The WordPress Chick Podcast

Course Creation does NOT have to be difficult. I know that’s saying a lot, but there are simpler ways to go about creating courses that won’t leave you feeling like you need a PhD to get it launched. But before we get into course creation, I’ve got a little bit of a rant today. This is what happens when you have a platform and an awesome audience that goes along the journey with you. Every now and then your audience may get more than they bargained for. My Little Rant I’ve had some interesting experiences lately and something has become glaringly apparent to me. On one hand, things are shifting and changing massively in this space (I’ll get more into that in a minute). On the other hand, people are people. No matter what we do when there are people involved there’s going to be a certain amount of psychological factors that come into play with any interaction. Especially when you bring money into the equation. We all have our own money story and we bring it with us to every interaction. What I don’t understand is how people think starting an online business isn’t going to take WORK. Is it simply that they’ve read great copy? Bought amazing products? The promise of riches? Probably a combination of all of the above. But I’ve got news for people who ‘buy’ into this…. First, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re human. I don’t know anyone who loves the idea of having to put in hours and hours of work in hopes of it paying off. There’s no crystal ball. You can work your arse off and still not make a penny. Trust me, I’ve been there and done it. When that happens you have to look at the type of work you’re doing. There are so many ways you can keep yourself busy ‘doing work’, but let’s be honest. We both know what is and isn’t going to pay the bills. Spending hours, weeks or months planning and preparing things isn’t work. It’s procrastination. At some point you have to make an offer. Oh… and of course you need people to make that offer to. It’s better to start building a list of subscribers and potential customers from DAY ONE than to wait until something is perfect. Don’t have a lead magnet? Google how to create one. Make a list of TEN things you can offer as a lead magnet. Close Facebook, close Gmail, turn your phone off and open a word doc. Start writing. Start recording. MAKE something of value you can give in exchange for someone’s name and email address. This is only hard because you’re making it hard. You’ve made a decision somewhere along the line that you don’t have something that can help someone else. That’s bullshit. EVERY single one of us has experiences, stories, lessons, hacks, tips, tricks…. whatever. Simply share something that made your life easier and you feel will provide value to your audience. Don’t have an audience? Define who you want them to be. Don’t tell me you don’t know who. Google ‘how to create a customer avatar’. It’s not 1990 folks. Stop waiting for someone to come in and do the work for you. You guys know how I feel about ‘Hustle’…. and I still live by #FtheHustle. But being sick of all the hype around the ‘hustle and grind’ movement does not mean I don’t do the work. Stop looking outside of yourself for answers. Creating a real business online takes time, energy, effort, work, investment, consistency, and initiative. It has never been easier to get a business started. But no one is going to do it for you. End rant. Let’s move onto Course Creation I’ve created a handful of courses over the last 8+ years.

Building a business with WordPress can feel a little challenging at times. As websites become more of a commodity it can feel a little like an uphill battle when you build websites with WordPress (and is personally one of the reasons I’m not doing service work anymore). I’ve said for a long time that I still believe there are great opportunities in the WordPress space to build a solid, profitable business. But it’s going to look different than it did a few years ago. With more people ‘building’ WordPress websites (I use the term ‘builder’ instead of developer because there are so many tools available to make this process easier that you really don’t have to be a developer to build sites for people anymore), it’s imperative that you carve out your own niche within this market. If you’re a ‘builder’ or developer, I still think the documentation space is wide open. There are plenty of things you can create training and content around that can provide a great income, provided you stick with it and market it consistently (there’s the magic word, right? It’s all about consistency). Today’s guest has done just that with his business. He’s picked a niche within this space and has created products (themes and plugins) that are specific to one niche. The Restaurant & Bar space. Nate Wright of Theme of the Crop joined me to talk about how he’s niched down within WordPress and where he’s headed. Questions I Asked Nate * Before we get into Theme of The Crop, what brought you here? What were you doing before you launched this? * Can you explain to the listeners what Theme of The Crop is and what differentiates your themes and plugins from everyone else? * What made you decide to focus on restaurants, cafe’s and bars? * What was it like to take on something like online reservations when there are companies out there like Open Table who are established in that space? * How do you market your business? * What would you recommend to someone who wants to niche down in the WordPress space the way you’ve done? * What’s coming this year for Theme of the Crop? What You’re Going to Learn * How Nate’s job as a journalist helped him realize what he didn’t like doing * How rejection through a popular theme marketplace drove him to build his own shop * How long it took Nate to sell his first theme (and why he stuck with it) * Who Nate’s target audience is… and why it’s not simply ‘any restaurant’ owner (he’s drilled even deeper into his niche) * How he’s used the WordPress.org plugin repository to grow his premium plugins * Why Nate is focusing more on content and marketing Where to Connect with Nate Website | Twitter  

No matter what you do to repurpose your content, there’s always more you can do. I know, that might sound a little depressing or overwhelming (how much more can you possibly do, right?), but the good news is that there is a lot of automation happening in this space and tools that are coming out to streamline this process. Which is why I was super excited to have Hani Mourra back on the podcast this week. If you haven’t listened to my previous episode with Hani, you can listen to that here. Hani is the creator of the Simple Podcast Press plugin as well as a couple other WordPress plugins. Hani has launched a new SaaS platform called Repurpose.io. Repurpose does exactly what you think it would do, it repurposes your content. Not all of your content, but for those of you who create audio and video content, you’re going to want to jump into this as soon as possible. Repurpose is currently by invitation only, but not from the exclusive sense. The first founders will get access in February (yes, I’m super excited to be one of those founders). Hani wants to make sure everything is working smoothly and the initial adopters are up and running (smart process). Questions I asked Hani * What have you been up to since our last interview? (we had to catch up a little bit) * For the listeners who may not be familiar with you, can you share a little about your business and what your WordPress plugins are? * Let’s talk about Repurpose.io. What made you decide to launch a web app for this as opposed to a WordPress plugin? * How has creating this product differed from creating a WordPress plugin? * How did you decide on pricing for your platform? * Can you explain what Repurpose.io is? * Where can people find out more about Repurpose.io? What You’re Going to Learn * Why Hani decided to go with a web app as opposed to a WordPress plugin * How he’s decided which features to launch Repurpose with * Why he considers Repurpose a platform as opposed to a web app * Which integrations Repurpose will launch with * Why Hani considers himself an ‘automation freak’ * When you can get access to Repurpose.io (and where) To say I’m excited about Repurpose.io would be an understatement. I have always loved repurposing content, this just gives me a way to automate it and measure which channels give me the best ROI. Where to Connect with Hani Facebook | Twitter | Repurpose.io *Transcripts coming soon*

Have you noticed a word resurfacing lately? O.K., make that two words. Blogs and blogging. Obviously neither blogs nor blogging went anywhere, but they weren’t really being discussed much. People were still blogging, but it’s been more about social media, video, live streaming… and dare I say, podcasting (I’m sure I’m missing something with those examples). As the online space matures (not sure ‘matures’ is the correct word, but we’ll leave it at that) and people realize that the latest & greatest tactic isn’t going to build your business, I think we’re going to see people returning to the things that gave this space legs in the first place… like blogging. Of course it’s not as easy to get traffic to a blog post as it was 8 years ago… the quality of the content has to be better, SEO, images, the way the post is written (it can be a tricky thing to write something people can scan while at the same time creating quality content that keeps people reading). So where do you start? How do you start creating content that works for you in multiple ways? That’s what we’re going to dig deep into today. Creating a content strategy and which tools you can use to keep it going (besides your own brilliance), because c’mon, you know I love my tools. Getting Started with a Content Strategy I’m not going to talk much about the whole ‘define your audience’ thing because I’m going to assume you’ve done that. If you haven’t, you need to get clear on who you’re talking to when you create your content. There are a couple of different approaches to this and I would use them both. The demographic approach where you literally write out your ideal persona (age, sex, income, interests, etc.) and then there’s the quality approach. What type of a person are you talking to? Open-minded? Conservative? Driven? Playful? That will help you in terms of the language and voice you use when creating your content. Before we get too much further into getting started with your content strategy, I’m going to say that this isn’t about learning to write better. Obviously the more you write the better you’ll get, but there are plenty of ways to provide valuable content where you don’t need to feel like you have to become a master storyteller (although that wouldn’t hurt, because let’s face it, stories sell). This is about you finding the medium of content that allows you to create content on a consistent basis that provides value for your audience. That might be solving a problem, sharing a story that they can relate to, introducing them to someone or something that will make their lives better. I’m not about to pretend I can teach you how to be a better writer. But I can teach you how to create content that works for you, resonates with your audience and drives growth for your business. What type of content do you want to create? This is KEY. I used to create a lot of content on how to do things with Genesis (the framework & themes this site is built on) by StudioPress. I love Genesis, but I’d rather talk about marketing with WordPress than building sites with WordPress. There are plenty of great sites out there that do that and it’s not what excites me. Which means I had to start shifting to creating the type of content I wanted to create, not what worked before (it’s perfectly O.K. to evolve and shift directions. Some people will stick with you, some won’t). What I didn’t do was get clear on what that looked like when it started happening. Partly because I wasn’t all that conscious that I was shifting directions and then when I was conscious, I wasn’t sure what direction I was going in (which can make creating content a challe...

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to approach my 2016 Year in Review episode. Like many other people, this year has felt particularly long. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that this was a record year for celebrity deaths and crappy politics. I promise not to go into either, although the celebrity deaths, particularly a couple of the musicians we lost this year reminds you how short life is because their music can take you back to a time and place in your life instantly. Both Prince and George Michael were huge when I was in high school (we had some fun music in the 80’s). I lip-synced songs by both musicians at school (one was for a dance and one was at an assembly, in front of the entire school… wasn’t shy back then either). All that being said, the last thing I want to do is write about or focus on the negativity… we’ve all had plenty of that and it’s time to turn the page on it. My intention with this episode and post is to look back as objectively as I can, acknowledge what worked, what didn’t, and share why I’m so excited about 2017. The easiest way for me to break down 2016 is in chunks… we’ll look at each quarter of the year (hopefully I can remember everything worth sharing without having to go back to a calendar). First Quarter of 2016 It’s a little crazy when I think about what was happening at the beginning of 2016 and where I was headed (compared to where I am). I had hired Jason Hornung to create a Facebook ad strategy for my ‘podcasting done for you’ service. We started working together in December of 2015 and in January I flew back to Wisconsin to spend a few days with him and a few other entrepreneurs as we worked through our ad campaigns, strategies, copy, and funnels. The whole enchilada. To say it was an intense (but amazing) few days is an understatement. I learned a TON about Facebook ads in general (and will be going back to his training when I get ready to launch my next campaign), had a very successful campaign (more on that in a minute), and walked away with an education unlike anything else I had experienced. What I mean by that is that is was like a lightbulb finally went off for me after all these years. After having spent the last couple of years in a mastermind (which was a great experience), I understood the value and importance of having a solid foundation and mastery of the fundamentals. I’ve been talking about this for months (mastering the fundamentals) and will probably continue to talk about it because it’s made a HUGE difference. Outcome of Podcast campaign: My investment with Jason wasn’t cheap, but it was worth it. It was a $15k investment: they did all the research, created my funnel, ad & worked with me on testing and tweaking. I also spent a couple days in his office with a few other entrepreneurs to dive deep into Facebook advertising. It was really a great experience (a little overwhelming in that there was a LOT of information). My total ad spend before shutting the campaign off was $2500. I got one podcast client ($7k) and ended up with her on a recurring retainer as well (so the campaign itself was paid for). During this time I also signed another podcast client ($6k… the first one included a site makeover and we gave her a discount for being a podcast client), so between those two clients and the retainer I’ve made my investment back completely. I turned the ads off after a month because it still needed more testing and tweaking (it was converting well, I gained about 900 subscribers in the process) and wanted to step back and evaluate things. During this time I also had website clients I was working with so I felt a little squeezed (hence ending the ‘done for you’ element of my business). Take away:

After almost 9 years in this business there are some things I think I’ll never wrap my head around. One of those things is the ‘haters’ out there. Those people who get bent out of shape by something that is absolutely NOT worth the energy they expend. Take a look at the screenshot below, which is what spurred this discussion about haters: WHOA! Settle down there tiger… I’ve been emailing much more frequently than I ever have before (almost daily). I am a customer of Ben Settle’s email players and without a doubt this strategy has worked wonders for my business. I’ve talked about it a bunch of times on the show so I’m not going to go into detail about it here again, but I will tell you that it works. My engagement rate, sales, affiliate sales, social connections… have ALL improved. Here’s another response I got to this same method: I received that email a couple months ago. I’m glad I took a screenshot of it. So now I have a choice… I can focus on the first email (whiners or snowflakes, as Ben Settle calls them), or I can focus on the second email. Clearly I’m going to focus on the second email. We all know the line… “haters gonna hate”… I simply cannot fathom getting so worked up about something like an email. Delete it, unsubscribe from it, don’t read it… it’s NOT a big deal. What these ‘haters’ don’t realize is their pissy behavior says WAY more about them than it does about me (or you). I’m sharing this story for two reasons: The first reason is because it’s kind of funny… and well, if you’re going to get bent out of shape and email me it’s quite possible I’m going to create content with your email. The second reason is to share that this happens to everyone. The more you put yourself out there, the more you share, the more you show up and do your thing the more likely it is that it’s going to rub someone the wrong way. Regardless of your intention. Thank them for the content and comic relief, then go about your day. Self-Promotion This is probably one of, if not THE hardest thing I’ve had to overcome, work on, deal with… in my business. Like… ever. And I’m going to come right out and say that for some reason, unbeknownst to me, this seems to be a common problem for a lot of women. Men don’t seem to have as hard of a time with this concept (I know I’m generalizing, but trust me on this, k?). Take my friend Jon Perez as an example… Jon has no problem promoting his stuff, blasting it everywhere and screaming from the rooftops that he’s written something, created something, or is selling something. His biggest challenge is having more time to do it all

I have to say that this is the first podcast interview that I’ve done where we talked about poop. But that’s what happens when you talk to a parent of young children (Curtis has young kids)… you just never know where the conversation is going to go. I was pretty excited when Curtis got in touch to be on the podcast. I had subscribed to him sometime in the last year and really loved his writing. Curtis shares his personal journey, lessons learned and doesn’t hold back from giving an opinion. That being said, he’s also pretty relaxed. Which I’m sure comes from having clear boundaries in his business. We talked about a lot of things (which is why I’ve included the transcripts below. I’ll probably be adding these moving forward, it just depends on time. I’m also thinking of adding time stamps), but one of my most favorite take-aways was the need to set firm boundaries in my business. Curtis does something I’ve wanted to do for YEARS… he batches his calls on Tuesday. Meaning, Tuesday is the ONLY day he takes and schedules calls. The thought of that makes me feel like I won the time lottery (because somewhere I think that exists… and the beauty of the time lottery is that we’re the ones picking the winning numbers. hmm… think there’s a blog post in there somewhere). Questions I Asked Curtis * Before we get into vetting clients, fill the listeners in on you & your backstory * You have an agency & your personal site where you do coaching & work with clients. When did you start doing coaching? * When did you realize you needed to get better at vetting clients? * Was there a shift or something that occurred in your business that made you put better time & energy into client vetting? * When you started your business how were you getting clients? * How did the questions that you asked potential clients differentiate you from competitors? What You’re Going to Learn * How Curtis left a job by telling the owner he’d fire himself * Why you don’t want to get on the phone too fast * How asking better questions up front is key in vetting clients * Why telling a client that their idea is bad will gain their trust * Why Curtis started batching his calls (hint: it’s not rocket science) * What his new is about Where to Connect with Curtis Website | Twitter | Book You can click the link below for the full transcript:

Just when you think you’ve got a grasp on something… a little dose of reality comes in. In this case, it’s a good thing. After last weeks episode on winding the year down and with Christmas quickly approaching, I’m starting to really wrap my head around what I want 2017 to look like for me. I’m still going to do a full ‘year in review’ episode but I want to share some of the things I’m doing as I wind down the year to prepare for next year. Beyond sitting down with my colored pens, planner of choice and BIG ideas. I’ve been talking a lot about going back to basics and mastering the fundamentals (maybe I can come up with an acronym for that?). The first two areas I’ve focused on have been copy and email marketing. When it comes to copy, I haven’t even gotten into the sales type of copy yet (think sales pages, ads, etc.). I started simply by working on headlines and paying attention to copy. Let’s talk about paying attention to copy first. This whole journey of getting interested in copy began at the very beginning of this year when I decided to sign up to work with Jason Hornung’s Facebook advertising agency. I connected with Jason through another friend, had him on my podcast and knew I wanted to work with him. I won’t go into detail on that experience in this episode (it was great and I’m planning on having Jason back on the show to do a follow up), but I got a bonus education outside of Facebook advertising. I was impressed with Jason’s understanding of ad copy, persuasion, the psychology of copy and what drives people. When he got interested in Facebook ads he jumped in with both feet. He studied copy, advertising and direct response marketing. Books that had been around 30+ years… he created a solid foundation for building his own ad agency. Prior to working with Jason I had zero desire to do any type of copy (or get attempt to get decent at it). But when I heard Jason’s story, observed what he did to master his craft all of the sudden I had a different respect for the art of copy. So I started studying and practicing. I tend to be someone who baby steps my way into things or I leap like a lunatic. In this case I baby stepped my way into it (but I’m slowly working my way up to a jog). I’ve focused on practicing headlines this year. For posts, emails and ads (although I haven’t run an ad in a while, more on that in another episode). First thing I did was start paying attention to what headlines spoke to me. What about them did I like, what drew me in to want to read more / learn more. Then when I would go to write my post title I would head over to the CoSchedule Headline analyzer (which I’ve talked about probably more than you’ve wanted to hear) and start with my first headline. Holy moly were some of them bad. Then it became a game to see what I could come up with and how I could improve the score. Depending on the topic, I’d write 5 or 6 headlines or sometimes I would stick with something clear (and maybe not very exciting) for SEO purposes. Once I had settled on my headline I’d write my post (which believe it or not I spend way more time editing than I used to). After the post is written the next step is to write a couple more headlines (or use a few that I had written in the headline analyzer) and use the Thrive Headline Optimizer to run some split testing. I have yet to have my original headline win one of those tests (pretty interesting, right?). I can guarantee you that 5 years ago I was not ...

Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand Out From The Crowd Anyone who has ever written a business plan (or attempted to), knows it’s not a simple process (I had originally written not a ‘fun’ process, but who knows, maybe this is something you enjoy?). I had to write a formal business plan once. And that was enough. It was when I was getting ready to open a physical retail Scrapbook store with a business partner. We found our location and the property management company wanted a business plan. We had plenty of research, examples of products, scrapbooking in general and we had our appointment set. So I went to the office store and bought a software program to write the business plan (this was way back in 1998… so what was available online pales in comparison to what you can find today). It took me 8 hours to plug through the entire ‘fill in the blank’ business plan. Of course most of what I projected was just that… projections. I probably could have zipped through the program in a quarter of the time had I known the property management company was just going to ‘skim’ through the business plan (in fact I probably could have written some of my answers in another language and they wouldn’t have noticed… but we’ll leave that alone). Which is why I was SUPER excited when I came across the 1 Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib. Once you listen to how Allan changed his own business through creating a 1 Page Marketing Plan you’re going to want to jump in and grab the book. Questions I Asked Allan * Before we get into the book, can you share your journey here (what you were doing before you launched your business – how you got into marketing) * When did you get into online marketing? * Let’s talk about your book, The 1-Page Marketing Plan. What inspired you to write the book? * I love the tagline of the book… “Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand Out From the Crowd”… In the book you talk about “the fastest path to money”… which I love, because there’s SO much noise online about passion, etc. , which is important, but it’s hard to do that work if you don’t have any money. * What is the 1-page marketing plan? * Let’s talk about the wrong type of business plan… can you share a little bit about that with the listeners? (strategy vs. tactics) * I’m assuming that a lot of people listening to this show are not large agencies… what is one thing they could start implementing today that would make the biggest difference? What You’re Going to Learn * How Allan went from being a typical geek to writing a book * Why being good at what you do doesn’t matter (hint: you have to be able to market yourself) * How the process of creating a business plan helps your business * Why you need to be comfortable with being in business to make money (as well as follow your passion0 * How focusing on marketing changed Allan’s business Where to Connect with Allan Website | Twitter | Buy the Book

I’ll be doing a ‘year in review’ post after Christmas, but thought this was a perfect time to do an episode on winding the year down, getting ready for 2017 and simply saying Thank You to YOU… my audience. You’ve made it all possible and have encouraged and inspired me to keep going. To say this past year has been a wild ride would be an understatement. I’ve gone through some massive changes in my business and personal life (and unfortunately for you I’ve bared my soul in the process). As challenging as some of it has been, it’s also all been so very worth it. Winding Down 2016 It’s been a long time since I’ve looked this forward to a year being over. As I write this I realize the reasons for this are hardly the end of the world, they’ve just been exhausting. Everyone I love is still healthy and happy, no one has had any major losses in their life and my business is doing well. Making the decision to sell my house was a big one, but I knew it was coming. It just came a couple years sooner than I had expected (I don’t intend to stay where I am when my son graduates high school in 2 1/2 years. It’s been a great place to raise my kids but it’s not where I want to spend the rest of my life). I knew I needed to simplify my life (and my business). It’s only my son and I at home now and while my house wasn’t huge, it was more than I felt like taking care of (especially the yard, even though I loved my pool). It’s still crazy to me when I think about the cost of living in Northern California… (specifically close to the Bay Area), but that’s for another conversation. Part of winding down for me is getting all my client projects completely wrapped up as soon as possible. These could probably have been done sooner, but of course I’m the bottleneck (I have done a pretty thorough job of cutting expenses this year, which included my project manager). I’d love to have her work with me again but in a different capacity. As I start planning for 2017 I know that to do what I want to do I’m going to need some help in different areas. I guess it would still be project management but it won’t be client projects. They’ll be my projects. In order to wind the year down and enjoy the last couple weeks of the year (not working, although I’ll probably be doing some work, but again, it will be on my projects. No calls, no new projects) I need to close the books on these projects (and I’m sure my clients want that too). So that’s step #1. The next step to really winding the year down is to start getting ready for 2017. I’ve probably gotten at least a couple emails this week and last about planning for 2017 already. I still haven’t decided what that will look like for me, but I have an idea of where I’ll start. Planning for 2017 When I look at planning anything I tend to work from the end backwards (which I’m sure most people do… you need to have an end goal, right?). The idea of backwards engineering makes more sense for me than any other method. Before I can decide what I want my next year to look like I have to do a good, hard look at what didn’t work this year (and what worked well). I can tell you without a doubt that my biggest take away from 2016, as it relates to my business, has been emailing daily. I’ve been a fan and customer of Ben Settle’s for well over a year (I subscribed to his list for about a year before I became a customer). It took me until August of this year to start stepping into his email methods. I jokingly say that it was my ‘almost-daily email’ because it took me some time to work up to daily (and I admit it, I still miss a day here and there). The benefits have astounded me to say the least.

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