WP Elevation Podcast

In Episode #18 of the WP Elevation podcast I had a great time talking with fellow Australian WordPress entrepreneur Dan Norris from WP Curve. Dan has built a service as a service company offering WordPress maintenance and support services as a monthly subscription product. He also runs a podcast called Startup Chat and is quite transparent with his efforts, successes and failures as a start-up entrepreneur. I played poker with his business partner Alex McClafferty late last year when I was in San Francisco and this is how I came to know Dan.

In Episode #17 of the WP Elevation podcast I had a blast talking with Noel Tock and Tom Willmot from Human Made. These guys count Clickbank, PayPal and Skype as their clients and have contributed several plugins to the WordPress community. They are the company behind Happy Tables, a WordPress based Software as a Service solution helping restaurant owners build a website and they recently launched WP Remote which allows you manage multiple WordPress websites from one easy dashboard. These guys are one of the select few who have accepted into the WordPress VIP Partner Program run by Automattic and are at the top of their game. Miss this interview at your own peril.

Episode #16 – Jake Goldman

In Episode #15 of the WP Elevation podcast I had the pleasure of chatting with Alex King from Crowd Favorite - one of the true gentlemen of the WordPress community. Alex is one of the original contributors to WordPress and is also well-known for several plug-ins including Twitter Tools and the Disqus commenting system plug-in among others. Alex has had some personal challenges in recent times and I thank him for speaking openly and honestly with me in this interview which is full of gold. A few days after this interview he emailed me with a link to his brand-new Admin Column View plug-in which allows you to view yiur WordPress pages in column view similarly to how you browse your desktop files. His company crowd favourite also makes Capsule, a journal for code developers and RAMP,  a platform for deploying content between staging and live environments for WordPress. Some of the resources and websites Alex mentioned in the video include All Things Digital, Ghost, Medium, Carrington Build, Walter Mossberg, You can reach out and thank Alex on Twitter and on his website. Alex suggested I interview Karim from VeloMedia. Karim, I'm coming to get you. Hint: to enter the competition, tell us the one feature you'd like to see in a future version of RAMP.

In Episode #14 I hung out with my good friend Cory Miller from iThemes. We had a lot of technical issues getting started and eventually hooked up on FaceTime and used Screenflow to record it. Cory is big on people and building a great culture to allow people to flourish. He treats his team as his family and the company he has built is testament to the fact that the people he surrounds himself with admire him and are all on the same page. Cory mentioned he first started publishing thoughts and content on his own website way back in 1998 and I found a snapshot on the wayback machine from Oct 1999 - I know Cory won't mind. Here's the blogger account he setup in 2004 courtesy of the wayback machine again. It looks like Cory discovered WordPress around February 2007 and started posting themes up in 2007 too. His own website started looking very nice around the middle of 2007 and it looks like iThemes started to take hold around early 2007. I applaud Cory for having the courage to talk about how he and his wife Lindsey frequently see a counsellor to help them navigate their way through life. They are both advocates for mental health and this is something I think should be talked about more openly. Cory also tells the great story of how BackupBuddy came about. These guys lost their server (with lots of client sites) twice without backups! So they built an all in one backup solution for WordPress. There's also some great nuggets about the future of WordPress business models, freemium, support, services vs products and an honest discourse of building the biggest thing they've ever done and giving it away for free (the eCommerce plugin Exchange). There's boatloads of great advice for WordPress consultants and freelancers in this interview - don't miss a word! You can reach out and thank Cory on Twitter and by email. Cory suggested I interview Lisa Sabin-Wilson, the author if WordPress for Dummies. Lisa, I'm coming to get you. Hint: to enter the competition, tell us the one feature you'd like to see in Exchange, the iThemes eCommerce plugin.

In Episode #13 I spent some time chatting with Australian online marketing powerhouse James Schramko from Super Fast Business about how he has grown his business and used education to capture the attention of his customers.  His background selling prestige Mercedes Benz cars informed his passion for providing high quality information as a way of attracting customers. James' SEO business does over $1MM a year in revenue and his team has built over 3000 WordPress websites. There is soooo much gold in this interview if you take the 35 minutes you need to listen to it you will learn something you can apply to your business, I promise. James has integrity and results. Everyone I know that has worked with James or studied his teachings speaks very highly of him and now I know why. Branding, curating content, content marketing, transparency, advertising (or not), affiliates (or not), developing products and getting paid before you make the product and collecting a list of buyers. These are just some of the topics we touch on in this interview. James mentioned the venn diagram from the book Good to Great by Jim Collins that highlights the sweet spot where you find something you are good at, love doing and brings in the cash. Here it is. You can reach out and thank James at Super Fast Business. James suggested I interview someone I really admire so Andrew Warner from Mixergy, I'm coming to get you. Keep your eyes on your inbox Andrew. Hint: to enter the competition, tell us the best golden nugget you learnt from this interview.

In Episode 12 I speak to Miriam Schwab from Israel about running a WordPress agency, managing a team and playing Mum to 7 kids! Miriam confesses to having a crazy side and is very transparent in how she has coped with the stresses of building a team in Jerusalem. If you think you've got a lot on your plate, you need to watch this interview. Miriam runs Illuminea, a WordPress web agency, is very active on social media, blogs regularly, contributes to WP Garage, speaks at WordCamps, organises WordCamp Israel and has an infectious positive energy. You can reach out and thank Miriam on email or on Twitter. Miriam suggested I interview Rami Yushuvaev from GenerateWP. Keep your eyes on your inbox Rami. Hint: to enter the competition, tell us the best thing you learnt from this interview.

In Episode 11 of the WP Elevation podcast I spoke with Brad Touesnard from Delicious Brains, home of WP Migrate DB. Brad has been through the experience of launching the WP App Store, which included investment from Adii Pienaar at WooThemes and Carl Hancock at Gravity Forms. The WP App Store ultimately failed and Brad has lived to tell the tale. Brad presented recently at the Boston WordPress MeetUp about the evolution of his business and why his pricing model is the way it is. Brad has teamed up with Pippin Williamson and launched a podcast called Apply Filters which is aimed at WordPress developers. I tried to find a screenshot of Flippa.com from 2008 but the way back machine kept redirecting so I gave up. However you can see the screenshots on Brad's blog. Brad is currently reading Judas Unchained: The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F Hamilton. You can reach out and thank Brad on his blog or on Twitter. Brad suggested I interview Jason Schuller who's fame includes Press75 and more recently Dropplets and Leeflets. Keep your eyes on your inbox Jason. Hint: to enter the competition, leave a comment below telling us the #1 feature you'd like to see in WP Migrate DB Pro.

In Episode 10 of the WP Elevation podcast I spoke with Andrew Dumont, business development manager at Moz and founder of the awesome Stride CRM App. Andrew gave some great insight into how Moz are growing, what growth hacking actually means, why "Guru" is a dirty word and how he balances his job at Moz and building his own app in his "spare" time. Andrew blogs frequently on the Svbtle platform where he published this post about avoiding burnout - it. is. a. must. read. He describes himself as addicted to the startup thing. You can reach out and thank Andrew on his blog or on Twitter. Andrew suggested I interview Neil Patel from KissMetrics and Ruben Gumez from Bidsketch. Boys, you're on the list. Hint: to enter the competition, leave a comment below telling us the #1 feature you'd like to see in the Stride CRM app.

In Episode 9 of the WP Elevation podcast I spoke with Collis Ta'eed, CEO of Envato, home of ThemeForest, CodeCanyon, GraphicRiver and more recently, Microlancer. I was eager to hear how Collis and his wife have built such a behemoth of a company and I wanted to ask him how he responds to the criticism that his marketplace based business has devalued web design and web development. His answers are well worth listening out for. I interviewed Collis just after I had returned from Pressnomics and we had  a great chat off camera about the WordPress business space in general and where it's headed. Collis is one of the true gentlemen of the WordPress business world and it was an absolute delight to spend some time chatting with him. Envato has grown so rapidly it makes the mind boggle. You can reach out and thank Collis on email or Twitter. Collis suggested I interview the guys behind the smash hit theme Avada (around $150K in sales per month!!!). So ThemeFusion boys, I'm coming to get you. Hint: to enter the competition, leave a comment below telling us the #1 tweak to a WordPress website that you'd like to palm off to Microlancer.