[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to WP Coffee Talk with your podcast barista, Michelle Freshette. Special thanks to our sponsors WS Forum and Beaver Builder. If you're interested in joining WP Coffee Talk as a guest or a sponsor, please visit our
[email protected]. And now on with the show.
Welcome to WP Coffee Talk. I'm your podcast barista, Michelle Freshette, serving up the WordPress stories from around the world. And today my guest, as I often say, is a friend. Welcome Adam Weeks, who is the co founder of Cirrus Influence to the podcast this week. Hey, Adam, nice to have you here.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Thank you, Ms. Michelle. It is nice to be here on this lovely fall day.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. I often talk about the weather. I like to think that WP Coffee Talk is evergreen content, but that doesn't mean we can't acknowledge where we live, where we are in the world and what the weather's doing.
It's almost 05:00 here and it's getting dark because it is mid November in are you where are you talking to me from today?
[00:01:07] Speaker B: I am in California. Specifically Northern California. And when you ask people from California if they're from Southern California, they usually just say California. People from Northern California will specify northern California? I am in Northern California. If you look on a map in between Tahoe and Sacramento, like on the way up to Tahoe, so we're in. So I get to get to the snow fairly quickly, but I don't live in the snow. I used to live in the snow and I don't have to anymore.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: So life is if you live in New York, there is no not living.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: In the snow, right? Yeah, no, it just is.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: We've already had the first snowfall of the year. Luckily it didn't stick and it was on Halloween night, so there you go. So I know you, but for those people who haven't met you yet, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Thank you. So my background is in education. I've been a school teacher and a school principal. And then my good friend Jonathan Woold, as I was making a transition out of education, he bugged me about helping out with post status and helping out with sponsorships. And that's where you and I met. So, yeah, post status is my entryway. I've always had WordPress stuff in the background. Being a teacher is always, hey, can you build a wedding? Yeah, that kind of thing. But being in the community, post status has been my home there and yeah, where I got to meet you. And I think we met in Oklahoma, right?
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Yeah. I was just going to say that.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: February in Oklahoma was fantastic, especially compared.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: To Rochester, New York. I will absolutely say I didn't have to wear a jacket. Everybody else was wearing jackets. I was like, this is like spring.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's kind of my background into WordPress. I help Bob with do the Woo and we do sponsorships there, too. But, yeah, Cirrus influence is my gig here in the world of WordPress, helping mainly product companies get more exposure and increase their influence. Yeah, that's kind of what we do.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: I love that. Well, the first thing I always ask everybody after introduce yourself, is tell us about your mug. And for those of you, those people who are watching on YouTube, they get to see it, too. So hold it up and tell us about your so let's just go. That's what it says.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: You got to have that sound effect there with them. Yeah, so let's just go. So the story behind this one is that I told you I was a school principal. I was up in Coeur d'alene, Idaho, and this was during the pandemic, and we were deciding what was going to come next. My wife and I, we've got three kids, and we were on the fence, what comes next? Should we stay here? But what we ended up doing was a road trip around the country. Took a year off, just did homeschooling during the pandemic. But this was the gift my wife gave me when she was like, yeah, Adam, I think you're done doing that. Like, let's just go. And so I love this mug. It's got a crack in it, so I'm trying to be very careful with it. But, yeah, let's just go. So, yeah, that's my mug. And I did brew a cup of coffee. Dark roast, just for you, Miss Michelle.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Is that what you're really drinking in your mug?
[00:04:30] Speaker B: It is. It's coffee. I can't show you or it'll pour out of my laptop. But yes, it is coffee. I do have one other mug here. It is Courage and it is my cup of water. Courage. And it is actual water.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: It's good, too.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: Well, I always show my mug, too. So my mug today is I always turn it the wrong way. Your mental well being matters.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Big orange heart.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Big orange heart.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: I love it.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: This was Give and Big Orange Heart. And Give sold this on their website and the proceeds went to Big Orange Heart.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Love it. The perfect mug for today. Very nice.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: I have carbonated water. I have what do they call it? Seltzer. I have grapefruit seltzer in my mug today.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Flavored water.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Otherwise, I mean, I'm already an insomniac. I don't need help from caffeine at 05:00 in the evening. Just stay away.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: So the grapefruit sat next to the can, and the essence of grapefruit in it meld it. And now you have the grapefruit.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: That's my favorite kind. It works. It works for me. So tell me, how did you get started? WordPress? I know you just said as a teacher, as a principal, you had introduction to it, but how did that happen?
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Always a bit of a nerd. My wife, she was a speech therapist. Wanted to kind of start her own speech therapy blog site. So hey, let's learn that. And then throughout the years at the school that I was teaching at, they wanted a new website. So, all right, let's build it in. WordPress and I partnered with different people to make that happen. All along the road, for many years, WordPress has been that thing. But then Jonathan, who, when I was up in Coeur d'alene, Idaho, I was his kid's school principal, and we became good friends, played games, and we were on that big road trip doing a big clockwise circle around the United States.
I started a small marketing company to help these private schools better market to their communities. And I was having to make this decision, can I grow this thing into something that will support my family, or do I need to go back into education? So I was talking to Jonathan. He's like, hey, come help me with Posttatus. We're growing the sponsorship program. Postatus is growing. And so, yeah, I learned a lot during that, fell in love with the community, and I guess the rest is history. The rest isn't really history. It's like current day rest is ongoing. Yes, the rest is ongoing. But yeah, that's my basic and I got to go to WordCamps, and I was encouraged and just met the most lovely people in WordPress.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: Absolutely. I think they are the most lovely people. Also, I think it's probably been coined by somebody else, but you just made me think of the rest is history in the making?
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Because it's not in the making.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: In the making.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Yeah, we're doing it. Doing it today.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: What's something that you think that we, as web designers, web builders, web developers, like the web community, doesn't focus enough attention on their sites that would make things better for the end user, the site visitor.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: So I think about this from a marketing perspective, and there's a gentleman by the name of Donald Miller, and I don't think he made this idea. It's not his original idea, but it's essentially that the hero's journey is a way to think of our customers. And when someone meets us for the first time, we want them to use as few calories as possible, energy in the brain to help them understand how we can help them.
We, as the company, we're not the hero. The website isn't about us. The website is about the person who is visiting it for the first time. And so I think of it in three ways, that there's this grunt test he likes to do. And what does the website do? It helps you buy groceries, whatever the thing it does. Can you quickly grunt the purpose of this website? And if you can't grunt it out, then it's too complex and it starts something like this.
What is the problem? We need to clearly know that. Oh, yeah, you understand the problem. You got the problem. What is the problem? What we do to solve that problem. Like, oh, that's what they do and then how it feels once that problem is solved.
I don't think that people who are building websites think of that often enough.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Yeah. So a lot of the times there's like, what's the clear call to action? But more than that, why are we calling them to action? And what is that action going to do to help solve their problem?
[00:09:13] Speaker B: Buy now. I don't care about you. Why would I buy now?
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: No.
So, yes, have a call to action, but lead the person along a very short journey to know why they would care to buy now.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Make it make sense. Yeah, I love that. That's really good.
Let's see, what was my next question? See, I got thinking about marketing, and I couldn't I try to do them all in order, but sometimes it doesn't always happen.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: We can jump around it's. All right.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: It's like 200 episodes, whatever. I don't know. I should know this by now.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Well, apparently, according to Twitter, you're one of the most well connected people in WordPress. So you do?
[00:09:57] Speaker A: Who do I see people at WordCamps all the time, have no idea who I am, and that's just fine with me.
I'll get to know them. I'll get to know them.
What's something that you wish you had known earlier in your WordPress journey that you've learned since that would have made life a lot easier had you known it sooner?
[00:10:16] Speaker B: I think WordPress is unique as far as a community goes as to what the aligned incentives are. And I'll say that by it's built on the backs of volunteers. At the same time, there are people making a ton of money, people that are struggling to make any money, and I think just truly, like, internalizing why this business works, here why it doesn't work. And that's something that took me a while to kind of figure out what the aligned incentives are and why people would be interested in something or not interested in another.
That's one thing. And then I found it's just really beneficial to me to start those conversations at Word camps by asking questions and just, hey, what are you working on?
What problems are you trying to solve right now? So, yeah, understanding the ecosystem and just kind of took me a little while.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: It took me a little while to know there was an ecosystem. So you were a step ahead of me.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: That too. Yeah, that too.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: What is this thing? What word camps? What's a word camp?
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: What are some of your favorite word camp? Or meetup talks or experiences? Maybe something that was like a pivotal moment for you, something that you learned or somebody that you met?
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Such a good question.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: Thank you. I wrote them all myself.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: You did? It's hard to boil down to one.
The interesting part has been when you hear some of the numbers, this is actually at a cloud fest, and there was a talk about how many WordPress websites there are and how big of an impact the people in this room, the lives they have changed by simply doing their job and being creative and figuring that out. So you take that and you juxtapose.
I was told that if we estimate how big the community is, the people who actually care about it, that's less than 10,000 people, maybe 5000. There's different numbers going out there. So huge impact. And when you go to more than one Word camp, you realize, oh, wait, these are the same people I saw over here, and these are the same people. It's not that big. And that we can have a significant impact by just being upfront and getting to know the people around us.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's true. And it is true. I think some of the local camps, that becomes less true. There's a lot more people that aren't part of the huge ecosystem, which is why I would love to see more people attending those local events. But the big ones tend to be a lot of the same friends that we've made. And I love seeing my friends, don't get me wrong, it's awesome, but I love seeing new people join the community as well.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: I think the important part is going to the local ones and then shepherding them to the big ones for those people. Like, there's a local Sacramento meetup once a month, and I think one person in that whole group had ever been to a Big Word camp, and I was surprised by that.
Okay.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
So Cirrus influence, I love that. It makes me think of Sirius. Like, this is serious influence, right?
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: But I also like the idea of, like, Cirrus clouds are just they're wispy, they're there.
They're not like rain clouds. They're not storm clouds. They're not there to hurt. They don't even overshadow things. So what made you decide on Cirrus? Maybe I touched on it already. But what made you decide on Cirrus as the name, but also tell us a little bit more about what you do with Cirrus.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: Yeah, you definitely hit on it. I've always loved clouds. I love looking at clouds. And then early on career. This is cloud computing. And what is cloud computing? And trying to explain it to people what cloud computing is and well, it's just computers somewhere else and that kind of thing. And then when we were coming up for a name for this PR marketing company for companies in WordPress, I really want to reach the WordPress community.
We want them to have influence in this community. You have an important story to tell.
You built this product because there was a problem to solve. And by growing your influence because it's not about me. It's not my influence. I don't need my influence. My job is to help you grow your influence in this community. So, yeah, Cirrus influence, the high wispy clouds this cloud computing thing that we're all a part of. And then the influence that I want these others to have and a lot of what it's doing, it's helping to solve the problem a lot of for the smaller companies. Because if you're a big company, you have a PR department, you have those resources, you should and that's not always true.
If you're a smaller product company, there is definitely a need to have someone help you get that exposure, get in front of an audience that is going to care about your product.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: That makes perfect sense. So I often have coming from a marketing background, I think there are a lot of people, even business owners who don't understand the difference between sales, marketing and PR.
So you are not a sales company.
You're a little bit marketing, but you're really more the PR and marketing are so close sometimes that it's hard to draw that line between them. But PR definitely includes marketing, but marketing doesn't necessarily include PR. So can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:16:24] Speaker B: So I think of it as marketing is this umbrella. Basically you are marketing anytime you're telling somebody else about your company. That in my mind falls under this very broad marketing umbrella. And some of it can be affiliate marketing. That is marketing, direct advertising, branding where if you're a physical place, you just put your sign up. That's technically marketing, mailers, all of that. So there's these columns I think of visually when I'm thinking of, okay, this is all marketing and marketing is in support of sales essentially is how that works is we market to fill our funnel and then out of all of this audience, there's a certain percentage that we fill will buy our product. It becomes a numbers game of the right numbers, which that's an interesting thing about marketing in WordPress is again, I said 10,000.
We're not going to have a huge audience watch this podcast. The numbers aren't going to be boggling. But the people who do listen right, but the people who do listen to this, they are influential in this community. These are important people to be in front of. You listener are important. And if we were talking in front of this exact group of people in a physical place, oh wow, this is a big deal. Like if it was 100 people, wow, that's a big deal. So marketing, there's paid marketing and there's earned marketing and earned media. That's the public relations part. There are very few pure PR agencies anymore. So we say we're about 60 40, I would say. So 60% of it is us just getting you earned media, making you a part of the conversation. What's happening on Twitter? What's happening in post status slack? What's happening on the Taverns comment section? Let me help you get in there. PR, we want you to be doing these talks as different events happen. We're going to help you get placed for these talks, we're going to prep you for those talks. All these things are typically free and helping them with that. But then there is this other bucket of content creators, maybe your larger YouTube channels that do have significant numbers. They're hitting thousands, maybe hundreds large audiences and those are typically going to be a paid spot where they aren't maybe as interview centric as much they are saying this plugin versus this plugin and that is also a very valuable place to be. And kind of the third area is the hosting companies themselves have media outlets and they can honestly only talk about themselves so much where they want to highlight other product companies that are solving problems for their customers and getting them connected that way. So that's kind of how we think of it. Core WordPress exactly what we're doing here today. Your post, your do, the woo, your tavern, your WP Mary, all those guys, small but influential. Then your larger, you know, influencers that are more generalist and then your hosting companies and those are really important for that distribution piece.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: So you mentioned speaking at a conference, things like that. Those should not cost somebody money, they just shouldn't. So how much did I charge you to be on the podcast today Adam?
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Right, you charged me the exact amount of money that you should no, it's zero.
It's zero.
And here's that inlined incentive things is that there's two parts to this. One is you as a content creator in this, you need to create content, you need to interview people. People who are doing products, who have things, they have solved problems for their customers and that's interesting. Your audience wants to hear from them. So there's an aligned incentive where hey, I want people to hear about me, I want to get on some podcasts and hey, I'm a podcast content creator, I want to interview interesting people, solving interesting problems.
That's kind of how it works.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And a lot of people don't think they listen to podcasts, they don't think I should try to get on that podcast because there's imposter syndrome comes in there's like oh, I'm not good enough, no, she wouldn't want me, he wouldn't want me. All of those kinds of things kind of come into play like I'm not interesting.
None of those are true, right?
The creators are always looking for content.
You are interesting. There have been a couple anyway, you are interesting.
Really. I think about PR more along the lines of branding. You're not necessarily like oh you've been on my podcast today, suddenly you're going to have like twelve sales by Wednesday. It doesn't work that way, right? Just like having a table at a Word camp doesn't guarantee you sales either. But it's about branding, brand recognition, it's about putting a human face with the brand as so like people can hear about serious influence and they don't know who that is. But now they know that Adam Weeks is serious influence, and they know your face, they know who you are.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: And you're exactly right.
A lot of times a founder will start their marketing journey with something like Google AdSense or Know, and like, oh, I spent this amount of money, I got this many eyeballs. That's how marketing works. And that is a very small part of marketing. And that is one of the reasons why what we do can be difficult to sell sometimes, because they'll want numbers from me. I actually had one client say, well, can we pay you for the number of podcasts you get us on? Everybody's got a podcast. Like, sure, I'll charge you all the money. No, you want me to be willing to try and get you on the right podcasts.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: You want me to be willing to go after those bigger things and then how do you measure that? What's your ROI.
It's important to look at it in a long term, like you said, branding perspective. Do you want this brand to be around a long time? If so, you have to think beyond advertising and start thinking about branding. And that's going to be that PR element is a big part of that.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Absolutely. And even though maybe it doesn't cost anything to be on a podcast and doesn't cost anything to speak at a word camp, the reason you pay somebody like Adam Weeks is because he is solving the problem that you don't know how to solve for yourself. Just like paying somebody to build your website or paying somebody to paint my house. You could do those things yourself. Maybe, but wouldn't you rather I mean, if I tried to paint, there'd be paint all over the floor and everything else. So I want a professional. I replaced my furnace earlier this year. Guess who didn't put the new furnace in? Me, because I don't know how to do that.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: Me neither. Not me. It's exactly right.
As business owners, I think it is our job to think about spending as much time doing the thing that we are uniquely suited for and enjoy doing. And when you're a solopreneur, you're the everything officer. You do it all because you have to, as you grow, as you have a little bit of margin. All right, well, I'm going to get a CPA to do my books because I don't want to do quicken anymore.
Marketing is one of those things that I think happens fairly quickly thereafter where I need more people to hear about me. And you can outsource different aspects of that. And we don't create content. We're not here to be your graphic designer. We're not helping you with that part. We're helping to make sure the stuff that you already have and who you are is what gets out there and gets out there in front of the eyeballs where you want them to be. Because, again, yeah, you can pay Google to do AdSense and all that. That's fantastic. But is it truly going to bring in the right people?
[00:24:55] Speaker A: And is it scalable, honestly? Right. Like, how much are you dumping into one channel when you should be hitting more than one channel? So absolutely, I think about that a lot.
I used to write blog posts for the local newspaper here in Rochester, New York. And I wrote an article about why you would hire somebody to build your website. Because with options like Wix and whatever else is out there and learning WordPress. Yes. As somebody who's a house painter could absolutely build their own website, but they will spend a week not painting and not making an income as opposed to paying somebody else to do that once and then do updates where somebody's doing that while you're painting and making an income. So it just makes sense. It just makes sense.
[00:25:41] Speaker B: Yeah. My little short illustration for that is you have someone doing lawn care and they put the investment in getting tractors and lawn mowers and all the weed eaters and all that equipment, and they're mowing someone's lawn and doing a great job, and they notice, hey, your gutters are full. And you go to the homeowner, hey, do you want me to clean out your gutters? Would you pay me to do that? And oh, sure, I'd pay you to do that. I don't want to get up on my roof. And so you take time and you do that and you get paid and it feels good. But while you were up there, you noticed that there were some shingles that were loose on the roof. Hey, homeowner, would you like to pay me to fix those shingles? I noticed that they're broken. Oh, sure, I'd be happy to pay you do that. Hey, while I was doing that, I saw that your chimney and would you like me to do some mortar work on your chimney? And suddenly you've noticed that your expensive machinery is sitting, not working.
It feels good because you made a sale. And that's why we kind of follow that sometimes. It's like, oh good, someone's willing to pay me to do this. But then we lose sight of if you focused on the thing you invested in, which in that case was doing lawns, you could have grown your lawn care business rather than being an everything to everybody type of situation.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Lawn care and handyman.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: Yeah, all the things.
You also can't spend all the money to have to outsource everything. Do so judiciously. But everything needs a budget, and your marketing needs to have a budget. A certain amount that is going to be the paid advertising, a certain amount is going to these different places. Because like you said, do not put all your in one channel. Don't put all your ducks in one, your eggs in one basket, ducks in.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: One, all of those things, all of them metaphors.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Don't do it baby ducks. I don't know.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: All right, let's move into the rapid fire questions. I based these off of the idea that inside the actor's studio, james Lipton, he does these wonderful interviews with all these amazing actors and then he does these same questions at the end for everybody. So that's what they're not really rapid. You can take the time you need to answer them. But anyway, that's where it came from. So diving in what are two or three must have plugins that you would recommend to somebody who's building their own website?
[00:27:55] Speaker B: That's going to be a good question.
However, it depends.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Of course it does. But what are some that you would recommend?
[00:28:12] Speaker B: Groundhog was one that we needed a CRM. So that's the one we jumped into. Groundhog a CRM is great if you're.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: Doing sales, for sure, yeah. And relation management.
[00:28:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And then multicolab anil has built a really cool plugin for collaborating in the what they've been able to show is that when we go to build a website, a lot of people's workflows are Google docs and, hey, let's edit here, suggesting here and that kind of thing. And then you have to then copy and paste and it takes a lot longer. And doing that in the editor is a game.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: So absolutely.
Anil from Multidots, who has the multi collab, who I don't know, some PR company pitched him and he's going to be on WP Coffee Talk. We're recording this weekend. So that might have had some influence from some cloud company. I don't know.
[00:29:12] Speaker B: Anyway, there you go. There's some backstory. And what's neat about what we get to do is we get to be authentic when we share this because it all kind of works itself out and, yeah, that's been fun, but those are the two that are high on my list right now.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Fantastic. So, next question. Have you had a mentor at all when you started your WordPress journey, whether it was an official mentor, a coach mentor, whatever, or somebody who you just like the way they do business and you emulate them and ask them questions, like, whatever.
If you have, who was it?
[00:29:51] Speaker B: Michelle Frichette. Is there another answer besides Michelle?
[00:29:56] Speaker A: There's so many.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: I think that's my answer. A few people, a lot of people.
But yeah, Jonathan Woold was the kind of the guy who pushed me into this, so I got to get a lot of credit to him. Spencer Foreman different people have bob is really someone that I want to be like when I grow up.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: Seriously, I think we all want to be like Bob. I just want his hat. Some days I want his hat. I mean, he's got a cool hat.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: So many people. But honestly, Michelle, you are legitimately high on my list.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: Thank you. I've enjoyed working with you. Ah, thank you. Well, my next question you can't answer with anybody you've just said, so you can take them. All off the list and so it's going to be a little who is somebody that you admire in the WordPress community and why?
[00:30:43] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.
[00:30:45] Speaker A: I know you just gave us all your good answers. Now you got to think of somebody else.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: I admire a lot of people. Say Reed is someone who I have admired in that she has this just incredibly unsatiable burning desire to make this thing better and she has been willing to go through some difficult stuff and she's still here, is what has been impressive to me. So, yeah, I'm going to go with Say Reed on that one.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: Absolutely. She could have walked away at least three times in the last several months based on things that she's been involved. Yeah, I agree. She's definitely somebody people should look up to and learn about if they don't already know her. What's something that you'd like to learn in WordPress but that you haven't tackled yet?
[00:31:37] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: Such good questions.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: These are good questions and I'm supposed to answer them quickly.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: Just no dead air, that's all I ask. No dead air.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: Right.
I feel that I still have some of the basics to spend more time in because honestly, that's not my daily experience.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: A lot of what I do is helping others do that and I know enough to be dangerous, I know enough to break stuff and I am tired of feeling that way and I just want to get back to some of the basics and I'm going to throw in there AI.
It's the answer to all the questions.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Everything everywhere and leveraging it. There's an art to it, I think, and I have not mastered the art of it yet. But asking good questions, that's the thing, right? Yeah. I needed a title the other day. I had to ask it three different ways before the title hit for me, so I get that very much.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: What's one of the biggest mistakes that you've ever made in WordPress and what did you learn from it?
[00:32:45] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.
Again, I'm going back to Jonathan. Jonathan kind of threw me in the deep end a little bit when I was doing cold calls, cold emails for Posttatus. And so posttatus had jumped up their sponsorship significantly from what it was, and I ended up asking someone who had been a former sponsor at a much lower rate. I'd never met her and she was lovely, but she was pretty frustrated because I was the bearer of bad news that this thing is ten times more expensive than what it used to be. It was also more valuable and she was interested. But there's a lot of politics and people who had been different places and I was oblivious to that. I didn't know that, oh, this company owns that company. And I have had foot in mouth syndrome a number of times. As I have said, oh, what about this? And no like, Adam, you don't know what you're talking about. You're right, I did not. I have learned so much. Yes, I now know more. And that is one of the tricky parts of WordPress is that because it's such a small community, you don't know who knows who. And you have to be nice to everybody because also true friends, something you never know.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: I wish that I could say I didn't know what it tasted like to have my own foot in my mouth, but I also know that, too.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: It happens. We learn from it, though. That's why I asked that second part of the question. What did you learn? And you definitely learn about, um, okay, let's look at something more positive. But what's your proudest WordPress moment?
[00:34:25] Speaker B: Oh, goodness.
I would say so. There's two parts. Was speaking at CloudFest when it came back to the US.
I was second in line for this talk because it wasn't in my wheelhouse and it was about how to pick a host for your WordPress project and going down the rabbit hole of we don't have a really good way to judge hosting companies except for their own marketing materials. And I got to know some really interesting people because I was doing that talk.
I was bold and got to know people who were really a part of that community. So that's one thing I'm proud of is that, hey, I'm doing this talk. I'm going to give a really good talk. In order for me to give a good talk, I got to talk to a bunch of people and they were all so willing to share with me their thoughts on a complicated issue.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: Yeah. I have often said if you want to ask a question with twelve different answers, ask a group of twelve people who the best host is because they all have a different answer to that.
And it depends because it's based on your needs, for sure.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: Right.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: We all have one we love to hate and it's not always the same one, but like, oh, I love this one, this one, this one. Don't ever go there. People love to tell you who not to host with, who not to host.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: With, and then you learn their reasons and then you think, well, was that a logical reason or is that an emotional I was going to say because.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: The person sitting right next to them goes, well, that's my favorite host. So you just never know. Yeah, for sure.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: It's difficult. Yeah, that was my thing is at the end of it, I feel I gave a good talk because I asked people who knew more than I did.
[00:36:22] Speaker A: And that's the way we learn. For sure. Absolutely. I love that.
And as a former teacher, principal, whatever, I love that you embrace learning so much that you brought it into this next career, which is awesome. Speaking of careers, if you weren't working in WordPress web PR. Let's say anything to do with your current career. What's another career that you might like to attempt?
Don't say going back to teaching. Say something more interesting, like Uber driver. I don't know.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: How much fun would it be to be, like, a race car driver? Something silly like that? Yeah, I'm going to go with motorsports. That just sounds like fun. An industry sounds terrifying.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: And yes, absolutely, I love it. Okay, well, I'm very curious now what the next question is, or answer is because the next question is, what's something on your bucket list? And I'm just wondering if it's a daredevil thing or maybe something completely different.
[00:37:19] Speaker B: I would like to visit all of the continents that's on my I want to travel continents. Yeah, I want to get them all.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: The hardest one is Antarctica.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: It is. And that'll probably be the last. And if I don't miss it, I'll die happy. Anyways.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: It'S the only continent that I haven't had anybody from on the show. Like, nobody's ever been on the show from Antarctica. Is anybody from, like, while they're right. Like, so if you go to Antarctica, you've got to be a repeat customer. And so that I can say, Look, I've podcasted from all of the know.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: Let's make it happen. Let's do it. We'll go on a boat ride.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: I love it. I will sit here. You go on the boat ride.
Whatever we name.
I don't think the battery would work. I don't know.
Show us or tell us about a hidden talent or interest that you have that people in the WordPress community might not know about. Now, I've had people get up and dance for me. I've had somebody pick up a saxophone. So what's yours?
[00:38:29] Speaker B: All right, so I work with being high school teacher and junior high. I have to come up with stupid tricks, and so this is my trick. All right, so see if you can do this. All right. Can you do this?
[00:38:42] Speaker A: No, I can't.
[00:38:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that's my oh, my gosh.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: I feel like an idiot.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Wait, it's an optical illusion. So for those of you on audio, you got to go back and watch the video.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: All right? And after we get off, you're going to show me how to do that, because my hand doesn't want to bend that way, and I'm sure it does.
I just can't figure it out.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: Okay, that's my stupid trick.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: I've been flummoxed. I love it. I love it, I love it. Okay, so if people are interested in connecting with you learning more, where do they find you online?
[00:39:18] Speaker B: Well, there's this really cool website called WP Speakers, and I think that's where you should go.
Adam weeks on WP speakers. There's really no other place that you should go to except for WP Speakers.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: You are a PR man right to the end. But what's your website? If people want to hit up your.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: Theoristinfluence.Com, find us there. We would love to have a chat about how we can raise your influence in the WordPress community.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: Fantastic. If you are listening to this episode and you want to connect back on any of the things we've talked about today, you can go to wpcoffeetalk.com, look for Adam's episode and all of the links will be there as well as the transcript of this episode in the show.
Whatever. I don't ask people for a headshot. I just dig one up on the internet and use it. So you're going to have to wait and see which one I find for you.
It'll be fun.
Anything else you'd like to share with us before we sign off today?
[00:40:18] Speaker B: Last thing is Marcus Burnett and I have been working on the WP world on a list of lists. So if you listen to this before Black Friday, there is a list of all of the lists for your Black Friday deals. So I encourage you to head on over to the WP world and see what Marcus and I have done there.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: I love it. I did notice that yesterday. By the way, I was all over that website yesterday editing my profile, so I wanted to make sure I got all the things in there. Thank you so much, Adam, for spending some time with me and letting me hear more of your story. Even friends, I know I don't know everything about them, so it's pretty awesome to learn more. And I appreciate you very much for spending some time with me today. Thank you.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: It was fun.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: Absolutely. For everybody else. We'll see you on the next episode of WP coffee talk.
