Wp Elevation Wordpress Business Podcast

Watch the video of this podcast here. Introducing Peter Freeman… AgainPeter Freeman is no stranger to the WP Elevation podcast. He first made an appearance back in episode 36. He joined Troy in this latest episode - the first one ever filmed live in the Silence Is Golden studio - to talk about his experience as the Director of Digital at an Australia-based tourism marketing agency. (How is that for a niche?) Why Tourism Marketing?Woof Media didn’t initially begin life as a tourism marketing agency. The fact of the matter is, being located in a big tourist area like Port Lincoln is what really set them on that path towards niching down as they attracted more and more tourism clients. Peter (his business partner) and Naomi (the founder of Woof Media) had to make a decision when Peter decided to move to Canada. They met with a business advisor, took a look at their client list at the time (which was about 70% tourism clients), and talked about who it was they really wanted to work for. It

Watch the video of this podcast here. Introducing Jasmine AndrewsJasmine launched her business (now dubbed Brain Candy Consulting) back in 2011, around the time her first child was born. She didn’t have much experience inside of WordPress aside from personal projects she used it for, but she was able to leverage it in one of her first major projects. Her Big BreakJasmine’s first client (a referral from her technical writing days) wanted help updating a book and converting it to Kindle format. She then turned her attention to boosting sales of it on their website. At the time, customers were only able to purchase one book per session, which, as you can imagine, can be detrimental to the user experience and to the company’s conversion rates. Jasmine knew there had to be a better solution, so she taught herself how to use WooCommerce and PHP. Although she was nervous that she didn’t know what she was doing, the results of her work proved otherwise. At launch, the website (which now had a

Watch the video of this podcast here. A Bit About Jennifer DopazoJennifer Dopazo is the Founder and Creative Director of Candelita, a branding and design studio that serves female business owners and influencers who want to take their companies to the next level. Before BlueprintBefore implementing the Blueprint course, Jennifer worked mostly in isolation and was highly protective of her agency’s processes and services. Since joining, all that has changed. These days, she works fewer hours (while getting more accomplished), has a healthier work-life balance, and has learned that it’s okay to say “I don’t know”. Jennifer’s Take on the CommunityAs someone who previously (and mostly) worked in isolation, Jennifer has really come to appreciate the community she finds herself within now. According to Jennifer, there is a lot of value that comes from the community - even if everyone who’s a part of it comes from a different background or works in a different niche. There&rs

Watch the video of this podcast here. An Introduction to Align TodayEugene starts by telling us a bit about Align Today which is a cloud-based solution developed by a New Orleans-based entrepreneur and his business coach. The founders attempted to implement Rockefeller Habits for the purposes of scaling business, however, they struggled with the limitations posed by tools like Microsoft Word and Excel. As a result, they took the Rockefeller Habits and developed a SaaS solution that would put them into the hands of business owners, coaches, and CEOs all around the world. Align Today’s main purpose is to get business teams aligned towards the same company vision and goals. Changing Your MindsetEugene explains that scaling business often causes entrepreneurs to arrive at a point where they need to calm the chaos. Troy tells us that he too arrived at this point and that’s where Scaling Up, the Rock Habits, and Align Today entered the picture and that Scaling Up is something that fu

Watch the video of this podcast here. About WP BuffsJoe has a team of nine people doing everything from the tech work to content marketing across five time zones! He says it's fun and challenging. Troy and Joe start the conversation off by talking about remote teams and why it’s a game changer to meet up with your virtual staff. They then move onto why Joe chose to join the Blueprint course six months ago. The WP Elevation CommunityJoe thinks that as he has grown WP Buffs that one of the hardest things has been finding the support of a community or network of people in the WordPress space. He wanted to find a tribe of like-minded people with drive and people who want to grow their business but this was really hard to find even though he goes to WordCamps and has a lot of contacts. When he found WP Elevation, the community was one of the best things that helped him to grow his business. This is the first time that Troy has heard someone say that the community was the reason they joined the program. Troy

Watch the video of this podcast here. A Bit of BackgroundTara's business, AlchemyThree, is a small business that she runs out of an office in Massachusetts. Tara and her small team concentrate on small to medium sized businesses particularly female-owned businesses as she loves helping women to step into their power and succeed. Her business focuses on digital marketing, web design and maintenance. Tara started as a photographer and hated computers for a long time. She only wanted to make art and it wasn’t until things started to go digital that she realised that she needed to get into that space and embrace her inner control freak! She got onto Photoshop and started messing around with that. She is largely self-taught with an Associates in graphic design from a community college. She has been working in the WordPress/ design space for around 16 years now with some stints of work in corporate. Discovering the BlueprintA year ago she saw Kristina Romero (one of WPE’s coaches) give a talk at Wo

Watch the video of this podcast here. A Brief Introduction to Kirk DeisKirk Deis is the founder and CEO of Treehouse 51, a digital marketing agency based out of Newport Beach, California. Although the company is relatively young, Kirk and his team have already experienced many of the issues that most of us in the web development and marketing space face with clients. This is how The Bug Squasher came to be. The Bug Squasher Origin StoryKirk was building a website for a client who happened to be an older woman that had very little knowledge of computers. So, when she encountered a problem with the website that Kirk had built, she wrote a tremendously lengthy email to spell out the problem. There were a number of problems with this: The 10,000+ single-spaced words that Kirk says was way too long to read. The client didn’t actually mention what the problem was until about halfway through the email. When she did, she didn’t indicate where it existed on the website as she assumed the developer would a

Watch the video of this podcast here. A Bit About AdamAdam discovered his interest in the web after he graduated from college, originally as a carpenter. But went back to school to learn web design and creation. He currently owns and operates the popular web design company Bottomless Design which also focuses on theme development. Adam lives a natural lifestyle, so he likes to extend that to his business and work with clients that are doing a similar thing. More on this to come! Working from HomeAdam says that the key to working from home is to have a quitting time and then honouring it. If you work too late into the evening then it’s harder to switch off when it’s time to go to bed. He is realistic about the amount of work that he can get done in the day so that he can get a good night’s sleep. He tries to draw that line because it can be easy to take one more email or something on your to-do list at the end of a day until it is nearly time for bed! Have clear boundaries and know what your

Watch the video of this podcast here. A Bit About KrondaKronda is a WordPress Consultant turned digital marketer. In 2017 she decided to change her company to focus on marketing and automation. She helps mainly service based, non-technical businesses with their online marketing and helps them put systems into place that will really help them grow their business in a way that is sustainable for them. Life Before the BlueprintKronda just reached the 5-year mark with her business. She tells us about when she started out and how she would make websites for anyone because she needed the income. Even then she knew that she was going to fire the difficult clients as soon as she could afford to. Kronda would check in with the clients that she had made websites for and very often they had been hacked or they hadn’t done much with the site so it wasn’t actually helping their company at all. Kronda started following WP Elevation about two years into her business. She couldn’t afford to join WP Ele

Watch the video of this podcast here. About ChrisChris Lema spends his days helping businesses create operation plans for profit, growth and excellence in customer service. This involves dedicating the majority of his time to working on company analysis and communicating with clients or team members. Chris is also a well-known member of the WordPress community who is often found speaking at WordCamps and other WordPress events all over the globe. He says that his role is to "fix companies so they work better". At Crowd Favorite he manages the service side of things. That includes managing the software engineers, project managers as well as doing strategic work to help the company grow. A Bit of BackgroundChris studied social welfare after high school where he learned how to build organisations, mobilise people and enact policies. After college, he changed gears and began working at a government research lab. At the lab, he learned how to build the first computer-based online learning management system. This w

Watch the video of this podcast here. You’ve most likely heard of Seth Godin; he’s a New York Times best-selling author who is known for his marketing genius. As you might imagine he’s done the interview circuit countless times, so his advice in this episode is gold. Kristina's ChallengesKristina Romero has a successful consulting business she has built from the ground up. She started out as a WordPress specialist helping people design and code their sites. From there she got involved with WP Elevation and expanded into the consulting side of things and even added maintenance plans to receive a recurring revenue. Kristina identifies the following as the main challenges in her business: Lack of time. She does a full-time job within part time hours as well as being a mother of three. She wants strategies to increase profit without having to work more hours She is trying to branch out to an online training environment for all businesses She has a lot of ideas and doesn’t k

Watch the video podcast here. A Bit of BackgroundGuy rose to fame as Chief Evangelist at Apple, where he worked to show people all over the world how Apple products and software could make their lives better. He was raised in a lower middle-class family in Honolulu and really had no idea what he wanted to be when he grew up. He was studying Psych at Stanford when his friend, Mike Boich, introduced him to the Apple I. So Guy went out and bought himself an Apple IIe which absolutely blew his mind. Guy started his career in the jewelry business where he learned some valuable lessons about the importance of sales. Sometime later his friend Mike, who was an employee of Apple, hired Guy as Chief Evangelist. Guy worked at Apple from 1983 – 1987 which was in the time where Steve Jobs left and came back. He has since been involved in many other ventures, including another stint at Apple from 1995 to 1997 where he helped to revive the Macintosh. However, his main endeavours over the years have been speaking,

Watch the video podcast here. A Bit About Hugh Hugh is a cartoonist, creative director and co-founder of Gapingvoid, a company that transforms business through art. He is intensely interested in what makes people tick and combines that with what they do for a living. Our work is such a huge part of our lives and so this is why his artistic focus is on the work environment, instead of making art for people’s homes or other places. And he’s been hugely successful in doing so. Hugh is also the author of the book Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity. CareerIn 1995, Hugh was a struggling artist in London. It was the early days of the Internet and the very pioneer days of blogging. As a struggling artist, he realised that blogging was a tool that could help him earn a living by reaching people directly with his work. Blogging gave him a powerful medium to reach his audience and has been a huge part of his journey. Hugh now makes motivational art. He believes passionately that the right locat

Watch the video podcast here. A Bit of BackgroundAt 17 Ben pooled together all the money he made as a summer camp counsellor and bought his first computer. He joined some online forums where he learned how to import clothing from India and sell it at a profit. Eventually, that small business venture ended after the Canadian Government closed the loophole and he couldn’t import anymore. That wasn't the end of his entrepreneurial journey though. Some years later after being let go from a job, Ben overheard some business owners talking about getting their website built in India but Ben chimed in and said that he could do it. He was given a $300 budget and nothing else! With no website creation training, he found WordPress and created the site. And so, his WordPress career began! Fostering RelationshipsBen says that he is the marketing and business development person in his company. The number one thing he does is foster and grow relationships between his company and potential clients and he relies on his t

Watch the video podcast here. Sarah runs a successful business with Cindy Kendrick called Codebrain Media, a company which helps build custom websites, custom plugins, manages migrations and marketing. She also spends a lot of her time working with the team at ServerPress.com with product development and social media. And then there is their latest project - the OptimaList WordPress Plugin. From Full-Time Mum to EntrepreneurSarah started spending time on the internet when her children were babies. She began blogging as a means to occupy herself during their naptime. Sarah also created a group for mothers in her area to support each other, socialise and network. Eventually, Sarah learned HTML and CSS by playing around with features on her blog. Her proficiency in writing online grew, and soon a friend asked Sarah to help with content writing using WordPress. That helped Sarah realise the potential of making money online and opened her eyes to new possibilities. Today, Sarah dedicates the majority of her t

Watch the video podcast here. Remkus has made a substantial name for himself in the world of website creation and is a force to be reckoned with! Tune in at the 6.20 minute to listen to Remkus’ story and how he turned a side project of building websites into a very successful business and how he discovered WordPress. Investing KnowledgeOne of Remkus' favourite quotes is by Benjamin Franklin: An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. From day one he has always wanted to invest. He always looks at the bigger picture and when he starts something new, he asks how this relates to stuff he already knows. So he is continually learning. He learns how to extend one idea to the next idea and keep going. WordCampRemkus is well known in the WordCamp space being a co-founder of WordCamp Europe. He says it hasn’t necessarily attracted clients, however, other people in the business who couldn’t take on projects within a particular scope would refer the work on to him. It is hard to measure the suc

Watch the video podcast here. A Bit About JoeJoe Pulizzi is a content marketing evangelist, speaker, author and founder of Content Marketing Institute which is the leading content marketing educational resource for enterprise level brands. He writes one of the most influential content marketing blogs in the world, and also writes for Entrepreneur.com and LinkedIn. Tune in at the 5-minute mark to find out more about Joe’s background. Stepping Away from Working with "the Man"Joe spent time cutting his teeth in the marketing industry at Penton Media, the largest independent business publisher in North America. While there, he ran the content marketing group and spent a lot of time working with customers who didn’t want to go the traditional advertising route for their businesses and so he decided to go out on his own. Joe put together a 40-page strategic business plan by researching and approaching mentors who were business owners.  However, once he started his company, he never looked at i

Watch the video podcast here. A Bit About GarthGarth Koyle has over a decade of experience in business management and internet marketing. Tune in at the 6-minute mark to find out a bit more about his background and what led him to Event Espresso.  Garth joined Seth Shoultes to become the co-founder of Event Espresso in 2012 and has helped the company to grow significantly since they launched. He also co-developed a Saas version of the Event Espresso plugin called Event Smart, which he intends on growing to a $100 million dollar revenue company. Finding BalanceWe all know the stresses of being an entrepreneur and finding that balance can be so hard especially when you have little ones like Garth does! So he has found that having a healthy and distracting hobby is really important. He lets his hobbies take him away for a few hours a week to recharge his battery and give his mind a break from work stresses. Garth loves bike riding around the mountains where he lives. Riding a bike means that

Watch the video podcast here. A Bit About JasonJason and his partner Dylan Kuhn co-founded a creative agency called Vernal based in Vermont. At the time of this podcast in 2015, they had just transitioned from agency to product with the release of the plugin Postmatic. Tune in around the 5 Minute mark to find out how Jason got started with WordPress as an early adopter and grew his business.  Working With Not-For-Profit OrganisationsJason's agency, Vernal, makes content managed open source websites for medium to large not for profit organisations. There’s a myth that there’s no money in the not-for-profit sector, but it isn’t true - they are like any business, but they are funded just happen to have a different tax status. Jason chose this as his niche because he wanted to find work that he believed in and was passionate about. He also found not-for-profits easier to work with because the people are generally kind, understanding, patient and sometimes used to not working in a 'not so ef

Watch the video podcast here. The Guys Behind Beaver BuilderJustin and Billy co-founded FastLine Media together which is a web development company. Robby came on board by applying for a job with them on Craigslist when, at the time, he was working in customer service. All three have strengths in development, and typically serve clients from start to finish. Each partner has their specialisations- Billy serves as operations manager, Justin will work on development and Robby focuses on design. The Beaver Builder StoryRobby explains that a lot of their clients wanted websites that would be easy to edit by themselves which really was their inspiration to create a page builder tool. They explained that on the agency side of their work, a lot of time is wasted emailing back and forth with clients about small changes and edits. Justin started developing their own tool to solve these problems they were having. He says that it started off as a backend page builder, then they decided they wanted it on the front en