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Just because you're an introvert doesn't mean you can't build a business. It doesn't mean you're afraid to get on stage and talk about your success -- or failures. Ken Elliott knows this role all too well. He's a self-described "networking introvert" that built a WordPress agency with his co-founder, will be emceeing WordCamp US next month, and appeared on this podcast! We dove deep into how he built his agency, lessons learned from servicing clients, and what steps he's taking to grow the business through 2022. If you enjoy today's show, please share it on social media! Important links Ken on Twitter bkreative.net Support the show; Join our #linksquad membership ✨Check out what InMotion hosting is up to with their new Managed WordPress product!

What if you locked yourself in a room and threw away the key to work on your business? Stop the Slacking, the doom scrolling, but forced to focus on the agenda of improving...everything. That's exactly what Kim Coleman, co-founder Paid Memberships Pro & Sitewide Sales, did to re-focus the Sitewide Sales business. Running a business of 2 core products, 14+ employees, and with her husband...it was time to "get away." If you enjoy today's episode, please share it on social media! Links Kim Coleman on Twitter Paid Memberships Pro Sitewide Sales Jason Coleman on Matt Report Support the show; Join our #linksquad membership ✨ Check out what InMotion hosting is up to with their new Managed WordPress product!

Corey is no stranger to building product. In part one, we chatted about his legacy of products, and selling his WordPress plugin. Today, we'll be back chatting about what goes into making great products. Important links Corey on Twitter Gelform Mexican Train Online Where will the WordPress middleclass go? Check out the NEW stuff from InMotion hosting!

I'm chatting with Corey Maas, former owner of the Kanban for WordPress plugin. After a few years back in the saddle of day jobbing, he's now running Social Link Pages plugin for WordPress. He also spent some time during the pandemic launching a new online game -- built on WordPress. Come learn what it's like to sell your plugin business and venture back into a day job...and then back again. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider buying me a virtual coffee or joining the membership. Corey on Twitter Kanban for WordPress Social Link Pages Gelform Mexican Train Support the show! ✨ Try Managed WordPress on InMotion hosting by clicking here.

In today's episode, I want to chat about the current vibe in WordPress. Compare and contrast the community vibe, to the business vibe. Porto looked like a ton of fun, sad I missed it! The WP Minute showed up in a big way, so I'm really thankful for that. Plus! I couldn't hold off from ranting about the WordPress content space...again. Say THANK YOU to InMotion hosting for sponsoring the podcast. Support the show by purchasing us a digital coffee or joining the annual membership! Links mentioned https://thewpminute.com/ https://thewpminute.com/where-will-the-wordpress-middle-class-go/ https://masterwp.com/ https://poststatus.com/ WP Tavern: Nathan Wrigley & Matt Mullenweg

Rachel Winchester is challenging us to think about WordPress as a canvas for art. WordPress as a paint brush, not an NFT. In this episode we uncover how she found WordPress and bringing those skills to her day job at DigitalCube. As a loyal Elementor builder, what does Rachel think about Gutenberg and FSE? Tune in to find out! Find Rachel on Twitter https://twitter.com/VisualWebmaster Rachel's Website https://www.visualwebmaster.com/ DigitalCube https://en.digitalcube.jp/ Subscribe https://mattreport.com/subscribe Buy me a coffee to support the show https://buymeacoffee.com/mattreport ✨ Thanks to InMotion for supporting the show. Check out my InMotion deal here: https://mattreport.com/inmotion

The most common piece of advice I think WordPress freelancers receive first is to "find your niche." Easier said than done. Niches are still hard to find. Crowded markets together with figuring out what you're best at providing to customers can be a challenge. What if that niche involves web sustainability? That's not a crowded space -- right now. You, a developer, literally saving the planet by coding efficient web applications and optimizing WordPress?! Sounds like a great opportunity to me! That is just a slice of what Hannah Smith does for her clients at https://opcan.co.uk/. Learn about that and more in today's episode with Hanna Smith! If you enjoyed this episode, consider supporting the show by buying us a virtual coffee or joining the membership.

Today's guest, Ines van Dijk, is helping WordPress product owners get better at customer support. With over a decade of experience in the WordPress customer support space with WooCommerce and Automattic, Ines knows what it takes to run a successful support team. You can hire her team to help build you a complete plan for supporting users or download some ready-made templates for responding to customers. If you enjoy today's episode please share it on social media and consider supporting the show by buying us a digital coffee.

There's an entire industry built on selling you the Holy Grail of raising your rates. Courses, memberships, ebooks, videos all assuring you that $10,000 projects are just a click away. Why wouldn't you believe them? They're on the gram throwing hundred dollar bills off a boat or speeding away in a Lambo. To be fair, I haven't seen a Lambo video in some time, but the one that gets me the most now is holding up an iPhone in selfie mode with AirPods and a cleverly placed whiteboard in the background. How about grit and persistence? Patience and confidence? How about going through the paces enough to uncover your self-worth and simply raising your rates. That's exactly what Chima Mmeje of Zenithcopy did…plus a whole lot more. I read her blog post, The Year I Learned Audacity and instantly DM'd her to ask if she'd be willing to share her story here. Luckily for you and I -- she said yes. If you enjoy today's episode please share it on social media and support the show by buying me a digital coffee for as little as $5 or whatever you think the show is worth at buymeacoffee.com/mattreport

There's a new cohort of WordPress celebrity hitting the spotlight these days and I'm here for it. When we look back in the Gutenberg history books we'll be able to show that blocks, patterns, and javascript not only rocked the code of the project, but the community as well. Some immediately dropped out, other stayed, and new stars appeared. Born out of the ashes of WordPress old, rising like a Phoenix came our new celebrity (hero?): Aurooba Ahmed! Okay, okay, I know I'm going really heavy with that one. She doesn't consider herself a WordPress celebrity and prefers her collection of plugins and developer chops speak more than her Twitter space or podcast appearances. Today we'll learn how new stars handle their fame, build plugins, host + appear on podcasts, and balance a day job. If you enjoy today's show please share it on social media and consider supporting us by buying a digital coffee at buymeacoffee.com/mattreport

What does the word entrepreneur mean anymore? To you? I think there’s that slightly jaded view of the TechCrunch Disrupt vision of days gone by. Building a unicorn. Changing the world. Buying that Porsche you always wanted. It’s about the endgame we so cleverly convince ourselves of. However, some of the best business builders are doing it because they are naive. Wait. Naive? Hold that thought: not in a bad way, but in the way I am guilty of and maybe even you are too. We set out not knowing that the roller coaster ride is going to tip us upside down, spin us in a 360, and do it at speeds in excess of 100mph. If we thought the ride was going to be anything but gentle…maybe we would have never bought that ticket. Entrepreneurs are both lucky and crazy. Joe Howard founded WP Buffs and grew it to a point where it just wasn’t for him anymore. He put a CEO in place, retains majority ownership, and he barely thinks about it. He’s off building another product called Drifly and blogging at https://blog.driftly.app This might have been my favorite interview ever. Let me know what you think by sharing on social media or buying me a digital coffee at buymeacoffee.com/mattreport

From Expression Engine to WordPress, Rob Howard has built his WordPress agency as a flagship for larger agencies to source work to. Unqualified customers are the biggest threat to the early days of building a business. Also known as bad product fit, when we're offering something to the wrong customer, the whole relationship is setting off on the wrong foot. When you're offering your WordPress work to a customer that already gets it, in this case, other agencies, so much more can go right rather than wrong. We'll explore building an agency, hiring, and we'll throw in purchasing MasterWP for good measure. If you love the show please subscribe at mattreport.com/subscribe and consider buying me a virtual coffee or joining the membership at buymeacoffee.com/mattreport

What's the side effect from WordPress changing so rapidly? We're dragging blocks, inserting patterns, and visually building our themes these days. There's been great discussion spurred around themes, where Matt Mullenweg What's the side effect from WordPress changing so rapidly? We're dragging blocks, inserting patterns, and visually building our themes these days. There's been great discussion spurred around themes, where Matt Mullenweg wants 5,000 new themes in the directory while WP Minute Producers like Daniel Schutzsmith and Spencer Forman say we only need one. Even if we split the difference and built 2,500 new themes…who's going to build it? Not only is the code changing, but so are the people writing it all. This is the shift we're quietly seeing happen in the background. So what is a WordPress business owner to do? Find great WordPress developers or train up a willing engineer? Mayank Gupta joins us today to talk about his strategy to growing a WordPress team for his day job over at PerforMedia. He has strong opinions on educating and inspiring an individual -- possibly ignoring the typical WP rock star.

When you hear the phrase high performance WordPress websites, what examples come to mind? This is a phrase that I see a lot of companies using in their marketing, which includes Malcare, today’s guest and sponsor of this show. Products and services targeting the type of buyer that might be managing a high traffic site like a Buzzfeed or a large WooCommerce store, like, well I can’t think of one right now. High traffic or highly functional equals high performance? My vote goes to high value. I know it’s not as appealing in the marketing world, but there are lots of website owners that value their site’s speed and security that aren’t pushing millions or even 10’s of thousands of page views a month. And that’s what Akshat Choudhary and team are building at Malcare and Blogvault. The catch? Protecting valuable high performance WordPress websites so easily, you don’t even have to think about about it. Enjoy the show today, please share it on social media, and if you want to support my efforts here consider buying me a virtual coffee or joining the membership.

Hey listener, before we get started, if you’d like to support WordPress community member Andrey Savchenko or anyone else currently in the Ukraine, please donate here or here. (read his original tweet https://twitter.com/Rarst/status/1497516263597387782) I can comfortably admit that I didn’t see Artificial Intelligence as the next big thing for WordPress in 2022. The march to Gutenberg and FSE adoption across the product landscape is sure to reveal new opportunities to be introduced to our favorite low-code software. AI, however, wasn’t even close to what I was expecting to be the next big thing for us. Bertha.ai is an all-new solution for helping users craft a near infinite amount of text for your WordPress website. From H1’s to entire blog posts, what Vito Peleg and Andrew Palmer are creating with this tool is quite impressive. Let’s get the elephant (yes, the real one) out of the room first, shall we? Bertha isn’t leading us to copywriter extinction. Hearing from Andrew in today’s interview, Bertha should still be used as your writing assistant — not your writer. You can give the AI assistant the ideas, the direction, and what you want to focus on, but will still require some editing chops to refine it. It’s still a darn good tool. You can download Bertha for free from WordPress.org to try it yourself. Consider supporting the Matt Report before the robots take over at https://buymeacoffee.com/mattreport

If you found your way to this episode from my newsletter, thanks for taking part in one of the areas I lack most in: emailing my list. If you’re like me, stuck in a proverbial hamster wheel of self-doubt & content creation, today’s episode is for you. In fact, if it weren’t for today’s guests, I would have never got back into pressing send in MailerLite. (A recent switch from MailChimp, because I have a bad feeling about the Inuit acquisition.) If you need a boost of confidence or a programmatic way to warm up your newsletter engines again, Kim Doyal and Jason Resnick are here to help — with a twist. The duo joins me today to talk about their new co-venture, Deliverit. (use the full link so they know I sent ya, it's not an affiliate! https://getdeliverit.com/mattreport/) This will be a meta approach to building a newsletter list in public. They will share what works and what doesn’t, when it comes to growing your email list. Learn straight from the email horses mouth — it’s going to be exciting. Thanks to Malcare & Blogvault for supporting the show.

The house that WordPress built…or will build. It can be challenging for new WordPress freelancers to get started in this industry. You have to find the right tools, the right customers, get paid and…actually build the websites! Is there a right path to take? Meet Terry Carter, Manager at Newfold Digital WordPress Live & Blue Sky teams. Terry is also a WordPress freelancer who kick started his side hustle after winning a web design contest at a previous company. Terry joins us to share his experience with supporting WordPress & WooCommerce users at his day job, and what works for him as a part-time freelancer. We'll learn how the market jumped pre-COVID, how things are adjusting, and where you can spot new opportunities coming into the market. Thanks to Malcare & Blogvault for supporting the show.

I've known today's guest before I even ventured into the professional WordPress industry. In fact, it wasn't his themes that revolutionized my thinking, it was the checkout process. Brian Gardner launched a theme company using a payment portal and delivery tool called e-junkie. I just checked, they still exist, they were the Gumroad before Web 3.0 was even a thought in Web 2.0's mind. I couldn't believe it. Someone could zip up WordPress code, put it on a website, set a price, and someone could buy it?! I wanted to do the same thing. But until then, I had an agency to run so I used Revolution Themes, then Genesis, then to the whole StudioPress suite to make that happen. Fast forward, Gardner not only sold SP to WP Engine, but he left the gig shortly after, only to make a return with his latest product, Frost. Enjoy today's conversation with Brian Gardner, Principal Developer Advocate at WP Engine, creator of many things and many blogs. Find his newly redesigned blog at briandgardner.com. If you fancy supporting the show, buying me a digital coffee or joining my fantastic private Discord server, head on over to buymeacoffe.com/mattreport -- I'll shout your name from the Twitter rooftops.

Welcome back to the Matt Report, where we continue our special 2-part series with Josepha Haden Chomposy. If you haven’t listened to the previous episode, I suggest you go back and learn what the WordPress Executive Director does on a day to to day basis. Today, we’ll be exploring some meatier topics that come up in the community like contributor compensation and Five for the Future. If you didn’t already know, Josepha leads a podcast of her own. We’ll find out why Matt Mullenweg nudged her into that journey. Thanks to folks over at Malcare for supporting this episode of the Matt Report. If you want to support me, you can buy me a digital coffee or join the super-not-so-secret Discord group for $79/year at buymeacoffee.com/mattreport

If you’re like me, you know Josepha Haden Chomposy is the Director for WordPress the open source project in title, but you probably don’t know what she does on a day to day basis. Or that she’s part of the Open Source Group Division inside of Automattic. Something I always knew, but once framed that way in discussion, was more interesting to hear. I was lucky enough to chat with Josepha for nearly an hour, so I’m breaking up the conversation in two parts. Today, part 1, we’ll cover the logistics of her role, bringing WordCamps back, and the challenges with Gutenberg. Thanks to folks over at Malcare for supporting this episode of the Matt Report. If you want to support me, you can buy me a digital coffee or join the super-not-so-secret Discord group for $79/year at buymeacoffee.com/mattreport