In this second episode of season 2, Brian and Chris explain why they are so excited about the new WordPress editor (Gutenberg), and how this will help publishers, bloggers, marketers and readers get more out of WordPress

Brian Gardner, founder of StudioPress, and Chris Garrett, StudioPress Marketing Director at WP Engine, kick off the new season with the story behind all the changes that have taken place and are happening right now in the Genesis and WordPress communities.

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On this week’s episode, Brian and Lauren discuss their favorite moments and guests that have appeared on the show during Season One of StudioPress FM.

In this 25-minute episode Brian Gardner and Lauren Mancke discuss:

• Their favorite episodes of Season One
• The most downloaded shows
• Most memorable guests and topics
• What they’re looking forward to in Season Two

Listen to StudioPress FM below ...

017.mp3">Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes

The Show Notes

• Follow Brian on Twitter
• Follow Lauren on Twitter

The Transcript

The Season One Recap of StudioPress FM

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM.

StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform.

Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, Brian and I discuss our favorite moments of Season One of StudioPress FM.

Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner, founder of StudioPress. Today, on this very last season episode for Season One, I am joined, as usual, with Lauren Mancke, vice president of StudioPress, mom of one, soon to be three. Looking forward to just wrapping up Season One.

Lauren Mancke: Yeah. Thank you for joining us again this week. We’re closing out Season One and we will be doing this week a little different. We have no guests. It’s just Brian and I talking about some of our favorite moments on the podcast so far.

Brian Gardner: Typically we like to go somewhat scripted, where we prepare questions for those that we’re talking to, but Lauren and I, this morning, we’re going to just completely wing it. We have just some general idea of what we want to talk about for this closing episode. It won’t be long. It’s hard to believe it’s been 16 episodes already. I know that for you it might feel a little bit longer because you started editing the first handful of them or first half of them and then we turned that over because you have more important things to be doing, but can you believe, 16 already?

Lauren Mancke: No. It’s really flown by.

Brian Gardner: I remember when I did No Sidebar, it seemed like it took just forever to edit the shows. I wasn’t structured when I set it up and it felt like it was hard to find ideas and guests and things like that. I’m almost forcing us to close the season down because we have a lot of stuff we have to do before the end of the year, but I don’t want to, because I’ve been having so much fun. It’s been great talking to the members of the community. When I sit down and try to think of who do we want to talk to next or what series we want to have, I’m loaded with all of this, these ideas, these people. There are so many people. I want to do two episodes a week, which of course isn’t realistic. There’s just so many people to talk to and so many topics to cover. For me, it’s been fun so far.

Lauren Mancke: Yeah. We’ve already got some great people lined up for next season, so it’ll be good to take a little bit of time off and get that all organized and lined up for next January.

Brian Gardner: I almost feel like we have a legit show here, where we actually follow a format and we have a good audience. We get at least a few thousand listens on every show, if not more. I don’t know. I feel really good about what we’ve done. It’s our first full-time gig together, doing the podcast thing. What do you think so far? Have you felt like this has been a successful journey?

Lauren Mancke: Yeah. I’ve really been happy with who we’ve gotten a chance to talk to and hearing everyone’s story. It’s really cool how so many people have that same sort of, they were doing something else and they found WordPress and then they built this whole thing. It’s great to hear everyone’s different take on that journey.

Brian Gardner: The good thing about WordPress and the cool fascinating thing I find is that even though we have generally that same story, we all come from just much different backgrounds. We also are in the middle of just different types of expertise, where some people come in as designers, some people come in as marketers, some people come in with a technical or programming background. You’ve got a designer who was sitting at a bored day job and then you’ve got like a technical guy who was working for the man and wanted to do his own thing. There are so many different levels of skillset and just expertise that’s being represented within the WordPress space. It’s fun to watch just how many people from how many different avenues of life are coming together in this whole open source project.

Lauren Mancke: For sure. So many different types of personalities, too. It’s not just the same type of person. You’d think all these WordPress people would be maybe slightly nerdy or whatever, but it’s not true at all. It’s so many different types of people, and they’re all really cool.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. Even within the short spurt we did here at the end with the designers, even the designers that we talked to like Bill Kenney at Focus Lab and Jason Schullermega and Megan Gray, even within just one segment of that audience, you’ve got people with different personalities and flavors. Bill works and owns a creative agency and Megan’s by herself and Jason’s doing a startup. Yes, there’s a lot of resonating stories, but even within a certain sub-niche of the WordPress designer ecosystem, there’s just so many types of different people represented. That wasn’t boring because everyone brought something unique to the conversation. Hopefully, designers and people who don’t design and do other things even were able to pick up something from that as well.

Lauren Mancke: In WordPress, I think, when you mentioned the guests specifically, it makes me remember all the different things that make each one of those people unique. You got Bill, who is very, very good at being efficient and I love that about him. He has so many ways of doing that and that’s his focus. He can tell other people about that. Then you got Jason, who is; he’s just a family guy. That’s his passion and you can see that with everything he does and everything he talks about. Those are just fun and unique things that everyone who works on WordPress, they can be their own person and tailor their job and their company around those skillsets that they have.

The Most Downloaded Shows

Brian Gardner: You know one of the things I think for me that I found for me interesting as a metrics guy and somebody who looks into that kind of thing? There were certain episodes that I thought would have been more popular than others and vice versa. When I would go in and see the analytics and the number of downloads and so on for each one, there were a few that surprised me where I was like, “Okay, this one’s probably not going to do as well, maybe because of the audience. It isn’t such a widespread thing or an ‘interesting topic.'” Then those were the ones that got the most distribution and those that were shared the most. It’s funny how you can draw up a game plan. Nine times out of 10, things go the way you want, but then once in a while you get that one where I’m like, “Wow. That was the one I almost didn’t even suggest doing and it was the one that was in the top three or whatnot of most listened to shows.” That just goes to show, you never know.

Lauren Mancke: What were some of the more popular shows that we had this season?

Brian Gardner: You’re going to make me look that up, so I’m going to make you talk while I go look that up.

Lauren Mancke: You know, we can edit this, so we can break for a second.

Brian Gardner: I know. All right, so I was able to pull up the analytics. Sadly enough, three of the bottom four episodes were the first three, which were my story, your story, and the redesign of StudioPress. I don’t know if that’s an indicator of the fact that it was new, and not as many ears were on the show, or if people were just don’t find that interesting.

Lauren Mancke: Yeah. Let’s go with the first.

Brian Gardner: I’m going to go with that one. Top to bottom, I’m just going to spitball these out here quickly. A Beginner’s Guide to SEO That Works is the number one show. We did that with Rebecca Gill at Web Savvy. I had a feeling that that one … SEO is a topic that a lot of people want to talk about.

Lauren Mancke: I thought that was a very informative episode. Lots of good nuggets on that one.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. I actually took the show notes to that and the transcript, and wrote up my own little iteration of that. I think I talked about this back then, that I was going to try that a couple of times with these and try to use that from a curation standpoint, a re-purposing content, and so I pulled some of the best things that Rebecca had to say and wrote a blog post about that, and tried to rank for, I think it was a Beginner’s Guide to SEO or something like that. I think last time I checked, that was on page three of Google, so it kind of sort of working. Yeah, there was definitely a lot of stuff that came out of that that was good.

Number two, and this does not surprise me just because I know that Matt and some of the folks at Automattic were helping with the distribution of this, and that was the show we did, How and Why It’s Okay to Make Money with WordPress, which of course we just talked about just all of the different types of people within WordPress, so that makes sense because that would appeal to everybody.

The next one was How to Scale a Freelance Business. That, I believe, was the one that we did with Bill Erickson. Then How to Build an Online Education Business, now this is the one I was referring to earlier that I didn’t think was going to strike a chord as much, just because it seemed a little bit more of kind of a sliver segment specific to doing an online education because that’s not what we’re all in the deal here for.

We did that with Tonya Mork. That was a good one. Great information. She’s got a ton of knowledge. She’s worked 20, 30 years in her field, so she has a ton of expertise that she brings to the table, so that was one a little bit surprising.

The How to Sustain a Profitable Creative Agency came next. The Importance of Entrepreneurial Mental Health with Cory Miller. That was probably my favorite episode that we recorded just because it kind of dove a little bit more into just the personal touchy-feely stuff, which I’m a huge fan of. Again, a lot of these were within 1% to 2% of downloads, so it’s not like certain episodes crushed other episodes, but that’s a quick recap. Then of course you and I, and our whole stories, are down there at the bottom, pulling up the caboose.

Lauren Mancke: Nobody cares about us. I’m just kidding.

Brian Gardner: Which is why we have guests on the show.

Lauren Mancke: Yes, exactly.

Brian Gardner: Because they’re the ones people will want to listen to.

Their Favorite Episodes of Season One

Lauren Mancke: I think the Cory Miller episode was very good as far as the content. I think all three of us were tearing up on that one.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. I wish I would have seen Cory’s talk at WordCamp Denver just because, and I’m sure it’s on WordPress.tv, but that is something that I think without a doubt every single person who listens to the show struggles with in some regard. Some better than others. I’ve had my seasons of even within the last six years, after we merged the company, of really struggling, especially early on. This was before we brought in the mid-level management and brought in people like you, who came in and really helped do a lot of the stuff that I do.

I remember, I think it was within the first year, we came together as partners in Boulder. I had a meltdown and I was like, “Look, guys, I’m just completely fried.” I remember Brian Clark said to me … He says, “Just take the next month and a half off. Do nothing.” I was like, “What?” Like, “No, I m a creative. I can’t do nothing.” It’s one of those things where it creeps in and life gets in the way and clients get in the way. Hard work and stuff like that do pay off, but the whole entrepreneurial mental health thing is something that I think far too many people don’t discuss or don’t have an …

It doesn’t even have to be talked about across the internet via a podcast. You got to have a couple of people in your life who even if it’s a Skype call … I know Cory a lot of times has tweeted things out saying, “Hey, I just got a message from a friend and it meant the world.” Just things off radar, offline. Just check in with the people, whether they are people who you work for, who work for you, or people like Jason, who are just peers within the community. That stuff matters, so I’m glad we had a chance to talk about that.

Lauren Mancke: Yeah. I think when you’re working on the internet, it’s easy to get lost in that. You’re connected to everyone, but you’re also connected to no one if you’re just in your own little bubble and you’re not really able to sit down and talk with people face to face or, like you said, even on a Skype chat or something like that, so it’s an important issue.

Brian Gardner: All right, so let’s talk about some of the other episodes. I’m just going to look down and just see. I know we talked, as I mentioned earlier, Brian and Jennifer, husband and wife team. They own their own agency and we talked a lot about … You weren’t on that episode because I think you had mom duty that day, but that was a good episode because it talked about work and family balance, which is in a way relevant to the mental health thing, where as creatives and those who do stuff online, we have access to the internet 24/7, and so it is difficult at times to balance work and home life.

I struggle with it sometimes. There are times where I literally have to just shut my laptop and tell Shelly, “Do not let me open this because I need to go play catch with Zach because that’s important, because I don’t want him growing up thinking the computer is more important than him and so on.” For you even, you’re a mom and have two more on the way, and all of that. I mean, what’s that going to look like for you next year?

Lauren Mancke: Well, I thought that episode would have been good for me to be on because I ran a creative agency with my husband, so I know a little bit about that. I even notice my son isn’t even two and a half yet and he’s already … He’ll come in and sit at my desk and say, “I’m working. I got to get on a conference call.” He picks up. He puts on the headphones and he pretends that he’s on a conference call. I’m like, “I don’t know that I want that to be my legacy with my son.” So spending more time with family is definitely a priority.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. Going back to Jason and the episode that we had with Tim, that was the one thing, over the last few years, of things that I see online that I get envious about, is the ability that some people have to do that and make that so important. By all means, I don’t shun my family. Shelly is at home all day long, so we get to talk to each other. I’m home at 3:00 o’clock when Zach comes home, so we do have our time together, but Jason, of anybody I’ve ever seen online, puts more importance on his family, his wife, especially his daughter. I can’t imagine the bond that they’re going to have throughout their life because of how much importance he placed on the balance of work versus time with them.

It’s fun and sometimes, like I said, I get envious of the fact that people are able to do that, maybe not so much as I wish I could, but yeah, it’s important too to balance that out because relationships, marriages, mother-daughters, father-sons, those types of things, in my eyes, big picture, matter way more than what we do for our jobs. Anyway, that’s the kind of thing that I think just everybody needs to hear, that it is important to balance work and life.

All right, so another one of my favorite episodes was when we had Shay Bocks on and talked about food blogging. That also is something that I thought would have been a little bit more less heard because of the fact that it was very niche-specific.

I think it resonated with a lot of people because people took things that she said out of the food blogging discussion we were having and those are the things that could have been easily applied to any other niches. So I think even thought it was a food blogging episode, a lot of the stuff that Shay talked about, things that we discussed, could have certainly been used across the sphere. Food blogging to me is interesting because it’s one of the … It sort of came out after real estate, which is sort of not really been that big a thing anymore, but the food blogging industry has exploded.

You know, Will, your husband likes to cook and you like to take photography and you’ve done a couple of food-oriented themes on StudioPress. I can’t believe how popular that still is and how many people still … Foodie has regained number one status on theme sales on StudioPress. With the exception of two, maybe three months over the last almost two and a half years now, it’s been number one every single month. Shay and I talk probably at least once a month just about stuff in general and she’s always like, “I’m waiting for the ship to sink.” I’m like, “Don’t.” I’m like, “Embrace the fact that …”

Shay has done something of a big lesson for all of us. If you do something that works, instead of trying to replicate that somewhere else, really hone in on that. She’s really crafted her business around the idea of food blogging and she re-branded her company, called Feast Design Company. How more relevant of a brand name than to work within the niche? That is also something I think has been fascinating for me to see, is people within our community really identify where they belong and then really attack at that point.

Lauren Mancke: Shay is also just a great person. It’s really great to see her succeed and all of her success. She’s just a wonderful, wonderful human being. I think too, also, food blogging, people … We’ve talked about focus on family. I mean, that’s a trend. People are spending more time, I think, focused on their family and eating and community and all of that, so I don’t see food blogging going anywhere any time soon.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. People always eat. There’s always going to be the internet and the will to make money. For people, not so much Shay, but the people who use Shay’s themes per se, that’s the dream, right? Living the dream, we talked about that with Jason, is to take your passion, something … In this case it’s something that you do at home, so you could literally be hanging out with your kids and working at the same time, and even having them help.

I recently redesigned a website called Simple as That Blog with Rebecca Cooper. She’s got to a really, really big website. She’s got four kids and she’s a great photographer. She does a lot of her DIY craft and recipe type of things with her kids. She uses them as props. They get dressed up and they do things. For her, it’s a really creative way to do that work-family balance thing because she includes her kids with her work, and so therefore there’s no … I don’t know. Just disconnect between the two, and so I think food blogging is just another example of where that can be done.

All right, so the episode that I actually wasn’t sure we would be able to do, mainly because I know Matt sometimes is a little bit slow on email as he should be … I’m sure he gets thousands of emails a day and from probably people way more important than me. I reached out to Matt Mullenweg to talk about WordPress and making money. He wrote back within like a day or two. I was very surprised and very pleased that he was very open to talking to us about that. It was a great episode. We talked almost an hour, I think, on that one, and probably could have kept going. The premise of that show was very obviously how to make and that it’s okay to make money with WordPress open source community. We did a couple of episodes on that. Also I remember we did one with Carrie Dils.

With Matt, we talked about just the WordPress ecosystem and different ways that we can make money with WordPress, that it’s okay to make money with WordPress, and the fact that he even endorses the fact that it’s okay to make money with WordPress because I think at this point, the community as a whole has identified that WordPress is a business in a sense. Even though there’s a free version of it, even though it’s an open source piece of software, there’s a full blown ecosystem, as we talked at the beginning of the show, just all the different ways that people use WordPress and can offer WordPress as a business, either as a service or like what we do with commoditized type things with selling themes and plug-ins and so on.

It was fun to talk to the guy, right? The guy who founded all of it. I was a little bit star struck, as I always am every time I talk to him. It’s a little bit difficult to … I don’t know. Feel like we were pulling our weight in that conversation, but what did you think about that show?

Lauren Mancke: Oh, we’re totally BFFs now, so it’s all good.

Brian Gardner: You guys on HipChat or Slack together? You just ping each other with ideas and whatnot. I like to think of Matt as like the mini Richard Branson because he’s always … At this point in his life, he’s probably got tons of money and he’s out travelling around. He’s out in Bali or in Antarctica. I forget that he’s probably 30-something now or late 20s or whatever, but to me he’s always going to be a kid. I don’t know. The whole thing is a great story. Just imagine how many people, their lives have been changed by what he’s done. Mine, yours, everybody who listens to the show, everyone in our company. It’s kind of crazy if you think about that.

Lauren Mancke: Yeah. I think he’s around my age, but yeah, he’s definitely prolific and I too am a little envious of his schedule. He gets to go everywhere and do all sorts of fun, cool things.

Brian Gardner: Again, I think that goes back to the point of, if you have some crazy idea, sometimes you just need to execute it. Like, what if he never decided to fork b2 back in the day. We all have that question in our life. What if I never left my job or what if I never asked people if they would buy a WordPress theme or any of that stuff? I think the moral of the story here is that sometimes you do need to take that risk and just do that thing, as George Costanza did in Seinfeld back in the day. Do the opposite, right? Because if what you’re doing isn’t working, maybe the opposite will. That was a great episode, by the way.

Lauren Mancke: I always get tuna on toast.

Brian Gardner: Ah, there you go. Seinfeld, one of the best shows ever, if not the best show ever.

What They re Looking Forward to in Season Two

Brian Gardner: All right, so moving forward, we are going to take break here. We ran that through our guy in charge of the podcast network and said, “Hey, we’ve got a lot of things we’re working on.” We will not be discussing any of those here on the show because they’re just fun, internal projects that will make a big splash and a big difference next year to everyone listening to the show. What are the types of things you want to do as we probably open back up in January of next year, after the holidays? Who are the types of people we want to have? Anything specific you want to see happen?

Lauren Mancke: Well, I know we have Dan from Dribbble lined up, Dan Cederholm. I’m excited about that one. He actually came up to the Northbound office a few years ago when ConvergeSE was going on. That’s a conference in Columbia, where I live. It was great to meet him and Rich, and spend time with him. It’ll be fun to have him on the show.

Brian Gardner: Now one of the things I want to do and throw out there is, we would love to hear from you guys, those who are listening to the show. At the bottom of the show notes, we’re going to put mine and Lauren’s Twitter handle. If you have any ideas or suggestions or people, if you want to nominate people, we are definitely open to hearing from the community. I know you and I are both creatives and designers, and so we err a little bit more on the side of that, in terms of show. I do want to make sure that we don’t forget our nerdy friends who are developers and programmers, and bring those types of people in as well, and talk to them because I’m sure they have a ton of wisdom to share with our audience.

I’m trying to think of who else I would want to have on the show. I know that we have a little Google doc where we keep track. I want to get outside a little bit of just the general WordPress space and just find some really big entrepreneur type people who happen to use WordPress, but it’s not their business. I know people like Paul Jarvis is a guy that I want to bring on the show, possibly Jeff Goins. From my perspective, those are a few of the people that I plan to hit up. Maybe we’ll see if we can get a guy like Chris Brogan on just to talk some sense into us all and whatnot. We’ll have to think about that over the coming weeks, who else we want to have on the show.

Lauren Mancke: Yeah. We’d love to hear from the audience, of suggestions. That’s a great idea, Brian.

Brian Gardner: Hit us up on Twitter, @laurenmancke or @bgardner. We’ll put the link in the show notes. Even if you don’t even have a suggestion for the show and just want to say, “Hi. Thanks for putting together the podcast,” we would love to hear some of that feedback as well, good or bad. Let us know. We will wrap the show up. This is our 17th episode, I believe, which still amazes me. Sorry for those who really like the show and want to hear next week. We won’t be here because that will be Thanksgiving week. Actually, you know what? This will air the day before Thanksgiving.

Nonetheless, people will be out shopping. No one wants to listen to us anyway. December is really a time for that family and stuff that we talked about. We will be back in January of 2017 with Season Two of StudioPress FM. On behalf of Lauren and I and all of us within our company who touch the StudioPress brand, we thank you very much for your support as customers, as listeners and those who spread the gospel of StudioPress. Thank you very much and we will talk to you next year.

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On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Megan Gray, a passionate — probably one of the most passionate — freelance graphic designers I know. She lives on the edge of a canyon in Orange County, California, where she runs her business, House of Grays.

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In this 34-minute episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Megan Gray discuss:

• Starting House of Grays in Orange County, CA
• Designing for the people
• Keeping focused among distraction
• Experience gained while working in a traditional agency
• The onboarding process of custom projects
• Creative outlets beyond the 9 to 5
• Following your own path instead of looking to others
• Filtering out the noise

Listen to StudioPress FM below ...

0162.mp3">Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes

The Show Notes

• Visit House of Grays
• House of Grays’ Work
• House of Grays’ Blog
• Follow House of Grays on Twitter
• Follow House of Grays on Instagram

The Transcript

How to Stay Creative in a Distracted World

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM.

StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform.

Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, Brian and I are joined by Megan Gray to discuss being a creative entrepreneur in a distracted and often chaotic world.

Brian Gardner: Hey everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host Brian Gardner. I am joined, as always, with my co-host, the vice president of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke.

Lauren Mancke: Thank you for joining us again this week as we continue with another episode in our series of talking to members of the design community.

Starting House of Grays in Orange County, CA

Brian Gardner: Today we are joined by Megan Gray who is a passionate, probably one of the most passionate, freelance graphic designers I know. She lives literally on the edge of a canyon in Orange County, California where she runs her business House of Grays. Megan, it’s a huge pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome to StudioPress FM.

Megan Gray: Thank you. I am so happy to be here.

Brian Gardner: All right. Let’s talk about Megan Gray. Taken verbatim from your website, you live on the edge of a canyon which is primarily literal in your life but I’m guessing there’s some figurative relevance here. Also, why I knew you’d be a great fit to talk about being a creative entrepreneur in a distracted world. Let’s start at the beginning and go through the early years of your life all the way back from diapers, all the way to where you are now in the OC. How did all of this happen?

Megan Gray: First, I had never thought about the metaphor of how I live on the edge of a canyon. So thank you for that. Yeah, so I guess I won’t go all the way back to diapers because that will bore everybody but I will say that I had always thought of myself as a writer and that was what I did by trade for quite a while. I worked as an editor and writer for newspapers in the DC area.

I always felt like I wanted to be a designer, have a creative profession but I felt, maybe an inferiority complex, but I felt like that was something that was always out of my reach or that was better than me because I couldn’t draw, and I thought that that was what it took to be a creative professional or be an artist. If I look back from where I sit today and I look back at all the things I was interested in or the fact that I was using Photoshop to make flyers for things in college or that I would spend hours customizing my SmugMug website for my friend’s photos with HTML and CSS.

I look back and I see that’s where I was heading but I remember at the time that felt like something cool people did and I wasn’t one of them. I just kind of chugged along doing the writing and editing thing until at some point the publisher of one of the newspapers got a temper tantrum and fired the whole design team. Overnight I had to learn InDesign and layout two papers and get them to the press on time. That’s kind of when I felt like I had been beaten into the gang. I was ready to go. From then on it was all design for me.

Then we moved to California for my husband’s job. He works at Blizzard Entertainment, which is a pretty well known video game company. That really opened up a whole new world for me in design and creativity and moving to California because of the community here and just the design style. Yeah, a lot of different cool companies to work for here locally. That’s the journey.

Designing For the People

Lauren Mancke: I can relate a little bit to the traditional arts thing because I felt the same way. I’m not a great painter or drawer so when I was looking at a major I was nervous about doing just traditional graphic arts because you have to take all those classes. I can relate to that a bit. Your website says, you have a tag line on the about page that says, “Design for the people”. What is it about people that pulls you in?

Megan Gray: I guess it’s just when somebody is doing what they love. It doesn’t matter if it’s an electrical company or jewelry making or just another creative. It’s just so compelling to me and it’s almost contagious when you work around people that are passionate about what they do. It shows up in the way that they are always there. They’re always responsive. They have ideas. They’re dedicated. They’re just excited about it. That’s irresistible to me in the sense that … I don’t care what their style is, I don’t care what their industry is, I just want to partner with them in their success and bring whatever I can to the table to help them get further faster.

That is something that took me a while to realize but I used to care more about their aesthetic style or even the industry or the budget. But, now I’m just so excited to work with people who love what they do.

Brian Gardner: Does that get you into any problems? Perfect segue into just the idea of being kind of crazy and chaotic and schedules and so forth. The fact that you like people and working with people, does that enable you to possibly take on projects you shouldn’t that might not be a good fit just because immediately you’re like, “Yes, people. I want to take it.” Or are you able to filter through and say, “I love people, but I need to take on certain types of projects so I don’t kill myself trying to take on everything?”

Megan Gray: Totally. I see what you’re saying. For me, part of what I love about those people is that they tend to be respectful of my craft, which always includes them having some sort of mindset about that good work isn’t free or cheap, and that they also have some degree of success.

I guess the short answer would be that it doesn’t really create any problems because I think when you really feel sure that you know what you love and the type of work that you want to do, it makes it really clear for me when it’s not the right work or not the right person. So I have no problem anymore passing on the projects that I know aren’t right for me.

The people who are really passionate and show up and do this work and love what they do, they tend to get projects done on time, they pay quickly or early, and it just seems to be a more pointed, focused process from start to finish for me.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, we talked to Bill Erickson a little while back just about the process of his leads and how he generates leads and the filtering process. He says the contact page, there’s sort of a questionnaire type of page, if you ask enough questions, you can siphon out the people who will admit by filling out certain things that they’re not the right fit. What is your screening process on the front end before you even get to a point where you would talk to them? Is that set up in a way where, maybe it’s by budget or something that will kind of trim out those that aren’t the right fit without even having to correspond with them?

Megan Gray: Yeah, I think somewhat differently than Bill Erickson. People know more of what they want when they look for a designer. I think developers, people are a little less educated on what makes a good developer or an expert developer. They’re just happy to find one. You probably have to do a little bit more qualifying of the leads. Whereas, when you get to my site, if you don’t like peach or pastels or anything that’s a little different, you’re already not going to contact me.

There’s some trimming that already happens before I even get to people. Having a drop down default in the budget, I often get people who are like, “Is that your minimum? Because I can’t …” Then I know where they’re at with budget. People who are wary that I even ask for a budget like I’m a shady mechanic, I know we’re off to a bad start.

Then a lot of times I can tell if people are just going down the Genesis Developers list and copy and pasting a form letter. Or they say, “I’m looking for someone who doesn’t like just the pretty things” and I’m like, “Why are you contacting me? Like, did you look at I can tell if people are interested in hiring me specifically and when they are, it goes great. When they are not, it can still go great, but a lot of the times I’m not really what they’re looking for and I help them find that out.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, Lauren did a great job when we redesigned StudioPress and updated the Genesis Developers page by showcasing a select amount, I think it was four, of the latest portfolio shots of each developer. That is also sort of our way to help in that process of filtering through people. People can just scan the visuals really quickly and say, “Ah, peach and pastel. I love beachy stuff. I’m going to check her out.” Then you know it’s an alignment already built in.

Megan Gray: I totally get that. I agree with that design. I think also, I have noticed that has happened less, like the form letters, and I don’t know exactly where that comes from, but I do think there’s more of a quick visual cue now to see, “Ah, that’s not for me” or, “I love that.”

Keeping Focused Among Distraction

Brian Gardner: Okay, people; husband, kids, two kids now. How is the balancing work and family thing going on? I know that just recently you ended up … This was a question I was going to ask you later but it’s a good time now. You had recently cultivated your own office space, which is out of house, and all of that. I kind of wink at you here, because I follow you on social media and all that, and I can see the ups and downs as they come along with where you’re going with this. How is balancing work/life for you going right now?

Megan Gray: It’s really challenging. I won’t sugarcoat it. Having two kids is more than twice as difficult for balancing it all for me right now. But, I do think that I’m able to compartmentalize it. Just like if it’s not kids, it’s something else that people have outside of their work life where drawing those boundaries and just kind of … It sounds defeated, but it’s not lowering my expectations so that I’m not the person who has no kids or no family life and I can just work at all hours as long as I want whenever I want.

In that way, it has helped me be more focused about the time that I am working instead of just meandering through my day. Speaking of my studio space, when I’m there I notice that there are people who can move just at their own creative slower pace. Then there are those of us who have to pick up kids at 4 or some other commitment and we’re very heads down and focused on our work. For me, it’s just helped me be more organized. When I’m not, it’s very difficult to manage.

The office space, one of the reasons definitely, I sought that out was because I needed a little bit of a clearer boundary between my home life and my work life. Also, I think that when you work for yourself, by yourself, it’s really good to get out there. My space, in particular, is a mix of other types of creatives. It’s not all designers. At the moment, I think I’m the only designer. More photographers and event planners and sign artists because Laguna Beach is a great community for that. We’ve got guys who make surf boards from agave by hand in the back. Lots of interesting things.

I find that there are days where I just need to get out and be around other people making things and doing things. Sometimes somebody will say, “Hey, I need a logo to paint on this surf board” and then I’m right there. Or I need somebody to print business cards and it’s sort of a cooperative that way. Then there are days where I definitely need to stay at home and not go around all the energy and be really productive. It’s nice to have more options.

Lauren Mancke: I’m a bit jealous, because I really miss my old office space. It comes up a lot, it seems like, lately on these podcasts. I have planned for my new office. There’s a new coworking place in my town, too, that just opened up that looks pretty cool. It’s their second location so I might be hitting that up more frequently.

Megan Gray: Yeah, coworking is nice when you can just drop in on the days that you need to get out of your head and then retreat when you need to get back in your head. I found that coworking in some cases here, there’s a couple choices in Orange County, but I worry about my productivity where it’s a really social element. In the studio that’s over by Laguna Beach I have my own actual office instead of a drop-in desk. That’s been huge for me.

Brian Gardner: All right, let’s take a quick break here for an advertisement because at StudioPress FM that is how we roll. If you are a digital business looking to elevate your brand, Infinity Pro, a recently released theme by me, was made just for you. It’s an elegant, responsive way to introduce your online presence. With all the options we’ve packed into Infinity Pro to customize your customer’s experience, it’s also one of the most flexible StudioPress themed releases to date. Did we mention it’s compatible with WooCommerce? Find Infinity Pro, along with more than 50 other great themes, at StudioPress.com/themes.

Experience Gained While Working in a Traditional Agency

Brian Gardner: All right. Let’s turn back the clock a few years and discuss your tenure at 10up. For those who don’t know, 10up is a brilliant WordPress high-end agency led by Jake Goldman, a friend of mine and friend of Megan’s. They do high-end client’s work such as Microsoft, Google, Entertainment Weekly, to name a few. As an independent creative, how did you end up in a situation where you’re working for the man?

Megan Gray: The man Jake Goldman?

Brian Gardner: Yes.

Megan Gray: Jake actually, I think, discovered me on Twitter, if I remember correctly, and reached out to me. I hadn’t been seeking out an opportunity like that, but I was immediately interested when we discussed things. I thought, “Take a shot, level up my skills, learn from some really great engineers” and that’s pretty much what happened. I started there as a project manager, which I think that became clear pretty quickly that that was not the best fit for me. I moved into a design role and worked on some of the internal products that they were developing at the time. That’s how I found myself there and it was a great experience.

Brian Gardner: What did you learn while you were there? I had been following you and we had known each other before you went to 10up and I was actually a little bit shocked because, first of all, there’s creatives who need to work. In other words, they’re the breadwinner of their family and they have to just make decisions that sometimes aren’t necessarily what I think they would love to do.

This was one of those cases where I was like, “I don’t think Megan has to take on a full-time job in order to live and eat and all of that.” I was somewhat confused, almost, in a sense because I was like, “She seems like such an open creative.” I was curious behind the rationale as to why you would have taken that.

I think we’ve had a few people on this show who have also done that too, where you get to a point where you’re kind of done, and Lauren, we’ve talked about this before even with you in your own agency, that you get to a point where sometimes you’re just so tired trying to generate business and sometimes it’s just easier, or maybe your family situation warrants it, where you need something more stable and whatnot, so you make that call. For you, it just didn’t seem like that was the case.

Megan Gray: It wasn’t the case that I was forced into looking for a stable thing. It certainly helped and I benefited from it, but for me the drive was, and this is maybe a little crazy, but when something scares the crap out of me, I make myself do it. For me, at the time, where I was in my career, 10up was the gold standard of tough agency gigs to get into in this space. I did not feel like I was up to the challenge so I made myself do it.

When I got in there I was very intimidated, because then and now I think some of the best people in the business work there and they were good at their jobs. I was coming from a place of being a freelancer who just didn’t have that agency experience or tons of experience in general. I got good quickly.

I guess what I learned from there is just how to be a smarter designer and consider things more from an engineering perspective. When I got there I was making pretty things. I think that after leaving there I made smarter things and I made better decisions and I thought about the whole picture of web design and product development more than I did before. I made some great friendships and people I trust who I still call on today and say, “Hey, this is an idea I have. Is it crazy?” They’re still some of the people I lean on constantly.

Lauren Mancke: I think, for me, choosing to leave the agency that I had built was a big decision because it was not really the stress of generating leads. It was almost like there were too many leads coming my way. It was hard to turn everything down to make time. I knew I wanted to start a family. I couldn’t spend 80 hours a week working. What are some things in your current situation that cause you stress? Are there any things that get in the way of your productivity that you’ve been able to work out a way around those things?

Megan Gray: I think what we touched on before, the family thing, with two kids that I really want to build my life around, the idea that I can be there for them when they need me at school or when they’re sick or when they’re having a bad day. That’s been a big challenge. Also just, I would say I’m my own challenge. When I get burnout or I feel uninspired or just not into it in the moment, trying to reinvigorate that creative energy that I have.

Other challenges of just life stuff honestly. Life in southern California makes inner things chaotic and challenging. Taking that time away in my studio and just kind of re-centering and reflecting on what I’m doing has really helped me maintain that focus.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, hanging out at Disneyland every other week also does that. Although I haven’t seen you post pictures of that lately.

Megan Gray: Yeah, I don’t really do the Disneyland thing anymore. It’s a little too much for me. A little too much.

Brian Gardner: That’s not too far from where you’re at, right? That’s in Anaheim.

Megan Gray: Yeah, it’s like 20 or 30 minutes. We used to have that annual pass and then it was just like, “Hey, I don’t think we’re having fun here anymore. It’s super overwhelming to come every week. Why do we keep forcing ourselves to do this?”

The Onboarding Process of Custom Projects

Lauren Mancke: What is the typical process you have for bringing a new client on board? You touched on it a little bit earlier about some of the things, they’ve already seen your work, they like what you do. Is there any other criteria that you specifically look for when you’re talking to a person about a potential project that’s the right fit for you?

Megan Gray: Yeah, I tend to now book a couple months out and it’s usually a pretty big red flag when somebody cannot wait at all. We just talk a little bit about money and timeline and the standard housekeeping things. I really whittled down the number of email exchanges I go through before I either close the deal or move on. One of the ways I’ve done that is just a really simple pricing PDF that I have that goes over simple packages that I offer, the prices for everything and the process and what it does and does not include. That’s been a friendly little barrier to entry to working with me.

Then, when I bring them on board, I know it’s really popular to automate a lot of that process now, but I don’t feel comfortable doing that because I really like the personal connection. I like doing things similar but differently a little bit every time. So I just kind of walk them through and onboard everyone just a little bit differently because no two projects are the same. Yeah, and it’s pretty clear process of designing and building out everything from there.

Brian Gardner: Speaking of projects, are there any in particular that stand out to you as being Megan’s favorite projects and whatnot?

Megan Gray: I didn’t prepare for that. You know, I don’t think so at the moment. I’m just doing a little bit of everything. One of the projects I did earlier this year was for a pop-up dinner company that had services. Their first pop-up dinner was actually in Lima, Peru and I got to be involved in the logo, the branding, the messaging. I actually threw up a quick site with a Café Pro theme for that.

Then we actually had videography, photography. That was a really fun and meaningful project for me, although it had a smaller reach. It was really hands on, a big collaboration with different creatives and videographers. That was just called Salt. That’s in my portfolio. That was an exciting one for me and it has a little video with it.

Brian Gardner: What is your favorite element of design? You just talked about how some of them you’ve done multiple elements of the whole process. Is logo your favorite part? Is overall site design your favorite part? What part of design in general do you think is the thing that brings the most joy to your life?

Megan Gray: Right now it’s actually just the strategy and the messaging, with the copy writing, so it’s kind of going back to my roots as a writer. That’s something I’m actually helping WP Site Care with right now is just re-strategizing or re-branding their messaging, all their on boarding materials, the customer messages. Everything that is less the production design and actual visual design and more of the whole brand experience and all the little touch points from social media to just all the interactions that they have with the customer, which is new for me to be really, really engaged with that.

Creative Outlets Beyond the 9 to 5

Lauren Mancke: So outside of designing, if you’re anything like me, I have a Halloween costume problem. Basically, I just spend way too much time creating costumes and it’s just really something I enjoy. I just like to do things outside of my regular medium which is digital. Designing things that are interior design or designing labels for my hot sauce or stuff like that really, really brings me a lot of fun, enjoyment, just to do a design for myself. Is there any other types of design that you like to work on?

Megan Gray: I do a lot of those little personal projects that you were kind of describing as well. Nothing as cool as that mini Hamilton costume that you shared. It’s just little things where … I definitely am into interior design and everything in my house being my way.

Brian Gardner: Not Ron’s way. Your way.

Megan Gray: My way. Little things like I put a blend of essential oils for my kids when I was gone and I printed labels and made a whole packaging thing for them. I guess that’s not something that normal people do, now that I think about it, but it’s something I enjoy.

Lauren Mancke: The Hamilton costume really everybody is impressed because that photo is so good. My friend is a photographer. Everyone is impressed I think with the photo more than the costume.

Megan Gray: No, I don’t think so. I was interested in the gold buttons.

Lauren Mancke: Those were just brads on white duct tape. Not super time-consuming. I think we did it in under an hour.

Megan Gray: I think it’s the idea that’s impressive. The brads and the duct tape instead of buttons. Just the creativity. But, the photo is great too.

Lauren Mancke: The kid has really long hair, so that makes it too, I think.

Megan Gray: It’s perfection.

Brian Gardner: All right, so outside of being creative, I know even when we’re not being creative we’re still being creative, because that’s just sort of our human nature. What are the things, Megan, and I want to hear from Lauren too on this one. Megan, what are the things outside of even being creative when you’re not being creative that you do to pass the time? I like to run. Even in that, I find creativity but I don’t exercise creativity in that. I just, I run. What are the things you do that are completely creatively agnostic that take up your time or just help you decompress and get your mind off things and whatnot?

Megan Gray: Yeah, I’ve recently gotten into podcasts and I just consume them like crazy. They just give me all sorts of ideas and weirdly make me a better writer to listen to. Then I’ve gotten into yoga, which, I used to laugh at people who did yoga, but I really like it now. I find that, this is probably not the answer you’re expecting, but I find that when other people like to do creative things … Like at my son’s school people DIY a lot of cool stuff. They’re making an adventure playground.

I feel like I just want to do accountant, data entry stuff because I feel like I use up every bit of creativity I have at work. I feel like I want the antithesis of that when I have down time. I guess I do like to consume other people’s creative work, but when it comes to DIY or anything like that I feel totally tapped out. It’s easy to be creative digitally, because you can easily undo or reproduce or replicate things. When I go to DIY something I’m like, “Ugh, command Z”. I have to start over.

Lauren Mancke: Undo that glue.

Megan Gray: Yeah, undo that. “I want a copy of this, so I’m just going to keep cloning it. No? I have to make more myself? Huh.” It’s just interesting, because I found that I tend to like to enjoy other people’s creativity in my downtime, but as far as making things like crafty Lauren I just, I don t know, I don’t have it. I don t have it.

Lauren Mancke: I think I’m crafty to a certain extent of, that it’s something that s not … takes patience. Like painting or anything for me that has to be very meticulous, I don’t have the patience for that. If it can be something done quickly, duct tape, you know, add duct tape to a sweater, I got that. If I had to sew that, that would take too much time.

Megan Gray: Yeah, I hear you.

Following Your Own Path Instead of Looking to Others

Brian Gardner: All right. What else does Megan Gray stand for, outside of design, being a mom and a wife, and all that kind of stuff? What else would you be defined as, in terms of leaving a legacy? What are the things in your life, when you find time and can fit them into a crazy and chaotic schedule, that you want to be known as?

Megan Gray: I like to sort of be a champion for the little guy to the extent that I can. Part of my tagline, “Design for the people,” that’s kind of what that’s about as well, which is that I have never had the interest that other designers have to work on something that everyone will touch. That doesn’t inspire to me or call to me to be a big name or work for big names.

I’ve always really liked to work for the small businesses and the people trying to make it. I really like to reach out and share or be vulnerable with something, like whether it’s a postpartum experience or a growing up a certain way experience. I like to write and speak to those people. Not that I think I’m so impactful that I can help thousands, but I always believe if I can help one person make a leg up in their business or one person who is struggling with something postpartum or one person who thinks that they don’t deserve to be a designer, then to me that is something I’m really interested in. It really drives why I work independently so that I can do that.

Lauren Mancke: What advice would you give, because you’ve touched on this a little bit just a second ago and before in the podcast, about when you’re a young creative that insecurity that you feel? What advice could you give any young creatives out there listening right now?

Megan Gray: I think they key is to just go in the direction of what you love. That might not always be the popular thing or the thing that everyone else is doing. But, if you start early doing what you love and you just keep at it, you’re going to be the best person who does that thing. You are going to be happier than the people who are doing whatever is trendy or popular or lucrative at the moment. I think it’s really easy to get distracted by someone else’s podcast or someone else’s e-course or someone else’s new theme or product.

I think if those things interest you or speak to you, yes, chase them. If you just feel like you need to keep up with what everyone else is doing to stay relevant, I just think no. Do what you love if you have the position to do so. Just be who you are and that will always, I think, win out and catch up with … You would be your biggest success.

Filtering Out The Noise

Megan Gray: To expand on that I guess just a little, to maybe keep it going is, I struggle. I think we all struggle. Anyone sitting here on a podcast in a position to offer advice, even those people, we don’t know. I don’t think anyone has it figured out. I think there’s so much noise now with social media and constantly seeing what everyone is doing or one-tenth of what they’re doing, like their good spots. I think it’s really hard to, on the one hand, consume what other people are creating to inspire yourself, and then also to block out the noise and filter it to be like, “That’s great, but this is who I am, and this is what I am doing and that is enough.” It’s a real challenge to pay attention but filter out the noise.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, I guess where I was going with that is, in my life, when I came up for the idea for this show, kind of a chaotic world, I think of people who are getting on a train or a bus or driving in traffic and doing what the world sees as being busy and chaotic. In my mind, I work from home and I get into my office, sit in my chair, like at 6am and do some things. I spend a lot of time online in my chair doing stuff. I’m not necessarily busy externally. In other words, I don’t have things to do and errands to do and all that kind of stuff. Thankfully, Shelly can take care of a lot of that stuff.

In my head I am very busy by way of things you mentioned, things, people you see online, the noise, the emulating that I want to do when I see something on Dribble from guys like Bill. That is, in it’s own sense, a way of being mentally busy where … This leads into my next question which is who are the people that you look up to and the ones that … When I ask that question to myself I’m like, “Well, who do I look up to? It’s the people who I wish I could emulate.” People who I want to rip off and in fun and tongue in cheek say, “I love that design. I’m going to steal it.” Who are the people in the creative space, they don’t have to necessarily be designers, they could be musicians or whatever, that bring to you a breath of fresh creative air and some inspiration and things that help bring you down from the business rather than add to it?

Megan Gray: Yeah, a designer specifically that I’ve just always admired is Jesse BC or Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain. He used to be 31Three and I think he’s with Shopify now. I’ve always loved how he is just so absolutely masterful with his craft. His designs are how I found him. I always thought, “Wow, that’s a real designer. That’s real stuff.” Back when I was just doing whatever.

Then I met him at Circles Conference and I was just blown away by how quiet and reserved and humbled he was. I introduced myself, and then awkwardly like I am, I said, “Oh, I don’t mean to keep you” and he’s like, “No, talk to me about what you’re doing, what you’re working on.” I was like, “What? What is this?” I’ve always just loved how he’s not particularly self-promoting. He’s not particularly out there trying to be the biggest and the best. He’s just quietly, comfortably kicking all kinds of ass in this way that feels really genuine and authentic to me.

Then on a more of a business perspective and somebody who is doing what they do, I still continue to think of Jake Goldman, former boss at 10up, as one of my mentors who I still reach out to who is somebody who just does not care what other people think of him. Or he does, but it does not influence his decisions. He is just everyday, everyday he is the same person. He is consistent and true to himself. That is really inspiring to me because I struggle with that. A lot of us struggle with that. Those are two people that I think I can look to when I need a little inspiration or a fresh take.

Lauren Mancke: That’s some really good advice. We’re really happy you were able to come on the show today, Megan. Thank you so much for all of the wisdom you’ve imparted. Do you have any other words for our listeners?

Megan Gray: I don’t. I think the closing is just to block out the noise and keep doing you and it will get you wherever you’re trying to go, I think.

Brian Gardner: There we go. Words from Megan Gray. Everybody at StudioPress FM. Thank you so much for listening. In the show notes, on the show page, we have all kinds of great links to Megan so you can follow her, you can look at her work. If you’re looking for someone to design something for you and you don’t mind pastels and beaches, then check out Megan’s portfolio.

Megan Gray: Thank you so much.

Brian Gardner: Until next week. Thanks again for listening.

015.jpg" alt="The Creative Entrepreneur: Living the Dream">

On this week s episode, we re joined by Jason Schuller, a designer and maker of things for the web. His MO is always focusing on elegant simplicity, endlessly being inspired by awesome creative people, and relentlessly learning by making mistakes.

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In this episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Jason Schuller discuss:

• The creative career of Jason Schuller
• Launching Press75
• The decision behind the sale of Press75
• The allure of side projects
• Prioritizing family in business decisions
• Creating Work/Life balance

Listen to StudioPress FM below ...

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The Show Notes

• Follow Jason on Twitter
• Visit Jason’s Website
• Plasso
• Follow Jason on Instagram
• Follow Jason on Dribbble
• Follow Jason on Medium

The Transcript

The Creative Entrepreneur: Living the Dream

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM.

StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform.

Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, we are joined by Jason Schuller to discuss being a creative entrepreneur and living the dream.

Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone, welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner. Today I’m joined as usual, with my co-host, the Vice President of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke.

Lauren Mancke: Glad to be back this week again, everyone. Thank you for joining us as we continue our series on talking to members and experts of the design community.

Brian Gardner: Today we have the pleasure — are joined by Jason Schuller, a designer and maker of things for the web. His MO is always focusing on elegant simplicity, endlessly being inspired by awesome creative people, and relentlessly learning by making mistakes. On top of that, Jason is a personal friend of ours, and we’re very fortunate to have him on the show. Jason, welcome.

Jason Schuller: Hey, thanks guys for having me. It’s good to talk to you again.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, for sure. We always like to kick off the show by asking the same question, to some degree: Who is Jason Schuller, and what is your backstory?

Jason Schuller: It’s funny, I feel like “who I am” is a lifelong journey at this point. I’m 40 and still don’t know who I am. I was born just south of Seattle, out in the country, and grew up loving the outdoors. Snowboarding, mountain biking, things like that. I had a pretty typical childhood that way, here in the Pacific Northwest. I still enjoy all those things. Just love being out here and being creative out in nature. That’s me.

Brian Gardner: Give us a little background then, from where you started — at least from a design and being a creative — because you weren’t always that way. As you evolved through your career it leaned that way and then you became a full-blown entrepreneur.

The Creative Career of Jason Schuller

Jason Schuller: The first time I realized I wanted to be a creative person … I think it’s always in you. We all know, to a certain extent, that’s in you just growing up. But I think the first time I actually realized it was in high school. I took a drafting class, and with those tools and being the perfectionist that I am — just being able to realize the design of a house and draft it out and see something I’ve made come to life. I think that was the first time I realized I wanted to do something along those lines.

I always struggled in school. I’m dyslexic. I have a hard time reading books. I have a hard time with traditional learning. So drafting and becoming an architect was a struggle for me, because I wasn’t able to get through those required courses to realize that dream. That was the start and the end of wanting to be a creative person at that time.

Lauren Mancke: I actually have a few dyslexic people in my family, and my dad was always concerned about that when I was growing up. I never really had an issue with that, but I can imagine that would be difficult. At what point in your career did you have creative jobs? Did you start in a normal job environment, or did you always have creative jobs?

Jason Schuller: I got married really young, at the age of 23, so I was kind of forced to find a job. Because, of course, you got to pay the bills and you got to move out of your parents’ place when you get married. It’s probably a good thing. I found a job at the Boeing company here in Seattle as a technical writer, and that obviously doesn’t really get the creative juices flowing. I think it was at that time when the web really started to take off.

I didn’t have any traditional training or education in web design or development, but I had an interest in it. What I started doing while I was working at Boeing was just finding websites, downloading the source code, and playing around and making things my own. Reverse engineering and learning that way. I think that’s when I really started to catch on to what you could do with the web and how I could apply my own creativity to building things for the web.

Brian Gardner: So you and I and Cory Miller — another friend of ours at iThemes who we had on the show a few weeks ago — we all had this same sort of story. Where we were at our day jobs, relatively non-involved with WordPress or development or design or whatever, and we just — maybe out of lack of interest or being bored — tinkered around with WordPress and code and whatnot. You were at Boeing, I was at an architectural firm, and Cory was working in marketing at a church or something like that.

Let’s talk about the beginning of your WordPress “career,” because it practically coincided with mine and Cory’s. It’s great to look back on those early days when we all had day jobs and were freelancing to start out our businesses. What stands out to you the most back then and what was the funniest part of what we did as WordPress was really beginning to evolve into something more than just a blogging platform?

Jason Schuller: Just like you guys, like you said, I was working at Boeing still when I got into WordPress. Every organizational website at the Boeing company is probably still maintained using Static HTML. I was looking for a solution to that, because it seemed like a dated process for creating and maintaining websites — using Static HTML. I was poking around with Joomla, as I’m sure you did too, and WordPress came around. I immediately was drawn to it because of its simplicity. I was able to take all the website templates that Boeing had created and turn them into themes for WordPress really quickly and put together, essentially, a platform for maintaining organizational websites in the company.

That’s when I really was drawn to WordPress and the potential for creating things for WordPress. That’s what spurred me into actually leaving the company, seeing that I could do much more than what I was doing. Start going off into a freelance career. I didn’t expect to sell themes at that time. I think in doing that process — leaving the company, starting doing freelance work — that’s when I saw what you guys were doing with premium themes and starting to sell themes. I think was specifically you, Brian, and Aidi with his premium news theme that he had. That’s what really got me interested in WordPress themes and potentially branching out into that market.

What stands out the most was how easy it was to build a following within WordPress just getting off the ground. I went from working at the Boeing company, leaving, and within two months having a pretty strong following already in the WordPress community simply by blogging and sharing what I was learning at the time. That really stands out to me the most early in those days, is how easy it was to build that audience and that following.

I think the funnest part — to follow up on that question — was meeting people like you, Brian, and Cory and Aidi, and just sharing the fun in what we were doing. Making things, designing and creating themes, releasing them, and having thousands of people consume them. That was just such an exciting time. It’s something that I had never experienced before — I’m sure you hadn’t either — sharing that camaraderie with my supposed competitors, which didn’t seem like competitors at all. I think that was the funnest part.

Launching Press75

Lauren Mancke: Walk us a little bit back through the process of creating Press75. You touched on getting started with WordPress. At that time … you started in 2008, is that correct?

Jason Schuller: Yeah, I got started in 2008.

Lauren Mancke: Brian, you had the Revolution theme going then, but that was before you rebranded to StudioPress, right?

Brian Gardner: That’s for sure.

Lauren Mancke: Walk us back through the process of creating the company. You mentioned creating a following. Share with us a little bit about what made you stand out among other theme makers out there.

Jason Schuller: Sure, my start in WordPress — I actually launched a blog called WPelements. I think that’s how you came to know me, through a plugin I released.

Brian Gardner: Oh, the Feature Content Gallery.

Lauren Mancke: I remember that plugin.

Brian Gardner: Love it or hate it.

Jason Schuller: Oh my god. Again, I was just blogging through WPelements, building that following. People were downloading plugins I was making and it surprised me, because I’m not a developer by trade. I’m not a designer by trade. I was just learning and putting things out there — broken or not — and people were following along. That was just the state of what WordPress was back then. It was growing so rapidly and there was such a growing community around it, it was that easy to build that audience. But again, noticing what Brian was doing, what Aidi was doing, and what Cory was doing with the premium themes, it lead me to believe that with this following I had now I could do the same thing.

I think what stood me apart was finding my own niche doing something that I enjoyed doing, which was video. There weren’t too many video themes back then in 2008, so I took a stab at releasing a video-centric theme where you can embed videos and have it displayed in a nice grid.

My first theme I put out there on WP Elements for $5 and it sold … it was a crazy number of copies within a couple hours. I remember going for a walk with my wife and our dog and coming back and checking the computer to see if I had sold anything, and it was something like 200 copies had been sold or something like that for $5 a piece. That’s when I realized that this could be something. It spurred me to, over the next couple months, releasing a couple more themes and then eventually building Press75 and creating a dedicated theme shop out of Press75.

Brian Gardner: That’s the creative entrepreneurial dream. They say “make money while you sleep” is the big dream. You want to do that while you’re at the beach, taking a walk, or while you’re sleeping. I know when I first started selling Revolution back in the day, it was that. My favorite part of the day was when I would wake up and go to my day job and know that by then I had already made $600 or something like that. It’s part addictive, it’s part inspiring, and it’s part, “can I keep this going?”

Obviously you get to that point where you have to decide, “Should I actually leave my established day job as a young, married-type of person?” We had a kid at the time, so even more so. Thankfully, Shelly had a job, and a good job at that, so it was a little bit easier for me to take off. But I think we all as entrepreneurs get to that point where we’re not sure if we should jump or not. I remember, I think it was Chris Cree or somebody told me way back then that they had been doing stuff for themselves for seven or eight years and they just haven’t looked back. When I heard that I was like, “I don’t want to not be at that spot.”

Jason Schuller: Right, and I think now you can look back and say the same thing if somebody asked you.

Brian Gardner: For sure.

Jason Schuller: Literally, I’ve been on my own for almost nine years now, and I can’t imagine doing anything else. I can’t imagine going back to work for a company like Boeing and being in that process of a daily grind. It’s so foreign to me now. I can’t even think of going back. When anybody asks me, “Should I do it?” I always say, “Yeah, do it.” I think where we got lucky is that we did it and it worked the first time. It doesn’t always work the first time for a lot of people.

Brian Gardner: All right, let’s take a quick break for an advertisement here, because at StudioPress FM, that’s how we roll.

Minimalism plus warmth, a winning combination, Gallery Pro is a theme that features your gorgeous galleries and pages in a minimalist style that features stunning typography. You can make Gallery Pro your own with options for a styled portfolio, multiple column classes, a flexible front page, and full color customization. Find out more on Gallery Pro, head over to StudioPress.com/Themes.

Brian and Jason s backstory

Brian Gardner: All right, we’re back. Now, as I alluded to earlier, you and I created our businesses around the same time. In fact, what many folks don’t know and they’re not aware of, is that at one point you and I actually formed a partnership for a brief period, which ended not too long after it started. Now, I want us to talk about why that partnership failed. I guess failed is a harsh word, because it obviously wasn’t terrible — we’re still friends and you’re on the show and whatnot. But let’s revisit why we decided it was better to part ways, because I think a lot of people might to relate to that and it speaks to the styles of being different types of entrepreneurs.

Jason Schuller: It might be different for you, actually, but for me, I think we are a lot alike in a lot of ways. I think that might have been our biggest problem as partners. We both wanted to do our own thing. We both wanted to lead the charge in what we were doing. I think when you have two partners that are so much alike in that way, it leads to problems. I know for certain the reason my marriage works so well is because my wife and I are completely different people. We balance each other out. And I think that’s true for business partnerships as well. When you have strengths and weaknesses and your partner can balance out those strengths and weaknesses with their own, I think that’s what leads to good partnerships.

We were both getting started. We saw the potential, and it was just really good that we recognized so early on in our partnership — because it was only a couple months — that we wanted different things. We were able to split ways before it got dirty and go back to doing our own things. And it worked out for both of us. I’m really happy with how that panned out. I don’t regret having a partnership with you at all. I learned lessons from that, and that’s important as well.

Brian Gardner: I guess it’s overdramatic because I used the word fail . I wouldn’t call it a fail. Like we said, it dissolved for very good reasons. Like you said, when you have two like-minded people, it’s tough. We just both wanted to create and do that part of it, and then no one was left to do the administrative or the marketing side of it, because all we want to do is create and move forward.

I think that the lesson here is you don’t always have to work with other people. Sometimes there are great fits and there are good marriages. I know that when I merged into Copyblogger — the five of us — that was a situation where everybody brought something unique to the table and it has worked out. Our situation is sometimes when … I wouldn’t even say that the situation came between two friends, because it didn’t. We parted amicably. You did your thing. Because you had stuff you wanted to work on, and maybe it was slightly different than the direction I wanted to go. I think we both split and still continued our success, and that was good.

Jason Schuller: I really see that as the beginning of me really branching out and being successful with Press75. I saw it as the beginning, not the end, for sure. It was a good experience for me.

Lauren Mancke: At the time, I was curious what had happened there. I think, Brian, you had mentioned to me about this. You were using his plugin on your themes and then something happened, and I never heard what happened. So that’s fun, to hear the backstory after all these years.

Brian Gardner: I was a little bit skittish back then in what I should and shouldn’t share with the public and people. It’s different than it is now. Even when Revolution — StudioPress rebranded from Revolution because of a cease and desist letter, and I got squirrelly because I was new to this. I did a lot of, “Well, it was the best thing, the great decision.” I didn’t do a lot of backstories because back then I was less into transparency and authenticity than I am now. Now I think I’m more that way because I want other people to learn from the stuff that I’ve gone through. Back then it was all new and I didn’t have any real knowledge to share other than, “This is weird, so let’s not talk about it.”

Jason Schuller: Right. I think I was the same way. You get full of yourself a little bit. You definitely don’t want to share those lessons because you’re not — it’s not apparently clear what the lesson is back then when you’re going through it. It takes sometimes a couple of years to look back, reflect, and realize who you were back then and how you want to be now.

The Decision Behind the Sale of Press75

Lauren Mancke: Let’s continue in that vein, Jason. What are some of the biggest challenges that you’ve faced with your company, Press75? I know we had a chance to talk at Circles Conference about some of the reasons you decided to sell it, and you’ve also shared with some others about your frustrations with WordPress in general. Can you give our listeners a bit of a behind the scenes on the decision to sell? And did any of the frustrations you’ve had with WordPress affect that decision?

Jason Schuller: Yeah. There’s a couple of factors that went into me wanting to sell Press75. I think the biggest challenge, first of all, of running Press75, was trying to stay true to myself and not giving in to the appeal of doing everything that everybody else was doing at the time. I think that was my biggest struggle.

I built Press75 on my own style and my own way of doing things, and that’s what made it so popular. I fell into that trap after a while of noticing what everybody else was doing and wanting to do the same thing. Wanting to grow it beyond what it was. That was one of my biggest struggles.

The second side to that is the direction WordPress was taking after a while. I think it was around 2010-2011 that WordPress really started to get, in my eyes anyways, pretty bloated compared to what it was in previous years. It was this perfect, simple, content management system that was easy to build themes for, and it became this massive CMS for doing pretty much anything you wanted to do with it. With that came the responsibility in creating themes that people wanted. What people wanted was basically all the functionality that WordPress provided, plus all the functionality that every plugin available for WordPress provided.

That’s where I started to disconnect a little bit. I wanted to continue doing my own thing, which is minimalist, simple design, and it wasn’t jiving with what the market wanted at the time, which was everything under the sun. That’s what really led me to go down the path of looking for a new owner for Press75 and wanting to do something different.

Brian Gardner: We had Cory on the show, as I mentioned earlier. He and I and Lauren discussed something very important and something that still is under-discussed, I think, in the entrepreneurial space, and that’s all about mental health. Specifically, how it pertains to being an entrepreneur.

Now, after selling Press75 during the summer of 2014, I know you went through a pretty rough time trying to process the end of that and what would be next. You went through a period of time … To whatever extent you feel comfortable, can you just talk about that a little bit? What went through your head and some of the emotions and things that were going on after the sale and before you started the next few projects?

Jason Schuller: Sure. Yeah, that was definitely a depressing couple of years for a lot of reasons. I think, primarily, when you’re in that game of building something and it’s successful — it’s the first thing you’ve done and it became a success really quickly — you have this attitude that everything you do in the future is going to be successful just like the previous thing. I kind of had that attitude getting out of Press75, thinking that whatever I did next was going to take off and be successful.

It just wasn’t the case. That was a big lesson for me to learn. But with that came a lot of depression. I can definitely say that I was the most depressed in my life — from the standpoint of my professional career — than I’ve ever been. But it was twofold, because in my personal life, my little girl had just been born in 2013. Personally, I was on a high. Professionally, I was on a low. Those two were just clashing in the middle all the time, because I had this great need to provide for my family, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Learning that lesson that maybe I’m not as special as I thought I was and that not everything I create is going to be instantly a success.

Looking back on that, it was extremely important for me to go through that period of a reality check almost, and realize that creating successful businesses takes more work than you actually might think. It’s going to be harder the next time around, even though I have had a previous success.

That’s where I am today. And that’s when I started opening up to new opportunities of maybe joining a team or working under the umbrella of another company and seeing what that opportunity has in store for me. That’s when I joined up with Drew Wilson and Plasso. I feel like I’ve grown so much more since doing that. It was an important step for me to take.

The Allure of Side Projects

Lauren Mancke: You’ve also been working on a number of projects like Droplets and Pickle and Atmospheric. Can you talk a little bit about those and what made you decided to do each one of those?

Jason Schuller: I think Brian can relate to side projects and wanting to do everything that pops into your head. Maybe I get a little bit less focused than Brian in that way. It’s one of the things I enjoy most, is doing side projects. But it’s also a big drawback for me as well, because it distracts me from doing the things that I should be doing.

I take on these side projects. I want to see something come to life and I put it out there. Then as soon as it’s out there, I lose interest. The process of building them, giving it my all and making something work, I think that’s really a healthy thing. But putting it out there and just letting it just go stale, that’s not so healthy. I’ve been trying to learn for myself and my own sanity to focus on important things and not give in to doing everything that pops into my head. Side projects — they’re kind of a double-edged sword for me.

Brian Gardner: I for sure relate to the whole, “Have an idea, carry it out, and launch it” type of thing. I’ve had to be very specific with what I do as a “completely outside of the scope of my job” thing. I’ve only got one thing that I do there. But from a creative standpoint or from a design standpoint, I get inspirations left and right all the time. I’m always in my own head thinking, “Ah, I’ve got this great idea.” Even if it’s an idea of something I would do as a true side project, I try to channel it away and say, “That’s not the right time to actually pursue a actual side project,” but conceptually take what you’re envisioning and wrap that into something that then can become a theme that we sell on StudioPress.

Some of the things that I’ve done lately have been the ideas or creative endeavors that I wished to live out, but just dial back the execution part and say “Okay, well at least I’ve put forth some time and effort and energy into something that a) is part of my job, and then b) something that hundreds or thousands of people can benefit from and they do.”

Jason Schuller: I’m starting to do that same thing. It feels good to be able to refocus that energy in a different way that makes it available right away under what you’re supposed to be doing. Again, I’m working under Plasso right now and designing and making things for Plasso, so every time I have an idea I’ve been exactly doing what you’re saying, rechanneling that energy into something that maybe could work for Plasso. That seems to be panning out for me, because I can use that energy still and not let it go away.

Prioritizing Family in Business Decisions

Brian Gardner: We talked about some of the stuff you did at Boeing. That worked its way into WordPress and Press75. Then you sold that and you’ve had some of these fun side projects. Some have and haven’t been included or involved with WordPress. And then you’re doing work with Plasso.

But there’s more to you than that, though. I know that because I’m a friend of yours, but also because I follow your Instagram feed, which is a total window into the world outside of Jason as the guy who sits in front of a computer and does design and software and creativity stuff. From the conversations you and I have had over the years, I know that the definition of life for you far exceeds running a business and being a successful entrepreneur. I can think of two things — or shall I say two people — that matter to you more than anything. I’m guessing I’m right here.

Jason Schuller: Oh yeah, absolutely. The ability to be home with my family, my wife and my daughter, and be with them more than I actually work has been the biggest gift of my life. Again, I can’t imagine going back to working for that company eight hours a day and not seeing my daughter. Only seeing her in mornings and at night. It’s not anything I can even fathom at this point. This experience is something I’ll cherish forever. It’s actually my biggest motivator in life to keep doing what I do. To be creative, to keep pushing, and to keep learning and growing and stay relevant, so that I can maintain that lifestyle that I like so much now at this point. Because I want to maintain being able to spend as much time with my family as I can.

Brian Gardner: We talked to Brian and Jennifer Bourn a few weeks back about maintaining a work/life balance, because they spend a lot of time with their kids traveling and doing things like that. From my perspective from the outside, even though I know that personally you were going through some rough times, to see you post pictures or to talk about — even in the context of a sentence — just saying, “This is my dream. This is my world. Spending time with my daughter and watching her grow up.” From my perspective as a dad, it’s awesome. It’s great to see. And it’s also convicting, because sometimes I don’t feel like I have that much of a conviction to be that intentional about spending time with Zach and Shelly and stuff like that.

I’m around a lot. I’m here all day when he’s here. I send him off to school. I’m home when he gets home. But it’s a lesson and a great motivator, like you said, to maintain that. Because once you have that … Of course, things will change as she gets older. Because he’s 12 now and he doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore sometimes, and I’m like, “Okay.” Then you think, “A few more years, he’s going to be out of high school.” I look at Shelly and I’m like, “What are we going to be doing all day long now?” There’s that to consider. But you still have plenty of time left with her.

Creating Work/Life Balance

Jason Schuller: I look back at those couple of years where I was super depressed from a professional standpoint but just living the high life from personal standpoint … I don’t know, I just have to believe that maybe that’s way it was supposed to be. For me to be there 100 percent for my kid those first couple of years that she was growing up and becoming a person, I think that that was such a special time. I reflect and think of it that way, instead of, “Oh, I was just super depressed all the time from a professional standpoint.” I look back at it — at those pictures, all those videos, and all of those trips that we took together — and remember it that way, as the time I got to spend with my daughter growing up.

Brian Gardner: Let’s talk to Lauren. Lauren, how do you feel about the fact that you’ve been able to spend a couple years with Fox? Now you’ve got two more coming, and I don’t know if being home will actually be a good thing for you or not with all the distractions and whatnot.

Lauren Mancke: I actually was going to chime in. I think that’s one of the things I bonded with Jason over when we first met, was that family-first mentality. We discussed making business decisions based on that. Putting your family first and creating a work/life balance that gives you the opportunity to be home with your children. I think it’s really important. I heard, Jason, that you’ve got a pretty sweet setup for working from home. Brian’s actually mentioned it on another episode. I haven’t been able to set up my super sweet office yet, but I’ve got schemes and I’ve got visions. What is your favorite part of working remotely and working from home?

Jason Schuller: I think you have to make a creative space for yourself. Something that inspires you every day. Somewhere you want to actually sit and spend a good amount of time in, so that you can let those creative juices flow. For me it was building this office. It’s literally just a little room on top of my separated garage. I built it in 2009, I designed it myself. My father in-law and I built it together from the ground up. Now it’s just that space I get to go to every single day and enjoy the view from my office and just be creative. It’s quiet and it’s peaceful. I think it’s really important for us when we work at home to have that space that you can go to and feel that way and just work.

Brian Gardner: See, I don’t think I have that. Mine’s called Starbucks. I just rent that space, $6 a day. My office isn’t anything special. I’ve actually had — I still probably won’t do this, because it just would cost too much and it would be silly — but I had this vision of designing the office that I have into a Starbucks.

I have a friend of mine who his friend is actually one of the guys who architects and engineers the refurbishment of Starbucks. I was actually going to hire him and say, “Come into my room and do Starbucks stuff.” I was going to put a little live-edged countertop. Put in the floor and some lighting. Really try to emulate a Starbucks. Then I just realized that was probably money not well spent.

But I do, I see the pictures of your office. It overlooks the lake there, and you’re always posting pictures of the mountains. “Then I took a quick drive up to go mountain biking.” There are people in this world — you are one of them, Jeff Sheldon is another — who I really have envy over their lifestyle and their ability to connect in places that I don’t live near. So good for you, that you get to have that type of space.

Jason Schuller: Yeah, man, I really love living here. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I’m sure there are plenty of better places to live than Seattle, but I grew up here. I love it. I love being connected to the mountains and nature in general, and being able to do that pretty much within 20 minutes of my place. It’s super important for me to maintain. So yeah, I love it.

Brian Gardner: As we wrap this up, we asked Bill Kenney a few weeks ago — from Focus Lab — the same question. I want to do the same with you, because I got a feeling it might be a little bit different answer. I think it’s really important for our listeners to get different points of view, so here it goes: If you had a chance to speak to a group of young designers or creatives and your presentation was limited to five minutes, what would you say to them?

Jason Schuller: Wow. That’s a loaded question. Just drawing from my own experience, I think the most important thing, for me anyways, is moving forward. Is not to forget who I am and what I do, because that’s what lead me down a bad path when I was doing Press75, was paying too much attention to what everybody else was doing and trying to emulate that. When I really sat back and did my own thing and did it in my own way, that’s when I was most successful. That’s the most important point for me.

Also, making yourself a little uncomfortable at times. I got really comfortable during those years of building WordPress themes. Living that life for a couple years really didn’t challenge me all that much. I’ve noticed this last year of working for Plasso — being with a team and being challenged on a level that I’ve never been challenged before — I’ve grown so much as a person. As a creative person, as a designer, and as a developer. I don’t think I would be where I am now without that continual challenge. I think getting yourself uncomfortable is also a big lesson that you need to keep in mind as you move forward.

Brian Gardner: That’s a great answer.

Lauren Mancke: That is a great answer. Is there anything else you want to add before we wrap this thing up?

Jason Schuller: No, man, I can’t think of anything. It’s been a pleasure talking to you guys, and I wish I could chat with you more often.

Brian Gardner: We can make that happen. Whether it’s on the show or not.

Jason Schuller: I miss those WordCamps. I’m not in that WordPress scene anymore, but that was the best part of those WordCamps, coming together. Skipping all the presentations and sitting in those halls and chatting with guys like you. People that were doing the same thing.

Brian Gardner: I will say this, Circles Conference, for me, has become the new WordCamp thing. I realized I’m more of a creative than I am a WordPress guy, even though I create WordPress products. I love WordPress and I’m so thankful for what it’s done for my life, but I realized my hardcore passion is about creativity. I will say, there was an empty spot in my heart this past year because both of you guys left me. We had the luxury of being together both — all three of us, actually — last year, and I missed both of you there this year. Hopefully next year maybe we can try it again.

Jason Schuller: Oh yeah, I’ll be there next year for sure.

Lauren Mancke: I won’t be pregnant.

Jason Schuller: But you’ll have three kids running around.

Lauren Mancke: Yeah.

Brian Gardner: Will’s a soldier, he can handle it, right?

Lauren Mancke: He’s got this.

Brian Gardner: Well, Jason, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks for being a good friend to us at StudioPress — to Lauren and I — and we look forward to seeing what you come up with next.

Jason Schuller: Thank you.

014.jpg" alt="Leveraging Social Media to Build a Creative Brand">

On this week s episode, we re joined by Bill Kenney. His unyielding passion for design began at a young age, but has been developed and honed over his decade in the industry. As a business owner, Bill has developed both the design acumen and business knowledge necessary for success. He s the co-founder and creative director of Focus Lab.

Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You Bylogo.png" alt="StudioPress Sites">

			
www.studiopress.com/fm">
			
Discover why 201,344 website owners trust StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. 
			www.studiopress.com/fm">Launch your new site today!

In this episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Bill Kenney discuss:

• Bill Kenney’s path as a creative
• Running a creative agency
• The importance of team
• Using Dribbble to create a creative following
• Repurposing content across platforms
• Complementing a service based business with products
• Finding your tribe

Listen to StudioPress FM below ...

014.mp3">Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes

The Show Notes

• Follow Bill Kenney on Twitter
• Follow Focus Lab, LLC on Twitter
• Follow Made by Sidecar on Twitter
• Visit Focus Lab’s Website
• Made by Sidecar
• Follow Focus Lab on Dribbble

The Transcript

Leveraging Social Media to Build a Creative Brand, with Bill Kenney

Voiceover: Rainmaker.FM. StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform.

Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, we are joined by Bill Kenney, the co-founder and creative director of Focus Lab to discuss leveraging social media to build a creative brand.

Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner, and always joined by vice president of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke.

Lauren Mancke: Welcome back, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We are starting a new series on talking to members of the design community.

Brian Gardner: Today, we’re joined by Bill Kenney of Focus Lab. His unyielding passion for design began at a young age, but has developed, and he’s honed that in over the last decade in his industry. As a business owner, Bill has developed both the design acumen and business knowledge necessary for success. Like I said, he’s the co-founder of Focus Lab. He’s also the creative director.

Bill, it’s a huge pleasure to have you on StudioPress FM.

Bill Kenney: Thank you. I’m excited to be here and talk to you guys.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, this’ll be good. Lauren and I are huge fans of you and what you guys do there, so it’s always fun to have people that we really look up to on the show. I’m going to get started here. I’m trying to think back. From what I remember, I’m pretty sure the first time I ever came across your work was on Dribbble.

Rafal and I have always had a back-and-forth chat session where we show each other things that are cool and really neat design stuff. I’m pretty sure he sent me a link back to the day and said something to the effect of, “Check out this Bill Kenney guy. I think you’re going to like what he does.” That was probably three, four years ago maybe. Can’t believe it’s been that long, but I know it’s been a while.

Here’s the thing. You got to love getting to interview people who you look up to. For me, that’s something for sure we’re doing here. I don’t know. It’s kind of crazy, a little bit humbling to talk to you. I know we’re good friends. We’ve hung out before down at Circles Conference and so on. So for you, it might not be a big thing, but for me, it sure is. Anyway, funny how things work out.

Let’s talk about Bill. Who is Bill? How did he become the creative director of what I call, arguably, the best creative agency on the planet?

Bill Kenney’s Path As a Creative

Bill Kenney: So much buildup. I need to live up to this now. I appreciate that. Oh boy. Who is Bill? At what point would you like me to start?

Brian Gardner: What was Bill doing when he was three that was creative, and how did that just ultimately go through school and into where you’re at right now?

Bill Kenney: Oh boy. At three, I can remember … this is going to sound like I was prepared for this question. I was not, and that was my own fault. I can remember distinctly what I would now describe as the beginning of my creative endeavors, kind of like scratching my own itch but not knowing it.

I would go to my grandmother’s house. She would always have colored construction paper. I think that was so much fun to me. I would cut out all these shapes. I would make animals out of them. I would layer it. I would cut out the green stuff first because that was the background. That was the skin. Then I’d cut out maybe yellow for the eyes. You cut that a little bit smaller so that you can still have green trim around the sides of it. You glue it on.

I don’t really remember much from my young childhood, and that’s not because I did a lot of crazy things in high school and college. That’s just because my memory doesn’t go back that far, but I can still remember things like that. Honestly, if I had to pick where it began, I think I would say all the way back then.

All kids play with coloring pencils, and they like to doodle and stuff. But I always was drawn to that more than anything. That just stayed true forever. That stayed true through high school, through college. I wouldn’t consider myself an academic by any means. It was always creative stuff that really struck the chord with me.

Brian Gardner: At what point, though, do you think you acknowledged the fact, “I am a creative,” and understood what that meant and really thought for the first time maybe, “Hey, this is something I want to either pursue further in school or actually want to become when I grow up,” that kind of thing?

Bill Kenney: Yeah, I think when it got real for me, that would have been college. I still really enjoyed art class even in high school and such, and was sending things away — as the school does, not on my own — to competitions and stuff. One of them got into this Air Force art show. I thought that that was really cool. That wasn’t a career at that point. I wasn’t even thinking career at that point in high school. I just wasn’t one of those types of high school students.

But in college, when I learned after two years of a liberal arts degree that I didn’t want to do math, I didn’t want to do science, I didn’t want to do history, and didn’t want to do any of those other things, I went, “Wow, I can become an art major. That’d be pretty flipping awesome. I could draw all day. I’d love that. I could take printing classes. That would be awesome. I could paint.”

In a way, it was a little bit of the easy way out, I think at that moment. Subliminally, I was drawn to that, so I followed the path I was supposed to follow. At that point, once I became an art major, school became awesome for me. I really enjoyed it, and I wanted to go to class. I wanted to go early. I wanted to stay late, all those types of things. That’s really when it opened up for me. That’s when it became real.

Brian Gardner: I wish I would have had that experience in college.

Bill Kenney: It was late in college, mind you. Again, I did liberal arts for a while, still trying to figure out, “What the heck am I going to do here?” When that changed, then I flipped the script. It was that much better.

Lauren Mancke: I had that kind of experience in college, except I took all those classes that you want to take right away because I really wanted to take them, all my art classes. Then my last semester, I was left with all the terrible, boring stuff.

Brian Gardner: Like the black jelly beans, right?

Bill Kenney: With my degree I went to University of Tampa in Florida. It’s not a big school in general. The art program is not big as well, but thank goodness, they had one. Who knows what I would have gotten into because I don’t know that I would have been just transferring around. I don’t know that it was that clear to me that, that was my calling.

To get your BFA — which is a Bachelor of Fine Arts, which is what my degree is — you had to at least pass college algebra, and math was always my sticking point. I kind of fumbled along through all the other classes. I wanted to keep my GPA high, and that one was the one that was always going to derail me.

So you wait till that last day before you can get a W, you can withdraw, and it doesn’t work against you. It’s very clear that there’s nothing you’re going to be able to do to bring that grade for the rest of the quarter, the semester. I actually botched that one all the way until my final semester of school. Then it was very clear to me, like, “Okay, here it is. I need to take it. My GPA is skyrocketing now because of all these art classes. I’m really excelling. I can’t let this one class bring it down.” I just really buckled down, and I ended up — this is not to pat myself on my back — getting an A in college Algebra 101.

Brian Gardner: Outstanding.

Bill Kenney: Yeah, is not outstanding by any means, but for me, for the class that I had always dodged and ducked, I was like, “I will conquer you.” I did save that one until the absolute end, and I won, thankfully.

Brian Gardner: Yep, good job.

Lauren Mancke: Let’s talk about Focus Lab for a bit. As you know, I used to run my own creative agency, so I bet we can relate a little bit on what you’re doing and how things are going. It’s been fun to watch you guys evolve over the years through social media, especially on Dribbble, which we mentioned, and we’ll talk about a little bit more. But fill us in. What’s the status of the company these days?

Running a Creative Agency

Bill Kenney: Focus Lab is going great. It’s the normal ups and downs of any business. It’s not always sunshine every day. We have the best team that we’ve ever had. We are the biggest we’ve ever been. Revenue is the highest it’s ever been. All these simple metrics, if you want to look at those, we’re doing really great. I couldn’t be happier with what we’ve been able to achieve, honestly, in the past six years now. I don’t know that I ever thought that we would get this far, honestly.

We started in a little tiny town, Savannah, Georgia. Honestly, the only reason people probably know about it, that it gets its name, is just the big tourism and the history of it all, but it is a small town with not much going on besides the history. That’s really what roots it and gives it its name.

We started this little design development shop there with aspirations to do great things, but I don’t know that six years ago I could have told you, “Hey, we’ll be 16 people, and we’ll be doing this. We’ll be doing that,” just all the other things that come with it. I think I would have been shocked, honestly, so I couldn’t be happier with where we are.

We’ve always kept a clear mind on the idea that we want to grow slowly. Growth is not the long-term goal. A success for us is not determined by, “Oh, we’ve reached 40 team members, and we make this much money.” That’s not success for us. I would say that we’ve already succeeded, and we just want to continue to build on that, which is having the team that we’ve built, honestly.

Being around the people that we get to be around, working with the clients that we get to work with, and the way of life and culture that we’ve created — that’s success for us. We’re in a wonderful spot, and it’s just constantly learning, iterating, and growing on top of that.

Brian Gardner: That’s really good to hear and very encouraging.

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Lauren Mancke: I was going to just jump in.

Brian Gardner: You’re so good.

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Brian Gardner: All right. Back to Bill. One thing I’ve seen from the outside is that people are important to you and Focus Lab as a whole. Your team matters to you. It’s clear to me that you value camaraderie in the workplace. You guys have Focus Lab retreats. You’re always sharing each other’s work on social media, attending conferences together, and whatnot.

In fact, Lauren and I got to witness this team thing firsthand last year when we saw you guys down at Circles Conference in Texas. How accurate is this diagnosis that Focus Lab and the ethos in which you operate is really built around a team?

The Importance of Team

Bill Kenney: Team is 100 percent number one. To be fair, even to myself and the recognition that I get when people see, “Oh, he has a huge following on Dribbble.” They see these things, and that’s not just because of me. We all benefit from each other. We’re all growing. Even that metric, which is Dribbble following, I really have a good amount of that because of the team, because of the work that we all do.

It’s not like I turn out all this stuff myself, and I don’t grow by myself. People don’t grow in a chamber. I’m surrounded by all these great people, and I grow in other ways, personally and all that, from the team. We all recognize that, so team is hugely important to us at Focus Lab. It’s very clear internally, and it’s nice to hear that it’s clear externally.

Lauren Mancke: I think running a creative agency is really interesting. I know as creative director you have to wear many different hats. You get to take part in so many different aspects of the company, especially when you are the one producing creative work as well as running the business as an owner.

My question is, what is your favorite part of running a creative agency? I know it doesn’t always come without challenges, but as I’ve had my fair share to deal with, I know. What is the most rewarding part of your day or week, and what makes you wake up each morning and say, “I love what I do”?

Bill Kenney: Yeah, I guess that changes year to year. As you grow a business, early on what excites you most is new projects, bigger clients, revenue increases, and all those things early on in business. That is still all so new to you, and you’re trying to go from zero to something. That could be your biggest reward metric.

At this point, it’s back to team. Team wins and team success for me is the most rewarding, so no longer am I most excited about, “Wow, I got such a great response from a client on a deliverable I sent or something I’ve posted online has been received really well.”

I get my biggest reward — and this is going to sound a little bit weird — in a way that parents would feel happier for their kids when they’re playing sports if they won a championship, their kid hits a home run, or whatever it is, that same level of proud moment, I get that. That’s what I want now. That is when I’m at my happiest. I love team member success and when they get put up on the pedestal, if you will.

A lot of what I do is to lift them up. I’m sharing all of our work through social media. I’m speaking about them. I’m shining light on them and making sure that clients know that this is not about me. Just because you happen to maybe find us or me on Dribbble first, we’re a team. That’s where my happiness comes from at this point and most of my joy.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, I can certainly relate to that. On some levels, and it kind of comes and goes a little bit, people recognize me as the face of StudioPress because I founded it back in the day. Just yesterday, I had a Tweet exchange with somebody who made a comment about the newsletter we sent out, where we had sent him a bunch of traffic.

He said, “Well, I knew Brian Gardner had something to do with it.” I kind of wrote back, and I was like, “Yeah, the old Brian would have said, ‘Yup. That’s right. It was exactly me,'” but sort of like what you were just talking about, I wrote him back. I said, “You know, no, it’s not me. It’s StudioPress as a whole,” because Lauren’s there. We’ve got an entire team from a support standpoint, from a development standpoint, a design standpoint, QA, all of that stuff.

As you know, as you grow from one person to small company to bigger company with lots of customers and so forth, it does become so much more than just the person. I almost look for opportunities like that Tweet where I can kind of back myself out of it and say, like you said, just put the emphasis on the team. At this point, I sometimes feel the team does a better job at doing all of this than I do personally.

Bill Kenney: Exactly right. Yeah, that’s 100 percent. We’re in the same exact boat. We’d have past clients that say, “I don’t want to work with anybody else but you.” I think they’re persuaded by what they see, so that’s like the social following is a little bit of a double-edged sword in that regard. But now, that is not the case. Thankfully now, [inaudible 00:16:16] works to make sure that that was not the case. No one can ever come in and just say, “I want to work with you because I think you’re the best.” That’s baloney. The team at this point is so strong. They are stronger than me in a lot of things, if not most things at this point.

We’re constantly having that conversation internally. They know that. We all speak that way — to the point where, even when deliverables are sent out, even if only I, or Summer, or Alex worked on it that week, the signature at the bottom of Basecamp is still ‘Bill and the Focus Lab team’ or ‘Alex and the Focus Lab team.’ It’s pulling in that team all the time. That is where we get our strength. Regardless of whether I did 90 percent of the lifting in a given week or 10, it’s still the formula is team.

Brian Gardner: I think Dribbble, and that’s where this next question is going, they really did us all kind of a service in this regard by opening up the idea of teams on that social media platform where you could take individual accounts and put that shot up underneath the team. When I look at the home page of Dribbble, and it’s always filled with Focus Lab things, I see Focus Lab posted thumbnails and not specifically from Bill Kenney.

Bill Kenney: Yup.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, Dribbble. That’s the big thing that especially with you guys, you personally have 33,000 followers, have posted over 1,200 shots, and each one of them, no doubt, makes its way to that front page. You’ve got that following, and people just always love your stuff. What’s the deal? How do you own them in the sense of … maybe it was just you guys got started early on, on top of just always creating awesome stuff.

What’s the back story to Dribbble? More so than probably any other person or group of people that I know through the design community, Dribbble is really your sweet spot. I know that it drives a ton of leads — sometimes good, sometimes bad — but that’s where a lot of your stuff comes through, right?

Using Dribbble to Create a Creative Following

Bill Kenney: Yeah. Dribbble kind of broke us through the ice, if you will. Again, back to Savannah, this is not a knock to Savannah. Savannah’s a great city. Our headquarters are still there. Twelve of the team members live there, but it is not a thriving, West Coast, tech boom city, you know what I mean? The marketplace for growth and work for a design agency is going to be limited. What Dribbble allowed us to do was quickly bust into a world market instead of just a little local market. We relate a huge amount of our success to Dribbble, just for what it did.

It was very clear, even if you look at the numbers year over year, from the year before we were on Dribbble, and then you look at revenue numbers the year after Dribbble. You’re talking about a spike that you could have never guessed at. To be fair, it may have been the following year because it takes you time to grow the following, to get the recognition, to drive those numbers up.

But we can find that data to see like, “Wow, this is huge for us. Okay, let’s continue putting energy and muscle into this.” Basically we’ve never stopped. The game has stayed the same.

To speak to the teams thing, the teams thing was a long time coming. I’m not an early bird to Dribbble, although I was in there earlier maybe than some, but not the earliest, earliest. I was in there, and we were building a following before team accounts existed. I remember that whole transition.

Basically what happened is, we were having internal conversations about, “Okay, well, I’m posting stuff, but it would be nice to have a team feed,” so we talked about it internally, tried to figure it out how to hack the system in a way and say, “Look, okay, if we tag them all Focus Lab, people can search by tag. Therefore, we get a URL by tag. Okay, we can use that URL as the thing that we link to. Now we have a hacked team page in a way.” Then we would put that at the bottom of every shot, “Made with the Focus Lab team.” That was a link basically to just the tag that would show all of our shots.

I’m not saying that we started this, but we were early in that game of people doing that, if not the first. I don’t know. Then a lot of people started to see like, “Oh, that works, and that works well,” so then a variety of people were doing that. Then eventually the teams accounts came around, which was nice. At that point, we had been doing it so long. It was like, “Oh, this is refreshing actually to have this now and not have to do it the other way.” That was a great addition, and Dribbble’s been doing great lately with all their new updates and stuff.

Lauren Mancke: Yeah, it was really cool to see the team thing. My company, Northbound, got invited to do a beta test of the team aspect by Dan and Rich, and it was fun to be one of the first teams on there.

Bill Kenney: Yeah, we were happy when that finally opened, opened up. We knew it was out there. We actually knew that people were testing it. We’re like, “Okay, we’re just waiting for this door to open,” because we’ve obviously been ready. We got this link thing here, and we’re faking teams, like a team account.

Brian Gardner: Did you have to go back and update all those links, though, when the team thing came out?

Bill Kenney: You know, that’s a good question. We put up so much content on Dribbble that any time you have to backtrack and change anything, that is so much work. I don’t know if we did. I kind of feel like we did, or maybe we didn’t. Again, we have so much volume that we’re going to push all that content so far back and down that it doesn’t really matter.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, that’s true.

Bill Kenney: It’ll just follow the new structure.

Brian Gardner: All right, so you guys started out with Dribbble. It’s obviously done very well for you, but over the last year or two, I’ve seen you guys venture out into other social media platforms in what I think is a deliberate play at leveraging those as well. I’ve seen you guys do stuff more so on Twitter than you have in the past, but also you’ve made your way into Facebook and even have written some things and published them over on Medium.

Now, you and I have had some conversations about content strategy. This led up to the whole Sidecar deal, so I had a little bit of inside information there. But how has that been going for you? I know that at Copyblogger and Rainmaker Digital as a company, we talk a lot about not digital sharecropping and investing your assets and resources in places that could potentially go down.

Let’s just say Dribbble closed the doors and completely vanished. Your efforts, especially like on Sidecar with the educational pieces and whatnot, how has that piece of strategy gone since you guys started implementing that?

Repurposing Content Across Platforms

Bill Kenney: Yeah, that’s a great question. That’s funny you talk about Dribbble as the example because that’s real. If we think about that right now, what would happen if Dribbble was wiped off the face of the earth, that would be not great for us in some ways. It’s not as if we’d lose all that content. We still have it all. We still created it all.

But the exposure, the eyeballs, the following, all of that stuff disappears, and then we have to populate it somewhere else and build all that back up — which is why when I talked to Dan three weeks ago in my podcast with him, I told him, “Don’t mess it up, Dan. We got a good thing going.” Yeah, we’re aware of that to the point we’re hyper-aware.

To be clear, so Focus Lab, we have what we call ‘Quarterlies.’ What that means is we all get together as a team onsite for an entire week each quarter, hence the name, and we don’t work on any client work. We just work on internal projects. Each one of those has a focus. In the one that was Focus Lab specific focused, which was our site and how we’re marketing ourselves, if you will, we talked about what are the new platforms, like what’s the new frontier look like for us. Dribbble is basically stay the course, if not get more aggressive. You can always post more.

The new frontiers would be basically Twitter, picking up volume there. We were already doing that, so that’s not really new. Medium would be a big new one. We don’t post a ton there yet, and when and if we do, and we will, that content will still come out first on our own platforms. So that content, if you will, to get back to the question, it is safe. It’s not like it would just disappear, but we would post it again basically through a channel like Medium for the added exposure.

I’ve already seen that work personally when I took a couple of posts that I wrote for Sidecar that got picked up, 600 recommends, and just so much traffic that they still get the traffic, that it is just so fruitful to post out there. We learned that because Dribbble’s the perfect example. It is the example of we can post whatever we want on our own website, but that doesn’t do us any good. We need to basically go where the people are. Like you read in a lot of these books, you got to go where the people are, and then bring them back to what you want to bring them back to.

Instagram has been another one. There’s been a very intentional plan for Instagram this year. We’ve gone from 1,000 followers to, I don’t know, today I think there’s like 16,000 or something. The team that focused on it, that’s been working on the Instagram account specifically, has done an amazing job with that. That will be more of a peer-facing platform, though. I don’t expect that really to drive a lot of work.

We’re talking about that. We’re making plans in and around that, but Dribbble still carries the weight. We’re on Behance. Behance is a little bit of a different beast. It’s a lot of eyeballs, but it’s not the same as Dribbble. It doesn’t really drive work.

Brian Gardner: Really, what you’re talking about is producing original content, putting it out on your own site, and then using some of these other social media outlets, kind of like in a syndication play, which is what Medium’s really known for, which is getting something that’s out there.

I think Medium itself has even embraced the fact that that’s how they know they’re being used. They’ve allowed for canonical tags to go back to the original source and whatnot. That’s where the people are. You can take the awesome work that you’ve done originally, put it out where the people are, and then just drive them back to your site. It works almost in a symbiotic relationship there as well.

Bill Kenney: For sure. We are organically creating so much content at Focus Lab that … you hate to use the word ‘repurpose’ because it sounds like we’re just spamming everything, but when you think about like a Dribbble shot, we can use that other places. That can then become an Instagram shot. It’s not as if we have to create original content every day for every platform.

We have so much artwork that we’re creating in a weekly basis, and then Alicja capturing it, us screenshotting stuff, us building presentations for clients, we’re basically already creating all this content. Then it’s up to us to decide when, how, and where we want to post it. We still have it all. It’s still ours.

Brian Gardner: Speaking of the content, and we’ve alluded to this thing called Sidecar, or Made by Sidecar a couple of times. Explain.

Lauren Mancke: I think what Brian is trying to say is, what is Made by Sidecar? Why did you guys create it? I know we talked a little bit at Circles Conference last year, which was a few months after it launched, but can you elaborate on the mission of Made by Sidecar? Has the focus of it changed at all since you first launched?

Complementing a Service-Based Business with Products

Bill Kenney: Great question. There’s two reasons here. There’s a business aspect, and then there’s also the bigger mission. Running a creative agency and a services-based company, you are reliant on client work. That can be taxing year over year over year. You are totally at the hands of, “Did we get leads, or did we not get leads? Do we need to go out and drum more up?” whatever that looks like for a company.

For us, we are blessed with the fact that we have a platform like Dribbble, and it drives a bunch through. It’s a lot more of just sifting through what’s coming through, but you’re still relying on that to live. That’s your revenue stream. We want to create a variety of revenue streams for Focus Lab.

Sidecar is an easy first step to that, but the bigger mission is not really about us and just making money. It is very much about giving back to the design community and building a community within Sidecar, a tribe if you will, that does a couple of things.

On one angle of Sidecar, we’re saying, “Here are the things we build for our clients that take us a ton of time, and our clients pay us a lot of money for. We can actually modify this, create it, and make it a template for you, and we can charge you X, which is nothing compared to the time and energy that we’ve put into it over the years to say that this works for us. Here’s your template.”

Yes, $56 or $76 might be a lot of money in a template world for a younger designer out there looking for things. How much are they gaining? How much time and experience are they gaining from that one deliverable that they can now reformat and use for their own client work? That’s the simple, high level, what we’re putting in there and what we’re selling, whether it be photography icon sets, all that stuff.

Really, the bigger greater mission for Sidecar, which will take years to play out, and it is in motion, which is the, how do we share knowledge? How do we teach? How does the community come in and help each other on a daily basis? We can build this really tight network of people that are willing to share information with each other, that are willing to encourage each other, that are happy to lift each other up, and do all of these things within the Sidecar tribe, if you will.

The goal is to build a tribe there that is that close, that has a variety of skillsets, perspectives on life, and all of these things. Right now, we have our Slack channel, which is our private Slack channel, that we invite people to. We’re starting to build up that tribe behind the scenes, if you will, that doesn’t exist on the site.

Right now on the site, we sell the products, and then we do all this free writing basically. We’re putting all this content in the journal of all the things that we know to be true, client experiences, and this is how we do this, this is how we do that. That’s our form of giving back right now, but really we want to blow those doors open and make it more of this community-driven, we’re all here for the greater good of design, if you will, to educate, to inform, to make us all better.

That’s basically seeping through from Focus Lab. That’s how we interact with each other. We all want to grow. Even today at lunch, one of our team members gave a lunch and learn on one of the books she read. It has nothing to do with design. It has to do with conversations and how to get through. The name of the book is Crucial Conversations. Just that type of stuff, doesn’t have to be design-specific.

I guess what I’m saying is Sidecar is now the outlet to do all of those things. Focus Lab still has to be what it is, which is a design agency. We can’t do all of the things that Sidecar will be able to do, so we’ve basically opened that up so that we can do that with Sidecar. I think that answers your question. I said a lot there.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, it’s great stuff. The way I see it is that Focus Lab is the creative agency that drives the revenue. Social media is the outlet in which you do things like build authority, get leads, and so on, but Sidecar seems to be that middle piece, which may have been lacking up until it was created, where you can take some of the stuff that, as you say, learn and have figured out through your experiences at Focus Lab. Sidecar is kind of the distribution channel for sending that out to social media.

Most of the stuff that you guys do on social media, that’s not necessarily just visual posting pictures, but more like the content side of it is actually through Sidecar and these, what you call, free writings, lessons, or tutorials where you’re really trying to help teach people. Not necessarily in a way that you hope that they come back and become clients, but just equip them as being tribe members of Focus Lab as a whole and all that.

Bill Kenney: Yeah. Focus Lab is very much the client-facing. We have this give back part of who we are, all of us in the team, like in our DNA, but we can’t be so peer-facing as a design agency. We have to be appealing to the clients, so there’s a little bit of a conundrum there when you’re like, “We’re writing for the Focus Lab blog, but really it’s purely peer-facing.” It’s a little bit silly. As your company continues to grow, the company has a focus, and it’s driven by what it’s trying to achieve.

Sidecar now becomes the peer outlet. In the Slack room, I’m in there interacting with all these people, and they’re saying, “Hey, can I call you up and just ask you this question about what to do?” Now they have direct access to us and to the team, which is awesome, because we want to be able to do that, but Focus Lab can’t function that way. Sidecar opens that door.

Lauren Mancke: Fun question. If you had to pick one, just one social media platform, to build a creative business around, what would it be, and why?

Bill’s Favorite Social Media Platform Is

Bill Kenney: Well, I think the entire world knows what my answer is going to be to that.

Brian Gardner: Okay, you can’t answer Dribbble.

Bill Kenney: Oh okay, all right. We’ll take that out of it then [00:33:48].

Brian Gardner: This is not you as Bill. This is you, like what advice would you give to somebody who’s starting up? Aside from your own plot of land, what would be the most fruitful opportunity for someone to help spread their own word?

Bill Kenney: I don’t know how it could be something else, honestly, and here’s why. I can say Twitter. That’s not a niche demographic there, so you’re going to have to fight your way through crowds, which is fine. I think you still want to be on there as well. You want to play amongst the different fields, but Dribbble gives you such a unique opportunity to the fact that it’s super-low cost. You have no price barrier coming in as a younger creative or someone that’s looking to start an agency.

You have immediate exposure to both huge players and small players, people that you’re going to be immediately able to interact with on a peer level to say like, “Okay, I feel equal to you. You will interact with me. I don’t know if I can go interact with that person yet. Maybe I feel too shy. Maybe they’d be totally chill,” like I am, and I’ll talk to anybody. It doesn’t matter, but you don’t see that when you first come in. It couldn’t be anything else.

I guess here’s the other thing. I am a little bit biased, and that’s fair. I can recognize that. You could do really well on other platforms, like Instagram proves itself really well for type designers. You see a lot of people get really far in type on that, and they actually get client leads and stuff.

It’s just a little bit harder for me to speak to because that’s not been our path. Therefore, I don’t know that I could give that advice, but I guess if I knew if they were in a specific realm, I could point them in a different direction. As an overall creative, and if they wanted to follow a similar path as us, I paved the way. Basically just do what we did. We’re not magic makers. I didn’t come in with some secret sauce. I didn’t start with a ton of money and was able to get ahead and all these other things. We just got in and got our hands dirty, and Dribbble is the platform to do it.

I do think that some people get ahead on Behance. I have a massive following on Behance. I have a couple hundred thousand followers on Behance, significantly larger than I have on Dribbble. I can tell you that it doesn’t even touch the return as far as revenue, and it doesn’t touch the connections I make on a peer level from all walks of life, junior designer all the way through to people that I would look up to and respect.

I could try to break away from Dribbble and say like, “Okay, let me try to think of something else.” I think that would be bad information. I tell everybody, “As a younger creative, just get on Dribbble. Put some energy into it and make it work,” because we did, and I know it works.

Brian Gardner: You know what, though? That’s kind of an unfair question, though, now that I think about it. We used the word ‘creative.’ We didn’t ask you specifically, what would you tell a designer, right? Because a creative is more than just a designer. It’s a guy who’s a photographer. He’s a videographer or a writer, and in that case, Medium is a much better place for a writer to go.

Bill Kenney: Right.

Brian Gardner: Backing up and letting you take the easy route with Dribbble, for sure, as a designer, that’s absolutely the place. I wouldn’t have even asked you to say something other than Dribbble just to answer the question because, yeah, designers need to go to Dribbble. If you’re another type of creative, obviously there’s different types of outlets like that that are probably better suited for you. Let’s not see a copywriter try to use Dribbble to expand their platform.

Finding Your Tribe

Bill Kenney: Yeah, for sure. When I am posed with that question, which is from anybody, “How should I get out there?” and even if we’re thinking about new angles or new things that we want to release, new products, or whatever, it’s still following the same model, which is go find where your tribe is basically. Focus Lab’s tribe just happened to be on Dribbble. It continues to be there for now.

But depending on what industry you’re in, you’re basically going to go out and find your tribe, hang out amongst them, make yourself a name within that group, and then bring that tribe back to where you need them to come back to — whether it’s your personal site, whether it’s a book you’re releasing, or whatever. Yeah, you want to go out there and find your tribe, so whether that be Dribbble, Medium, whatever photography site, community. It’s just about the community. You got to find your own community.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, let’s talk about that. Alicja, who works with you guys a lot, is a photographer. Let’s just use an example. Ironically, I think you guys did their logo design, the photography site that just recently you guys launched a design for. It’s sort of the photography version of Dribbble, right?

Bill Kenney: Yes and no. To be clear, yes, we did do the branding work for 500px. They’re an amazing client, such a great team, and they are a really large community. It is interesting, though. I don’t have much experience on that platform in the sense of how we use Dribbble, so I don’t know if each community, if the result is the same. I don’t know that there are Hire Me buttons, CTAs, and stuff that really help to drive that type of action that come from Dribbble.

But yes, I would always tell people in other industries to at least do what you can to find your Dribbble. I’ve said that many times to many people in different industries, even to developers. “I don’t know where it is. I don’t know what to tell you, but you need to find your Dribbble. You need to find your version of what I did.” That’s the easy first step as far as I’m concerned. All it takes is time and energy. If you don’t have time and energy, you obviously don’t care enough about whatever you’re trying to start or what you’re trying to accomplish.

For every industry, it’s going to be different. I think that design is one that Dribbble specifically just worked out great. I don’t know that there is one for every industry. I think that’s really tough for other industries to figure out. Like, “Oh, I don’t know where the tribe is,” and there could be other huge barriers even if you figure out where it is. How the hell do you get into it, and how do you interact?

Brian Gardner: It always seems like an opportunity, if those don’t exist for certain media, to actually be the person like … is it Dan Cederholm? He’s the one who did Dribbble, right? He’s got his co-founder, Rich?

Bill Kenney: Yeah, but I think Dan seems to get the crown the most. I don’t know if that’s just because he has the most exposure. He’s actually on Dribbble with the big following up on the first page. But yes, it’s both of them.

Brian Gardner: My point, though, is that even if you’re a creative, and we do this with our software at our company a lot, if it’s not out there and we need it, we build it. To the really, really savvy entrepreneur who’s a creative, if that medium or that Dribbble doesn’t exist within their niche, that’s an opportunity. It’s just an opportunity to go try to create that thing, be the next Dribbble founder or the next whatever founder.

Bill Kenney: Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that 100 percent. If you’re a developer and you say, “I wish there was a …” Well, I think there have been some small attempts, but yes, I agree 100 percent. If you remember Forrst, Forrst was before Dribbble, right around the same time, but that was a play to designers and developers. You could actually post code and stuff on there. That was a little bit earlier.

I don’t know that people were searching around and hiring as much as they are now from a client perspective. The community was smaller, just because that was a while ago, just like Dribbble’s community was smaller, but there seemed to be other kind of platforms that poke around, but yeah, if you had the opportunity to create one in whatever your space is, it works.

That’s the only thing I can ever say to the path we’ve taken is it works. I don’t think I did anything magical. I think I set a course, and I said, “This is what I’m going to achieve, and I’m going to achieve that by doing A, B, and C.” I did A, B, and C, and it worked out. Everybody’s path is different, but it wasn’t rocket science, I can tell you that. Look, it took me until the end of my college career to get the college algebra thing crossed off.

Lauren Mancke: Speaking of that, who are some of your heroes or people that you look up to, respect, and say, “I wish I could do X like X”?

Who Bill Looks Up To

Bill Kenney: Oh, that’s a great question. My answer is not going to contain names I would have read about in art school. The reason is simple. It’s not because I don’t respect what they’ve done and basically the foundation that they laid for design and art in general, and the history of the world, if you will. When I was a sponge and I was coming into the who am I looking up to when I was fresh into, deeper into the design world, if you will, it would have been all of a sudden the bigger names that I would have seen on Dribbble.

I hate to go back to Dribbble, but that is such a big part of my evolution over the past six years. When I think about the people that I look up to or that I respect, those are the people I’ve been around the most and have seen the most volume from, week over week. They would just pop out in my mind to be the people that I would look up to. I can tell you typically what I look up to most, whether it be a big name or a small name, would be people that do things that I don’t do or that I can’t do.

I love it when I see really great motion work come out of the variety of people that do motion work now. Motion’s really blowing up. When I see that stuff, and we have now a motion designer on our team, Will Kesling. He is awesome. That’s the stuff when you want to get down on your hands and knees and just say, “I am not worthy.” It’s like when I look at people that do the things that don’t cross my plate typically, which are going to be just amazing typography.

I just started following these two girls on Dribbble. They do really awesome felt fabric figurines. It’s so obscure. I would never even known that I would have found that. I was just kind of trolling around on Dribbble, not to say that I’m a troll. I just found these accounts. I’m like, “Wow, people make little people, but purely out of felt.” They make little mini Pepsi cans, but the scale of it is like a fingertip. It’s all felt. That’s the stuff. That’s what inspires me. I’m like, “Holy crap. That is amazing. What is that thing?”

To say that I look up to somebody, and this is in the most humble voice ever, in the branding space or even a web space, there are people that I’m like, “Wow, you do really great work, and I respect you,” but that’s not really what kind of tickles my feathers, if you will. It’s when I see the really funky stuff that’s completely unexpected. It seems like type illustration, motion work, new mediums, three-dimensional stuff, and blending platforms doing three-dimensional stuff with flat stuff and motion — all that stuff paired together. It’s crazy to me, and that’s what I really love. I think what you were looking for is for me to name drop somebody, but I haven’t done that yet [00:45:09].

Brian Gardner: Give me two or three names. Come on, two or three designers that you want to emulate, not copy, but you know what I mean? A lot of these people are on a much higher pedestal on my level than they are your level. For you, these might be peers, but I want to know two or three people that you say, “Man, that guy or that gal has just killed it in design.”

Bill Kenney: Oh, man, that’s so tough. I’m such a people pleaser. It’s like, “Oh, I got to make sure I name the right people.” Let me think about the people that I know that constantly do great work, and let me also make sure that it’s clear that I would consider these people very good people, too. That is important to who we are and who I am.

I would say Kerem is somebody that I’ve looked up to for a long time. Kerem can be found on Dribbble. He’s out of San Francisco as well. He’s West Coast at least. Kerem’s last name is Suer, I believe. He does really, really solid work, really great person. He was one when I first started on Dribbble, you’d look up and you’d go like, “Oh my God, I can never touch that level.” Then you finally get to meet them in person, and you have grown as well. Now they’re aware of you, and you’re interacting on a peer level. You’re like, “Wow, this is amazing.” I would definitely say that Kerem is one.

You know who jumps out lately who’s totally crushing stuff is Bethany Heck. She just moved on from the IBM team, or I’m sorry, sorry, the Microsoft team. She’s moving on to her new position. I actually forget where it is, but the type stuff that she’s putting out. She just did this thing with Fonts.com when she put out all these baseball card posters using all this new type that they have for sale.

That’s the kind of stuff. I saw that poster. I was like, “OMG! I need to have that. That’s amazing.” I would say that she is somebody that I’d look up to, for sure, to this day. Right now when I look at her stuff, I’m like, “Wow, this is really great.”

That covers two platforms. That covers basically UI because Kerem’s more of a UI product guy. She does a lot, but a lot of type. What other funk do you want? I could throw out the cliché names, like Draplin. Draplin’s awesome. I love hearing him talk. He does rad work, but like everybody says Draplin. I don’t need to say Draplin. Who else? Who is on your list, Brian? I’m curious to know who you [crosstalk 00:47:38].

Brian Gardner: Well, there was one person, and I don’t know, I kind of assumed that maybe it’s just too obvious. I know that you not saying him isn’t in any way a form of disrespect. Maybe you just didn’t want to say it, but I was thinking GoPro.

Bill Kenney: Were you thinking Charlie Waite?

Brian Gardner: I was thinking Charlie Waite.

Bill Kenney: Mr. Charlie Waite. Let’s talk about Charlie Waite for a minute. Charlie Waite will love this. He listens to all my stuff. Right, Charlie? You’re going to listen to this. Charlie Waite is a great person. That’s easy. You can say that. You can call me biased, but that is the truth.

Brian Gardner: And full disclosure, Charlie used to work at Focus Lab. Let’s put that out there, so everyone who’s listening knows that this is all [crosstalk 00:48:17].

Bill Kenney: Right, which is why I’m biased. Yes, Charlie Waite, so Charlie Waite worked at Focus Lab for three years. You can call him number three in command. You have me, my business partner Erik Reagan, and then Charlie Waite was next in line. Charlie is an amazing, well-rounded designer. He’s amazing in two ways. I’m glad you put me on to Charlie because this is just good design discussion. We have this talk now all the time with like, “Should designers be able to code and design it all?” and all of a sudden, it’s like we’re supposed to be everything.

Charlie, from a design perspective, taking code out, but from a design perspective, was extremely well-rounded. Projects come in, and they need all this illustration work. Charlie just whips it up. I’m like, “Wow, sh*t, I didn’t think you’d be able to do that much that good that fast. Okay.” UI work, he did branding projects. The well-roundedness of Charlie, and to be really strong basically when I worked with Charlie and Charlie got a project, and although I was his boss — we don’t even like to use that word — I had no fear. I didn’t even feel like I had to check in. Charlie just knocked stuff out.

Charlie now works at GoPro, and he leads design over there. I actually just had dinner with Charlie and his wife in the city this weekend because they were on the East Coast. They came in. It was the first time I had actually seen him in a year since Circles, like we were just talking about. Such a good time to see him. Me and Charlie Waite are still the greatest of friends. Leaving a company is always tricky in any regard, especially when there’s friendship, too.

Brian Gardner: You understood, though. You sent him off well because I know that he’s always been sort of a California, West Coast boy. You really embraced that, understood that, and knew that he was growing into a bigger position. That’s kind of important, though, right?

Letting Your Staff Grow into Bigger Positions Even When It’s Not with Your Company

Bill Kenney: Absolutely. Yes. That is important to us at Focus Lab in general. It’s easier said than done, but Charlie spent an amazing three years with us. He helped us achieve a lot as well. When it was time for him to leave it wasn’t as if he just said, “Oh, hey, I got this new gig. Thanks for helping my exposure grow on Dribbble, and I’m out of here. Good luck.”

He hit me up all along the way as people … here’s the interesting dynamic that happens at Focus Lab. People join Focus Lab, they’re strong. I can see that they’re strong. They’re not at the level where all of a sudden Apple’s going to go out and hire them because their portfolio is not there yet. It’s not been proven to those types of companies.

I can see they’re great people. They come into Focus Lab, they turn into even better people, not because I’m there for any reason. It’s just because the Focus Lab ecosystem is such an environment for growth because of all of us that are there. We all encourage it. We all want it. Followings grow. Exposure grows. Here comes the poachers, everybody. That’s fair. It is what it is. You can’t stop that. All of a sudden, all the team members get job requests from everybody because they see all the work all the time, the Instagrams, the Googles, the Pinterests, the Microsofts, everybody.

Charlie was very transparent with that. He said, “Listen, I’m getting approached by a lot of people, blah, blah, blah. I don’t plan on doing anything.” As time went by, GoPro was the perfect storm for him. It was a great opportunity for a lot of reasons.

He got to move back to the West Coast where he grew up. He actually lives in the town that he grew up in. His daughters now are going to the school that he went to school at. He’s a surfer. He was living in Alabama — time to get out of Alabama, time to go back to the West Coast, and take the great new job. Yeah, let’s put Charlie on the list. I wouldn’t have thought that initially just because it wouldn’t have crossed my mind. Honestly, right now, I would have been looking for the big names, if you will. Charlie is great all around.

Lauren Mancke: Do you have any parting words for creative entrepreneurs or just entrepreneurs in general? Any secret tips or recipes for killing it online?

Bill’s Secret Tip for Success

Bill Kenney: Oh gosh. The secret tip is you got to put your hard hat on, go out there every single day, and bang it against the wall. Some days are amazing, and some months, some quarters, and some years are amazing. Some days, some months, quarters, and years are really a grind. I think the thing for me, and the thing for us at Focus Lab, it’s the longevity. It’s the stay the course. Course correct as needed. Motivate as needed. It looks all sunshine and like it’s all easy every day from the outside perspective.

To be fair, it is 90 percent of that, but there are the days where you’re like, “Oh, can I post another thing here? Can I grind out another amazing deliverable on top of the one I just spit out?” That becomes quite a challenge. It’s being a creative on top of running a business and all of these things.

It’s not necessarily easy. I think it’s the, can you weather the length of time that you may be doing it — whether it’s three years or 30 years — and can you also weather the storms when they come? Because they’re going to come for sure. When you get on the flip side of it, you’re a bigger, better, stronger person. But can you weather that?

That would be my only advice. For me, it’s a time, energy, and intention game. If you put in the right amount of time, the right amount of energy, and the right amount of intention, you should be moving forward. That ball should be moving forward, and it should be growing for you. Just keep doing it. It’s the old ‘don’t give up’ speech, but it’s so the truth. Year after year, that starts to become pretty hard. Where do you find your motivation?

Brian Gardner: Yup. Words of wisdom from little Bill Kenney of the big ship, Focus Lab.

Bill Kenney: Thanks.

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This week we’re joined by Chris Lema. Chris is a Product Strategist, a people manager, a speaker, and a blogger. He also works with companies to help them build better software products, run better software development teams, improve their marketing messages, and bring their products to market.

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In this episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Chris Lema discuss:

• Aligning your work with your areas of expertise
• Making a course correction in your career
• Defining leadership by difficult decisions
• Leveraging WordPress in your business
• Leadership that requires a move beyond good
• Taking the leap to achieving success
• Being sold on yourself to become the leader you were meant to be

Listen to StudioPress FM below ...

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The Show Notes

• Follow Chris on Twitter
• Visit ChrisLema.com
• Chris’ Online Courses
• Chris’ Books and Products
• Beyond Good
• CaboPress

The Transcript

How to Be a Great Community Leader, with Chris Lema

Voiceover: Rainmaker.FM. StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform.

Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Chris Lema to discuss how to be a good and effective community leader.

Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner, and I’m joined, as always, with the vice president of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke.

Lauren Mancke: Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us this week. We are continuing our series on talking to members of the WordPress community.

Brian Gardner: Now, when we refer to them as ‘members,’ we also refer to them as ‘experts’ because, in fact, these people are. I’m very happy today. We are joined by Chris Lema. Chris is a product strategist, people manager, a speaker, and a blogger. He also works with companies to help them build better software products, run better software development teams, improve their marketing messages, and bring their products to market.

Chris, it’s a huge pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome.

Chris Lema: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Brian Gardner: You’re one of those guys who I knew for a fact, even back when we were first talking about StudioPress FM, I said, “We have to have Chris on the show.” It was just a matter of trying to figure out what topic in particular. There’s probably about 10 that I could’ve approached you with. I’m glad that you decided to talk to us. We are talking about leadership and how to be a good and effective community leader.

We oversee a pretty big community ourselves in our little world here at StudioPress. We are close to 200,000 strong. A lot of them are active in the community as developers, designers, and users. I thought it would be a great fit to have you on the show, so let’s kick this off.

I know you’re a humble guy, right? From what I’ve seen on your website and the experiences I’ve personally had with you, you don’t love to talk about yourself. In fact, we had an email exchange just over the weekend, and you made a joke and said, “Oh, gosh. This is all about me.” I know you were sort of kidding. This is our interview and our show, so I’m calling the shots here. Give us the skinny on who you are, what you do, and how you came about.

The Skinny on Chris

Chris Lema: I am a guy who’s had the privilege of doing, roughly speaking, the same thing for more than 20 years. If you are a travel agent or a photographer and your world got pulled out from under you, through no fault of your own, because technology changed, then that’s a bummer, right? For me, I started working with the web in ’94 and started building applications, websites that were functional verses just kind of brochure-ware, back then. That has taken off, and we’ve changed the name of what those applications are from ASP to SaaS. That has also gone up and to the right.

I’m a guy who’s just been in a really lucky place where there’s been just tremendous growth, and I’ve been given the opportunity to build software, lead people, and do that for a whole bunch of years. In the midst of that, about 10 years ago, 11 years ago, I started working with WordPress and about five and a half years ago started trying to get involved in the community.

Lauren Mancke: On the front page of your website you have a section that says, “I speak. I coach. I write.” Such a simple, great breakdown. Which of those, though, is your favorite and why? Also, touch on which one of those is maybe your least favorite.

Public Speaking vs. Writing

Chris Lema: My favorite is public speaking. When I get to stand on a stage, when I get to speak and tell stories, and watch people engage, watch the aha moment when they realize you’re telling a story, but the story has a point — “I’m trying to predict what the point is. Then I’m trying to figure out how it relates to me, and then, aha, now I saw it. I get it, and this means so many things for me” — that’s my all-time favorite.

Probably the hardest one for me is writing. When I first started writing, it was hard to figure out how to use my everyday voice and my storytelling voice in writing. I felt like, “Okay, I am not a writer,” and so you’d sit down to write and feel like, “Okay. That’s probably not the right words, or that’s not the right sentence structure.” Writing is harder. Public speaking is a lot easier for me. I love doing it. Thankfully, I get the opportunity to do it. It’s a lot of fun.

Brian Gardner: Now, it’s funny and, Lauren, I think you can probably side with me on this one. You know where I’m going with this one. It’s funny, Chris, to hear you say, “I love public speaking. It comes easy to me. I enjoy that, but the writing thing … ” As a person who much prefers to write over public speak, and I’m sure Lauren’s the same way, it’s interesting. It shows two different types of minds, skillsets, and all of that.

In my mind, I’m thinking to myself, “Oh, my gosh. You put me on stage. I’m going to freeze,” but I can control the mood, control what I say and how I say it when I write. I can prepare it all ahead of time, and then I can kind of caress it. Yes, I don’t get the aha moment, necessarily, that you might get, and there are people like you who I have envy for, sure, who can go up on stage and speak. Jerod Morris from our company is another one of those guys where I just want to walk out of the room when I see him talk. It’s funny because I’m sure Lauren and I resonate. I’m sure others resonate as well with that. It’s just interesting to hear you say that.

Chris Lema: Well, part of it is I’m just very comfortable adjusting and connecting as I’m speaking. I’m doing this constant calculus of where to take it, how far to go — do I veer off course or not — based on the feedback I’m getting from an audience, or at least the first set of rows of an audience. In writing, that feedback is only in your head. There’s no one reading it as you’re writing and giving you the, “Yeah. I’m with you,” or, “I think you lost me,” or, “Go deeper into that.” It’s harder for me to do that.

Brian Gardner: Well, different strokes for different folks, right? We’re all wired differently. If we were all writers and no one could speak, we’d live in a pretty bad world.

All right. Speaking of speaking — ha-ha, pun intended — I think of you as a guy who’s all over the place all the time. About five years ago, there was this movie that came out. My wife dragged me to it. It was with Sarah Jessica Parker. I think it was called something like I Don’t Know How She Does it. It was about this mom who had a job, kids, and all of these responsibilities. She was everywhere, all over the place. It was fine. We got through the movie and all that, but it makes me think of you.

Before we go any further, I have to just ask, Chris. As a person who writes, speaks, blogs, coaches, and travels almost as much as Brian and Jennifer Bourn seem to, although they’re more local, but you fly everywhere, man. How do you do it? How do you do all the things that you do? — and you do them well. You’re always traveling, whether it be at conferences, vacations with your family, or combinations of the two. You’re blogging. You’re teaching. You’re consulting. You’re everywhere. How do you do it?

Aligning Your Work with Your Areas of Expertise

Chris Lema: I think it goes back to I try and do a few things, and then do them more often than not and try and leverage the benefit of them a lot. Let me explain what I’m talking about. I gave a talk this last week in Fargo, North Dakota, but the talk that I gave to a group, the Association of Advertising, that talk I gave had a lot of material that is going into a new book. I’m re-purposing both bits of that, but it comes out of having spent three years consulting and coaching people on some of the same material.

I think part of the issue is because I don’t have to change what I do over and over again. Because my industry, what I do, and the way I work is consistent and constant, I get the benefit of being able to just leverage a lot of what I’m doing in a lot of different ways. If I had to come up with brand-new research for every talk I was giving, brand-new research for every post I was writing, and brand-new research for every bit of coaching or consulting I was doing, it would blow up the amount of work I had to do.

I try and keep everything … maybe the word we’re talking about here is ‘alignment.’ By keeping strong alignment around two or three areas that I focus on, I get to benefit from that when I go to do all the different stuff I’m doing.

Brian Gardner: That’s interesting. You’re speaking to something that we talk about a lot on the blog at Copyblogger and us as a company at Rainmaker Digital, which is re-purposing content — whether it be taking podcast interviews and re-purposing that into blog posts or, in your case, experience with consulting and then taking that and putting it into blog posts, but maybe extracting some of that and using that in keynote speeches and stuff like that.

From a content standpoint, re-purposing would be the way that you move efficiently, right? Is that what you’re saying?

Chris Lema: Yup.

Brian Gardner: Interesting.

Lauren Mancke: Yeah. That sounds really smart. Let’s talk a little bit about WordPress specifically. You touched on it a little bit earlier. Let’s talk about how it pertains to you and what you’re doing. How did you get involved with WordPress, and where do you see your current role in the community?

Making a Course Correction in Your Career

Chris Lema: I started using the product 11 years ago. It was mostly to save work. In those days, either you were using pure HTML or … I was playing with both websites that were pure HTML and others that were CMSs like PHP-Nuke or other solutions. The whole point was to try and give a website to a client and let them manage their content without calling you back — again, to make your life far more efficient and aligned.

I chanced upon WordPress one weekend, and that changed it up for me. I just started doing everything with WordPress. I was coaching a lot of startups in the time. Mostly, I was doing product strategy, but every now and then startups would need a website. I would help them get that site up, so WordPress was really great.

About five and a half years ago, we moved from Northern California in Silicon Valley. We moved to San Diego, and I had no coaching clients down here. I had no consulting gigs down here. I had no places that asked me to speak because I was a non-known entity down here. I said, “Oh. Why don’t I blog?” I thought, “What would I blog about?” It took a couple weeks and months to figure out. I said, “You know what? Maybe I can help in the WordPress space, but with something different.”

I’m constantly someone who says, “Try and take a corner that isn’t congested and doesn’t have someone taking it because it’s a lot easier to take that corner than if you’re writing the same posts that 40 other people are writing.”

For me, the business side of WordPress was an easy corner to take. Other than Bill Erickson giving a talk here or there, which always was fantastic and phenomenal, nobody else was really talking about the business side. I said, “Well, I have a lot of business expertise in the software space. Maybe I can help there.” I started writing about that and started writing about some of the more complex notions of WordPress that people weren’t spending a lot of time on. It blossomed from there.

Brian Gardner: It’s funny you say that ¬– there weren’t a lot of people writing about business and WordPress. From my perspective, there’s probably a degree of fear, fear of, “I don’t want to share my secrets,” the trade secrets that brought me from a guy sitting at a desk job to making six figures a month in selling WordPress themes. There’s a lot of business expertise I could have shared, but of course, there’s a part of me that was like, “Why would I want to share that?” As un-open source as that might seem, that’s just the reality of it.

It’s nice to see that you come in at it from the perspective of a guy with business knowledge and bringing it to the WordPress community — rather than just someone who’s talking about their success within WordPress. What took you so long, though? You said that you started WordPress 10 or 11 years ago, but you only got into the community five or six years. What happened in that first five or six years, and then what changed? What made you decide now it’s time to jump in and really just become ultimately what you are now, which is a leader?

Chris Lema: I don’t ever really predict where it’s going to end up. I want to be clear about that. A lot of people I think try and be the next ______, the next Brian Gardner, the next Brian Clark, the next whoever — whatever name you put in there. You’re like, “I want to be the next Carrie Dils.” You’re like, “Hold on, I can’t be those things. I can be me.”

I think part of the transition was figuring out what I knew, what I liked, what I felt like I could give, and what was comfortable and easy in that context. Part of it was moving to a new place, not knowing anyone, and saying, “I’m going to have to resort to a different skill,” which is writing versus public speaking.

Part of it was saying, “I have a prediction about this WordPress thing. I have a feeling that, over the course of time, marketing companies will stop wanting to use their IT departments and want to do it themselves. I think I found a tool that they will like, but as they do that big companies will start using WordPress. Currently, the ecosystem that’s here is not mature enough to understand how to work with big companies, but I have that background. Maybe I can help them start thinking through what they’re doing and also in the long run help WordPress grow into something that can be adopted and worked with in the enterprise level. That’s where I bring some value.”

I think it’s a lot of those things coming together and saying, “All right. Let’s give this a shot.” You take little risks, you invest in little bits, and then you see, “Am I getting any positive feedback?” The feedback takes a little while. Then, over time, it starts building on. Then you go, “Oh. Hey, look. It’s all working out.”

Defining Leadership by Difficult Decisions

Brian Gardner: That’s great perspective. I like that, a lot actually. That’s really good food for thought, even for me, just moving forward in what I want to continue to do and thinking about just the legacy I want to leave and so forth.

So a few years ago, you were invited by the folks and some of your friends over at Crowd Favorite, a big WordPress company, to serve on their board of directors. Not even two years later — I think it was, what, 19 months I think your bog post said — 19 months later you stepped down.

In your words, you said, “I love WordPress. Nothing about that is changing. I love all of my friends at Crowd Favorite. That’s not changing either, but professionally, it’s time to make a course correction.” Interesting phrase that you used there. I think a good leader really shines when he or she has to make a difficult decision. It’s easy to be a leader when things are going great, but when it’s time to say, “We have to shift, to adjust, or what not,” and to then have to communicate that to the people who are in your world at that point, and that was a difficult decision for you. That I know.

With so many people looking up to you in the community and the risk of letting some of them down, walk us through the decision and how you made that. It just seems like it would have been easier to just stay on. You disrupted your life and, in a way, probably much more beneficially than I can imagine, by making the decision, but I think it’s just helpful to know, hey, what do people think of when they make these bigger decisions?

Chris Lema: I had been on the board for about a year before I joined the company. I joined the company for about 18 months, a year and a half, 19 months, I think. Then it was time to go. It was probably two or three months before that where several different things came to a head.

When I first joined Crowd Favorite, one of the things we talked about was, “Let’s clean this up and tighten it up, and get it really running full steam ahead,” which is the stuff that I know how to do professionally. The blogging and those things are all nice. They’ve been on the side. My day job has been managing software engineers.

They’re like, “Come in. Let’s clean this up and tighten it up. Then we can look at building a product side.” My background is in products, not in services, not consulting. I’ve worked with and helped lead consulting organizations, but only in the context that they are consultants for our product. I’m a product guy. I went in, and I started doing it. The first six months, we did a lot of stuff. At the 12-month mark, we had a lot more done, and everything was going really well.

Somewhere after that, we were more shifting into what I call for my life ‘maintenance mode,’ where you’re just keeping things running. That’s not really my style. I’m not that guy, and it was a service company. I didn’t wake up in the morning going, “Oh, my god. This is going to be amazing because I’m building a product.” It was, “Okay. Let’s lead these people well.” I think there was a part of me that was itching.

But I’ll be honest. Maybe there are other folks like me. After 10 months of doing anything, I get an itch. Like, “Oh. I should go do something else.” I’ve had to develop the discipline to not jump when that itch comes because staying power teaches you something else about yourself. It helps you go deeper in certain areas that you wouldn’t if you just keep jumping. I recognize, “Oh, yeah. It’s a little after 12, 13 months. I’m getting a little itch, but you know what? That’s not something we act on, and just focus in, get some stuff done, and lead well.”

On top of that, we get to this point where my wife had some emergency surgery. It was very scary. I sat there I’m a kind of person who can think in a lot of different directions and then think through what happens after that and what happens after that. But in this particular case, as she went into surgery, I couldn’t think past the next step. Like, “What happens if this doesn’t work out?” I fell asleep. It was four or five in the morning, and I fell asleep. By seven, they were waking me up and telling me she was okay, which was great news, but I was sitting in the spot where I went, “What am I … ?”

I think everyone goes through that. You go through some hard part, and then you go, “What am I doing in life? Am I just sitting in a mode where I’m just doing all the same routine without focus, without drive, without energy, and without alignment to the rest of my life?” We sat down. We talked about it a little. She’s like, “Well, don’t make any rash decisions,” because we were literally right at January one. She’s like, “Don’t make any rash decisions.” I said, “No. I’m going to just work this through.”

It took a little bit of time. Then, finally, in April I said, “Okay. It really is time to move on.” Part of the lesson out of that is you should always be willing to sit, even when you get fidgety, for a little bit because you don’t know what is there for you to grow and develop by not jumping every time something doesn’t work out or something is a little boring. When hard times come, I think it’s important to figure out what’s really important.

I think ultimately even when you know you’re going to make a decision, timing is critical. If you just bolt and you just walk out I could have left a lot of damage at Crowd Favorite by stepping out at the wrong time. You wait a few months. You try and get some things in place. You try and make sure that when you leave it will be better than when you got there and that you leave in a way that leaves that community whole, leaves that company fine, and allows you to step out.

I did all that and have spent the last several months doing some consulting and other things, but hoping to hold off making the next major choice through the rest of this year. Then in 2017, you start looking at, “Okay, what’s the next big thing?”

Lauren Mancke: Anyone who’s heard you speak knows you’re a leader. You just have that way about you. You’ve got that power to compel people to follow you. Have you always felt this? Have you always felt that you were a leader? When you were younger, did you know it? Are there any examples of when you were a kid maybe where you led or you had an instance where you took the reins? Maybe not. Maybe it was when you were older. At what point in your life did you realize you had this gift?

Chris Lema: I was horrible in junior high — like you’d try out for ASB. You run a campaign, and I lost, badly. I don’t even think I was trying for VP or president. I was I think maybe for treasurer. There was definitely not one of those things where you realize at a young age, “I’m a leader.” You’re like, “I suck.” Part of that was, I think, the way I thought about leadership. I thought about it as an important title that makes you important, and that is not leadership at all.

It wasn’t until probably in the middle of high school, as I started learning to serve and take care of others, that I felt like, “Okay. The leadership is happening without me wanting it. It’s happening because I’m developing trust and rapport with people who want my say — but it’s because I’m in their corner.”

I leaned into that in college and spent a lot of time figuring out what kind of leader and how I led. By that point in college, it was a really clear juxtaposition when you see someone who’s leading for the title versus someone who’s leading for the impact. Those two people look different. They act different.

For me, I think it was somewhere around being 20 and middle of college. I felt like, “Okay. I have a couple tools in my tool belt. I can align both public speaking with some one-on-one coaching, with some professional empathy, with a vision, being able to see for other people where they could go, see what’s best for them, or see things in them that was there, but they weren’t willing to own or accept themselves simply out of insecurity.”

So I lean into it, and I’ve leaned into it ever since. I actually have a master’s degree in leadership because I, in the middle of working at Emphasis, I was a little bored. Instead of jumping ship I said, “I think I want to go back and study.” The company said, “Hey, we’ll pay for your masters if you stick around longer.” I said, “Okay.” I went back and studied even more about leadership.

Brian Gardner: There you go. Chris Lema definitely has the right to say he’s a leader. He’s got the master’s degree in leadership, so we certainly chose the right person to have on the show.

Okay. We’ve talked about you and your experience in the business world. We’ve talked about you and your experience in WordPress a little bit. As we all know, there’s many types of leaders all over the place. Let’s talk about WordPress specifically. Who would you consider to be some of the best leaders in the WordPress community?

I’m not talking specifically about financially successful and things like that, but just things that you’ve seen people do either that you resonate with or you do that, “Yes. I’m so glad they did that,” type of thing.” Give us a few names and maybe just a sentence or two on why you think each of those people are demonstrations of a good leader.

Good Leadership Exemplified

Chris Lema: Sure. Steve Zehngut is a friend of mine down here in Orange County. He runs a company called Zeek. They do a bunch of WordPress and mobile stuff. He started a meetup so that he could build this community of WordPress people. Then he started showing other people how he did it and giving them the opportunity to use his physical space for their own meetups. I think Steve’s meetup has birthed something like 12 other meetups in the whole area. They all start by using his space, and then they eventually branch out into other spaces. That is a leader — someone who says, “I can have an impact here. Let me help out. Let me help other people. Then let me give them the space to grow into themselves.” I think he’s a fantastic example.

Jennifer Bourn is a good friend of mine who is up in Sacramento. Her ability to connect and help people around branding in the WordPress ecosystem is fantastic. Where most people get up and they do a talk at a conference, and they rattle off stories, like I do — rattle off stories, have a main point, get off stage. You go, “Hey, that was entertaining.” Jennifer shows up with a whole packet of worksheets, hands it to you, and walks you through how to get yourself better. Anyone who’s committing their time, without necessarily getting paid, to help you be a better you, they’re my idol. I think they’re fantastic.

Another guy, Jason Cohen, is the CTO over at WP Engine. He’s a guy that is consistently helping people think better about what they’re doing. He does that at work. He does that in WP Engine, but he does that outside of it. You hang out and talk with him, and every conversation I walk away with something additional.

All of these people are leading in a way that helps the other people they interact with get better. Some people do it through writing, obviously. You guys know Brian Clark. These are some of the people that I’ve invited to my own conference that I run for WordPress businesses, products, and service companies, an event called CaboPress. I go to these leaders, and I say, “Come join me in Cabo and have these discussions with other people who want to get better.” They say, “Yes.” Those are the people that I look up to and say, “These are great people. I want to hang out with them.”

Being Sold on Yourself to Become the Leader You Were Meant to Be

Brian Gardner: I’m going to jump ahead to the question I had for you a little bit further on because it piggy backs on exactly what you were just talking about. When I go to your website, the first thing I see at the top of it is a quote or a testimonial. It says, “Chris Lema doesn’t sell you on himself. He sells you on yourself.” Now, basically everything you’ve said up to this point on our interview — talking about leadership by serving, leadership by example, and leadership in the form of putting the emphasis on teaching people, enabling people, all of that other stuff.

Your form of leadership, which I really, really love and appreciate, is not about building yourself up, but building others up, and maybe, as a byproduct of that, that helps with your brand and all that kind of stuff. I actually remember our conversation. We sat down and had breakfast last summer in Denver. I wanted to pick your brain about some things. I came away from that conversation almost feeling selfish and saying, “Man, this was all about me.”

Then I realized, to some degree, that was what you wanted that conversation to be about, right? It’s not about Chris. It’s about those that he’s with. Just speak to that just in general. My guess is that you do the same sort of thing when you lead your family. It’s always about your wife, your kids, or stuff like that. Is that just who you are?

Chris Lema: I think it’s who I’m trying to be. I think that quote on my website is as much to center and ground me as it is to share that with others. I really appreciate Mika’s statement. I wasn’t even in the room when she shared it in Chicago several years ago, but I got all the Tweets and heard about it. I went, “That is amazing and wonderful. I’m going to cherish that.”

At the core of it, I think you need to constantly ground yourself — especially if you’re getting any level of popularity. At least for me, I have consistently tried to take action that says, “Remind yourself that you put your pants on the same way every day.”

When Silicon Valley was getting hot, startups were growing, and I was selling companies, I moved out to the East Bay to say, “I’m going to live in a normal town with normal people, drive a normal car, so that I am grounded in the fact that I don’t need the very next thing.” The same thing happens to the WordPress community. I think it’s a tactic, a habit I use to say, “You stay grounded by remembering that you’re here to help other people, not just to aggrandize yourself,” but I think what I’ve discovered over the years is, it works.

When you focus on someone else and you help them get better, especially if what’s holding them back is just insecurity. It’s not a certain skillset they’re missing. It’s not something they can’t do anything about. It’s really just the fact that they are insecure — and so many of us walk around with that insecurity that holds people back — and you just go, “Let me just break that open for you a little bit. Let me just show you that, no, you actually have what you need. You can take this next step,” or, “Let me show you a step you didn’t know you could take and take it.” I think it ends up being incredibly helpful.

The phrase that runs in my head all the time is “comfort, come alongside.” Leading for me is, how do you come alongside someone in their journey — not the journey you have for them, but the journey they have for themselves? Then how do you comfort them when they have the insecurity to encourage them to take next steps? Most of us, we have a special puzzle piece in our pocket, and we think, “Yeah. I found this puzzle piece. This is mine,” and we stick it in our pocket. You’re like, “No, no, no. The piece has to go on the broad. That’s what makes it awesome is when the whole picture comes together.” That’s what I spend my time doing.

Lauren Mancke: Speaking of helping others, let’s talk a little bit more about your website, ChrisLema.com. You’ve got a tagline on there, “Helping businesses leverage WordPress, and helping WordPress businesses find leverage.” How are you writing on your blog to successfully do that? What else would you write about that also helps with this?

Leveraging WordPress in Your Business

Chris Lema: Part of the thing is I bring companies to WordPress. Companies that are like, “I don’t know if WordPress can do this,” I write posts that say, “WordPress can. You can use WordPress to do these things you want to do.” That’s bringing small businesses and big businesses who are trying to figure out, “Can this really work this way?”

Then, I work with WordPress companies, products and service companies to help them with their marketing and to get their message out better. Often, I am writing posts about them and redirecting some sunlight to them, or I am highlighting what they’re doing in a way that causes people to go, “Oh, that’s interesting.” Then, of course, consulting and coaching is to help them with their segmentation, their marketing strategy, their communication, and all that kind of stuff.

The blog is a key part of it, so yes, I think it’s successful in doing what I want it to do. I think just so I don’t get bored, I write about a couple other things here and there. There are some posts on public speaking. There’s a couple other posts in there that are personal, but predominantly, that blog is about WordPress and that attempt to help different groups of people connect to it on the site.

Lauren Mancke: Speaking of connecting people, what is your favorite part of leading and community building?

Leadership That Requires a Move Beyond Good

Chris Lema: I think my all-time favorite part is shining a light on someone that you didn’t know or a product that you had never heard of, a company that you weren’t aware of, and what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. When I get to do that and when it works, it’s a wonderful component and incredibly exciting for me to see the result when that happens.

It doesn’t always happen, but if I can say, “Hey, check out this company. Look what they’re doing, or look at what they just released in a product.” Then they contact me a couple weeks later and they go, “Oh my god. You don’t even know what just happened over here,” I’m like, “That’s awesome.” That’s my favorite part.

Brian Gardner: All right. ChrisLema.com is all about WordPress and business. Just recently you just launched a blog called Beyond Good. It’s on one of our themes, which of course we’re thankful that you’re using. You use that one specifically to teach about leadership and how you can encourage folks and teach them how to take their leadership to a new level.

You say, “Leadership is hard. Most of the time we settle for good enough. Leading people requires more, requires that we move beyond good.” That reminds me a lot about the book Jim Collins wrote called Good to Great, where he writes about why some companies make the leap and others don’t. What do you think stands in the way — whether it be individuals as entrepreneurs, small businesses, or even bigger businesses — from taking the leap to achieving that success from good to great?

Taking the Leap to Achieving Success

Chris Lema: Insecurity. Insecurity I think everything boils down to. When a person doesn’t have the courage to take a step that is different than what they’ve done before, when a company doesn’t have the courage to hire someone that is different than what they’ve hired before — whatever it is that they’re doing — and they don’t have the temerity or the courage to step into it, more often than not, when you dig into, it’s not the numbers. It’s not the prediction. It is insecurity. It is a fear of, “What if I do this wrong? What if this turns out wrong? What will other people think of me?”

A lot of what holds people back is that insecurity. I spend a lot of time personally, one-on-one, doing the work of trying to mitigate that. Now, that said, there’s a lot of little reasons why companies just don’t lead well, that it’s just because they don’t know better. The blog tries to solve that problem.

I can’t really solve insecurity just on a blog. When I’m coaching, I will work that through, but when I’m writing, I’m mostly trying to give some of the other tips, the other ways to think about things, the other questions to answer on the blog Beyond Good.

Lauren Mancke: Let’s get into a little bit of recommendations. Do you have any favorite blogs or books that you can recommend to the StudioPress FM audience?

Chris’ Reading Recommendations

Chris Lema: I always have book recommendations because I’m always reading. There’s a meaty book that I like called Learn or Die. I find that it’s quite good. There’s another one called Peak, which is focusing on the new science of expertise, which I’m also reading. There’s another book called Strategic Storytelling, which I would recommend only because my storytelling book isn’t done yet. All of those I’d say are really great.

Brian Gardner: Does that go along with your ‘cool story, bro’ thing?

Chris Lema: Yeah. Exactly. I love stories and the power of stories.

Brian Gardner: Okay. What about blogs? You gave us a few books. Just people that digest better reading individual blog posts or what not, whether it be on leadership, WordPress-type stuff, who’s blogs do you frequent that you just get a lot out of and like to share from?

Chris Lema: Well, let me caveat that for one quick second to say, if you’re not reading books, you should. The reality is, when you’re writing a blog post, normally that’s a five-minute investment. When you read a book, it may be several hours of investment. Part of the dynamic is, if you’re not making the investment to read depth, I think your leadership thoughts and your leadership understanding are all still pretty shallow. That’s not to say you can’t read good blogs. I’m just saying you should make time and build the habit of reading books because they’re worth doing.

Now, that said, Michael Hyatt is a fantastic guy to read if you want to read a blog. John Maxwell is another guy whose blog is awesome. Dan Rockwell, who I’m pretty sure Dan’s writing a WordPress blog. Actually, I think Michael Hyatt’s is well. Dan’s is Something.WordPress.com I think, Leadership Freak. Those are definitely ones that I would point to and say, “Hey, check those out because I think you’ll dig them.”

Brian Gardner: As we wrap this up, if we were to give you the opportunity to do a 60-second speech right here on the show, what is the one piece of advice to anyone listening regarding the topic of leadership that you would want to give?

Chris’ Epic Advice on Leadership: Lead As Only You Can Lead

Chris Lema: Sixty seconds on leadership. Asking me to do anything in 60 seconds is hard.

Brian Gardner: Loaded question.

Chris Lema: Let’s try it. Here we go. In your pursuit to lead others well, in your pursuit to be someone who is considered a leader, never make the mistake of looking to someone else to determine who you are. Never look at someone else to tell you who you should be. Never look at someone else’s journey and say, “That’s the journey I need to have,” because the reality is, you’re unique. You are completely unique. To that end, your journey will be unique, and the way you lead and help others will be unique. So figure out you.

My one piece of advice is, figure out what motivates you. Figure out how you work best. Figure out what is easy for you and, at the same time, aligns with your passion, your interest in helping others. When you figure all that out, when you figure out how to be you, then find the leadership route that works best for that. In that way, you’re leading as only you can lead.

Brian Gardner: That was brilliance in 48 seconds.

Lauren Mancke: Wow.

Brian Gardner: Man, we got to clip that out and use that or put it in a blog. I’m going to re-purpose that. Chris, do I have your permission?

Chris Lema: You totally have my permission.

Brian Gardner: Of course, we will link to you. I will link to you when I do that. I’m almost speechless. I honestly don’t know what I should say next — other than the call to action, which I have here on my script. This is great. It’s a great segue. If you are convinced that Chris is the right guy for you, whether it be to hire — I know you make available yourself via phone calls, also various ways to be consulted with and so on — or if you just want to read Chris’ stuff. All of it’s good.

Do you want to be sold on yourself or become the leader you were meant to be? Chris obviously has a ton of knowledge, shares his wealth with that knowledge in the form of articles, books, courses, videos. Pretty much any media you can imagine, he’s done it. For more of that information, you can check him out at ChrisLema.com and his leadership blog at BeyondGood.com.

Lauren Mancke: If you liked what you heard on today’s show, you can find more episodes of StudioPress FM at StudioPress.FM. You can also help Brian and I hit the main stage by subscribing to the show in iTunes. It’s a great way to never ever miss an episode. We want to thank Chris for coming on the show. It’s been great.

Chris Lema: Thanks, guys.

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This week we re joined by Seth Spears. Seth s company (Spears Marketing) helps small business owners and bloggers build a reliable and profitable web presence that works… even when you’re not working. His primary focus is on digital marketing strategy.

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Discover why 201,344 website owners trust StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. 
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Seth is a husband, a father, and fanatical about the Cincinnati Reds and the Cincinnati Bengals. He s a staunch free-market advocate and often called a renaissance man. Last, but certainly not least, Seth is a part of the brotherhood I founded two years ago called Brocation, where a group of entrepreneurs take a few days each winter and hang out in the mountains of Colorado.

In this episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Seth Spears discuss:

• The founding of Spears Marketing in 2009
• Focusing on your core competencies
• Tools to build your online presence
• Branching out into the Wellness space
• The power of an effective marketing campaign
• Common marketing mistakes made by small businesses
• Successful marketing for the biggest ROI
• Repurposing content for multiple distribution channels
• The value of networking with like-minded entrepreneurs

Listen to StudioPress FM below ...

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The Show Notes

• Follow Spears Marketing on Twitter
• Visit SpearsMarketing.com
• Like Spears Marketing on Facebook
• Follow Spears Marketing on Instagram
• Wellness Media
• Brocation

The Transcript

The One Thing That Can Make or Break Your Creative Business

Voiceover: Rainmaker.FM. StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform.

Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, Brian and I are joined by Seth Spears of Spears Marketing to discuss why a marketing campaign can make or break your creative business.

Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I’m your host, Brian Gardner, and today I’m joined, as always, with the vice president of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke.

Lauren Mancke: Hello, hello. Thanks for joining us this week. We are continuing our series on talking to members of the WordPress community.

Brian Gardner: Today we’re joined by Seth Spears. Seth’s company (Spears Marketing) helps small business owners and bloggers build a reliable and profitable web presence that works. His primary focus is on digital marketing strategy. He is a husband, a father, fanatical about the Cincinnati Reds and the Cincinnati Bengals, though I don’t know why, and he’s a staunch free-market advocate and often called a Renaissance man.

Last but certainly not least, Seth is a part of the brotherhood I founded two years ago called Brocation, where a group of us entrepreneurs take a few days each winter and hang out in the mountains of Colorado. Anyway Seth, it’s a huge pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome.

Seth Spears: Thanks, Brian. Hi, guys, how are you?

Brian Gardner: We’re doing good. Lauren?

Lauren Mancke: Good, good, good.

Brian Gardner: Good, we’re all good, so let’s start talking.

Seth Spears: It’s good to be good.

Brian Gardner: Yes it is. All right, so you founded Spears Marketing in 2009 as a one-man band in the digital marketing area. It’s a digital marketing shop that you created. What’s the prequel to that? What were you doing before 2009?

The Founding of Spears Marketing in 2009

Seth Spears: Yeah, it’s a great question, Brian. Prior to that I was working for a college in Nashville, Tennessee, and I was the assistant director of admissions there. I was doing a lot traveling around, recruiting students, encouraging them to attend the college that I was working for. I ended up leaving there after about four years, kind of got burnt out and was sick of it, and decided I was going to go out on my own and do independent consulting for homeschooled students preparing for college.

Obviously, I had the background on what it took to get into college working for the university, and I was also homeschooled in high school. I was intimately familiar with that process as well. So doing that, I realized that if I was going to do consulting, I had to have a website, so I began researching on how to build a website.

I’ve always been a tech early adopter and played around with different software, social media. I had heard of WordPress. I think I’d played with WordPress.com a little bit and Blogger, and I actually had started a couple of blogs back in 2005, 2006, but nothing big. Definitely wasn’t an expert in HTML, CSS, or anything digital marketing at the time, although I did have a marketing degree.

I began reading as much as I could on building a website, promoting yourself, and using social media in order to do that. It just so happened that, while the consulting gig I was doing there didn’t become that successful, I learned a whole lot about online marketing, using WordPress, building websites, and social media that it turned into a lot of friends and family members asking me to help them to build a website for them. It kind of led into a natural progression of starting a web design and digital marketing agency.

Lauren Mancke: Your company started out as a freelance business and then grew into a boutique agency, but then you scaled back to a one-on-one targeted approach. I can probably guess the answer to this based on my own experience with scaling back my agency, but talk to us a little bit about how all that went down, why you started to focus exclusively on client strategy and consulting, and moved away from service implementation.

Focusing on Your Core Competencies

Seth Spears: I got burnt out. I grew things from just me doing everything and being a one-man shop to growing it into a mini-agency where I had a couple employees, outsourced some other services, and was taking on anything and everything. If there was money to be made there in the online world, I was doing it — everything from the web design, from social media, creation, strategy, implementation, SEO work, some banner creation logo stuff. Just a little bit of everything, really.

Wherever I saw an opportunity, I was taking it, and I got burnt out. I realized, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it. It’s more important to focus on what you’re good at, what you enjoy, and really narrow down the focus on your core competencies. I realized what I really enjoy and what I’m good at is the consulting and strategy — working with other online business owners and bloggers, helping them to figure out what works best and to grow, and market their site and their business for more traffic and increased revenue.

Brian Gardner: Now, did you come into our space through Copyblogger or through StudioPress? I’m trying to remember how I first met you, and I was thinking about that.

How Seth Found His Way to StudioPress

Seth Spears: I guess it would be Copyblogger, sort of. I’ve always been very entrepreneurially minded, and even before I started doing the independent consulting in 2009, I was familiar with Copyblogger. I’m thinking that was around 2007, 2008. I was, I wouldn’t say a regular reader of Copyblogger, but I was familiar with it, and I did read many articles just trying to improve myself, learn more marketing strategies, and things like that.

I became familiar with StudioPress when I was trying to teach myself web design and learning about WordPress, and I was looking for themes that I liked. This would’ve been late 2009. I think around October or November, and I ran across StudioPress and the Pro Plus Package. I was broke and looking for the best deal I could possibly find on as many really good-looking themes. I found some coupon code for the StudioPress Pro Plus Package, and I think I spent $99 to get all of them.

I was like, “Oh, this is the best deal, and I really like some of the themes.” This was pre-Genesis even, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I think I made the best decision possible there, and I’ve said before, that was the best $99 I’ve ever spent in business.

Brian Gardner: All right. Everyone listening? It’s not $99 anymore, or never was supposed to be, but apparently back then it got through.

Seth Spears: Yeah, somehow. Some little coupon code that … I don’t even know.

Brian Gardner: Yeah.

Lauren Mancke: How do the tools we that we offer help make running your business smoother and easier?

Tools to Build Your Online Presence

Seth Spears: Most of the clients that I work with now, they’re bloggers. Even the ones that are not bloggers, they just have a business and a web presence. Probably 95 percent of them are on WordPress, and since we all know that Genesis is the de facto standard when it comes to WordPress frameworks and themes, it just works. It’s so extensible. You can do so much with it. It’s safe. It’s secure. It’s fast, and it’s SEO friendly.

Just the themes themselves are fantastic. I host many sites on Synthesis, which is great. The fact that it has the Scribe SEO plugin built in is a major benefit to that. That definitely helps with client sites in order to improve their search engine optimization and help them to rank a little bit better.

All the information that Copyblogger puts out, either through the membership and now all the podcasts and everything let’s not forget the conferences — I’ve been to every single one. I’m coming to the next one, too. The information is just great. You’d be hard pressed to find somewhere other than Copyblogger and Rainmaker Digital that puts out as much quality information as you guys do.

Brian Gardner: And we don’t even need to continue the show anymore. This was just a commercial for our company.

Seth Spears: I’m not even being paid for that.

Lauren Mancke: Yeah, we did not pay him for that plug.

Seth Spears: No, I looked back one time and realized I have purchased every single thing that Rainmaker Digital now has put out with the exception of Third Tribe, I think, and that’s because it came before I was even in the industry. If that’s still around, you can get me a copy of that. That’d be great, Brian.

Brian Gardner: I think it’s evolved since then.

Seth Spears: Yeah, sure.

Brian Gardner: Aside from what you do at Spears Marketing, you run another business — which probably, I’m guessing, takes as much if not more time out of your day — called media.com">Wellness Media, which is a network of blogs in the health, wellness, and natural living space. How did that whole thing come about?

Branching Out into the Wellness Space

Seth Spears: I began working a whole lot with health and wellness mama bloggers. One of my first and biggest clients is WellnessMama.com. So working with Katie over the years and helping her to grow her site, I became acclimated to the industry — health, wellness, natural living, fitness — and began working with a lot of those bloggers as well. Kind of began to specialize in that.

Then I saw a need. A lot of bloggers starting out, a lot of online business owners, they had great information — and they had a desire to share that — but they didn’t really know the best way, the best strategies. So Wellness Media started meeting a need to help train them and give them more information so that they could grow and prosper.

It’s evolved a lot since then. Now it’s a network of sites where we put out great information in the health, wellness, natural living space, then monetize that through affiliates, advertising, and things like that. It’s the combined effort of all of them helps everything grow. You’re right, though, it does take a lot of time. Still trying to figure out the ins and outs of it.

Brian Gardner: All right. Let’s talk a little bit more about Wellness Mama specifically. What role do you play there at Wellness Mama, and how has that impacted what you do online?

Seth’s Role at Wellness Mama and How It’s Impacted What He Does Online

Seth Spears: I’ve handled the majority of the marketing strategy for Wellness Mama over the years. Everything from social media implementation and SEO, looking for new opportunities, and just everything in regards to the online presence. I focused a lot on the site over the past six to 12 months on site speed and optimization, just slimming things up and making it faster, and just a better user experience.

Katie does all of the writing, all of the content. Then I handle a lot of the other aspects of it that don’t relate to that, more like the technical side.

Lauren Mancke: I noticed Wellness Mama used to run a custom Genesis Theme, but you recently moved it over to Rainmaker. Can you tell us a little bit about that process, and why you made the change?

Why Seth Made the Change to the Rainmaker Platform

Seth Spears: Actually, the main site, WellnessMama.com, is still on WordPress, and it is still a custom Genesis Child Theme, but there is a membership site that is on Rainmaker. It’s on a subdomain, My.WellnessMama.com, and that is over on Rainmaker. That powers Katie’s member content library. It’s got a couple courses that she sells. It handles all of the e-commerce for her ebooks, free downloads, and resources. The podcast is run through there.

We basically offloaded all the heavy lifting that was slowing down the site and taking up resources. We were going to get rid of a whole bunch of plugins and things, and offload them onto Rainmaker. The main content hub is now a lot slimmer, leaner, and performs better. Katie can focus on just creating content over there, and then I handle the technical stuff over on Rainmaker, which has made it a lot better for everyone. It’s been a great experience doing that.

Brian Gardner: And then we can stop the episode again because that is another commercial. It’s funny. Seth has been a raving Copyblogger/Rainmaker Digital fan over the years. As he said, he’s bought all our products, and that’s not why he’s on this show. Seth has a tremendous amount of knowledge when it comes to marketing and stuff online. That’s, more importantly, what we’re here to discuss.

Seth, the tagline on your site says, quote, “Helping small business owners and bloggers build a reliable and profitable web presence that works even when you’re not working.” Obviously, you’re a marketer, and you believe in the power of that type of thing, effective marketing campaign, and so on. What’s the sales pitch you have? When you’re talking to clients or perspective clients, what is it? How do you convince them to choose your company over someone else?

The Power of an Effective Marketing Campaign

Seth Spears: That’s a great question, and I don’t think I’ve perfected that yet. I think that’s always a work in progress. I guess the first thing is, I don’t think of marketing as a campaign. A campaign is something that has a beginning and an end date. Marketing, if it’s working — and working, to me, is that it’s continuing to bring in more traffic, more subscribers, more fans, more revenue — then that’s something that doesn’t have an end date. You continue to do that until it stops working. Then you pivot and do something else that is.

I guess what I bring to the table, and what I’ve been able to do for a lot of clients over the years, is to help them find the low-hanging fruit. So many business owners, they can’t see the forest through the trees. They’re so wrapped up in their own business that it’s hard for them to figure out what works — or what they’re missing.

Are there new ways to monetize their site? Are there opportunities that they’re missing? How can they better optimize things from the technical side, both for search engine optimization, for increased social media engagement? New content opportunities, maybe additional products that they could create and sell. All of those different ways that is going to improve their web presence, improve their customer service, their relationship with their readers, with their customers, and just to provide a better experience all around.

Lauren Mancke: Not being able to see the forest through the trees reminds me of a phrase my father always used about, “Too busy cutting down trees to sharpen the ax.” I’ve always kept that in mind. What are some of the common marketing mistakes you see around the Internet? What impact do you think those mistakes have on a business?

Common Marketing Mistakes Made by Small Businesses

Seth Spears: The biggest thing that I’m seeing right now is there’s a lot of copycats online. Someone will see what’s working for someone else — this business will say, “Oh, this strategy or this type of content is working for that company or that business. We should do the same thing because it’s working.”

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work. You can copy the exact words that someone writes, but unfortunately, you can’t copy their customer service or the relationship that they have built with their audience. That’s what makes it intrinsic to them.

I’m seeing a lot of that. That’s one of the biggest pitfalls that I’ve seen, especially in the health and wellness space, but I’m sure it happens in a lot of others as well. The antidote to that is to be unique, to really find your voice, to find what works. If you’re not a naturally humorous, funny person, don’t try to be funny. You can’t mimic humor. It’s something people either have it or they don’t.

The same with if you’re a really studious person and you like to read science journals, medical journals, then you should focus on that in your writing. If that’s not what you’re into, then trying to duplicate that, it’s just going to seem contrived. Just avoiding some of those things, definitely. Being authentic.

Brian Gardner: Authenticity, one of my favorite words. Yeah, I love it.

Seth Spears: Yeah, that’s what it really comes down to — being as authentic as possible and staying true to your mission, your vision, and your audience, giving them what they want.

I guess another pitfall that I’ve seen a lot is, people still trying to push market — and this would be other industries primarily, not online as much — but using social media as just another outlet to try to push their message and not try to engage and interact with their readers and potential customers. Those would be the two biggest things: lack of authenticity and not using social media tools the best way that they can.

Brian Gardner: Good stuff, good stuff. Let’s talk about successful marketing tips. You obviously run a company. You run multimillion visitor sites and so on, so you know what you’re doing. What have you seen lately as one of the more effective bang for the company marketing’s buck? In other words, where’s the biggest ROI happening these days?

I know that’s a loaded question. It’s probably different for niches and things like things that. But as a whole, where do you think right now you see a successful person spending some marketing money?

Successful Marketing for the Biggest ROI

Seth Spears: It definitely depends on the industry, but just as a general rule, I would say to niche down. You see a lot of companies where they have line extension, where they’re constantly trying to see, “How can I expand here or there. Let’s add this product or that service.” They forget about the 80/20 principle — what is the 20 percent that we’re doing that’s bringing in 80 percent of our success?

What I’m seeing that’s really working is, if companies, businesses, online business owners, bloggers, et cetera, if they can narrow their focus to really their core competency — what they are really good at, what they really enjoy — they tend to get more traffic, build up more fans and followers, sell more products. services. They have more fun with it, too. They’re focusing on what they’re good at and what they enjoy and not just those things that will necessarily bring in a few additional dollars here or there, where it takes more time than it’s really worth.

Doing that is something that doesn’t really cost you any money. At first when you do it, you may lose a little bit of income from the services or products that you’re no longer offering. But in the long run, you end up making a lot more just from everything that I’ve seen.

Lauren Mancke: What is your definition of a marketing client? What are the types of people that you like to work with?

How Seth Defines ‘Marketing Client’

Seth Spears: Primarily, online business owners who like creating content — whether that’s a blogger or someone who just has an online business, someone who’s good at creating the content, but they haven’t been strategic with it — maybe they’re not that tech-oriented as well.

My core competency is helping to break down and simplify things for them to help them understand where the low-hanging fruit is and what they can do to really grow their business using all those tools, like we’ve talked about, and basic strategies. Whether it’s search engine optimization, social media, or just improving their website and web presence so that they can make more money and gain a better following.

Brian Gardner: Are there any industries that you’ve seen that are either super ripe or less ripe for marketing campaigns? I know all of the online businesses out there, and entrepreneurs, need to have it in some fashion, but are there certain industries or niches that it’s a lot more critical to have a marketing campaign, maybe because of competition or just because of the ROI or the ability to get to a quick ROI? What have you seen?

When (and Why) a Marketing Campaign Is Critical

Seth Spears: One of the biggest things that I’ve seen is your offline service businesses, like your old-school ones that are primarily doing direct sales and things like that. They have the most to gain right now because the competition is so much less. There’s still so few businesses that have a really solid web presence.

Those that do have a website, or a decent one, they’re still not putting that much information about. The more information that a business can put out, no matter what it is, the more likely they’re going to be seen as an expert and, again, more likely that potential customers are going to want to do business with them.

Builders are a great example. Had a client a few years ago who I worked with — built them a new website, helped them a little bit with their social media, their SEO stuff. I was encouraging them to begin blogging, start writing tutorials. They were a very specialized builder of log and timber frame, so I encouraged them to really begin talking about how they do certain aspects of their business.

They were very hesitant to do so because, “This is our trade secret. Our competitors will steal it, or those who need it, they’ll just take and do it themselves.” I don’t believe that’s true. Yes, some competitors may take it and do it. But if they’re looking for this information and they find it, maybe they’ll try to implement it themselves, but when they fail, they’re going to call back because this company is now the expert. Or if they decide they don’t want to do it, they’re going to call them because they’re the expert.

Most people, if they’re trying to do it themselves, they’re going to be really budget-conscious anyway. They’re not a good customer, so they’re never going to get that business. I would say the low-hanging fruit there is those businesses who are really not focused online, but begin to transition that way. There’s so many other ways that you can monetize things there also. Whether that’s through affiliate income or maybe some advertising. If you have eyeballs, you’re always going to be able to monetize it.

Lauren Mancke: So you’ve touched on this a little bit, but can you give us a few examples of what marketing campaigns have worked for you? I’m sure our listeners could benefit from a few simple tips or nuggets of information that you have to share.

Seth Spears: Yeah. Obviously, email opt-ins are still huge, having some type of free offer. There’s all kinds of different philosophies and so many different tools as far as collecting email addresses — whether that’s a popup, a slideup, an above the post opt-in, or below the post. The thing that I’ve found to be the most valuable is, as far as email collection — and you’re going to get less from doing this, but the quality is greater — putting your email opt-in at the bottom of your post.

The reason for this, at least from what I’ve seen, is that if someone has gone through and read through all of your content, then they’re much more likely to be engaged with you and actually want whatever it is that you’re giving them away for free, or the reason you’re asking for their email address.

Yeah, you’re probably going to get more if it’s just a popup, but everybody hates them. Nobody likes them, but they do work. From what I’ve seen, you tend to get more unsubscribes from those types of opt-ins than if someone is fully engaged and has read through the full piece of content and then signs up for your list. That would be a big one.

The other one regarding email opt-ins is content upgrades. If you’ve got a piece of content that does really well maybe a blog post. Maybe it’s a recipe — if someone’s a food blogger, and they’ve got a really popular recipe that gets a lot of traffic. If you have a content upgrade, maybe just like a little box — LeadBoxes is really good for this — where you have a little box halfway through the post or at the bottom, and it says, “If you like this recipe, click here to get three more that are variations of this,” or something like that. Then they enter their name, email address, and boom, they get it sent back to them. That’s a really good way to collect more.

Repurposing Content for Multiple Distribution Channels

Seth Spears: Then I guess a third thing I’ve seen is content repurposing. I had a client several years ago who had been recording webinars for his customers and clients for years. He was in the automotive repair consulting business, so he helped automotive repair shop owners to market, market their business better, work on their budgeting, staffing, and everything that goes along with that.

He had been doing weekly webinars for them for something like five or six years. I began working with him on increasing his online strategy so that he could bring in new clients and better serve his current customers. We developed the strategy where he would take those webinars, he would strip out the audio, and he would create a podcast. He had slides already set up for the webinars, so he would strip those out, add those slides to SlideShare. Then he’s got a slide deck that he can use for them.

The webinars, he would export them as a video and put it up on video. The transcript he would export and put it as a blog post. He had one piece of content that he had originally created, and now he has multiple different channels that he can use that for, to hit people on different levels. Everyone has different modalities of learning, of how they prefer to consume content. Some people, they prefer to read. Some prefer to listen. Some prefer to watch. Some prefer all of the above.

The more ways that you can give a potential customer, reader, subscriber, access to that information so that it’s easier for them to consume your content, the better it is. That was a really good strategy that’s worked really well. I’ve seen several other industries that have used something similar, that do this very well also.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, I love that you bring up the repurposing thing, something we do a lot at Copyblogger, or Rainmaker.

Seth Spears: Yeah, you guys are the champs at that.

Brian Gardner: Yes. In fact, we actually write posts on how to do that. One thing I’ve done people have probably seen it from the outside, but they don’t know necessarily the strategy behind it. But one thing I’ve actually started doing on my own site, BrianGardner.com, is taking a couple of the podcasts that Lauren and I have done, StudioPress FM, and once the transcripts have been made available, I’ll actually write a post on my own site that summarizes that. Very intentionally going after a couple of different keywords, just to see as an experiment if I take some quotes from stuff that our guests have said, and then write around that, editorialize it a bit, and come up with a full post. That doesn’t take me all that long.

For instance, if you Google “make money food blogging,” I show up on the second page of Google, and that was an example of something that I repurposed, the interview we did with Shay Bocks about food blogging. I thought, “Hey, let’s see if this works.” The site has authority, so ranking pretty good in that. I’m doing that a number of different times and may even do that with this show that we’re recording right now. For sure, good stuff.

Seth Spears: Oh yeah, that’s great. That was a great interview you did with Shay. I really connected with that one.

Brian Gardner: Cool. All right, so last year, you and I, along with eight other guys, attended this thing that I talked about earlier called Brocation. We’re sort of departing a little bit here from the show, but I’m getting to a point. For those who don’t know, Brocation is an unofficial event I organize each year, where a group of us head to the mountains for some skiing, snowboarding, food, fine wine, that kind of stuff.

Anyway, the reason I started that was I wanted to bring together a number of guys who are in the online space and just have great conversation about running online businesses. Yes, it’s time to get away and do the man thing, but the people who go there are very specifically chosen. We share our stories and encourage each other about the stuff that we’re doing.

I like to think of this Brocation event as almost like a networking focus group type of thing. It does bring a number of us together to talk about that kind of stuff. Would you say that, in some form, Brocation or any other of these networking events or focus groups can be an effective marketing tool or, at the very least, help be the sparks of what could potentially be marketing tools for other people?

The Value of Networking with Like-Minded Entrepreneurs

Seth Spears: Oh yeah, by all means. I’ve gone to numerous conferences, mastermind events, and networking things over the years, and you always leave with something, some little nugget that you’re going to pick up from someone else. There’s a certain dynamic when you’re hanging out with other entrepreneurs, other business owners — whether they are in the same niche or a completely different one.

Actually, a lot of times it’s better if they’re in a completely separate niche. They’re probably doing things that you haven’t even thought of, and you can take that back and implement it in your own business. Like I said, I’ve been to numerous ones over the past several years, and I always leave with some little chunk of gold that I’m able to go back home and begin implementing right away.

Yeah, by all means, for people listening, if you’re able to network or mastermind with other people that are like-minded and similar in your outlook on business and life, that’s very beneficial.

Lauren Mancke: I can’t hear the word ‘Brocation’ without picturing you guys doing a lot of high-fiving.

Seth Spears: There might have been some of that.

Brian Gardner: It’s funny, I think I remember when we were all hanging out in the hot tub, I was sitting there — me, little Brian Gardner — in the context of Joshua Becker, Marc Chernoff from MarcandAngel.com, and Seth. I was starting to add up because I’ve done work with all you guys behind the scenes, and I know the amount of traffic and Facebook reach you guys have — I was thinking to myself, “Man, I’m here with half the Internet now,” because of the reach you guys have.

Obviously, it’s all in different areas. But again, we got together. We talked, and in the context of 10, it’s hard to have a big round table. The little conversations that just happened through the few days that we were up there, for sure inspired me to go out and do things — things that you would share, other folks would share.

Of course, we’re not telling everyone to go out and necessarily plan a trip together, but whether they’re Skype calls or whatever, you may pull something from someone that they’re doing and apply it to your niche, which is completely different from their niche. And it might be something that completely opens the door to new traffic, new users, new email subscribers, and so on.

More than anything, that was just a long way of saying to try to get yourself involved and network with other people who are online.

Seth Spears: Yeah, by all means. I’ve put together several different events through Wellness Media over the years, where other online business owners and bloggers, we get together in specific locations and just hang out for a few days — for anywhere from two to three days, to as long as a week or so. It’s amazing the connections that you make and the friendships, and the business knowledge that’s gained.

There’s just massive value in that, especially when you do go somewhere else. You’re a little bit out of your comfort zone. I really think the only time you’re really learning and growing is when you’re on the edge of your comfort zone — or out of it. That’s when you’re pushed, and you got to make a change.

Brian Gardner: Well, words of wisdom from Seth Spears on all things Internet, all things marketing. If you or your company are looking for digital marketing strategy, WordPress website consulting, or search and social optimization strategy, we just want to put in a good word for our friend Seth and his company, Spears Marketing.

You can check them out on the Internet at SpearsMarketing.com, and from there, you can see all that Seth does and can do for you.

Lauren Mancke: If you like what you heard on today’s show, you can find more episodes of StudioPress FM at, you guessed it, StudioPress.FM. You can also help us hit the main stage by subscribing to the show in iTunes. It’s a great way to never, ever miss an episode.

Brian Gardner: Seth, yes, it was definitely a pleasure to have you on the show. We’re very thankful that you’re able to share your years of knowledge with our listeners. Thank you for being an ongoing advocate and supporter of all that we do within our company. It definitely helps push things.

Seth Spears: You’re very welcome. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.

Lauren Mancke: Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

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This week, we have the very distinct pleasure of talking to a gentleman who is not only a talented member of the WordPress community … but the one responsible for it.

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www.studiopress.com/fm">
			
Discover why 201,344 website owners trust StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. 
			www.studiopress.com/fm">Launch your new site today!

Matt Mullenweg is the founding developer of WordPress, which currently powers over 26% of sites on the web. The WordPress website says it s “a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform.”

More importantly, WordPress is a part of who Matt is.

In this episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Matt Mullenweg discuss:

• Matt s start with WordPress
• Founding Automattic in 2005
• The difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org
• Analysis of the premium theme market
• Generating revenue in the WordPress Ecosystem
• The spirit of GPL in Open Source
• Adding paid themes to WordPress.com
• Making a profit with premium plugins
• The future of WordPress

Listen to StudioPress FM below ...

0112.mp3">Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes

The Show Notes

• Follow Matt on Twitter
• Visit Matt’s Website
• Read Matt’s Blog
• WordPress.com
• WordPress.org
• Automattic

The Transcript

How (and Why It’s Ok) to Make Money with WordPress, with Matt Mullenweg

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM.

StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform.

Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, Brian and I are joined by Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Automattic, to discuss how (and why it’s okay) to make money with WordPress.

Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner, and I’m joined as usual by my co-host, the vice president of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke.

Lauren Mancke: Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us this week. We are continuing our series on talking to members of the WordPress community.

Brian Gardner: Now, today we have the very distinct pleasure of talking not just to a member of the WordPress community, but one of the people responsible for it. Matt Mullenweg is the founding developer of WordPress, which, as it stands to date, powers over 26 percent of the web. Probably more even at that point. The WordPress website says it’s a “state of the art semantic personal publishing platform,” but more importantly to Matt, WordPress is a part of who he is. Matt, it’s a huge pleasure to have you on the show StudioPress FM, welcome.

Matt Mullenweg: Awesome. I’m very excited to be here.

Brian Gardner: There is a huge back story to all of this. For those of you who have been following StudioPress and me over the years, you know that I got started in WordPress in 2006, 2007. I can’t believe it’s been that long. We were just talking about that. I wanted to start at the beginning of your journey. I know in 2005 you founded Automattic and that is the secret force behind WordPress, Akismet, Gravatar, VaultPress, IntenseDebate, and a number of other smaller entities.

This story for you goes further back though. Before Automattic formed, you and Mike Little forked this little blogging platform called b2. Run through us the early years of WordPress and what it was back then you were hoping to achieve.

Matt’s Start with WordPress

Matt Mullenweg: Oh, our goals were very modest. I would say that back then we were just looking to have some good software for ourselves. To have something that we could use and continue. B2 had a pretty good community around it. There were some forums we would participate in. It had a pretty cool active little thing going on, and it just seemed a shame that it was slowing down. Mike and I had already interacted on the forums a lot. We followed each other’s blogs. He was releasing code and I was releasing code. He’s also a super nice guy, so it just seemed very natural to work together. It’s funny though, that we didn’t actually get to meet in person until many years later.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. I find that to be — Lauren and I are good examples of that. We met probably three or four years ago in person, but had known each other five or six years even before that. It’s funny how we can, in our Internet lives, finally get to that point where you get to do that ‘in real life’ thing with people who you’ve met, or known, or entrusted with a business, or even just become really good friends. To not really get to meet them in person for years down the road … Quick question though with Mike. You met on the forums. At what point did you think to yourselves, “We need to fork the software,” and then just take it and do your own thing with it?

Matt Mullenweg: At the point when it was no longer being developed and it didn’t appear like there was a way forward. In some ways, for a period of time there, b2 was abandoned. When proprietary software gets abandoned you’re just out of luck. If open source gets abandoned, you can pick it up and run with it. So there was a fumble, we picked the ball, and we tried to take it to the end zone. And that is the extent of my sports metaphors I have the knowledge to make.

Brian Gardner: Especially in San Francisco, right? We won’t talk about the 49ers right now.

Matt Mullenweg: It’s funny you talked about meeting people though. We actually have a tool inside Automattic that tracks who you’ve met in person. So you have a percentage and everything. Right now, because we just had our grand meet up, I’m at 81%, which is pretty high. That means I’ve met 404 of the 501 total Automatticians.

Brian Gardner: I just saw the picture of you guys. You guys were on Whistler, right?

Matt Mullenweg: We were, Whistler, British Columbia.

Brian Gardner: I just saw the picture and I was thinking to myself, “That is a lot of people.”

Matt Mullenweg: Yeah, I agree.

Brian Gardner: Did you think that back then when you and Mike forked this piece of software, that 10, 12 years later, however long it’s been, you would be in charge of a company with 400 or 500 people?

Matt Mullenweg: Never in a million years. If I had had a big ambition at that time it was maybe to be a really good webmaster or have a little hosting company with 500 clients or something. It was very modest. I think the big business plan idea was I could get 500 people paying me $20 a month. That was it. I was like, “Then I can just retire.”

Lauren Mancke: Some people get confused with WordPress initially because there’s WordPress.com and WordPress.org and they might not know the difference. For our listeners, can you give us a little explanation about which one is for who?

The Difference Between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

Matt Mullenweg: It’s all WordPress in that WordPress.com runs the WordPress software. I would say WordPress.com is a good place to go if you just want to dip your toes in. As you’re first getting started, it’s a great place to start. It’s got our great community features built in. It’s got built-in live chat support, so if you ever get stuck there’s someone there to help you. And it’s pretty difficult to break it, so there’s nothing you can do there that can’t be fixed pretty easily. It also showcases some of the latest interface work around what we call Calypso, which is essentially a next-generation interface for WordPress. So WordPress.com is a very good place to start.

An advantage is that if you ever outgrow it — which many people never do — that it’s very easy to move to a web host where, if you wanted to run specific plug-ins or modify the code on your theme, you could do so. That’s what in the community we call WordPress.org. This idea that you went to website WordPress.org, downloaded the software and installed it yourself. The terminology is a little confusing, and I hope someday we come up with something that makes a little more sense. But you can think of it as, if you want to modify code you’ll want to run the software someplace other than WordPress.com. If you’re not planning to modify the code, WordPress.com’s probably the best place.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. I’ve been on the outside looking in on WordPress.com stuff, primarily because when I first got started with blogging I was playing around with Blogger, which really was a competitor and still is — not so much anymore. Then I jumped right over WordPress.com and went right into the self-hosted version which is WordPress.org where you can download the software and install it. It’s been interesting to not really have that experience with WordPress.com but be able to watch you guys develop that over the years, knowing that it is the precursor to what’s coming into the .org side of things.

This is maybe a bad diagnosis, but in my eyes I’ve always seen WordPress.com as the place where Automattic makes money and WordPress.org is where the community makes its money. I realize there are opportunities on both for us all to make money, but is that a fairly safe generalization to make, that WordPress.com is the focal point from a revenue standpoint for Automattic, whereas the community side is left to WordPress.org?

Matt Mullenweg: Yeah. It’s not a perfect characterization, both because Automattic has a diversified business which makes money in several different places and several different ways — including WordPress.org — and that the community utilizing WordPress software and the freedoms of the GPL can make money from WordPress.com, and does quite a bit, but also can leverage it in many other ways, some of which don’t even look like WordPress on the surface.

Lauren Mancke: Let’s jump back to 2007. As you know, Brian launched a commercial theme called Revolution. What were your initial thoughts on this, the fact that someone chose to commoditize something you created? At this time WordPress was seen as less of a CMS and more for blogging. A lot of the themes were free. Was this something you expected to see?

The Spirit of GPL in Open Source

Matt Mullenweg: The first freedom of the GPL is the freedom to use the software for any purpose. You can modify it, you can see how it works, and you can distribute those modifications. There’s absolutely nothing, and has never been anything wrong with selling things on top of WordPress. Yeah, I think it was a very natural conclusion, especially because themes value in scarcity. Versus plug-ins or core, which has value in abundance.

Brian Gardner: For me though, I don’t know. It’s safe to say at the beginning with this whole Revolution thing it was unclear. To me it was unclear whether or not selling themes was legal, primarily because, if anything, that was an ignorance to what the GPL actually is and what it stands for. There was a lot of discussion going around back then. In my eyes all that confusion was rooted in that licensing issue. I know that it got to a point where I flew to San Francisco to talk to you and Tony about that. What it really means, what we’re allowed to do, and all of that. I take full blame for a lot of that initial confusion and some of the business models that may or may not have been in line with “the spirit of the GPL.”

The question I have for you is this — it’s more a comment than anything, but I’m glad that we’re through that period, because that’s was kind of a roller coaster thing. I think that, more than anything, it’s just a community trying to figure out what it is and isn’t allowed to do. Would you agree that it’s nice to be out of that period and into a different period where things are on the table and everybody knows what’s good, what’s not good, that type of thing?

Matt Mullenweg: Yeah, and I know there was some confusion around licensing at the time and what license was Revolution under versus the GPL. Was the GPL compatible? Did it violate WordPress’s license? Those sorts of things are pretty natural for this idea that WordPress had grown beyond just the early open source adopters, and folks coming in wanting to build businesses — including yourself — who might not have been as deeply rooted in the philosophy of open source naturally had a fear. I’m not saying this to you in particular, but we still see this today where people say, “Wait, if it’s free and open and users have these rights associated with it, how will I ever build a business? How will I ever make money?” That’s scary for folks, initially.

Especially then because there were no examples. Now we have the better part of eight or nine years of not just some money being made, but tens or hundreds of millions of dollars being made on 100 percent GPL, completely free code. You can no longer say, “Can I build a business on open source?” That question’s been resolved for even the biggest skeptics.

Brian Gardner: I would agree with that.

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Lauren Mancke: I think one of the biggest stamp of approvals the community has gotten over the years was when you guys decided to list commercial themes on the WordPress.org website. Can you tell us a little bit about that decision to incorporate those and the impact it’s made on both WordPress and those developing themes for it?

Matt Mullenweg: Sure. Something I’ve always been a big proponent of through the years is sometimes, especially on the community side … You could look at the theme of your team or different areas around this today — we can be a little disciplinarian where we want to say, “This is wrong,” or punish people who do things wrong. I think it is even more powerful — this old southern idea that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar — to highlight good behavior versus trying to punish the bad behavior. The commercial themes list was just a way for us to highlight the good behavior, the people who were doing the right thing in the right way. It’s a carrot more than a stick that we could put out there for good people. Yet another reason to do the right thing besides it just being the right thing.

Brian Gardner: I think I bit pretty hard on that carrot. One example of rewarding that good behavior — and to this day I wonder where my life would be if I actually never saw this comment from you. On a blog post from Ian Stewart on ThemeShaper way back in the day, this was after we had released some themes that were against the spirit of GPL and proprietary and all that, I saw a comment that said something to the effect of, “I will gladly promote any theme shop that goes completely GPL.”

It was at that point when I saw that comment I almost immediately emailed you and that’s what instigated the trip to San Francisco, the idea that you would reward and put in front of the hundreds and thousands back then — not to know that in the future it would have turned into millions of people — using WordPress. That was an opportunity to — I wouldn’t say come to the light side, because I wasn’t necessarily on the dark side — I just realized that that was an opportunity to come alongside the bigger fish rather than swim against it. An example from you was exactly that, your willingness to promote and help people who were doing things that were in line with the licensing of WordPress. That is a decision I absolutely will never regret.

Matt Mullenweg: Yeah, and that’s very much in line with … There’s WordPress the software that you download and run. There’s WordPress.org which is a website, a community hub for everyone working on WordPress and interested in WordPress. It’s an editorial product. The things that we choose to highlight and promote there are showing a point of view. Something I’ve always been big on since the site first started was being thoughtful and deliberate about what we choose to link to from there, highlight from there, promote from there. Because it is an endorsement, and you’re defined by what you endorse in many ways.

Adding Paid Themes to WordPress.com

Brian Gardner: As well as those who you do endorse are defined by who’s endorsing you. Aside from listing themes on WordPress.org that we had just talked about, you also opened up that same capability to a smaller degree on WordPress.com. You invited some premium theme developers back then and gave them a way to make money with a very big distribution pool, the user base of WordPress.com.

That was a sign that I realized, as I alluded to earlier, that WordPress.com is what I would always in my head call “Matt’s baby.” I always felt that that was something that you govern and protected more than the .org site. Not that at any point did you — I don’t think it was favoritism. But I always knew that was the focal point, at least, for Automattic. So opening that door to allowing people to sell themes on WordPress.com was a huge declaration of that willingness to expose and open up the possibilities of making money with WordPress more on the .com side here.

It’s also something I know you guys at Automattic have joined as well, because I know you have some themes there and are participating in that. I’m curious, how is that going? It’s been probably what, four, five years maybe, since WordPress.com has opened up the ability for folks to purchase premium themes and all that. Is that going well and continuing to go well for both the users and the developers?

Matt Mullenweg: There’s a couple of things there. It’d be good to dive into history and then also talk about the present. On the history, my memory’s kind of fuzzy here, but part of what caused some of the premium theme stuff was we had actually announced that program and then didn’t follow through on it. And hadn’t you developed a theme and you’re like, “Okay, I’m just going to release this because it’s not going to be for sale on WordPress.com.” Or was that later?

Brian Gardner: It may have been later. I do know we were one of the three initial groups, but that does sound vaguely familiar, that there was a little bit of that happening back then.

Matt Mullenweg: Yeah, I think it was probably early 2007, or maybe even 2006. It seemed like a cool idea to have a marketplace. We reached out to folks, I don’t remember exactly what happened, but there was something where we didn’t launch it. But I had announced it in WordCamp Argentina, which was the first international WordCamp, and talked about it on stage. And then, I think because of the GPL issue, we put it off. We couldn’t decide how to make the code available while also preventing people from it being available. Then people just started to release them themselves — including the Revolution team — which we thought was really good. Yeah, of course. I think it was you, might have been Chris Pearson —

Brian Gardner: You want to open that box?

Matt Mullenweg: — that were the first ones that we reached out to because y’all had some of the best and coolest free themes. Today it’s been interesting. In the beginning, everyone was worried about GPL affecting their business. The reality is that business is just hard, full-stop. Even if you’re not open source, it’s really tough. Even if you’re not open source, people can copy your features. We have Wix and Squarespace. They don’t use any of WordPress’s code, but they’ve copied a lot of our features and are good competitors.

Analysis of the Premium Theme Market

Matt Mullenweg: The thing that’s happened with the success of premium themes more broadly is that a lot of people have gone into the market, so even though the pie has grown, it gets sliced thinner and thinner and thinner for each individual theme shop. I think overall, themes have grown. Sites like ThemeForest have really driven a commodification so that individual theme shops that maybe used to make six figures a month, they’re now making five figures a month or less. That has been a trend. But it’s also a natural thing that you can expect with a successful market. People, including yourself, Brian, who talked about how successful it was — that draws people in.

On WordPress.com we’ve seen a little less of that, partially because we don’t allow everyone in, so there’s less commodification of the general size of it. Also, a lot of our theme authors — we’ve been trying to switch everyone towards subscriptions and away from one-time purchases. As you might be familiar, with our WordPress.com business plan you can have access to any premium theme, all of them, and you can switch them 10 times. You don’t have to buy them individually.

What we do is we take a portion of that business subscription and we pay it back to the theme author. That recurs every year, versus being a one-time sale. You get that over and over and over as long as that person is a WordPress.com customer, which creates a much more stable and sustainable business. I think it’d be cool as well to have this in our premium plan, which has a lot more subscribers than our business plan, which is $300 a year. We can facilitate people to profit from a subscription model. I think that that helps create more stable businesses that are less boom and bust, particularly in the theme space. As you know, people can only run one theme at a time.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. I wish I would’ve had that advice years ago when StudioPress started and I made the decision to do that as a transactional thing. There was never a point where I personally, up until the merger at Copyblogger, did I ever want to make the switch over to a recurring plan — even though there were other folks who were starting to move in that direction. For whatever reason I just thought to myself, “I don’t know if I can make that move.” And, of course, StudioPress merged into Copyblogger. We are still transactional at StudioPress, but we have the benefit of having other products and software and services around WordPress that are on a recurring basis so that we’ve never really had to make that change. That’s interesting.

Matt Mullenweg: It’s the best. If you can do it, it works really well. Something that was really obvious to me early on is that you buy a theme and you get support forever. I was like, “Support costs money, so if I’m giving you money once and then I’m costing you money indefinitely, forever into the future, at some point that might actually cross over.”

Brian Gardner: Yeah, WooThemes was an example. I think they were transactional at one point and then they transparently talked about why they made that decision, because of the fact that they just couldn’t scale the support and that “unlimited support” for them in the way that they were handling their business just wasn’t doable anymore. So they made a switch at one point then to go recurring.

Matt Mullenweg: They did, and that I think was pretty controversial for them.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, they got a lot of backlash.

Matt Mullenweg: It was before the acquisition that we did, so I wasn’t 100 percent privy to it. But definitely saw some of that from afar and didn’t envy their position. They were essentially saying, “Hey, this thing that used to be included is now no longer included,” which is tough to do.

Lauren Mancke: I think the recurring payments is something I brought up when I first came on board at StudioPress because I saw some other companies doing it. But it is definitely tricky with the backlash. We’ve talked about themes, and that’s an obvious way for members of the WordPress community to make money, but there’s so many other ways for an individual or company to generate a profit using WordPress. Can you share with us a little bit of the other ways you’ve seen the community generate revenue?

Generating Revenue in the WordPress Ecosystem

Matt Mullenweg: Oh, I was actually coming on this podcast to say you’re not allowed to make money with WordPress under any circumstances. Sorry. Was there a miscommunication beforehand?

Brian Gardner: I guess we’ll scrap the episode.

Matt Mullenweg: Cool. Yeah, I mean y’all have seen it. Where to start? Anything that creates value for someone who is getting from point A to point B. No one wakes up in the morning — well some of us do, but most people don’t wake up in the morning and say, “I want to use WordPress today.” They’re probably saying, “I want more customers in my restaurant,” or “I want to sell more of my widget,” or “I want an audience for my blog that someday I want to turn into a book or leverage into speaking opportunities or something.” They have some goals.

WordPress is a means to an end. As WordPress reaches a larger and larger number of people — because it does a really good job doing most of what people want — even the very niche users like, “I want to use WordPress to sell houses,” become valuable niches. If you can help people do that and you generate a lot of value for them, they will be willing to pay you back some of that. Open their wallet in some regard, whether that’s buying something directly from you, whether that’s coming to your events, whether that’s reading your site and clicking on the ads — whatever it is. There are a lot of opportunities there.

As many different ways as there are to be in business in general, there’s ways to make money with WordPress, because making money with WordPress is no different from making money in the world. It’s just that you’re getting the benefit of this huge open source platform and community as a distribution mechanism. And you’re part of a community that is a bit more conscious and awake about, “How do we keep this sustainable going forward? How do we give back and make sure that 10 years from now WordPress is just as vibrant?” But other than that it’s pretty much the same as any other business you do.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, I would say over the 10 years I’ve been doing stuff with WordPress, I’ve covered a lot of the different ways to make money. Even before selling themes I was selling my services on customizing themes. So there would be money for hire on a freelance level. Then, of course, I started selling themes, so there was the commodity or transactional version of making money through WordPress. And then we took StudioPress and merged it into Copyblogger where we, like you say, sell some of the training or the assistance. Helping people who are either on it or trying to use it themselves. We obviously have a small hosting division. And then we have Rainmaker, so there’s a software as a service. I feel like I’ve had a really broad experience, and I’m sure there are even …

Matt Mullenweg: You’ve done them all.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, exactly. Well, I’m sure there are even other ways. Plug-ins became a big thing after the premium theme market. Folks like Gravity Forms and WooCommerce are two huge examples — Pippin with Easy Digital Downloads. So plug-ins — there’s a huge market for that. Where do you see holes though in the WordPress community in terms of that opportunity to make money? Is there anything or are there any areas that you think yourself, “Man, I wish somebody would go out and go do X?”

Matt Mullenweg: You know, having a company in the space, when I think that, we usually do it.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, I walked right into that one. But there’s got to be smaller stuff. Things that aren’t important enough for you guys to cover. You would think, “Hey, it’d be great if a little company just came alongside and did this.”

Matt Mullenweg: I would say to follow my blog and follow my Twitter. Because I put out — it is true that I probably have 10 or 100 times more ideas than we’ll ever be able to get to. My philosophy is to always just put them out there, and if they happen that’s great.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, I’ve been asked, probably on a number of different occasions on different podcasts, “Why doesn’t Genesis do X,” or “Why aren’t you guys going after this particular market?” Like you, I say, “You know what? We’ve only got so many developers and designers and people in-house. We’re just not going to spend our time going there.” But I always throw it up as a layup. I say, “Hey, this is a great opportunity for someone to come alongside, wink wink, and take over and take that opportunity.” I think I’ve seen it a few times where someone’s taken that bait and then gone and done it. We, like you, try to reward people and our community who do good work and try to expose them and help promote their stuff too.

That’s a good idea though, to leave a breadcrumb trail of ideas and things that might be of interest or have value or potential for monetization that we can’t get to. At least you’re leaving that open for others to see.

Matt Mullenweg: Totally, and also it’s just good to share.

Making a Profit with Premium Plug-ins

Lauren Mancke: Let’s jump back. You mentioned some premium plug-ins. Let’s jump back to those. Matt, can you give us an example of plug-ins that are being sold right now that you think are a great and solid solution for WordPress users?

Matt Mullenweg: The obvious ones I don’t want to unfairly advantage, because there’s a lot of really good ones. I don’t want to mention one and not another, so I’m just going to mention ours.

Brian Gardner: Safely.

Matt Mullenweg: The things that Automattic sells — we have some service plug-ins available generally through Jetpack, but you can get VaultPress or Akismet, which are backup and security services and anti-spam services. These are essentially lightweight plug-ins. What they do is they connect you to an external service that, in the case of a Akismet, uses the intelligence of seeing hundreds of millions of things a day to help keep spam off your sites. VaultPress takes a copy of your blog and stores it literally in 12 places. So even if a meteor hits 11 of them, we would still have a copy of your blog that would be safe and available to restore. Those are the lightweight things.

We also have plug-ins largely that came in through the WooThemes acquisition, including WooCommerce — there’s over 300 extensions for WooCommerce — and smaller things like WordPress Job Manager or Sensei that are essentially like little miniature applications that you can put on top of WordPress that transform it. In the case of Sensei, it turns it into a learning management system, something if you wanted to run classes online and help people it’s all there.

Brian Gardner: Let’s talk about the acquisition of Woo for a little bit. I think in the big picture of the WordPress community that was the big, “Oh my gosh. Did you hear?” type of thing. I know when I read it there was … Adii and I, back in the day, started things out side-by-side and were really big competitors back when WooThemes got started and all of that. You run this race with people and when you see something like this, “Automattic acquires WooThemes and WooCommerce,” and you start hearing figures of seven and eight figures, my instinct was to instantly get jealous and think, “Oh, that sucks. Why can’t that happen to me?” But then you realize that …

Matt Mullenweg: Well, you got to reach out.

Brian Gardner: Is that how it works?

Lauren Mancke: Yeah. We’ll talk after the podcast.

Brian Gardner: We’ll have a follow-up phone call. No, in all honesty though, it made sense for WordPress as a platform to try to go after the e-commerce thing. So yes, you have to realize that there was a lot of wisdom in that acquisition. Is that the type of thing that you guys look for specifically? I know there’s a lot of people making money all over the place, but I’m sure there’s lots of things like that on your radar where you say, “We want to go after a certain type of market or a certain type of user. These folks or that business already has built a solid piece of that and it’s a good idea for us to then go pursue.” Is that what happened, just the movement towards e-commerce through WordPress and the acquisition of Woo and WooCommerce?

Matt Mullenweg: Yeah. It was really driven, first and foremost, by e-commerce as a category. From Automattic’s point of view, we were hearing for a really long time the demand from our users on WordPress.com that they wanted e-commerce. The demand from our partners, places like Web hosts, that sometimes as many as half their customers signing up were saying they wanted to sell things online and the solutions there were not good.

We really did look holistically at all the WordPress add-ons, including Woo, Easy Digital Downloads, WP commerce — there’s probably even more. All the services: Shopify, Ecwid, BigCommerce, PresstaShop — everything out there. And the big guys: eBay, Amazon, Etsy, the more centralized approaches. And began to really map it out and explore different options, including talking to folks like Shopify a lot. I think Shopify has a really great user experience and has built a pretty interesting business there.

What they built at Woo was super impressive — the team that was putting it together and the breadth of its adoption and the ecosystem around it. I had been trying to signal for several years that Automattic was going to move into e-commerce. We’re a big elephant in the room, so I don’t like for there to be surprises for people. In fact, prior to the acquisition I reached out to the other folks and said, “Hey, just so you know, this is going to happen and be announced next week or next month,” or whenever it was. Just because I feel like that’s the polite thing to do. But probably what drove the decision there was that e-commerce for WordPress needs to be a platform, meaning that the core software that drives the commerce engine needs to be available as widely as possible, really robust.

It needs to be something that scales from a small store selling just a handful of T-shirts to really huge stores with 60, 70,000 skews doing tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. We wanted that to be something that lots of other businesses could be built on, and Woo was the best fit that we identified at the time.

That was just about a year ago, and a lot has happened over the past year. We joined these two different companies into one. Woo had a lot of similarities to Automattic, so that made it a bit easier both in how they were distributed and how they ran the company, everything. But we then started to look at, How can we grow this?” We’ve increased the size of the Woo team by over 40 percent and that’s still growing. The developers on the core software and the core areas have gone up by 5x, so a lot more people working on the software. We’re looking at it from a very long-term view. Automattic has a very strong business already. What can we subsidize or invest in or support to make Woo a platform that, just like WordPress, is one that’s a commerce engine for the next decade?

Brian Gardner: Well, just like you, we’ve been asked by our users all the time also, “When are you going to have e-commerce themes?” and things like that. Back before the acquisition it was always like, “We can’t design for WooCommerce because they’re technically a competitor.” I got all weirded out about all of that. But when the acquisition took place I started thinking to myself, “Okay, there’s a bigger vision here for all of us here, and it goes beyond just trying to compete or not compete against other people.” I wouldn’t call this an announcement, because I have alluded to it a little bit here on social media in the same way you sometimes do, but we’re very excited that we are focusing our themes — I’m literally designing one as we speak that will be WooCommerce compatible.

Matt Mullenweg: Oh, cool. That is news to me, so thank you.

Brian Gardner: The writing, for sure, is on the wall, and we’re now at a point where we can focus and dedicate some of our time. This may take a little bit of time, but my hope is to take all of our existing themes on StudioPress and work in the WooCommerce component. At the very least to make WooCommerce out of the box look good.

Our emphasis, then, will be on continuing to design and develop themes for the Genesis framework and all of that, but as a side note to that, all of them will be styled at a basic level for anyone who wants to use a theme and start selling stuff. So WooCommerce and e-commerce for us is definitely on the radar and the roadmap. That’s very fun for me to — I wouldn’t call it announce, because it’s not a big announcement yet. But it’s been on my mind for six months to a year for sure, as Lauren knows. We’ve had conversations.

Matt Mullenweg: Cool.

Lauren Mancke: Yes. It’s been on my mind for a couple years now.

Brian Gardner: I’m like, “I’m going to do it. This makes sense to me.” That will be coming — the first theme — probably in the next couple weeks, so I’m excited about that.

Matt Mullenweg: I think that’s something I’ve always tried to do with Automattic as well, is that we can compete and cooperate at the same time, especially if you think long-term. If we said there were 10 WordPress sites in the world and you and I were going to duke it out for getting them to use your theme or one of the themes that Automattic sells, sure, that’s zero sum. The reality is there are 10 sites today and I’m working on taking that to being 100 sites so we can both get a ton and work together. Automattic works with all the web hosts. We also compete with them with WordPress.com.

I just try to think of it from the point of view of what is the best long-term thing for WordPress as a whole. Never let what our particular business might be there …. For example, I love working with other e-commerce platforms besides WooCommerce. There are reasons for people to use something instead of Woo. We could pretend they don’t exist, like Google or Facebook do, or we could just say “Hey, how can we help everyone here with what we’re learning and maybe services we can provide — whether that’s hosting or something else — to make this pretty awesome for whatever people want to choose?”

Brian Gardner: That’s a good way to look at it.

Lauren Mancke: Matt, you said earlier that you don’t like to have surprises from Automattic. Is there anything you want to hint at for the future?

Matt Mullenweg: That’s a good question. Nothing I’m ready to say today. I appreciate the swing at the bat there.

Lauren Mancke: It was a try.

Brian Gardner: Nice try, Lauren.

Lauren Mancke: Yeah.

Brian Gardner: Back in the day, I know you weren’t a fan of how the whole licensing and theme things went down and we’ve moved well beyond that. Are there any areas right now within WordPress — within the community, that is — where you see things that you wish would be going a little bit differently? Not that you can control it or anything like that. But is there anything out there that we should just be aware of that maybe there’s room for improvement, or a better way to do a business model, or something like that?

Matt Mullenweg: I think the area that — there’s a ton of stuff in core and some really great things that Helen’s working on for Four Seven. Thinking beyond that even, I’d say broader, the thing that I feel like we have the most room for improvement is probably in our directories, both the plug-in and theme directory. When you think of the directories as essentially an interface for users, I think they could be pretty frustrating in terms of how search works. How you discover things. How you get support for it after you’ve used it. And how you know whether things are compatible or not, including having a different approach. With plug-ins, we accept everything and then worry about quality through reviews and reports. With themes, we try to look at everything beforehand.

For, honestly a few years, we’ve been pretty behind. You might submit a theme to WordPress and it could take — the WordPress Theme Directory, and it could take months before it goes up. And then we’re still not requiring things like it to be responsive, which is kind of wild in a day when cell phones are a big deal. Maybe even smart phones in the future.

There’s good reasons for this, but I think sometimes you can get pretty far down a path by just putting one foot in front of another and not think, “Am I heading in the right direction?” One of the things I’m looking forward to — there’s some good conversations going on in the weekly meetings on Slack. I’ve been talking to a lot of folks and seeing how can we iterate there — both in the design and presentation of the directories, which we’ve done some work for, especially on the plug-in directory. But also in our processes and how we approach them.

Lauren Mancke: Matt, is there anything you regret with WordPress? Have there been any decisions made, whether by you or others, that you wish hadn’t happened?

Matt Mullenweg: I don’t live with a lot of regrets, so I don’t know if I’d resonate with that particular word. But there are certainly things that in hindsight, if I were doing them today, I would do differently. The theme licensing stuff, especially in 2007 through 2010, has come up a few times. I think part of why that was such trouble was I was less mature as a leader and I thought the best way to hash these issues out was to talk about it and correct everyone in blog comments and do blog posts.

Lauren Mancke: And go on Mixergy.

Matt Mullenweg: Go on Mixergy. Just prove everyone wrong. We got from point A to point B, but maybe I should’ve done more of what you did, Brian, which is get on a plane and talk to people. Perhaps we could’ve avoided a lot of the back-and-forth and drama that we had. Because we were on the same side of things. You wanted to build a business with WordPress and sell themes, and I wanted more people using WordPress. Those are highly complementary goals.

I think now, as a leader — and this has also been something I’ve learned through many of the great people I have the good fortune to work with every day at Automattic — you can approach that differently and really look at talking things through. If one medium of communication — be it email, or Slack, or text, or twitter, or blog post comments hurled across the interwebs — isn’t working, switch to another one.

Brian Gardner: I have a question that I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time now. I hope that you don’t take this in a narcissistic way, because I’m not at all looking for the answer that some people might think. Do you think that the whole premium theme movement has had some degree of impact on the growth and the use of WordPress as we talk about it now, 25% of the Internet and all that kind of stuff?

Do you think that without that — I guess that in a natural evolution would’ve always happened at some point, but do you think … ? I was thinking to myself like, “Wow, I was part of the big area of growth within WordPress.” Because I think premium themes proved that. Of course, there’s lots of people involved. This is not at all me trying to take credit for anything. But I always think in the back of my mind that at least I was a part of a movement that helped open WordPress up to a significant amount of users who may not have ever thought of it as anything more than just a little blog platform.

Matt Mullenweg: That’s a interesting question. It’s actually one I’ve thought about a lot. Because, if the answer is yes, then what we should be doing is trying to have everything be premium, right? If the answer is no, then we should try to eliminate premium themes. Or maybe it’s someplace in the middle. Based on the data, it’s someplace in the middle. Here’s what I mean by that. In absolute terms, it’s undeniable. You can look at your numbers and say, “I have sold X tens of thousands,” or, for some folks, into the hundreds of thousands of copies of this theme. I’m sure everyone has heard from customers — especially because many premium theme sellers are really good at marketing. I would say better than WordPress.org and better than Automattic in some cases.

They say, “I wasn’t going to use WordPress, but I found this theme and I decided to use it.” Have you heard that before? Yeah, so that’s undeniable on an absolute sense. The relative sense, meaning, “Does it change the growth curve of WordPress?” The numbers — because we’re able to track through the update system how many of every theme is run. If you added up all the premium themes, or let’s say all themes not in the directory, which is a good proxy for premium themes — although, as you know, there are some that have up-sells or pro versions of things — it comes to be cumulatively 10 percent, 12 percent. It’s had an impact, but still the vast majority of the overall growth is driven by some of the default themes and the many free ones out there.

I think that if you think about this, it makes sense a little bit. Although some people start with WordPress from our premium theme, it might be more likely that when they’re comparing things they’re probably comparing WordPress … They’re either getting it from their web host, and I would say that web hosts have been a big driver of WordPress adoption and growth because it’s one click and they get started there — or they’re comparing it to other solutions like Squarespace, Weebly, etc.

They start with WordPress. They’re probably going to start with a free theme because they’re not sure whether it’s going to work for them or not. Then, once they figure it out and they say “Hey, okay this is something I can use to solve my problems,” then they go to premium themes. That’s for everyday users.

The other thing that drives this market a lot is developers. It’s folks who know WordPress and they’re being hired to build WordPress sites for people. They have a theme that they love because it enables them to make great-looking client sites really quickly. It’s got the functionality and they know it as a platform on top of WordPress. It’s their go-to. So they’ll buy a copy for every single one of their customers as they build it out. Do they have to? No. But do they want to support you so you’ll make more themes? Of course.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, I think the definition of premium, back in the day — I think we at one point even had conversations of calling them paid themes versus premium, because premium’s kind of a subjective term. I’ve seen themes that are free that are probably better coded and better designed than some of the ones I’ve seen being sold.

Matt Mullenweg: I think that’s what we call them on WordPress.org too. I think we call them paid themes.

Brian Gardner: Paid themes, yeah. Okay, let’s talk about the future of WordPress.

Matt Mullenweg: Wait, does that answer makes sense to you?

Brian Gardner: It totally does. I realized that when I take myself out of the equation that WordPress is huge. There’s just — like you alluded to, even the hosting. That seems like within the last few years, especially with movements like Go Daddy doing one-click installs, and Bluehost and so on, that the hosting companies could say the very same thing. Saying, “Well, from 2010 on we really had a big role in the growth of WordPress,” and all of that. I’ve just always thought about that one back in the day. It was like, “What would’ve happened if … ?” type of thing. If it wasn’t me, it would’ve been someone else, so it certainly wasn’t my intuition.

Matt Mullenweg: It’s also something to keep an eye on. Maybe that percentage of what’s driving changes over time. And also looking at new users, not just total users. I’ll keep an eye on it. I love data.

The Future of WordPress

Brian Gardner: All right. Let’s talk just about the future of WordPress. We alluded to it a little bit earlier with e-commerce and stuff like that. Not necessarily how folks can make money from it, but where do you see WordPress going and what are the things that maybe stand as the biggest hurdles in terms of growth for Automattic and WordPress and all of that?

Matt Mullenweg: I think that what’s cool about WordPress as a platform is that it can do a lot at once, meaning that I believe that WordPress is going to grow hugely as a blogging platform. Some people might think that blogging is dead, but I see the next six billion people coming online and blogging being an interesting thing for a lot of them. It’s growing as an e-commerce platform. It’s growing as a site creator. It’s growing as a platform that people build things — maybe even just using the API, whether that’s a REST API or a PHP APIs, to make applications. Whether they’re using WordPress as a development platform to do things that don’t look like a blog at all.

The challenges and threats is that, in every single one of those areas that we’re in, there are some purpose-built tools. And, in fact, an entire company is dedicated to that small area, which are in some cases doing a really good job. If I’m starting a store today, I’m going to compare how easy it is to get started with Woo to how easy it is to get started with Shopify. And today that comparison looks pretty good for Shopify because they’re quite good at providing the hosted service that really on-boards you in a slick way.

The same thing in the CMS space and small business space. We’re getting some very good competition from Weebly, Squarespace, and Wix. Wix in particular, has really used marketing to leverage some breakout growth there. We have to keep in mind that they are spending $40 million dollars a quarter, so $160 million dollars this year, which is a big number, in advertising to drive people signing up for Wix. In certain markets now — you can go and the barista at the coffee shop might ask you about Wix. They might see your WordPress shirt and ask you about Wix.

If they’re able to create a flywheel effect of that advertising driving brand awareness, driving people asking for Wix, that’s going to start to drive developers away as well, which could be very bad for WordPress. These are the things that we have to keep in mind and also do some coordination across the community. One thing that I’m sure about WordPress is that if we all run our own directions and just try to localize or maximize our own profit and everything, we’ll be outgunned by these other companies.

The truth is that Wix’s $300 million dollars in revenue is bigger than any company I am aware of in the WordPress space individually, but it’s much smaller than we are collectively. The question becomes, “How can we work together? How can we team up? And how do we get the right philosophies and the right ways of doing business and everything out there? The best practices so that as we do our own things in our own places, we’re heading in the same direction in a way that, honestly, no company could ever compete with?” Just like the Encyclopedia Britannica could never compete with Wikipedia.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, it’s that crowd-sourced approach, whether it be intentional or unintentional. I guess what you’re saying is that you guys at Automattic necessarily can’t, by yourselves, go out and compete against Squarespace or X. But through the enlistment of other, bigger, smaller companies that would themselves go after and cater to the types of people who would be using Squarespace — that is the bigger army. The WordPress as a whole army versus Automattic as the one company behind it.

The more companies that are out there trying to build their own things off of WordPress, but to a user that might be interested in using Weebly or Wix or Squarespace, that that’s also a bigger win for you guys or just all of us as a whole. To think we are the ones that are out in the field trying to do the things, so the more we can do for ourselves, ultimately, goes up to the top.

Matt Mullenweg: Yeah. It’s all about being long-term. If you think truly long-term about this, that’s how we can win. That’s how we’ve won in the past against competitors like Six Apart that had more people and were better funded, and it’s how we’re going to win against all the ones down the road. We kind of have to. You have a lot of business owners listening to this. Think about what makes this business relevant? What makes the WordPress ecosystem relevant in 10 years. Are you orienting your business to make that a reality? Are you going towards it or away from it?

Brian Gardner: Well, I think those are great words for us to close by. I really do want to be sensitive to your time, because I know that you have a lot of things to do, a lot of responsibilities. First of all, before we go though, I do want to personally thank you for WordPress. Without a question, I’m not sitting in the house that I’m in if WordPress wasn’t around.

I know that on behalf of all of our users and developers and designers — people who build off of Genesis, which was really built off of WordPress — you have created an ecosystem and an environment which, as you alluded to at the beginning of this call, you probably didn’t even forecast or even think of. It was just a matter of trying to build something for yourself that you could use to do something X. Little did you know, 10 years from now you will have companies making 8 figures a year in revenue and enabling — our company has 60 people.

We have 60 people whose families are fed by way of, ultimately, what WordPress has enabled us to do. The stuff like that. I want to thank you. I should text you every once in a while or just shoot you an email and remind you, and say “thank you” and all that. I was a byproduct of your vision. You have put me on WordPress.org before to showcase some good work and stuff like that, so I just didn’t want that going unsaid. As much as I appreciate you being on the show, I also more importantly appreciate for what you’ve allowed me in my life and my family to experience because of the stuff that you did back in the day.

Matt Mullenweg: Thank you. I wish I could take credit, but the reality is you’re part of that too. We all are. So let’s all give ourselves a round of applause there, because what we’ve created is pretty impressive and I hope that you can have 10 more houses in the future.

Brian Gardner: My wife would like that too. No.

Lauren Mancke: Matt, thank you for coming on the show. Everyone, if you like what you heard on today’s show you can find more episodes of StudioPress FM at StudioPress.FM. You can also help Brian and I hit the main stage by subscribing to the show in iTunes. It’s a great way to never ever miss an episode. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

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Today we’re joined by Cory Miller. Cory is a former newspaper journalist turned full-time entrepreneur. In 2008, he started iThemes, which builds web design software and offers cutting-edge web design training for thousands of customers around the globe.

Cory is a passionate entrepreneur who believes in finding and maintaining work happiness (for himself and others) that aligns with your purpose and plays to your strengths, talents and ambitions, while challenging you to do great things with your life.

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Discover why 201,344 website owners trust StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. 
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In this 43-minute episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Cory Miller discuss:

• The founding of iThemes in 2008
• Comradery and Co-opetition in the WordPress community
• What lies beneath the surface of entrepreneurship
• The importance of talking openly about mental health
• How mental health can affect your business
• How to find lasting career happiness

Listen to StudioPress FM below ...

0103.mp3">Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes

The Show Notes

• Follow Cory on Twitter
• Visit CoryMiller.com
• It s Time To Start Talking Openly About Mental Health
• iThemes
• Leader.team: A Business Podcast by Cory Miller and Matt Danner
• The Div

The Transcript

The Importance of Entrepreneurial Mental Health

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder, Brian Gardner, and VP of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke, share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform.

Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, Brian and I are joined by Cory Miller, the founder of iThemes, to discuss the importance of mental health in being an entrepreneur.

Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner. I am joined, as usual, with the Vice President of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke.

Lauren Mancke: Hello, everyone. We are starting a new series on the show this week, one that we’re very excited about. We’re taking a step outside of the Genesis community and talking with members of the WordPress community.

Brian Gardner: Today, we’re joined by Cory Miller. Cory is a former newspaper journalist turned full-time entrepreneur, like many of us — the entrepreneur part, not so much the journalist part. In 2008, he started iThemes, which builds web design software and offers cutting edge web design training for thousands of customers around the globe. Cory is a passionate entrepreneur who believes in finding and maintaining work happiness for himself and for others that aligns also with your purpose and plays to your strengths, talents, ambitions, while challenging you to do great things with your life. That’s a mouthful. That’s awesome. Cory, it’s a huge pleasure to have you here on the show, StudioPress FM. Welcome.

Cory Miller: Thanks, Brian and Lauren, for having me on the show.

Brian Gardner: This is going to be a good one. I’m excited about this, mainly because it’s a little bit of a departure from the stuff we had been talking about, which was general business practice. Covering a number of different things. And it’s something that I know is very important to you, as it is to me. In a way, I’ve almost become envious of the way that you’ve been able to communicate and — I wouldn’t say grow an audience around this, but talk to a very particular topic that I think is important to all of us.

I want to get this started by setting the foundation for you and I, going back to the beginning. You and I have known each other for almost 10 years, believe it or not. A time when we were both working normal 40 hour a week jobs. Back then, we were tinkering around with WordPress as a hobby. I think back to that time and remember all of the conversations you and I have had on Gmail chat.

I wish I would have somehow saved those, because those were groundbreaking and set the foundation of where we are here today. It’d be fun to look back — almost in a diary sense — to see what were the things and feelings and stuff like that we were talking about. I want to ask you, what stands out in those early years about our relationship, but more importantly, what we discussed and built and started back then? How did that lay the foundation of where you and iThemes and those who work for you — where that’s all at right now.

The Founding of iThemes in 2008

Cory Miller: Yeah, those were the glory days, right, Brian? Those were the fun days. How I originally met Brian was I needed a theme for my WordPress blog. I found one of his great themes. I was trying to think what the name of that was. I have to find that. Found this guy named Brian Gardner and decided to read his blog and thought, “Man, we have a lot in common.”

I reached out, and before you know it we struck up this great friendship. I think we knew each other probably over a year before we actually met in person. What strikes me about that time back then, Brian, and I hope this is resonating for you too, is comradery. We were one of the first to be doing what we’re doing back then. The theme market was pretty abysmal and you had already released a number of themes. I was behind you trying to do the same, going, “I just want to learn.”

You were a great help to me and a resource as I tried to learn WordPress, web design, HTML, CSS, and put out free themes. When I think back — it’s comradery. Our Gmail chats you’re talking about, it makes me smile thinking about those, because it was just another person going through the same or similar experiences I was. We could just go, “What do you think about this?” “Ah, this is what I think.” “Well, what do you think about this?” Being each other’s sidekicks, I guess, is the way I felt about the early days.

Of course, that laid the huge foundation for what would eventually become iThemes and StudioPress. You quit your job before me. I quit my job after you. But I think we started on the same date, if my history, my memory serves me correctly. That was just a fun experience of going … Two kids is how I thought of myself, trying to make business of this. Man, looking back, when you said 10 years it’s like, “Holy cow, it’s been 10 years.” It’s crazy to think back about all of that. It’s been an awesome ride. That was, of course, the foundation for everything I’ve done. The success that I’ve enjoyed at iThemes and WordPress.

Lauren Mancke: I think a lot of people have a similar story of when they’re starting out in WordPress. That’s a great thing about the community. They’ve teamed up with these other people and they’ve gotten to know people and have helped them along the way. What about WordPress drew you in, and why were you so willing to back then to hitch your wagon to WordPress?

Cory Miller: When I found WordPress — I had originally started out on Blogger. I’m one of those original story people that started out in Blogger then went to WordPress and saw the light. The organization I was working for, we were trying to rebuild our website. We were looking at a bunch of options and one of them was Joomla. I thought, “That looks like a helicopter dashboard. It’s so overwhelming.” Then I installed WordPress and I’m like, “This is just easy to use.” I think it was just easy to use software.

I think WordPress as a learning tool was the biggest help for me. WordPress is just awesome. I think it’s still a key foundational tool for learning web design and web development, because it’s an awesome platform. Being so easy to use and simple to use. I can write posts, click publish, and I’m going. The five-minute install back then, being able to quickly install WordPress. It helped me become a web designer. Now, I’m not a web designer today. My team keeps me away from code or anything that’s sensitive. It’s just a great tool for learning.

Brian Gardner: It’s funny. People could say now the same thing you said about Joomla, that WordPress in and of itself sometimes feels like a helicopter dashboard. That’s just to speak to the evolution over the last 7, or 8, or 10 years of stuff. It’s had to evolve because of the fact that it became more than just a blogging platform, so I say that somewhat tongue in cheek. But you’re right, WordPress back then was such an easy tool. Obviously you and I both learned our way through it.

Hundreds and thousands of other community members — both as users, developers, or designers — they’ve all been able to teach themselves that stuff. Yeah, I love that WordPress came into my life and has obviously changed it. The same thing can be said for you as well, Cory, and Lauren — all of us here. Most of those listening — probably the same thing. It’s safe to say we share the start of our entrepreneurial journey together. We talked about the Gmail chats. And in those chats we got really deep with each other. We shared our revenue numbers. We shared business plans. We were close. In fact, years ago — it’s probably been, gosh, 6 or 7 years since we took that cruise together.

Comradery and Co-opetition in the WordPress Community

Brian Gardner: In the WordPress space, our relationship was probably one of the first examples of what you call that comradery. In layman’s terms it’s called this co-opetition thing, a term that we now use to describe the beauty of the open source community where members who are competitors help each other work through this thing we call life. Talk to us about that. I wouldn’t call it a brotherhood, but how that co-opetiton back then helped start iThemes. More importantly, why it’s been so important for you to continue that over the years. I’ve seen that from the outside as you and I have gone our own ways to some degree. I can still see from where I’m at that that has been an important thing for you and that you’ve maintained that all this time.

Cory Miller: I think entrepreneurship is a lonely, tough job most times. In the beginning — you were a few steps ahead of me, of course. You were so gracious and generous to share what you were doing, what you were learning. That helped me tremendously. I think I took that example of being generous from you, and also the spirit of WordPress and open source software, and continued that. I try to help people as best I can going forward.

I get real touchy about … I don’t want to say competition or frenemies or anything like that. In my traditional — probably the way I was either built or whatever — is I think of competition and I want to squash competition. I want to beat them. I don’t like that when I have so many good friends that are technically my competitors. I don’t like thinking about people as my competition. That’s always been this hard thing. I think you set a great example in the beginning to say, “Hey, everybody can do good together.”

We shared pretty intimate, detailed stuff about what we were doing in the very beginning. I would say, I don’t get to that degree as far as now — business plans and financial stuff with people. I haven’t shared my revenue number, I don’t think, in a very long time. The principles of what are really good for you and I, being sidekicks even though we had separate businesses — trying to help each other and doing good together. What I’ve gotten the most out of the relationships I’ve had with you and going forward has been just knowing I’m not alone. That we can be technically competitors but there’s enough space for all of us to do good and do well.

The comradery — back to that — saying, “Hey, I remember …” I think you’re going to ask me about this at some point, but when I was going through my divorce in 2010 I had a good friend of mine named Grant Griffiths give me a call and go, “Hey man, what’s going on? You just don’t look good.” I shared everything that pretty much five people on the planet knew about at that point. That was just one example of saying that I think the most I’ve gotten out of the friendships I’ve had — who happened to be competitors too — has been the emotional support of knowing there’s people going through the same things I’m going through, the highs and the lows.

Brian Gardner: Some of these people, would you consider them friends first and then either competitors or business acquaintances second?

Cory Miller: I think I’ve tended to always think of them as friends first. Then sometimes I realize that not everyone values that friendship as much as I do. At some point you realize, “If I’m not in the business, are we going to be talking as much and doing all these things?” It’s a reminder. We had some friends in Oklahoma City in July, about 25 people. I realized it was really special that we were able to have our friends come into town and roll out the red carpet for them.

But then the question hit the back of my mind, to be honest with you. It was like, “If I’m not the CEO of iThemes and doing this stuff in WordPress …” Those people are amazing people, like you, Brian. I’m like, “We probably won’t have as much in common if I’m not a part of the WordPress community or iThemes.” I don’t know. That was probably a little refresher.

I tend to think friend first because I’m a very loyal person. Then realize, “Okay, this is how we met.” Brian, you introduced me to Jason Schuller 00:12:01 back in the day, I think 2008. I count him as one of my most dear friends in life. He lives in Seattle thousands of miles away and isn’t even in the WordPress community anymore, but I value that friendship. I think there are those that have transcended the business competition, partnership — whatever you want to call it. They’ve become really dear friends that I care about and want to keep in touch with.

Brian Gardner: We’re going to take a quick break, but we’ll be right back with StudioPress FM.

Jerod Morris: Hey, Jerod Morris here. If you know anything about Rainmaker Digital and Copyblogger, you may know that we produce incredible live events. Well, some would say that we produce incredible live events as an excuse to throw great parties, but that’s another story. We’ve got another one coming up this October in Denver. It’s called Digital Commerce Summit, and it is entirely focused on giving you the smartest ways to create and sell digital products and services. To get all the details and the very best deal on tickets, head over to Rainmaker.FM/Summit. That’s Rainmaker.FM/Summit.

What Lies Beneath the Surface of Entrepreneurship

Lauren Mancke: Aside from iThemes, you are involved in a number of other projects. You maintain a personal blog at CoryMiller.com. A few years ago you started an organization called The Div, and recently, a business podcast at Leader.Team. Can you share a little bit about each one of those?

Cory Miller: I think I’m like Brian, if I don’t continue to do new projects I get bored. I subscribe to those newsletters and this podcast and stuff. That’s what we shared a long time ago. “Hey, here’s a new project I’m doing.” “Okay, that’s awesome. I’m going to do this project too.” It’s always having to have a project in front of you, I think. My personal blog is just to share experiences and expertise that I’ve learned that might not fit our iThemes audience. It’s more focused on entrepreneurship and leadership.

The Div is something I’m very proud of. It’s our nonprofit we started five years ago. The mission of The Div is basically to teach kids technology, help kids learn code, light the spark that Brian and I began learning 10 years ago or whatever — that lit our fire. Helping do that for kids earlier on. I’m excited about The Div. I’m glad you asked me about it today, because we just got accepted to be a regional partner for Oklahoma for Code.org. Next week, our Executive Director, McKaylan Danner, and I and my partner Jay will be at the White House learning about next steps at Code.org. We’re super excited about that partnership. It’s just trying to do good for the last couple years and then realizing Code.org has everything that we wanted to do here in Oklahoma to help kids learn technology.

The last you asked about, Leader.Team, was essentially — one of my best friends, my sidekick, my COO Matt Danner and I just realized we’ve made a lot of mistakes in eight and a half years. We want to share those experiences and what we learned, and let people take the truth or the things that they need from those stories. Again, I think Brian and I are a lot alike. If we don’t have a project in front of us we get bored.

Brian Gardner: You said mistakes. This was not on the agenda, but it made me think of last week when I was in Dallas at Circles Conference. I was on a panel onstage and we were asked, “What were the reasons you may have rebranded your company?” I immediately raised my hand and mentioned that for me it was a cease and desist letter that I had gotten way back in the day. That’s why I rebranded to StudioPress. This idea of entrepreneurs and business and making mistakes is fresh in my mind and you just brought it up. I’m going to ask an impromptu question, if you don’t mind. I’m sure you don’t, because you’re such a transparent guy. Give us a few examples of a few mistakes you’ve made over the years. Ultimately, these are probably things that at the core maybe have bubbled up into some of the stuff that we’re going to talk about a little bit later on with mental health and so on.

Cory Miller: Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you asking the question too. I remember that cease and desist letter. I remember that chat. You going, “Hey, we just got hit with this.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh. I’m sorry.” All the emotions around that. I felt that empathetically because you were going through that and we were chatting quite a bit.

As far as mistakes goes, I try to stay as positive as I can. Mistakes are always learning lessons for me, or I at least try to make them learning lessons for me. I would say the biggest mistakes or learning lessons have been around people. We’ve had to part ways with team members in the past — with customers too. I think the biggest mistakes are probably just making sure we’re doing right by everybody, but thinking through the learning aspects of, “Okay, how do we do this different so we don’t replicate this?” When we have to let someone go from the team or whatever, that’s a tremendously impactful thing — often negatively, but in the long haul positively for everyone involved. How do we get better as we do that? We’ve made some hiring mistakes, team mistakes over the years. We’ve really tried not to do that as much. We’ve made a number of product and brand mistakes.

I don’t know if that’s exactly where you wanted the question to go, Brian, but we pulled WebDesign.com into the iThemes brand and we thought, “Yeah, just turn on the domain name and it would go bezonkers,” and all that kind of stuff. It didn’t. We eventually let that go back. Some of the product mistakes have been obviously huge. I don’t know if you classify those as mistakes. Probably in 2008, 2009, exploring movable type themes — that was interesting and costly. I’m trying to think back some. It’s not that I don’t have a wealth of mistakes, by the way.

How Mental Health Can Affect Your Business

Brian Gardner: Yeah, right. I hear you. Okay, let’s get into the mental health element of it, because that’s really what this is all about and what I want to pick your brain about. It’s safe to say that we can all agree this is an issue we face as entrepreneurs. You mentioned that at the very beginning that being an entrepreneur can be a very lonely job. It’s something I’ve experienced a multitude of times in a number of different ways over the years.

Quite honestly, it’s had a significant impact on how we run our business. It’s hard to separate personal from business or mental health from business, because at some point they’re going to intersect. It happens daily and hourly. For me it’s almost every other hour. “Oh my gosh, should I do this or should I go do that?” It’s always at the top of my mind. It’s something that I’ve struggled with over the years. Something that I’ve allowed to affect the relationship we’ve had over the years. At what point did you encounter the initial wave of it’s not just all peaches and roses ?

Cory Miller: Gosh, probably that first year as we had to let people go. The whole thing in the background about WordPress and the GPO controversy that was going on around themes. That was the first wave of, “This isn’t all peaches and cream. It’s a tough job. It’s a tough sport. It’s a tough game to play.” Having played it for eight and a half years, both of us, in the ups and downs, it’s a cold shower to say, “Okay, it’s just not going to be all good. There’s going to be some really trying times for that.”

I think that some of the ones along the way over the last eight and a half years — the biggest was when I went through my divorce in 2010. That affected the entire team, the business, and me, obviously, personally. Trying to get through that. That’s when personal life and business life — my personal affected business in a tremendous way. Gosh, looking back, Brian, to when we started themes back 10 years ago. Golly, 10 years. There were few people doing themes or even quality themes. Now today, you look and there are themes and premium theme companies all over the place. Not to mention StudioPress’s long tenure in the space. But also you’ve got ThemeForce, which has gotten substantially better. A lot of offerings there. It kind of commoditized that market in so many ways.

The constant competition, which is good, I think. I don’t like to admit that always. But the constant competition within WordPress makes everything better. That means we’ve always got to be a step ahead. We derive about two to three percent of our revenue from themes today. Eight years ago we derived 100 percent of our revenue from themes. How much that has changed in the few short years here and how it’s going to change in the future, too. We don’t know where that necessarily is always going to be taking us. To be ready for that.

The constant competition — it’s a resetting thing for me every single day almost. You’ll come in from a weekend and look at yourselves in the mirror and go, “Oh, gosh.” You’ll start feeling bad about yourself. You have a down week or whatever that is. I think it happens to everybody, by the way. There are some that are more open with it and honest about it. We all have the down days. That first day probably that happened in the first year, second year, when you’re like, “Is the server down? Are sales not happening today?” You think the sky is falling.

When team members leave — either voluntarily or involuntarily — that’s always a down moment in business. I think preparing myself to be resilient. Each issue I’ve gone through over the last few years — trying to build more and more resilient muscle to myself, knowing that it’s only a matter of time when there’s going to be another dip.

Lauren Mancke: Being an entrepreneur is definitely a difficult job. It’s really something you put your whole self into, like you said. It’s only natural for that to spill out into other aspects of your life. Your personal life can spill back into your business life. That can happen when you work remotely. Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, if you work remotely. You said that someone saw you and they said, “What’s going on with you? You don’t look well.” When you work remotely, you don’t have people who can actually see you and see what’s going on with you. What do you think is so difficult for entrepreneurs to deal with, and what major contributions do you see?

The Importance of Talking Openly About Mental Health

Cory Miller: The way I look at being an entrepreneur is when you guys have been asking me about experiences and stories, the down and the highs, I always think about an iceberg sitting out in the middle of an ocean. That’s the way I think most of us entrepreneurs live our lives. At the top is everything you see. That’s the success. That’s the happiness. That’s the, “Hey everything is awesome, going great.” It’s the Tweets, it’s the Instagram posts with cute kids, and being on exotic vacations, or whatever it is. That’s all that success stuff that most of us only see.

The other 70% that you don’t see is the suffering below it. How I’ve been able to look at my life as an entrepreneur and deal with it better is thinking of the iceberg and going, “There’s stuff underneath the surface that I’m not sharing that I’m suffering with, struggling with.” Not every single day do I feel depression or do I have some particular pain that’s just killing me. There’s things under the surface that affects the top of the surface.

I think the more we can share those things that are happening with trusted like-minded people, the healthier we’re going to be. I talk a lot about having a professional counselor that I see, on average, four times a year. I put it on my calendar every quarter to make an appointment with Kyle, my counselor, to talk through the issues. Just knowing that I needed some outside perspective, a professional that’s trained and licensed to help me walk through some of the things that I deal with on a day to day basis. Even if I think there are not many things underneath the surface, I still try to do that. Going back and knowing that I was very unhealthy in the early part of our business, consumed with jealousy and envy, anger, frustration — all those things.

Now I go, “If I’m going to live a healthy life and continue to do this job for the next 10 years, then I’ve got to be healthy.” And I want to be healthy and happy doing that. I think to your question, Lauren, is why don’t we do that? Why don’t we share the issues? There was about a six month period where I was going through a lot of personal pain and didn’t share it with hardly anyone that actually cared about me, that loved me, that wanted the best for me. I kept that in for about six months. I think the reason why is there’s a healthy sense of pride, a healthy sense of ego, and a healthy sense of fear. I think those things get in our way. We don’t want to ask for help but we know we need it.

These things of fear, pride, ego, or whatever, they get in the way to be willing to say, “I’m hurting. I need some help.” It took me being on my face and being dragged across gravel to realize I needed to go reach out for help. The first people I asked help for were my parents, then eventually counselors and other friends that rushed into my life as other people were running out of my life.

I’m trying to get down to it because I still do it today, let things get in the way so that I don’t share what I’m really going through. I trace it back to fear. “Am I going to be embarrassed? Are people going to use this against me? Will people really know the real me?” Those things that are obstacles to sharing the stuff underneath the surface are the things that I try to work on. I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I’m trying to work on them so I can be healthier and happier as a result of it.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. Leo from Buffer set the trend, at least for me, to do the transparency thing more from a business and numbers standpoint. When I think of it in terms of who out there — and not even just the WordPress space, but the online entrepreneurial space — who has started to set that trend of the personal transparency, obviously you come to mind.

In fact, as I was preparing for all this I thought it would be fun to Google “Cory Miller mental health.” I know it’s kind of a funny phrase, but I have the ability to be able to find what I need to on Google. I’m like, “That’s perfectly phrased for what I was looking for.” It’s quite obvious how important this is to you, because I see results all over Google with that search term. There’s articles in Inc. Magazine, a podcast you did on Office Hours with Carrie Dills and Pippin Williamson, and a slew of other results that came in like that.

The one that stands out to me the most, though, is the piece you just published not too long ago on your own site titled, “It’s Time to Start Talking Openly about Mental Health.” You had just spoken at WordCamp Denver, and in your words, shared the most “personal, intimate, transparent, open, and perhaps the most impactful” talk you’ve ever given.

I followed that up with the one on your site. I wanted to read a little bit of that just for our listeners. Cory says, “It’s not too often that I cry, let alone cry in public, let alone cry on stage, but I did. Sharing some of the most personal stories of my life, many of which I’ve never shared publicly was intense to say the least. Thinking about the people who’ve made a difference in my life, often the life-saving difference, just opened up a part of me I don’t share too often … and I lost it.”

In that talk, you shared some intimate things you’ve alluded to a couple of times here already on the show with your divorce, the solitary confinement you put yourself in for six months, and your general insecurities, and as you’ve also said, fear. You have thousands of customers at iThemes, more than that who follow you through social media, and a slew of folks who look up to you — what was the straw that broke the camel’s back? Why did you finally break down and decide to go against the grain and set this trend, and just say, “It’s okay to be real and it’s okay to struggle?”

Cory Miller: I remember telling my wife Lindsay — we’ve been married 5 years in July — I said, “Hey I’m submitting this talk.” A lot of things I wanted to share earlier but couldn’t for a number of reasons. I said, “I’m submitting this talk and when I push publish here on this talk, I’m afraid they might actually want me to do it. But once I’m done I’m committed.” Sure enough, they did it. There was probably three talks I submitted. Sure enough, they said, “Yes, we want you to do that.” I was like, “Okay, now I got to do that.” Man, leading up to that week to being able to share the story publicly — that basically I had been through a divorce and all the things that you mentioned above. It was just time, I think.

I want to be clear. It wasn’t therapeutic. It wasn’t intended for my own therapy. It was intended to help others. I know as I’ve shared my struggles in the past with depression, struggles with divorce, struggles with being an entrepreneur like we talked about, it’s always resonated with people. It always seems to be the most impactful thing I’ve ever done in my life, to share simply my story and being open and honest about it.

It was just time. It had been a couple years since all those things had happened. I had put them to rest in my heart and soul. I thought, “It’s time now to share with other people.” Going through and just sharing this story, being on stage and my emotions coming through me, I said, “It’s time.” I’ve experienced more success than I ever could have dreamed of in my life. That doesn’t necessarily mean financial stuff, just more success in my life than I ever thought possible. I’m so thankful for where my life is now and what it would have been five, six, eight years ago. It’s gotten better even through some adversity.

I thought, “There needs to be more honesty and transparency and genuineness in entrepreneurship.” We always put these facades up. This mask of “everything is awesome.” And all that above surface stuff. I thought, “There’s a time for vulnerability to share stories that resonates and helps people.” For one day alone, to help somebody else by sharing my story, to go, “I’m not alone, there’s other people going through the same thing.” Pooling some of the impact and the influence we’ve been able to have through WordPress just saying, “Okay, well if someone that’s been in this business eight years and been in WordPress 10 can share their story, then I can go and get help and seek help.” That’s really what it was. It was time to share the story to help other people.

Lauren Mancke: It sounds like that speech in WordCamp Denver was very powerful. What kind of reaction did you get from people? Did they come up to you afterwards? Did they say, “You really touched me with this?”

Cory Miller: It’s pretty incredible. Not even expected. I’m sitting up there sharing the story, opening my soul to everybody there. I ended up crying, Brian mentioned this. I’m sitting there, trying to get myself together. My wife is in the audience. Our longest-tenured team member was in the audience. Another awesome team member was in the audience. Sharing all that in front of all them was pretty tough. What happened was I shared the story and I’m sitting there basically going, “I want to go in a hole and cry now.” I got a standing ovation, which I didn’t expect. The thing that I wanted to do is just say, “I don’t care what happens. I just want to get this out.” That was incredible to have people really affirm after you’re sitting up there crying at a WordCamp talking about nothing about really technology.

The other thing that was one of the most treasured things I’ll take in my life, was there was a Q&A session. I ended early, but people kept coming to the mic and not asking a question of me, just sharing their story, getting it out there. I thought, “Wow, there’s something magical about just sharing your story.” Doesn’t have to have my name attached to it. I don’t need to get credit for it. When you share your story authentically and genuinely, it opens up this humanness between people.

Four or five people got up and weren’t asking me questions at all. They would say, “Thanks for sharing your story, and here’s mine,” in front 150 people, whatever was in that room. That was pretty magical. After that was the realization for me that I’m not going to stop sharing my story. If my story helps somebody else, I’m going to keep doing it bigger and broader and better. That’s what I’ve done since Denver, over a year ago now.

Brian Gardner: Another quick impromptu question. Have you ever thought of writing a book that speaks very specifically to this? Not just feeling agnostic general business and entrepreneurial stuff, but an entire book either about your story or the importance of mental health through your story and what not?

Cory Miller: You’ve been reading my email again, Brian. I totally do want to do that. But I always give the disclaimer, “I’m not a professional licensed or trained counselor. I’m just an entrepreneur sharing my mental health stories.” I want to do something that says here are not just my stories, but other stories. Brian Gardner’s stories. Your challenges with the highs and lows of business.

I want to get a bunch of entrepreneurs and get their stories. Then I want to find a writing partner that could be that professional trained counselor to say, “Here are some things.” I don’t want to give advice. I’m not professionally trained, I’m just sharing my experiences and what helped me most. I’d like to have somebody to do that. I want that to happen. I just need a bigger … I need to kick my own pants here and get it going, because it’s a message that needs to get out there.

Brian Gardner: I know you’ve gone through a lot over the years. We’re all sorry to hear that in your story you’ve had to deal with those things. We all have our own stuff to deal with. I’m going to try to get through this question. I don’t know if I’m actually going to be able to.

More importantly, I’m sorry for anything — this is sort of impromptu. I don’t know. I’m sorry for anything I did back then that contributed to any part of your story that wasn’t happy. I know we talked about how in the early days the comradery was there, and at some point I think I let the bad side of entrepreneurialism and competition get the best of me. I think it ultimately affected where our friendship went. I knew that when I flew to Oklahoma City to talk to you about that and to apologize for that … Sorry, reality TV right here on the … Oh, gosh. Anyway, I think you know where I’m going with this, that I’m sorry.

Cory Miller: Absolutely.

Brian Gardner: I’m not a narcissist. I’m not going to take credit for all the pain you went through. But I do know that in your early stages, the fear and the competitive or the “I’m not good enough” stuff may have been derived from stuff that I did — whether it was on purpose or not. Anyway, I want to move through that a little bit and apologize for that.

I guess I can say that I went through my own seasons, many seasons of online immaturity. It affected our relationship. Moving through that, what I didn’t truly embrace back then was the idea that one plus one could equal three and how important working alongside our peers can be. I know that at the beginning of our relationship it was that way. It’s better to go with people than trying to outrun them, is something that, looking back in hindsight, I wish I would have — especially with you — embraced more.

Back to the idea of co-opetition, where do you see opportunities right now in the WordPress space? Things that aren’t happening, but looking outside — if you could play a marionette and say, “Gosh, I wish this person could go with that person.” Or, “I wish these people would get along better.” Our audience is Genesis-specific but also very WordPress-specific. There’s a lot of general WordPress community people who listen to the show. Where do you see those opportunities? Where do you wish things would be just a little bit different?

How to Find Lasting Career Happiness

Cory Miller: First and foremost, I got to go back to your comments. Thank you so much for that, Brian. But you and I put those things … Forgive and forget way back, a long time ago. I do appreciate that. I totally accept that, and I hope you’ll do the same for me. It takes two, brother. It takes two. I’m thankful that I get the opportunity to talk to you again and hopefully rekindle those things. Anything that happened — which is private between you and I — is all in the past. I so much appreciate you doing that in this venue, even if I feel like you didn’t have to. I do appreciate it. I know I can always be a better friend, better person, better leader.

Okay, back to your question. I think the biggest thing is emotional support and friendship, that comradery like you and I had back in 2007, 2008, and beyond. Maybe we don’t have to share numbers and business plans per say, but just going, “Hey, man, how are things? How are your kids?” Taking that cruise with you every so often. I’d pin you and go, “How’s Z, man?” You had children before I did. Seeing him grow up on Facebook and Instgram is pretty awesome. He’s a great kid — young man, excuse me.

I think it’s that emotional support and friendship. Along the way, I think there will be times when we can help each other out. Like, “Hey, Brian, I just saw” — just like we did back in the day — “I saw you did this. Would you mind sharing how you did that?” Being generous with those types of things but not feeling that … I’ve got a great business group here in Oklahoma City. We have different businesses. We don’t have anywhere like competitive-type businesses against each other or anything. It’s awesome to have that emotional friendship-type of support to go, “Hey, we’re going through the same stuff. We have the same problems just different names attached to those.”

That’s the same with any entrepreneur, I believe. Same problems, different name, whether it’s cash, people, conflict, communication — whatever it is. Same issues, different names. I think that opportunity in WordPress is pretty special because we get together at WordCamps or different venues online or offline. The opportunity to say, “Let’s just be humans” — we sit behind computers and type all day at a desk. We have the opportunity to also be — with the spirit of open source software and spirit of WordPress — to be human to each other too. I think that is the biggest key for the opportunities that happen in WordPress.

Brian Gardner: I’ll take that as a swift kick in the pants to go out there and to seek those opportunities. Not the opportunities to take, but the opportunities to give. Thank you for that.

Lauren Mancke: Cory, you’ve shared so many great points with us. I know it’s resonated with me and makes me recall a lot of the struggles I went through starting my business. I think that’s the beauty of what you’re doing. You’re letting people know that they aren’t alone, that you don’t have to be a rock. It’s okay to be open and vulnerable. Do you have any other final thoughts you want to discuss about anything we’ve covered? Any words of wisdom for those who are starting or thinking about starting or actually just in the bottoms of the entrepreneurial journey?

Cory Miller: There’s typically always a tomorrow. You hear the typical cliché thing, “this too shall pass.” I think trying to — as I’m going through the bad times, the dark times is — savor that for a moment. To say “I’m valuing what my life is. What I’m going through now helps me really truly understand the value of my experiences,” and all that. To be thankful for every moment in life, because even the bad times have shaped me profoundly into a positive thing.

I think that’s the key we miss. Number one like you said, “I’m not alone.” When you go through the bad times, you got to remind yourself, “I’m not alone.” The second is there’s something to learn here. There’s something to learn and grow and do and be better about to make sure your life can go on to bigger greatness, whatever that may be.

I think remembering those core things, like reaching out to find somebody else to help, whether that be your spouse, your significant other, a professional counselor, another business colleague. The second, to know that “there’s something I need to learn through this experience.” Make sure you savor that and everything that is part of your life. I think gratefulness has been an antidote for a lot of the tough times that I’ve had in my life. It’s hard to remember, but it’s key to do.

Brian Gardner: Well, we appreciate you being willing to open up and to share on the show. There’s so much more to you and your story and all the knowledge that you have outside of what you’ve shared here. We wanted to give people an opportunity to look deeper into that part of your life. Cory’s written a number of books on entrepreneurship and career-focused types of things. These cover topics such as young people trying to get hired all the way to the new rules for what you call entrepreneurship and how to find lasting career happiness, which is I think what we all are looking for.

If you’re looking for information about stuff like that, I definitely recommend the stuff that Cory writes. You can visit his website CoryMiller.com/Books to see all that he’s written. If you’re interested in interviewing Cory or having him speak at your workshop, seminar, or conference, he’s always open to that. You can hit him up at CoryMiller.com/Contact, I believe is his contact page. Like I said, we’re very thankful to have your story here on the show.

Cory Miller: Appreciate you guys being open to share this.

Lauren Mancke: If you like what you heard on today’s show, you can find more episodes of StudioPress FM at, you guessed it, StudioPress.FM. You can also help us hit the main stage by subscribing to the show in iTunes. It’s a great way to never ever miss an episode. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.