goals you need to be thinking about. From $5k to $100k WordPress projects Jose has seen it all.

Small boutique studios, mid sized agencies, to the largest super agencies in the world.

Do you know what the difference was with one agencie's web product versus another? Nothing.

These agencies became brands that commanded the type of dollars that would make us dream of sandy beaches, blue water, and palm trees. However, not all clients are created equal.

Higher paying clients are larger corporations, media companies or enterprises. If you're looking for enterprise grade WordPress services, be prepared to have vast resources for insurance and legal counsel.

Again, set your goal, have your vision and be prepared. The importance of process If there's one thing this interview taught me it was to reevaluate my process.

The process isn't there just to keep the client in check -- but to make sure you don't divert from the path either. It's easy to let some things slip especially when you're juggling a lot of work and business development at the same time.

Creating systems is something a lot of us in the startup space hear a lot. Systems are great for the rinse/repeat work, but a process still allows you to be creative at each new phase.

What kind of process do you use? What do you think about system versus process? What did you think about this interview? Let me know in the comments below. If you want to be on the VIP list to get notified of my next interview subscribe to my list http:http://mattreport.com//subscribe

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Are you ready to learn how to find a niche business?

One of the things I really want to do for MattReport.com is to seek out folks who use WordPress in their business that aren't designers or developers. The average folks who actually use the software and not just live under the hood. I want them to share their story or insight to help us improve WordPress and our own businesses.

John Nemo is such a person.

He's a marketer and all around business guy that founded the Nemo Media Group. I invited John on to the show so he could share his unique angle with us.

Get your pen and paper ready -- John's about to school you on improving your bottom line!

John Nemo on building a niche business using WordPress as the platform https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFh2zaePYZ0

Watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

Full disclosure, John is a client of mine.

More importantly, he's a friend online. John and I crossed virtual paths a few years ago talking about inbound marketing and building business in general. When he needed WordPress help, he reached out to me.

Since then we've forged a strong working relationship that I hope lasts for years.

"So why do I care Matt?" you might be saying to yourself.

Here is why you should care... Being human sells John and I get into a great conversation about connecting with our clients on a real human level.

He tells this story about how we connected and his experience with using my firm. The take away from this is, you don't always have to be selling.

I never sold to John, but he knew I did "things" with WordPress.

There's a great part in the interview where John talks about sharing favorite sports moments with his clients. So you will see, it does not have to be 100% business 100% of time!

When you start your WordPress business, don't have tunnel vision and expect to be talking like a robot 24/7. Enjoy what you do and take time to really connect with clients. Finding that niche I'll be honest with you -- it takes time.

A lot of people set out to research a niche and I think that can be a dangerous thing. Dangerous because you might find a niche for the sake of niche and have ZERO connection to that business.

If you're not passionate about something or can't find an angle to use what you're currently good at, chances are it's not going to pair up well.

John services the debt collection industry. How "fun" is that? It's not and that's the point!

He's able to inject today's tech and marketing tactics into an industry that is as old as the phone book.

What niche are you going after? What do you think? I want to know if I'm wasting my time...

Do you like stories from the "outsiders?" The non typical WordPress developer or designer who has a great story to share? Folks who can help us with our own business or give us insight about WordPress form the outside.

Please comment below and if you want to stay connected with the latest interviews go to http:http://mattreport.com//subscribe

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Last week I released the awesome 2 part interview with Andy Stratton.

Andy is a kick ass freelance WordPress entrepreneur who is setting out to revolutionize his business. He's taking our boring service industry and flipping it upside down with a product called WPMaintainer.com .

In this BONUS episode, he's taking us down the path of how he started WPMaintainer and gives us the juicy details on how it's all put together.

Andy Stratton spills the beans on WPMaintainer.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XjhrTaflYs

Watch on YouTube here. Listen to the audio version

The WordPress entrepreneur's story So what do you think about Andy's business?

Where do you think WordPress is going as a market?

I get really excited when I meet entrepreneurs like Andy and listening to their story. The high's and the low's - the story behind their adventure.

Is your story similar? I would love to hear more in the comments.

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Think freelancing is a tough gig?

Try moving half way around the world and rebuilding your business from the ground up.

In this amazing interview with Amber Weinberg, she's going to share that story with us.

We're going to discuss the journey of selling WordPress sites to anyone that wanted one, to now working strictly working with agencies and commanding a minimum starting budget.

All that and more in the latest episode of the Matt Report!

Amber Weinberg on becoming a professional WordPress developer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltnlzNhHXKA

Click to watch on YouTube Listen to the audio version

What it takes to go from freelance to professional In every interview, I try and find the most useful lesson we can all take away after listening.

What really excites me about Amber's story is how she progressed as a freelancer to a professional WordPress developer. Working strictly with agencies now and no longer doing "battle" with civilian WordPress websites.

And did I mention she moved across the pond in the middle of all this?

If you're a newbie developer or running your own business - listen to how Amber progressively made the shift to command more money per project by finding the right client.

I hope you find this lesson as useful as I did.

Want to know when I release more awesome interviews? Subscribe to my newsletter!

Want to see something different or have someone you want me to interview? Let me know in the comments!

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What makes a support team, business, or community successful?

Someone with awesome drive, who communicates well, and genuinely cares about the customer. That's just a small part of what makes Andrea Rennick rock at her job at Copyblogger Media.

I want you to watch or listen to this interview (because we had some technical difficulties half way through) and feel the passion that Andrea brings to the table. This is super important for those of us just starting out or even veterans looking to grow our business.

You have to be passionate and care about the customer - bottom line.

Andrea is going to share that and more about the WordPress community in the latest episode of the Matt Report!

Andrea Rennick teaches us the importance of caring for our WordPress customers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYjHD_23iu8

Click here for YouTube Listen to the audio version

Community If you're not building a community for your business or product - what are you waiting for?

The competition is too great for you to think you can just sell to one customer and move on to the next. People want more value for their dollar, so start giving it to them.

On the flip side, you can't go it alone building your freelance or agency presence. Build a community of other professionals around you. Need another WordPress developer? Connect with one. How about a designer? Discover some on the social web.

Community means more than just where you live - it's who you interact with on a daily basis. People that are progressing your career or you as a person without you even realizing it.

Take some time this holiday season and brainstorm how you will grow your community in 2013. Whatta' ya think? So far so good?

I need more feedback! Are you liking these interviews? Do you want something different? Let me know - Christmas is right around the corner!

If you can share this link with someone that would be super. If you could sign up for my newsletter, that would be an awesome present! :)

Til next time!

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Some of us love what we do and some of us do not.

Tom McFarlin joined me to talk about building his WordPress freelance career. He's a partner at 8bit and co-creator of The Standard Theme. He works with a wide range of clients and considers himself successful in doing so.

It's not because of the money he makes - but that he loves what he does.

I was delighted to have Tom on and share his experiences with us. Let's sit back and watch this amazing interview!

Tom McFarlin on WordPress freelancing, building a team, and doing what you love http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0ELBAhrMwM&feature=plcp

Click to watch Listen to the audio version

The journey Here's what I love about Tom's journey: it's authentic.

There was no master plan or cunning strategy. It was hard work, making connections, and building a product that someone loves that brought him his success.

Tom has a lot of different identities online. From his freelancing portfolio, working with 8bit, to downloadable themes. He keeps this all organized using exceptional time management skills. He shares some of his tips with us in the video. Building a team via networking And we're not talking LinkedIN.

Tom has been involved with the WordPress community since he started coding plugins. He also shares that getting involved with others and putting your work out as soon as you can is one of the best steps a young freelancer can do. It was by taking these steps, Tom was noticed from others in the community and how the guys at 8bit brought him in. What did you think? Episode #4 in the can!

What do you think so far? I'm still working on the technicalities and interview questions as we move along. Want different questions? Shorter interviews? Let me know in the comments!

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Making money while you sleep is awesome. Making money while you sleep using WordPress is even better.

Meet Brian Casel of CasJam Media.

In episode #3 of The Matt Report, Brian and I discuss the life of a freelancer transitioning into a solo entrepreneur with a software as a service product. Brian built his product Restaurant Engine on WordPress. It's a place for small business eateries to come and start an affordable website.

Continue to the interview to get all the great details of his journey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ntg6S1gnA0&feature=plcp

Listen to the audio version

What you're going to get from this

This was an amazing episode that went a bit longer than I expected.

But that's OK because you're going to benefit from it.

We talked about his journey from WordPress designer, virtual studio manager, to product designer for his new venture. The journey that he took to get there was found by satisfying his own itch in our industry.

He found a need within his own client set, built a product, and now caters to them with an affordable valuable solution. Tons of great take aways from this.

Struggling with supporting your own client base?

Just when I thought supporting clients with a SaaS prodcut was going to be the number one issue -- it wasn't.

Brian shares some great insights on how he supports his clients and how he actually enjoys doing it. He looks at support as a great feedback mechanism to help mature and expand on product offerings. He also shares some of the tools and tactics he uses to connect with users online.

How do you find customers online?

The million dollar question.

Brian and I will discuss some of the methods he uses to attract more customers. We also talk about how efforts need to be made offline in today's noisy social media driven web. Looking for that right client? It might take more than a tweet or wall post.

I'm still trucking on

Lots of things still cooking for The Matt Report.

I'm only 3 episodes in and I hope you're all enjoying it. I still need to improve as a host and I plan on it. Would love to know what you think in the comments below!

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I had the chance to interview one of my favorite WordPress personas on Twitter Curtis McHale.

I've been following Curtis for a while and just love the type of content he puts out. If you make a career out of using WordPress or a Freelancer in general you should read his blog and follow him on Twitter.

If you want to learn how to scale from the small $500 sites, raise your rates, and fire your bad clients -- continue on to watch the interview!

Watch the interview with Curtis McHale http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvVtEByQtTE Listen to the audio version

As you will learn in this interview, he's a self proclaimed "great ranter." He expresses his thoughts, opinions, and experiences loud and clear. He also has the clout to backup his hard work ethic and passion for WordPress development. Hailing from outside of Vancouver Curtis makes a living developing WordPress sites and apps -- he's stopped by for an interview to share his thoughts with the rest of us.

If you like what he had to say, please thank him! Thoughts on episode #2 of the MattReport This is only my second interview and I'm viciously studying other mediapreneurs out there to improve my content.

I'm not happy with my lack of asking the right questions, talking too much, and rushing the guest into new segments without feeling that the last question was properly expanded upon.

I've still got the um's and ah's and I hope to start working on those. If you like or don't like something I do in the interview, please let me know in the comments!

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Watch this interview to learn how Jesse Friedman went from newbie WordPress developer to noted WordPress author of The Web Designers Guide to WordPress (aff. link) in just 5 years.

Also, we talk about doing WordPress the right way, the WordPress community, and how you can get involved and accelerate your career.

Stick around to the end and learn how you can win a WP Engine hosting account FREE for the rest of your life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRpb2Ji0WKw&feature=share&list=PLJPZBGTYJ3EIl1DRSBMgL_bCLuKuh7SAm Listen to the audio podcast

Note: I hope everyone enjoyed my first interview on the MattReport! I promise to improve quality of the video and do away with my ummm's, uhh's, and ahh's as I progress!

Thanks for watching and please subscribe if you want more great WordPress interviews!