With Special Guest Kathy Zant Founder of Emergent Governance Group and former Director of Marketing at KadencWP
Is your WordPress website truly secure? In this informative show, we dive into the potential risks posed by AI and how it could impact your site’s integrity. From unauthorized access to content generation challenges, learn the signs that your website may need an AI warning. Equip yourself with essential safety tips to protect your online presence. Don’t miss out — watch the video to safeguard your WordPress site!
Your WordPress website may need an AI warning label—here’s why regulators and users are demanding transparency. Learn what to disclose now.
With Special Guest Kathy Zant Founder of Emergent Governance Group and former Director of Marketing at KadencWP
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathyzant
Twitter /x – @kathyzant
Stroke of the Genius
https://www.zant.com/item/stroke-of-the-genius-ebook
This Week’s Sponsors
Jetpack: Jetpack
Ninja Forms: Ninja Forms
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Rollback Pro: Rollback Pro
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:22.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP-Tonic show. This is episode 1028. My God, I’ve been doing this for almost 9 years. We’ve got a great show, folks. We’ve got Kathy Zent with us, the founder of Merchant Governance Group and former director of marketing at KadenceWP. Kathy is well known in the WordPress community, has done a number of WordCamps and been an active member in the WordPress community. We’re going to be talking about all things AI, WordPress, Governance. It should be a fantastic show. I haven’t got my ever great and patient co-host Kurt with me. He’s at a conference this week. He’s managed to escape my beloved tribe, but I will do my best. So, Kathy, would you like to give us a quick, like, 20, 30-second intro about yourself, and then we’ll go into your background in a bit more detail in the main part of the show?
[00:01:25.010] – Kathy Zant
Sure. Well, Kathy Zant, I’ve been in, I’ve been using WordPress for, I mean, I have a backup that has version 2.0.1 and one of my backups. I was like, well, I guess that’s when I got started, but I didn’t really get involved with the community until about 9 years ago. And the rest is history. I have a, well, you’re gonna ask me about all my background and everything, but I really love the WordPress space, love the people in it especially, and love helping people figure out secure and good ways of doing new and innovative things.
[00:02:01.950] – Jonathan Denwood
So that’s fantastic. Like I say, we’re going to be talking about how WordPress sites might have a blindside around AI, AI and security, and the WordPress community to save. We’ve had some surprising, surprising events last week would be an understatement. I don’t know if Kathy has been keeping track of that with our beloved leader’s comings and goings. Uh, or if he— she even wants to talk about it, I’ll leave that to her discretion. She knows, she’s an experienced marketer, she knows how to handle me. But before we go into the meat and potatoes— she’s laughing at my jokes. Well, that’s a good sign, isn’t it? Um, but before we go into the meat and potatoes of the show, I’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:02:57.080] – Speaker 1
WP-Tonic is sponsored by Jetpack. Managing WordPress sites shouldn’t mean stitching together a pile of disconnected plugins. Jetpack brings security, performance, publishing, growth, and AI tools together in one WordPress-native toolkit. Use what you need: backup, scan, boost, social, video press, stats, and more. All with modernized dashboards built into WP Admin. For your site or your clients’ sites, see what Jetpack can do. jetpack.com. WP-Tonic is sponsored by Ninja Forms, and let’s talk about one of their powerful tools, conditional logic. Conditional logic is the clearest example. Every rule for the whole form lives in one panel instead of being buried field by field. On client work, build speed and low maintenance are part of your margin. A form that is fast to configure and that a client can run afterward without coming back means less friction during build and less support load after the handoff. Ninja Forms— powerful and genuinely easy to work with without being dumbed down. To learn more, go to ninjaforms.com.
[00:04:17.150] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back, folks. Want to point out we’ve got some fabulous special offers from the major sponsors, plus some other great deals, plus a curated list of the best WordPress technique, technology, and services for the freelancer, small agency owner, or power user. You can find all these goodies by going over to wp-tonic.com/deals. wp-tonic.com/deals.
[00:04:44.060] – Speaker 4
/deals.
[00:04:44.480] – Jonathan Denwood
What more could you ask for, my beloved tribe? Probably a lot more, but that’s how you’re going to get on that page. I’ve made a career of disappointment. There we go. So, Kathy, this goes straight into it. So what do you think are some of the biggest legal blind spots in WordPress right now around AI and using it?
[00:05:09.410] – Kathy Zant
Yeah, well, there’s a couple of things going on. Well, first of all, I love WordPress. I love AI. I use it all the time. I love how AI can help you do stuff with WordPress faster. But there are privacy considerations as well as some new laws coming on the books in the EU. The EU AI Act Article 50 went into effect in August, and that is requiring disclosure for certain types of content. If it was generated by AI. So if you are working in the public interest and publishing AI-generated content, that act is requiring disclosure. So there are all sorts of concerns. GDPR has been a concern for a long time with all of the cookie consent and everything. But if you are plugging AI into a system like a WooCommerce or a learning management site and you have personally identifiable information in there and you are not protecting AI from it, you are basically putting yourself into a consideration of having another data protection agreement in place. So all of these types of things are concerns for people who are running AI with WordPress, especially if you’re doing it on a live site.
[00:06:29.010] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I just don’t think it’s the European because I’ve got very limited knowledge about this, but my understanding that the AI regulations in China are quite interesting as well. I don’t know if you know anything about that. And is, is, do you think, obviously the president has declared that he’s really not interested in any kind of governance around AI, so I’d imagine it’s going to be left to the states. Um, one of the leading ones around, um, internet privacy is California, isn’t it? Do you think California or some of the other states are going to bring in any regulation around the usage of AI, Cathy?
[00:07:12.380] – Kathy Zant
Yeah, there are already a bunch of local ordinances and local regulations, and there’s more things that have been proposed, bills in various legislatures. But yeah, the federal government, there was an executive order in December that basically the Trump administration was saying that they did not want regulations on AI. They wanted to, you know, spur innovation within that field. But California, if you are using AI, for example, with cleaning up a real estate picture or cleaning up your product images, those types of things, that needs to be disclosed. Of course, they have privacy considerations there as well. Illinois has a law on the books about using AI in recruiting. So if you’re using AI in any kind of hiring, New York City also has an ordinance on that.
[00:08:05.020] – Speaker 1
Mm-hmm.
[00:08:05.230] – Kathy Zant
So we’re seeing all of these things kind of popping up across the board. And so it’s going to be a— but the problem is with these kinds of regulations is like, You might be in Arizona and your website’s hosted at GoDaddy in Arizona, but you have people visiting your site from California. Well, these laws still apply to you. So it’s becoming increasingly complex for site owners because if you are serving anyone in a jurisdiction that has these kinds of regulations, you have to be aware of them. So navigating all of that is something I’m helping my clients do in terms of what they’re doing with AI and making sure that—
[00:08:42.630] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you have any clear picture about that? Because obviously, obviously, if you’re incorporated in California, you, you, uh, the company, or if you’re a sole trader or your company, a corporation, limited liability company, are incorporated in California, you are under the jurisdiction of California state law. But if you’re outside that, apart from them taking non-criminal action against you, isn’t it down to the federal government? Do you know that, or is that outside your pay scale? Because it’s a legal question, really, isn’t it?
[00:09:21.700] – Kathy Zant
Yeah, I’m a lawyer, so I can’t speak to anything specific.
[00:09:25.460] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, you are a lawyer?
[00:09:26.360] – Kathy Zant
I am not a lawyer. I took— I took the LSAT. I was going to go to law school many years ago, but then the internet happened and I said, oh, let’s go play with code. So I went the other way. But I know enough to be dangerous and But the laws in California are laws to protect the consumer protection laws for the consumers within California. So there’s still jurisdiction. So they might not have a criminal complaint against you, but you can have any kind of other type of legal ramifications because it’s to protect consumer citizens within the state of California. So there could be extrajudicial type of, or extrajudicial jurisdictional kind of impact. Same thing with the EU too. You know, you might be in the United States, but the EU laws can still govern you and still have an effect on you because you are serving someone within the EU.
[00:10:22.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, kind of. It depends if the state that you’re in the EU actually wants to apply the EU law or not. And that was the strange thing when England was part of the EU, it used to obey EU regulation quite reasonably strictly, where other states, they kind of used to turn a blind eye to a lot of EU legislation. So it’s a quite strange scenario, really. So let’s move on. Let’s go on to security, because that’s been in the news quite a bit about WordPress in a way, but I think Myself, and I don’t know if you’re going to agree with this. I think it’s because it’s open source, and a lot of this is in the open. And we had a guest a couple of weeks ago who who is the head of VP of technology for a company that provides services to hosting providers. Unfortunately, the gentleman’s name I’ve gone blank, but. I think a lot— I think it’s affecting all areas of IT, isn’t it? Just that non-open source, they do it in private, don’t they? Or they attempt to do it in private, where open source is in the public, isn’t it?
[00:11:48.770] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t know if you agree with that. And what do you think of the— are there any specific things that you think just affects WordPress, really?
[00:11:58.250] – Kathy Zant
Well, yeah, security, AI, and WordPress together is an interesting gumbo, so to speak. It’s an interesting mix. And one of the benefits of being an open source is that security researchers have access to the codebase. And so vulnerabilities are discovered rather quickly. It’s always been that way. But now these researchers and attackers are empowered with AI. So they— so the window of finding vulnerabilities has gotten much smaller. You know, things are being discovered much quicker, as well as being able to say, oh, this plugin was patched, so now let’s write a proof of concept. AI is writing a proof of concept of like how to exploit that particular vulnerability. So attackers are empowered much faster. So I know Patchstack has put out, um, when, when WordPress was at 7. I can’t remember the version, 7.0.1, I believe, when there was that high severity vulnerability that was discovered. Within hours, attackers had scripts running, and, you know, they’re all bot-driven, and they’re out hunting for someone who has a vulnerable version of core. And so they saw, like, within hours, they started seeing attacks of sites protected with PatchStack on their network. So that The window of discovering vulnerabilities is much smaller.
[00:13:25.730] – Kathy Zant
The window of exploiting vulnerabilities is much smaller. So site owners, I’ve advised my clients that if you used to have an update window of, oh, well, we just update everything once a week, it needs to be a check every day. And I’ve actually coached a few people of like using AI bots to go scan vulnerability databases and being able to alert you only if there’s a severe vulnerability on something that you’re running. So you have your, your bot like enabled with understanding what you’re running, and then watch the vulnerability databases that PatchDeck and Wordfence put out, and then alert you. So because otherwise it’s just like, you know, you get the emails, you get everything, and it’s like this alert fatigue. There’s so much happening in WordPress security right now.
[00:14:10.170] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah.
[00:14:10.890] – Kathy Zant
You only really need to pay attention if it’s affecting you or one of your customer sites. So use AI to empower yourself as a site owner or a site manager or as an agency so that you can take action faster. And I have that script. If somebody is watching this and wants the script of like how to enable a bot to do that for you, I can, you just write me [email protected] and I can share that with you. But it’s pretty easy. I get an, I get a message from my bots every morning. Okay, here’s some, oh, I have another one too that’s like pings me if something is interesting happening in the WordPress space that I might want to comment on. As well as checking all my sites for any vulnerable versions. So, but it keeps the alert fatigue down because right now I think security, security is not just for the professionals anymore. Watching these kinds of vulnerabilities with that window so much smaller, it’s, it’s important for everybody to just really be paying attention to what they’re running and any kind of security vulnerability that’s happening with any of those.
[00:15:11.830] – Jonathan Denwood
Would you agree in this statement? Because I’ve been going on about this for a few years, really. I think the whole, the way plugins are handled and distributed and handled by WordPress.org, it’s really got to fundamentally change in my opinion. You know, I know WordPress is, there’s been a lot of negativity about WordPress, but in some ways I’ve been really surprised about how resilient it’s been. I know that sounds strange from a WordPress-focused podcast. I do touch a lot around marketing, SEO, and a lot of other subjects because it’s aimed at freelancers and agency owners. But I mean, but I think there’s a fundamental flaw. I think anybody that’s making money from their website and they’re using WordPress, I really think that they either got to educate themselves or they really should have somebody that does. And they should avoid— and it’s probably a bit sweeping— but avoid really out-of-date free plugins, be more fussier about what they’re using. Um, but I also think the directory and the way WordPress.org I really think there should be a kind of charge, like with X, you get a— you can pay your $80 and you get a blue tick.
[00:16:50.300] – Jonathan Denwood
There should be a charge where somebody can tell that the code and the updating and the security meets a certain standard, and they pay that to work WordPress.org and WordPress does that check and they get that blue mark and that, and people can be reassured that that particular plugin meets certain standards. What do you think about that?
[00:17:17.840] – Kathy Zant
Yeah, I think so. Well, especially with, I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen some of the numbers on how AI has created so many more submissions to the plugins team for new plugins coming out of nowhere because it’s so easy to just open up coding tool, AI tool of choice and start coding up a WordPress plugin. And WordPress is so well documented. So all of these AI tools know how to do it. So the floor for getting into WordPress is so much lower. So there’s all these new plugins coming out. And the ones that I would love, I mean, the plugins team has done a really good job historically of vetting, but they are, I think, overburdened. And I do think there needs to be There needs to be a better way. One of the talks that when I first started doing talks at WordCamps was how to evaluate plugins, how to understand the plugin repository, how to understand what a good support team looks like. Because when you’re choosing a plugin, you’re choosing a plugin that you are like marrying your data into. Think about like WooCommerce or any of the other carts. You’re, you’re committing to something.
[00:18:22.770] – Kathy Zant
And so there needs to be, you know, You need to go on a few first dates, you know, first date and go through meeting the family and understanding what you’re getting into with that kind of commitment with a plugin. So making it easier, there’s a lot of novice people who get into WordPress and they’re not quite sure what to do with the repository, understanding how to read things, what, what is a changelog, things that you and I understand, but newer people in WordPress, that’s something that’s more difficult for them. They just— but I think we need to make it easier for people to understand that because the education base of like choosing plugins even has been, I think, historically pretty hard for people. So yeah, it would be really helpful if there was some— especially if there was a way to say, you know, this went through a security review and that—
[00:19:14.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you know, there’s people I know that say that plugins are finished. You know, why do you need a plugin? You just You just use AI and you just code up. They still— so some of that, that those people that I communicate with have totally turned their back from WordPress. Others haven’t, but they just think, apart from some core plugins, I’m not sure about all this. I think, I think it’s more complicated in the market. I think the market hasn’t made its mind up, you know. I think in some ways AI tools probably can work with WordPress easier, you know, and there seems to be a lot of development in using Claude and using some of the key AI coding tools with WordPress. Do you think WordPress has got a A reasonably bright future, or do you think it’s not gonna disappear for the next few years, or do you think it’s just gonna be a gradual decline?
[00:20:30.820] – Kathy Zant
I think there’s always space for WordPress. I think a lot of the changes that have happened in the last couple of years have really hurt the most powerful part of WordPress, which has been the community aspect of it, because I, I feel like, go tell AI Like my husband, he doesn’t work anymore. So he’s got a site, he chose LearnDash for it, and I don’t want to maintain it anymore. So I’ve had Claude like just code something up that keeps everything accessible to the customers who have already bought stuff. I don’t really want to sell any more of his courses and everything. So I could do that. It makes sense for that implementation. But for WordPress still has a space, especially for dynamic data-driven sites for people who don’t want to maintain code and want to trust a company that maintains code and develops for them. There’s always going to be people who are going to be like, don’t need AI anymore. There’s so many different kinds of users. But I think the biggest benefit of WordPress is one, community. 2, its extensive codebase. 3, its legacy aspect that even if you’re going headless with an AI interface, there’s still the database structure that so many very large sites run on.
[00:21:45.050] – Kathy Zant
So I think WordPress is still always going to be relevant. I think that the leadership of WordPress needs to lean into the opportunity and remove some of the friction for people who are starting to develop a site for the first time and don’t understand how HTML, PHP, and database— they don’t understand the technology behind it because they can’t go to an AI tool and say, code me a learning management system. They could, but That now they have to maintain it and they don’t understand everything.
[00:22:15.740] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s not only that, isn’t it, Kath? You’ve got the attraction of a custom solution, but you’ve also got all the baggage of a full custom solution. You know, a full custom solution, you’re, you’re totally in bed with that agency, that particular developer, that particular setup. Obviously you could say, you know, and obviously you could hire somebody else and they could divert the whole site again. But it’s not so clear-cut, is it? It’s a lot of it’s a little bit propagandish, the taste of propaganda to me. Let’s move on. I think, you know, we covered security a bit. Let’s throw a question that wasn’t on my list that I sent to you, see how you cope with it, Kathy. And, you know, I’m sure you’re going to be, you know, We’ve had, we’ve had all this drama. I don’t know if you followed it at all about Matt being removed as CEO of Automatic and then coming and then coming back and then the temporary CEO, the chief financial officer, seemingly in that gap. Actually giving themselves quite attractive severance packages. I’ve never heard anything like it, actually. Did your eyebrows— I don’t know if you followed it at all.
[00:23:49.820] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve just been following it a little bit because I have to make my living, unfortunately, deal with customers. But it really struck me as I’ve heard it all now. What was your— because, you know, you’ve been director of marketing at Cadence WP. I’ve always just run small businesses, but did you— what’s your thoughts about the whole thing? Did your eyebrows— were they raised when you heard about all this?
[00:24:21.510] – Kathy Zant
Oh, well, I’ve been kind of sort of quietly watching everything since that, that fated, uh, what was it, the State of the Word in Portland a couple years ago, and the WP Engine Everything that has been happening, and I’ve just kind of quietly been watching it, how it’s impacted the community has been the thing that has worried me the most. I feel like we’re just seeing signals. We’re just seeing signposts on the road, but I’m not quite so sure where it’s all going.
[00:24:57.990] – Jonathan Denwood
No, no.
[00:24:58.550] – Kathy Zant
But I do think that the signposts are telling us that there’s some— there’s something going on, right? All this stuff publicly wouldn’t be happening if there wasn’t sort of this deeper story going on. And I do worry about— I worry about the WP Engine trial. I don’t— I don’t want to prognosticate of what I think is going to happen there, but I don’t think any— no matter which way it goes, it’s not good for WordPress. I worry about, you know, the stuff I’ve seen. I mean, what was Matt’s biggest complaint about WP Engine was private equity, but automatically private equity as well and the write-downs that—
[00:25:37.440] – Jonathan Denwood
That always puzzled me a little bit. I always— because I’ve interviewed Matt about 3 times, he’s always been gracious to come on the show.
[00:25:46.530] – Speaker 1
Yeah.
[00:25:46.860] – Jonathan Denwood
And some people don’t like him, some people, you know, you know, really feverishly follow him. I’ve always been— always treated him as a human being because, yeah, I always saw there was good points I really think he’s very committed to WordPress.
[00:26:08.240] – Kathy Zant
Yes. We wouldn’t be talking right now if Matt didn’t start WordPress.
[00:26:13.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Exactly. And I think Matt Midaus from WP Minute has a more grown-up attitude towards Matt, and that’s been my attitude. I think there’s good parts of Matt’s character. But people that, you know, start something like WordPress, they tend to be a little bit unusual, don’t they? They tend to be, as we say in London, they tend to be characters. But I also think it’s taken— the last time I interviewed him and we had a discussion afterwards, you know, He said he was really committed, but you could tell that this whole thing is putting an enormous amount of strain on him. Um, you could say that’s been self-inflicted, but it doesn’t change that there’s a lot of strain on him. And I always felt that he was too spread and taken on too many hats. Um, And, um, yeah, but it does seem very, very messy. Um, if it can be improved, we probably don’t know, but it needs to be, doesn’t it?
[00:27:41.140] – Kathy Zant
Yeah, yeah, it would be nice. Um, Matt’s always been very gracious to me. Um, I, I wish him well, and—
[00:27:50.130] – Jonathan Denwood
I do. That’s my position.
[00:27:52.150] – Kathy Zant
I hope that things get easier, but, you know, I mean, I can’t— I’ve never run a company like Automattic, and I don’t know what it’s like being Matt. And I just— I will just send him all of my good thoughts.
[00:28:08.810] – Jonathan Denwood
I’d be surprised. There’s a sizable— you know, he’s got his strengths and he’s got some really large weaknesses, but he’s not— There seemed to be a group in the WordPress community that want, and still do want, to make him out as some kind of cartoon villain, don’t they? Um, and I think things are much more complicated than that, aren’t they?
[00:28:34.400] – Kathy Zant
Yeah, yeah, they are complicated. And, um, you know, I’m not one— I’m not one to judge. I would like Do I want to say this? I don’t feel like some of the harsh Twitter posts that have been coming out of official channels have been helpful.
[00:28:56.010] – Jonathan Denwood
No, they haven’t.
[00:28:58.830] – Kathy Zant
That would be my only real— I mean, I don’t wish all of the trauma that he has to go through on anyone. I feel for him. But at the same time, the community is the greatest asset in WordPress. And I would like a little more upliftment from official channels. That would be my only criticism.
[00:29:23.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Right before— I don’t know if you want to, you want to comment or discuss this before we go for a break at all, because I’ve interviewed some people from that used to work for Kadence and, you know, And the parent company, um, um, have you been surprised the way that they really got rid of all the branding and they just brought it into Liquid Web? And, um, was you really surprised, or do you— did you think that was always on the cards in the end?
[00:30:00.120] – Kathy Zant
I didn’t think it would be as— I mean, I left Kadence well before any of that happened. And so I just kind of watched from— the thing is, I loved Kadence when I started there. I had one person in the Kadence community say, you know, when you were at Kadence, it was pretty magical. And it was. The founder of Kadence, Ben Rittner.
[00:30:21.270] – Jonathan Denwood
He’s just a fantastic guy and a fantastic developer, isn’t he?
[00:30:26.630] – Kathy Zant
He is, and still a good friend. And I love him and his sister who worked with us. I love them dearly. I would joke that I considered myself an honorary Rittner because I loved them so much and I loved working with them and I loved the brand. I had, not to get into all of my reasons for leaving, but—
[00:30:45.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Right.
[00:30:46.520] – Kathy Zant
It was kind of, when I started there, leadership at Liquid Web was extremely supportive of me and supportive of what we were doing with Kadence. And then there was a lot of leadership changes and then private equity ownership changed and then things just kept changing. I was really surprised that they destroyed the brand equity of Kadence and tried to bring that all under Liquid Web Nexus and do that.
[00:31:10.710] – Jonathan Denwood
As somebody experienced, as somebody experienced, and you can remove your emotions, does it make any kind of business sense to you?
[00:31:21.480] – Speaker 1
It does not.
[00:31:22.270] – Kathy Zant
No, because there was so much— the greatest, like, like WordPress, Kadence had an incredible community of people who helped other people find success with the tools. So the community around it was was amazing. And they really did not— they destroyed the brand equity, not just with the brand, but with the community. And that really surprised me. And it did not feel like a good decision for the— I mean, even if you’re private equity, know where your asset is. The asset isn’t the code. The asset is the people who are buying a subscription year after year, who have committed to your product. And they’re doing it not because of the code, they’re doing it because of the support. They’re doing it because of the community and the support they’re getting. And they’re doing it because of the success they find with the product. It’s not about the code. And I think that leadership, leadership sort of lost their eye on the ball of what the brand, the brand was really successful, why it was successful. And they destroyed the reason why it’s successful and still putting out the code, you know. So I disagree with everything they’ve done.
[00:32:32.180] – Kathy Zant
I wrote a blog post about it right after it all happened. I was just like, Like this, it was really sad to watch something that I had invested a lot of my time and energy into being discarded.
[00:32:46.010] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I think it’s a good time for us to go for our break. Okay. And Kathy’s been an excellent guest. We will be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:32:55.780] – Speaker 1
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[00:33:32.920] – Speaker 4
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[00:34:10.260] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back. We’ve had a fantastic discussion with Cathy Lent. Before we go into the second part of the show, just want to point out that I do a great newsletter. I write it myself. Um, basically I write about one of the topics that I’ve discussed, um, during my shows during the week, and then I trawl the internet finding other interesting stories that come on my radar, and I, I put them all into a newsletter which ends up in your inbox on Tuesday or Wednesday. Um, to get it, all you have to do is go over to wp-tonic.com/newsletter. wp-tonic.com/newsletter. Yes, I’m not on Substack, but there we go. Um, so, um, on to the next question. Um, I’ve got your passwords. Um, but let’s move on. Let’s just have a general chat, shall we, Kev? What? Because obviously it’s not only WordPress, it’s online marketing in general, isn’t it? To say everything’s been thrown up in the air year, and nobody really knows through AI, through Google AI overviews, from a reduction in clicks through AI overviews, through Google’s updates and penalizing specialized websites. You know, what are you getting from your clients about how the world of online marketing And how are you trying to rationalize it yourself?
[00:35:56.280] – Kathy Zant
Yeah.
[00:35:56.380] – Speaker 4
Yeah.
[00:35:57.010] – Kathy Zant
Well, I’ve noticed a lot too. And so I do a lot of experimentation with different platforms and different ways of connecting audience. And I mean, I’ve tried the TikTok thing and I’ve tried YouTube Shorts and I’ve tried, you know, all the video type of things too, as well as— and I kind of found some success with some experiments with doing all of that, but success in terms of of views, but not necessarily anything that was very sticky where I actually like got any clients, where I actually got any connection. So I kind of took a step back and I started thinking about long-form content and blogging. People blog for different reasons, right? You know, there’s tons of different ways to do it. There are people who are blogging for SEO and the clicks were important to them and Search traffic was very important to them, and that’s diminishing, right? Because of the AI summaries and because people are just going to ChatGPT to ask a question and not even going to Google to research it on their own. And so there’s a challenge for site owners who have been doing that. How do you make sure that those agents know that you exist and that you’re an expert in whatever there is?
[00:37:12.810] – Kathy Zant
Or Do you instead lean in very strongly to who you are, your personal brand, and become a thought leader so that you can start keeping those connections? And I’m doing both of those things rather than like, I’m not going for SEO clicks or anything. I’m going towards what are the things I’m thinking about while I’m making scrambled eggs in the morning? What are the things I’m thinking about? What are the things that I’m wondering about? And then I might open up a chat ChatGPT or Claude and ask it, I have a theory. I think this is what is happening. Challenge me on it. And I’ll have a conversation with it that kind of gels my thinking. And then I might have Claude draft something. I might draft something and then have Claude challenge that. And so I’m like sort of honing my thought leadership about a lot of different things using AI, but I’m going towards my marketing in In terms of, here are my areas of expertise, here are the things I think about, here are the things that I might be prescient about of like what I think is coming. And I’m leaning into my personal brand with that.
[00:38:21.190] – Kathy Zant
And I mean, the people that I talked to who are like, their blog was their brand and it wasn’t about them. And it was— I spoke to, and she had a crafting blog and she was seeing her traffic just sinking. And how does she get her AdSense numbers back up? And I’m like, Make it more about you because you’re the one-of-one thing that nobody’s ever gonna replace, right? There’s no competition if you’re one of one. So where’s like the one thing that you do differently? The one thing that AI can’t replace, the one thing that is you. Because when you, I, I think that’s the challenge for a lot of people who do online marketing is like, where’s your one-of-one leadership? And use AI to refine that. But lean into who you really are. And I think in that way, people rise above the noise and then they make really authentic connections with their subscribers, with their audience members on YouTube, with, with the people who are in their community and how they bring more people into their community. I’m still getting people signing up to my mailing list off of blog posts. So that’s still happening, but I’m I’m having to do it in a different way rather than chasing a term and competing with other people.
[00:39:32.680] – Kathy Zant
I’m like, where is my thought leadership and who am I and where can I be of service to someone that kind of falls into my ideal client profile? And how do I do that from a place of Kathy Zant, not the search term, if that makes any sense?
[00:39:51.310] – Jonathan Denwood
No, it makes it perfectly. I’m not saying I’ve been thinking about this a lot myself because I’ve seen a sizable decline in my own traffic to the WP-Tonic. And obviously, I never use paid traffic. And I am looking at that a little bit. But I think the other area is, you know, is podcasting, is using YouTube, is doing podcasting on YouTube, combining which we’re doing here, doing a kind of hybrid webinars where it’s not the traditional webinar where you’re just selling. You’re offering information, answering questions, then chopping it up and using it in short-form video and going on other people’s podcasts. You know, you were gracious to agree to come on my show. It’s getting yourself on other people’s podcasts, but having your own as well. Doing it as a series if you can’t do it every week, or do it monthly as a live webinar kind of hybrid where you’re answering people’s questions, promoting it through YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, trying to build that kind of audience? You know, I think nobody has a clear path about that. And when— because I think it depends on each individual in each industry, doesn’t it?
[00:41:30.340] – Kathy Zant
Yeah. And it depends on basically the intent of the person who’s looking for help with whatever they’re doing. Because there’s sometimes I will search, there’s sometimes I will ask AI, and there’s sometimes where it’s like, I just want to— I want somebody to explain this to me on YouTube. And so my intent for a particular topic is going to be different based on what it is I’m looking for, what it is I’m trying to solve, what it is I’m thinking about, where I might want some feedback on something. So what is the intent behind your customer and what they’re looking for and how, what’s, what medium is going to be best for communicating to them? And then also like really hitting it all, making sure that you’re visible in AI, making sure you’re visible in search, making sure you’re visible on video. platforms so that different people learn in different ways. And then you start honing in and you don’t have to do them all at once. Like me, for Shorts, I’m like, this isn’t sticky enough for me. I don’t want to spend my time on it. You start honing in, what is the thing that your people need to hear from you and how they need to hear it?
[00:42:41.630] – Kathy Zant
And if you do a few experiments, over the course of a month, you figure it out pretty quick, I think.
[00:42:47.200] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you think? Do you think Google has any idea what they’re really doing, or do you think they’re just reacting to the market? Because Gemini, you know, a lot of WordPress, you know, a lot of— that was a Freudian slip— a lot of Google, you know, you know, advertising, Cloud computing, Gmail, Workspace. Yeah, they’ve got some very profitable centers, but they’ve also got a lot of products that are just a total, total hot mess, haven’t they?
[00:43:29.160] – Kathy Zant
And yeah, isn’t there that website?
[00:43:32.150] – Jonathan Denwood
Their Gemini and their— it’s, it’s Because they were leaders in AI technology, but their Gemini and some of their other AI products, in my opinion, are just really a hot mess. And I know their PPC income seems to have gone up, but They can’t really stuff any more adverts into YouTube because I’ve noticed the adverts have increased a lot. But doesn’t, doesn’t AI overviews really affect the long-term profitability of pay-per-click really? What’s your own thoughts about all this?
[00:44:22.160] – Kathy Zant
Yeah, Gemini is, Gemini’s good for searching. Like if you’re gonna buy something and like find me the best price on, like it’s good for like that kind of stuff.
[00:44:31.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah.
[00:44:31.800] – Kathy Zant
But I don’t go to it for like work. It’s too sycophantic. It’s too— I don’t know. I’ve just got my tools that I use. I use a different— I have 6 AI tools, right? Well, I’ve had to do some testing and things for work-related things, but I get to know like, okay, this one’s really good at finding this kind of answer. This one’s really good at this, you know? But yeah, Google, well, it’s interesting because they, the business was built off of the back of bloggers, right? It was built off of search and having good content out there to give to their customers. And then placing ads, you know, those being able to allow bloggers to put ads on there. I feel like it was built off of the back of of bloggers and site owners, content creators. And now it’s kind of shooting that in the foot. And they’re, they have to pivot, they’re pivoting, I think, into other things, because they, they’ve really left that core audience, I think, behind, because they’re not giving traffic to those sites. So the ads that people are running on their sites aren’t being shown. So it’s almost like they’re abandoning that.
[00:45:49.370] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re really wondering what they’re gonna, what they’re gonna You do, aren’t you? You really wonder, don’t you?
[00:45:55.640] – Kathy Zant
It’s flailing right now.
[00:45:57.240] – Jonathan Denwood
It seems like it’s flailing because, like I said, I’m going to repeat myself. They, you know, they’re because, you know, ChatGPT, OpenAI, and, you know, they’ve got their own problems, haven’t they? I think the cost-based what this is really costing them. And you’ve got the challenge from China, you’ve got the open source large learning models, um, you, you’re having— I was looking at some figures that like 80% of the income from Claude and, um, was coming from like 1% of corporate users, they’re using OpenRouter, that these corporations are looking at their costs and looking at open large language models more.
[00:46:58.530] – Kathy Zant
Yeah.
[00:46:59.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you know, obviously, obviously they want to go to the— they want to go public. But do you think, do you think really, in the end, it’s going to be dominated by open source large learning models rather than them, basically?
[00:47:28.750] – Kathy Zant
It’s interesting. There’s this, this push recently that I’m very suspicious of. to control AI. I think it started in—
[00:47:39.990] – Jonathan Denwood
Absolutely.
[00:47:41.740] – Speaker 4
Yeah.
[00:47:42.230] – Kathy Zant
It’s, it’s very suspicious of all of it and how just kind of like, I don’t know, a little bit of a conspiracy theorist at times, but it’s just too orchestrated and not organic in my opinion. And I think that, you know, they, they want to IPO their Bleeding money. There would be nothing better for them to have some kind of regulation that locks them into being the behemoths and not having competition. But I just, I don’t know, it’s so antithetical to how things progress. And I worry about too much control. I would like the market to Evolve. Um, open— there’s going to— there is an opportunity, um, because there are open source LLMs. Um, there are open ways of doing it. There are ways of localizing your AI usage so that you’re not like burning through data centers. There are opportunities, but it’s kind of like, it’s reminding me a lot of like the early days of blogging when there were all these different ways to blog. There was Blogger and MovableType and all these things. And then WordPress came along and was like, oh, here’s an easy 5-minute install. Easy way to do it.
[00:49:01.460] – Kathy Zant
So when that happens in open source, somebody comes in and can make a 5-minute install.
[00:49:08.200] – Jonathan Denwood
I didn’t think of that. I think that’s a fab— I think you’ve put that fabulous, Kathy. I think you’re spot on there. I never really— that’s what you— yeah, I think that’s very insightful. That’s what the market probably does want to run it locally, but he wants like, well, that 5-minute install, as you just said.
[00:49:27.740] – Kathy Zant
Well, I mean, that’s what happened with WordPress. And yeah, there was all that stuff with movable type and their licensing changes and stuff like that that made a lot of people jump. But the fact that, I mean, I use, like, I have 6 AI tools installed on my machine. I was using every single blogging software and evaluating them. And when WordPress came along, I was like, oh, well, it’s using the same database class that I use on my PHP. ‘Cause I was a coder way back in the day. I don’t write code anymore. You’re welcome, internet. But it was using the same database class. So it was addressing the database in the same way. And then I’m like, you know, I don’t want all these HTML files. I wanna be able to like skin my blog and do it easily. And so content in the database, design over here, it just like made sense to me. And they’re making it super easy. So there needs to be that kind of— innovation that Mullenweg and Mike Little brought to WordPress in the early days. That kind of innovation needs to happen with AI. It’s just so chaotic right now.
[00:50:29.810] – Kathy Zant
I haven’t seen anybody do it. I’m sure it’ll become really apparent when it happens, but I think we’re still waiting for that, that initial genesis of WordPress kind of moment with AI tools.
[00:50:43.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, let’s wrap up about your book, Stroke of Genius. Maybe you can tell the audience Why you wrote it and what it’s fundamentally about?
[00:50:54.330] – Kathy Zant
Yeah, it was therapy. It was therapy. So my husband had a stroke in 2021, 2 weeks after I started at Kadence. So I start my new job and I’m so excited to work with this new team and this really innovative product. I mean, Kadence was the first product that like, oh, I can do Gutenberg. I’m cool with Gutenberg if I can use this. And it changed my relationship with Gutenberg. So I was like so excited and then this happens and I’m like, how do I do this? How do I start? How do I do all this? And the team at Kadence, and at that point it was under iThemes. And so I reported to Matt Danner, who was the general manager of the iThemes team at that time. And he’s like, you take care of you. They supported me through that. The whole team at iThemes and the team at Kadence were like, they’re behind me 100%. So they got me through it. Ben Rittner especially. I can’t even tell you how supportive that man was to me. I will forever be loyal to him for everything he did for me. But yeah, so after— I kept trying to write the book.
[00:52:01.540] – Kathy Zant
I wanted to write about the experience. And then I wrote it. Somebody actually told me, once you have AI interview you, it’ll help you gel your thinking and get you out of it. Because I’d write like 2,000 words and I’m like, ah, it’s not—
[00:52:15.310] – Jonathan Denwood
I hated it.
[00:52:16.430] – Kathy Zant
But AI actually interviewing me helped me gel my thoughts so that I could write the book. And then I wrote the core of the book about the experience of the stroke and everything I went through and caregiving. And I’m still caregiving. He’s in the next room. I have more support now. But I then was like, well, I need to tell the story of why would I do this for my husband, Mark? And so then I wrote the story of why I made the commitment to this man, like how impactful he was to me, how brilliant he was when he was He’s sort of the leader of the family. So, he’s the genius of the stroke of the genius.
[00:52:56.130] – Jonathan Denwood
You don’t mind me asking, what was he doing for his living before the stroke then?
[00:53:01.840] – Kathy Zant
Yeah, he did neurolinguistic programming. So, he did lots of coaching, lots of corporate trainings. He had some very high-profile clients. He traveled the world and spoke on stages in Peru, in A couple of different places in Russia, all over the United States, ran events himself, very well connected in the neuro-linguistic programming and hypnosis arenas. Also was quite a character and just an amazing human being and still is on the inside even though the best part about him, his brain, got wiped out by the stroke. But he’s still in there.
[00:53:43.010] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s true. And they can— I think we wrap it up. But if— what’s the best way to find out more about you and maybe get a copy of the book?
[00:53:53.120] – Kathy Zant
Yeah. Yeah. Zant.com. It’s— there’s links to Amazon on Zant.com to the book on there. And I’m blogging pretty regularly. I’ve got a mailing list, I’ve got a few courses. I did a training. I’ve been doing trainings on AI enablement that’s not on the site yet. But if you sign up to the mailing list, I have another one coming up in a couple of weeks specific for WordPress agencies using agentic AI, not just like Claude or ChatGPT, but using agents to run a business. I did a training on that last week. And so I have a little community of people who are testing new things and that goes along with that course. So, but all that’s zant.com and you’ll get all the links there.
[00:54:36.990] – Jonathan Denwood
We’ll make sure that all the links are in the show notes. To support this interview. Thanks, Kathy, it’s been a blast talking to you. Hopefully you agree to come back on the show in the new year. Um, we will be back. I think next week is our roundtable show. Um, but it’s been a blast chatting with Kathy. We’ll see you soon.
[00:54:58.390] – Speaker 4
Bye.
[00:54:59.190] – Jonathan Denwood
Hey, thanks for listening. We really do appreciate it. Why not visit the Mastermind Facebook group and also To keep up with the latest news, click wp-tonic.com/newsletter. We’ll see you next time.
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