As designers or developers -- even product makers -- when WordPress is your hammer, everything looks like a nail. WordPress is certainly in an inflection point. Where as the software is evolving, read: gutenberg + fullsite editing, the community of users grapple with what WordPress really is. I feel like that's a statement which has lingered in the air for a few years now. When you unlock it's power of custom post types and fields with a dash of REST API magic, the CMS can become a neural network for your data. Yet with an interface that I struggle to drag a single block into the 3 column of my page layout. Today's guest has mastered the teachings of WordPress, specifically with Elementor for his students over the last few years but that usability struggle I mentioned earlier? Yeah...that's caused him to pivot his teachings to a hosted platform you may have heard of before on the show before -- Webflow. Welcome today's guest Dave Foye, as he unpacks the challenges of not only learning a new CMS, but the challenges of designing a curriculum for new students seeking to become proficient in it.

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Dave Foy’s switch to Webflow

The WordPress acquisition world was rocking this week. If this week were a heavyweight fight between Learn Dash and Sandhills Development, Pippin would certainly be the beloved veteran. You can hear more about his side of the story in this podcast interview. Today I got to sit down with Syed Balkhi, founder of Awesome Motive, to recap his point of view on the acquisition. It hasn't been without some controversy, but hey, that's WordPress for ya :) If you enjoy today's episode, please share it with others. 

Syed Balkhi on Awesome Motive acquiring Sandhills Development plugins

Today's a bittersweet moment in WordPress business land with the announcement of Awesome Motive acquiring Sandhills Development suite of plugins including Easy Digital Downloads, AffiliateWP, and more. I'm honored to call Pippin my friend who has helped me "grow up" in the WordPress community. I'm happy for him, and sad that he's retiring from the WordPress world...for now. I had a chance to sit down with him earlier this morning to hash out all the feels around this news. I hope you enjoy the episode, please share it with others!

Pippin Williamson on selling his plugins to Awesome Motive

Even with all of the WordPress consolidation happening, there's still plenty of opportunity ahead for the industry. There's lots of potential users, customers, and room for investment (note: we just saw the acquisition of Yoast happen by Newfold, formally EIG. If I had to guess, somewhere between a $30-50M deal.) If you though the plugin space is crowded or even more specifically the membership & LMS veritcal, then I have a surprise for you today. Nathalie Lussier, founder of AccessAlly a LMS plugin for WordPress joins us to talk about her venture in building her business. From selling online courses and building community to building and selling software -- this is a fantastic lesson for all of us. Her and her team are really proving that in the a crowded market, you stand apart from the crowd by knowing who your perfect customer is and building them the perfect product.

How to find the perfect customer in a crowded market

Is there ever a right time to start a business? We could subscribe to every podcast, take every online course, thumbs up every video Troy Dean puts out on Facebook and we still wouldn't be 100% ready. Imagine having a full-time job and peddling your small piece of software on the side. Before you know it, it's making 500 to 1,500 in monthly sales. If you dedicate more time to it, you can turn it into an almost full-time gig. But when? If you dedicate more time to it, where do you focus that precious resource? Travis Lopes just made that leap from full-time at Rocket Genius -- the makers of Gravity Forms -- to run his software business, forgravity.com. He'll take us down (or up?) the decision tree on how he weighed the opportunity ahead of him. Also, what about building for a niche product within a niche product?!

Side hustle to full time business w/ Travis Lopes

I appreciate a good side hustle story. Someone slogging away in the cubical but slowly building up an audience on Twitter on the weekends. I'm sure you know all about the "build in open" movement, and today's guest really shocked me with that. See, maybe like you, I've listened to Dave Rodenbaugh on his podcast (with my boss Craig) Rogue Startups, for years now. But what really got me in today's story, is that he was never really even "part-time" into his business Recapture.io. In fact, the way he put it, he was only devoting 10% of his energy into the business while being contracted at a corporate gig he recently had the chance to exit from. There's lots of fun stuff in today's episode covering everything from managing a day job to which marketing skills you need as a developer to kickstart your business. I hope you really enjoy it.

Recapture.io: From part time business to world domination

Probably just like you, the exploration for the secret ingredient to running a successful business is a tricky one. Speaking for myself, I can tell you that I'm constantly trying to learn and dissect what some of the most successful brands are in my space. How did she do it?What does the website look like?Productized service or digital product?Smash that like button on a secret formula to generating $5m in Facebook ad sales All of this with our blinders on. Sometimes, the real secret, is just staying in the game. Jason joined us eight years ago, right when he and his wife Kim were making the transition to full-time product sales, leaving custom client work behind. Now, Paid Memberships Pro has over 100,000 active installs according the WordPress.org directory and his business is getting a lot more focused on…doing what works. Has he considered convergent PMP into a hosted solution? What about outside acquisition? You'll have to listen to the episode to find out!

Eight years and 100,000 active installs later

The important role of an in-house media creator (or content creator) to a brand, especially in the software space, has been a topic weighing on my mind for a while. In today's episode, I break down a few clips from a recent episode of Bootstrapped Web, where hosts Brian & Joran discuss their challenge of filling this role. I refer to this as Founder Marketing. When a young company is hiring for this role, it's a responsibility that can't be left to the fundamental content creation tasks. A capable candidate must be able to channel their inner founder in order to create content that resonates across: sales, marketing, product, and support. Someone that not only knows how to create a piece of content, but that also is as passionate for the business as they are the audience. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments or engage with the following Twitter thread.

Founder marketing: Hiring a media creator

Forming a successful partnership in business might be the most powerful, yet, most challenging things to do right. This goes beyond simply linking to each others business or handing over the occasional customer referral. I'm talking about two (or more) partners both handling responsibilities and working towards a shared goal for the overall mission. Tara Claeys, founder of Design TLC, has a certain knack for this stuff. She co-hosted the WordPress podcast Hallway Tracks along side Liam Dempsey and is now laying down the roots with a new partner in podcasting, Aubrey Bursch. So I think it goes a little something like this: Aubrey invests her knowledge and experience with Easy School Marketing into the podcast content, while Tara flexes her strengths in design, compassion and years of podcast experience. Together they host Mindful School Marketing, The Go-To Podcast for Independent School Professionals.

Mindful School Marketing: Finding a great podcast co-host

There's a fine balance between optimizing your services for profits and providing satisfactory value for the money you charge your customers. Let me frame that for you: A high-touch, white glove services business is people + time intensive. If you own a boutique agency, you're aware of the time and money you invest on all of processes around building a website. It's hard to prove value for, too. And if you're launching something like a done-for-you service, chances are there's less customer interaction + hand holding, but at a price point that reflects the value. You're doing something the customers perceives as valuable for the money they've agreed to pay you, and your internal processes are efficient enough that you are profitable to repeat this type of work. Lindsay Halsey, co-founder of Pathfinder SEO is taking this to the next level, with a guided approach. You get a valuable product, a valuable service, and then you sprinkle some controlled face-to-face time on top. A guided productized service. I'm absolutely fascinated by this and I think it's the natural step to increase value in a world now saturated by productized services on one side, and Software as a Service on the other. Marry both worlds, and you get an extremely happy customer. I hope you enjoy today's episode, if you do, please share it with others!

Lindsay Halsey on building Pathfinder SEO

Today's guest used to sit on the opposite sides of the WordPress hosting competition table from me. At one point in his career, he was pumping out content on Kinsta's blog like an absolute machine while I was raging against that machine, selling would-be customers on Pagely's hosting stack. So where is Brian Jackson, former marketer at Kinsta now? He co-found Forgemedia with his brother Brett, and have released 3 unique plugins, two of which help WordPress site owners optimize their sites for ranking and social sharing. Oh, they tossed a coupon plugin in there too to help affiliates increase sales for good measure. Once frienemy now Matt Report guest, I'm excited to share this conversation with you today.

Brian Jackson: From marketing Kinsta to building a plugin business

It took me a while to draw out what I wanted to say in today's monologue about our guest. This will be his 6th appearance on the show. With this episode, we've covered 4 different SaaS based businesses, with a handful of digital products and one service-based business that's still running, of which, I've never fully interviewed him about. I really should since it's the cashflow center he has to fund all of these business experiments he's chasing. His name is Brian Casel and he's trying something new, it's called ZipMessage. It's an asynch way to share videos with customers & colleagues. Out of everything he's worked on, I think this will be the software project that defines his career in the software business. Just like I called it with Paul Jarvis and Fathom Analytics taking over his product world, I bet we'll have Brian back on for a 7th time when he sells his company to Microsoft. Enjoy today's episode!

Launching ZipMessage w/ Brian Casel

I came across Kristen Youngs' YouTube channel while I was exploring the popular no code Bubble.io platform. At first, I thought she was creating the typical tutorial videos channel around this very popular app building platform, but as I explored more, I realized she was building a very unique business behind the scenes. I think most of us in the client services or consulting space, long to have an additional stream of income that isn't directly tied to our consulting hours. You'll often see a digital download, a one-time course, or a finely-tuned productized service that effectively optimizes our work effort to profit margin ratio. But what Kristen and her partner are building at coachingnocodeapps.com is something of a hybrid. It's a coaching series, a course, and recurring consulting for customers that need help building out their Bubble app. In the WordPress world, this might be like selling a web design course for Elementor while you do monthly check-ins to help your clients build out new pages or add new functionality. Needless to say, I really like this model. Kristen brings the knowledge in today's episode. I'm going to leave you with this one question to ponder as you continue on…what do you think the most challenging part of her business is? You're listening to the Matt Report, a podcast for the resilient digital business builder. Subscribe to the newsletter at mattreport.com/subscribe and follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Better yet, please share this episode on your social media! We'd love more listeners around here.

A new business model for no code

Over the last few years, I think one of the most important lessons we've learned is that our community can go beyond WordPress. From the tools and the code, to the neighboring software's we use to get the job done. Whatever that "job" is for you. It could be publishing a simple blog or helping a university with a multi-site solution for an intranet -- WordPress is powerful, but the solution can be expansive. Our stack is moving well beyond plugins, and that's a good thing. One person leading the charge to expand our knowledge in this space is Christie Chirinos, former product manager at LiquidWeb and now host and creator of the Open Source Economist podcast. If you're selling an open source product (or any product for that matter), Christie is someone you want on your team. I'm excited to learn more about the open source space through her new podcast. Okay, don't forget to subscribe at MattReport.com/subscribe, let's get into the show!

Open-source economist podcast by Christie Chirinos

Today I’m experimenting with a new type of podcast episode called Play it Forward. I’m “borrowing” this concept from a show called 3 Clips that we produce at…

Play it forward w/ other WordPress podcasts

This is clarity for your digital business. Matt Report episodes help you better understand WordPress and it's ecosystem. We'll talk to developers, designers, consultants and other business owners to learn from their success -- and mistakes. If you're looking for new strategies or tips for your WordPress powered business -- this is the place for you.

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Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owner...

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