Wp Elevation Wordpress Business Podcast

Watch the video podcast here. A Bit About SherrySherry has a PhD in Clinical Psychology and specialises in helping entrepreneurs and executives who are trying make their way in the world of business. It’s a tough path to travel and there are many rewards but it is important that we tell the truth about how hard it is to carve out our own livelihood. She started out as a professor and did a lot of research into traumatic stress and became curious about how we can prevent long-term mental health problems when people are under stress. She started asking these questions about various populations such as military officers and physicians before she started asking them about founders. Sherry is married to Rob Walling who is a well-known entrepreneur and author.  Sherry tells Troy that one day in 2012, she found Rob crying in his office as he had just learned that Aaron Schwartz (founder of Reddit) had taken his own life. This had affected him because he could relate to the tough journey of an entrepreneur

Watch the video podcast here. A Bit of BackgroundMost notably John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing. It’s the name of a podcast, a blog and a book but essentially it is a marketing system. John started his own marketing consultancy about 20 years ago and loved working with small business owners. However, the difficulty was that small businesses usually have no budget and a short attention span. So he decided to create a system to overcome this problem. It's actually really hard to buy marketing services these days. Everyone is selling a piece of the puzzle, including Google. The fact that this was a full strategy at a fixed cost was pretty remarkable. Before John wrote the book, he was a practising consultant. He was selling the Duct Tape Marketing methodology as an online course and it was doing so well that he had people approach him to ask when he was going to write the book. It had been on his mind to do this but it took someone to say, "here is the money and a deadline" to gi

Watch the video podcast here. A Bit About ChristinaChristina started off working in the Defence Department as a management analyst, so her job entailed a lot of technology. She then got married to a marine, so that trajectory changed for her as they needed to move around for his work. Christina got a job in tech support at a bank and whilst she was working there she got to know some of the programmers who told her about Homestead. This caught her interest and so, in 1997 she built her first website. She then decided to make websites and although she didn’t have any experience, not many people did at the time. She loved it and knew she could do it from anywhere and so she founded GlobalSpex in 1999. She now has four virtual contractors based in Argentina, India and the two in the US. The GlobalSpex NicheChristina's customers are typically in engineering, energy and healthcare. Her "thing" is problem-solving, so she attracts those types of customers who have that analytical brain and appreciates analysis

Watch the video podcast here. Jurgen's StoryJurgen's journey is quite an interesting one. He started off with 27 years of experience in corporate marketing and enjoyed both the challenges and being able to work his way up. However, in the last few years, things changed - he is driven by serving his clients and the company that he was working for wasn’t putting an emphasis on relationships and he didn't want to be a part of something that wasn't in line with his values. Jurgen went off on his own and started a business which he initially thought would be a marketing and business consultancy (because that was his background). However, he soon came to realise that his marketing was based on corporate experience which didn’t work well with small business. The Global Financial Crises also got in the way at the time and people were cutting back on marketing expenses. Jurgen realised that in those meetings people would often tell him that they needed websites. Aha! Lightbulb moment! Jurgen decided to fig

Watch the video podcast here. About MattMatt started out in IT after he left the military but eventually got tired of the corporate world and decided to go out on his own six years ago and start an IT company working as an IT consultant. He had been building websites for years as a hobby and as he was consulting his clients, they either had bad websites or none at all. So being their IT guy they started talking to him about it. Not thinking it would be a full-time thing, he made a few websites and realised he was pretty good at it and that he enjoyed doing it. So 2.5 years ago, he transitioned to web development and hasn’t looked back since. Matt's CompaniesMatt has three companies at the moment- His first being the web design company Aledor (his surname backwards!) where he builds and redesigns websites for service professionals such as accountants and lawyers. His second company is Tech Site Builder which is a turnkey website platform specifically designed for computer repair workshops. He acquir

Watch the video podcast here. Who is Phil Singleton?Phil is well known as the best selling author of SEO for Growth which he co-authored with John Jantsch. However, Phil considers himself a web designer with a difference - he creates lead generation websites that turn into recurring income for his clients and he uses the books that he has written to leverage his business. Writing Books - Not as Difficult as You ThinkPhil says that writing a book was surprisingly not as difficult as he thought it would be. Phil joined Duct Tape Marketing (which was started by John Jantsch) as a certified consultant. He did a presentation on SEO to a Duct Tape Marketing group which impressed a few members of the audience. Fast forward six months and he had sold his first bestseller - Small Business Owners Guide to Lead Generation. He wrote that with a group of six other experts. At first writing a book seemed to be an impossible dream for him, but it ended up being easier than he thought by using Amazon's self-publish

Watch the video podcast here. Who Is Andre Gagnon?Andre has been in WordPress business for 10 years. He tells us that he started his own business because he needed to make money after being fired from a job, so he began creating themes. His latest development is ProjectHuddle which is a plugin to make it easier to get feedback from clients on their website design. The client is able to point to a specific part of the website and make a comment on the actual spot that they are wanting to alter. Why Is It Important to Get Feedback Right in the Design Phase?Part of it has to do with the fact that if you are an agency you are a service business. What we do is fun, we are creating something for them and the client wants to be involved in the process. So part of your business is to include your client in the process and let them know every step of the way, what you are doing. Whether you like it or not, client feedback is about project management. The go-to tool is email, but this opens you up to scope creep. The c

Watch the video podcast here. What Is Elementor?Elementor is an Israeli company based in Tel Aviv who have grown to be a very successful compant since the release of their page builder. Page builders are visual design tools that have changed the way we build websites within WordPress. Although Word Press is a great CMS it isn’t that great at designing websites and you have to rely on themes to get it to look a certain way. With a visual page builder, you can see it as you design it and it cuts down the workload of a web designer substantially. Before page builders, you needed to create the prototype in Photoshop and transfer it using codes, HTML and CSS. Now you can easily create everything live, not worry about coding and focus more on creating beautiful pages. Troy has been saying for years that a website lives in the browser, not in Photoshop. So if you are designing websites in Photoshop and getting them cut up into HTML and CSS then your days are numbered. There will always be a disconnect and a di

Watch the video podcast here. What Exactly Is Oribi and Who Are Asi and Noam?Asi is the head of marketing and Noam works on the product at Oribi, which is the first analytics and insight tool designed for any type of business of any size. There are many analytics tools out there but most business owners don’t really know how to understand the results and how to use that for their business. Oribi fills this void between answers and questions so that business owners can easily understand results and get the most out of their website. Insight Is More Important Than NumbersIt's not about the numbers it's about the story behind the numbers. The product translates the figures into everyday language that everyone can understand. A lot of web developers aren’t data analysts. They can install google analytics but then don’t know what to do with it and may end up paying an analyst or agency to work it out for them. Why Is It Important for Businesses to Understand the Data?Simply put - using the data w

Watch the video podcast here. That's it for this episode. We hope you collected some gold here! Let us know what you think of this podcast or if you have tried inbound marketing in the comments below. Who is Joe Howard? Joe Howard is the founder of  WP Buffs which is a WordPress Maintenance company and a CTO for entrepreneurs and small businesses who run WordPress websites. They have headquarters in Washington DC but work with a remote team all over the world. Joe has been working with WordPress for seven years now and running WP Buffs for two years. He started out in client services and building websites and made the transition to maintenance because his strength is marketing rather than technology. Joe is passionate about inbound marketing (having leads find you rather than going out and finding them.) When Joe was building websites he was semi-successful and usually had some work going on, but when he wasn’t building websites he wasn’t getting paid and it made it difficult to find a recurr

Watch the video podcast here. Writing "The Art of SEO" Stephan is best known for the Bible on SEO “The Art of SEO”  which is currently in its third edition. The book came about because he was sharing his knowledge at the conference "SMX Advance". He believes that what you put out into the universe you get back so he gave away some of his best tips. Everyone in the SEO industry was there including Rand Fishkin (the founder of Moz) and three weeks later Rand approached Stephan in the speaker room and gave him a hug! They had a great conversation and decided to write a book together. He had never written a book before, but there were four co-authors for the first and second edition. Having four authors was tricky because the voice needed to be consistent so they hired a ghost editor to ensure that it was written all in the same style. Why SEO? Stephan was studying for a PhD in chemistry but had always had an interest in programming and creating websites. In 1994 when web development wa

Watch the video podcast here. Who is Laura Elizabeth? Laura has been a designer for the last 7 years. She started out with one year in an agency then became a freelancer. Last year she transitioned into product development of a WordPress plugin called Client Portal. She also teaches how to design in a non-pretentious way and she still does the odd design job from time to time when a cool project comes along. How Can We Build Better Client Relationships? Laura came to realise that most of her income was coming from repeat work and referrals. This is because of the importance that she puts on giving her clients a memorable experience. She came from an agency background and when she became a freelancer, she felt that disadvantage of not having a nice office to bring your clients to, so she focused on standing out and giving them a great experience instead. Laura says that most clients have a business goal that they want to achieve but they want to enjoy the process as well. As a designer, a lot of what you do is

Watch the video of this podcast here. Background Corey started in 2003 in the early days of WordPress when it was good for blogging but not much else. He was a terrible blogger but a passionate bass player and had been wanting to build an online magazine just for bass players. However, he wanted more than a website, he wanted to connect and build a community. He also wanted to find a way to program WordPress to push the content out by targeting specific interests. He didn’t know where to start so he kept it really generic at the beginning and his audience could subscribe to a newsletter, MySpace (and yes apparently it still exists for musicians), Facebook and Twitter. At the time, he was big on Twitter and he hardly touched the Facebook page, but it was Facebook that was growing significantly. So, he focused on Facebook (reluctantly) as it was clear where people wanted to connect. By the end of the first year, they had 10,000 Facebook fans! Back then it was easier because Facebook pages used to accommod

Watch the video podcast here. Meet Bridget We start out with a little background on Bridget. Amongst all her projects, she explains that her passion is blogging about social media marketing which you can find on her site at bridgetwillard.com. Her other passion is giving back to the WordPress community through volunteering at WordCamps, the most recent being WordCamp LA where she teaches people about blogging and using Twitter. These camps are a huge success - with one on every weekend around the States. One of the reasons why WordCamps are highly successful is because they are able to keep the price affordable thanks to the volunteers. What To Expect at a WordCamp It’s cheap"Tech changes every 20 minutes!" so you are getting up to date information You're meeting people in the same space as you, or potentially will work in the same space as you.It is a very supportive spaceThe WordPress Community Support Bridget then talks about the support she feels from the WordPress community and why she enjoys

Watch the video of this podcast here. Meet Bridget We start out with a little background on Bridget. Amongst all her projects, she explains that her passion is blogging about social media marketing which you can find on her site at bridgetwillard.com. Her other passion is giving back to the WordPress community through volunteering at WordCamps, the most recent being WordCamp LA where she teaches people about blogging and using Twitter. These camps are a huge success - with one on every weekend around the States. One of the reasons why WordCamps are highly successful is because they are able to keep the price affordable thanks to the volunteers. What To Expect at a WordCamp It’s cheap "Tech changes every 20 minutes!" so you are getting up to date information You're meeting people in the same space as you, or potentially will work in the same space as you. It is a very supportive space The WordPress Community Support Bridget then talks about the support she feels from the WordPress community and why she

Watch the video of this podcast here. How Your Grew Her Business... Fast! She started as a social media consultant and ran a consultancy for four years purely from word of mouth referrals. However, she got to the point where she was burnt out with too many clients and working solo. She explains that this YouTube thing all started by accident!  Her clients kept asking her the same questions and she was constantly on phone calls and in meetings which were a waste of her time. So she decided to do a YouTube tutorial about live streaming for your business and how to use Periscope which had just come out. She sent it to her clients, not thinking much of it, but by the next day, she had 1,000 views. (Which has now grown to 80,000 views.) This is when she realised the power of Search on YouTube and making videos that people are looking for. And that’s how she built her channel up so fast within only two years. The beauty of YouTube is that it is free marketing. You aren’t paying to get views and she

Watch the video of this podcast here. How Did 17hats Begin? Donovan Janus is the CEO of 17hats which is an all in one business management app where you can manage client communications, proposals, contracts, bookkeeping and more. His idea for the software happened when he was working for an online gallery system at the time. The company was trying to generate and followup leads but they were wasting too much time on these processes. (And we all know, as business owners, we never have enough time!) He tried to find a complete solution for the client onboarding process, but nothing such as this existed at the time. So, he decided to build it himself, and despite being told they were crazy, the demand for the product was huge and the company grew quickly. The Struggles of Growing Your Product Donovan says that an influential book for him has been “The E-Myth” by Michael E. Gerber which explores the different stages of growth within a business. One of the stages is when you become ashamed of your bus

Watch the video of this podcast here. Kim’s Business Transitions Kim started her own business in 2008 and it has evolved so much over years. She started out thinking that she would be a millionaire from being an Information Marketer but that didn’t work out. That’s when she discovered WordPress and got sidetracked. She named her company “WordPress Chick” which she says was a ballsy name to claim but she stuck with it and figured it out as she went along! At first, she was bartering for websites and got a couple of people to help her and one thing led to another and it wasn’t long until she had built up an agency and an outsourcing company. She started podcasting and realised she was much more of a content creator and connector. She loved being able to connect with people and use her voice. She says “I’d rather be the star than the producer” She was having fun and saw the validation that she was getting just from using her voice and being herself. Kim expla

Watch the video of this podcast here. A Bit About AndrewAndrew started out in banking in the late 90’s, but after 15 years he realised that he had become an angry young man. It became clear to him when he would talk to people out and about, that there were so many myths out there about finance and he saw so many people that couldn’t manage their own financial affairs. So, he set up a website in 2011 and published a lot of free information which he was able to compile into his best-selling book “How to Own the World”. He describes the book as “an idiots guide to finance with a sophisticated overlay”. Why Is Financial Literacy so Important for People Who Are Self-Employed?With your own business, your income can have an uncertainty to it. You have times when the money is coming in and times when things are slow. However, if you learn about finance and make sensible investments, it won’t be long until you can build a nest egg which can throw off returns itself. The Golden

Watch the video of this podcast here. How Did Content Snare Start? James and Mark started out as Software Engineers but they decided to start their own company, Aktura Technology, in 2010 and worked mostly on creating websites and SaaS (Software as a Service) apps. They stumbled onto a very annoying problem when working in web development – it is difficult getting information from clients to create web content! (Sound familiar anyone?) They decided to do some research and spoke with many other web developers who all shared the same frustration. James and Mark knew that there could be a software tool to overcome this problem. So, they created Content Snare which is helping web developers drastically save time and the hassle of having to chase up clients for content. Go guys! Education Marketing Ok, so they had the awesome product idea and knew there was a demand for it, so how did they start building an audience even before the launch? James explained that throughout the development process, they used ed