What Would Spence Do If He Was Running Automattic?
Jon, Kurt, and Spence discuss Spence’s new WordPress as a Service “WPLaunchkit” offering that provides everything smart creators want for a platform, including personal support and done-for-you expertise. This is the WordPress that Spence would create if he were running Automattic.
Spencer helps freelancers, entrepreneurs, and agencies build and grow successful businesses with WordPress. Spencer is an experienced entrepreneur, attorney, and WordPress Influencer.
#1 – Tell us about your new product/service, “LaunchKit,” and what problem it helps solve in WordPress.
#2 – You have consulted many WordPress agency owners and entrepreneurs in WordPress; what consistent patterns have you observed?
#3 – What are some major differences people need to understand when producing new products or services in the WordPress space?
#4 – What would they be if you ran WordPress and could fix one or two major things?
#5 – If you return to a time machine at the beginning of your career, what essential advice would you give yourself?
#6 – Are there any online recourses or books you like to recommend to the audience?
Spencer Forman
https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencerforman/
@SpencerForman
This Week Show’s Sponsors
Zoho: Zoho.com
Sensei LMS: Sensei LMS
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
LaunchFlows: LaunchFlows
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00.200] Introduction
Welcome to the WP Tonic This Week in WordPress and SaaS podcast, where Jonathan Denwood interviews the leading experts. In WordPress, eLearning, and online marketing to help WordPress professionals launch their own SaaS.
[00:00:08.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic This Week in WordPress. This is episode 770. We got a returning guest, a friend of the show, a co-host, comes on our monthly Round-table show as well. We got Spenser in the house. We’re going to be talking about his latest product launch kit. We’re going to be talking about his experiences in consulting agencies, WordPress agencies and entrepreneurs in the WordPress space. Spenser is a leading influencer in the WordPress scene, and it should be a fabulous discussion. So Spenser, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to any new listeners and viewers?
[00:01:04.850] – Spencer Forman
It’s my pleasure to be on this show for the first time to meet both of you, by the way. I’ve been thinking about hopefully meeting you soon. I’m just joking. I’ve known Jonathan since show one, and I’ve known Kurt now for a couple of years, but I had the pleasure to meet you in person in San Diego. It’s Spenser Forman, primarily at WP Launchify. Com, but also at Spencerforman.com, no E, leave it off for savings, and social media Spencer Forman. We were just talking about word camp and all the rest of stuff. But today I’m excited to talk about the changes that are coming and the changes that are. So this is actually an old discussion that’s finally come to fruition. I think I predicted this happening at least two years ago.
[00:01:54.860] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s nothing like your predictions coming true, is it? I’ve got my great co-host, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:02:06.190] – Kurt von Ahnen
Absolutely. Jonathan, my name is Kurt von Ahnen. I own an agency called Manyana no Mas. We specialize in membership and learning platforms and helping small businesses get forward.
[00:02:16.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Should be a great discussion. We’re going to really delve deep about Spenser’s experience in helping a load of WordPress entrepreneurs. We will be back in a few moments. I’ve got a couple of special messages from the show’s major sponsors. Be back in a few moments. Are you.
[00:02:34.520] – Spencer Forman
Looking for ways to make your content more engaging? Sensei LMS by Automatic is the original WordPress solution for creating and selling online courses. Sensei’s new interactive blocks can be added to any WordPress page or post. For example, interactive videos let you pause videos and display quizzes, lead generation forms, surveys, and more. For a 20 % off discount for the tribe, just use the code WP Tonic, all one word, when checking out and give sensei a try today.
[00:03:06.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Hi there, folks. It’s Jonathan Denwood here, and I want to tell you about one of our great sponsors, and that’s Zolo. Com.
[00:03:14.540] – Spencer Forman
If you got a.
[00:03:15.660] – Jonathan Denwood
WordPress website, a membership website, and you’re looking to link it with a great financial management package, Zolo can provide this solution. So all your bookkeeping needs are done for you. Through Zolo. If you need new inbox email functionality and you don’t want to pay the high charges that Google will charge you, Zolo offers a great email inbox platform. They’ve got over 50 apps and services that all integrate fantastic with WordPress at great value levels, and they almost always offer a fully functioning free product as well. So it’s just amazing value. Also, if you’re a WordPress developer or agency owner, Zolo are looking for great partnerships in the WordPress space. To get all this information, all you have to do, folks, is just go over to Zolo. Com and they have the product that you’re looking for. Thank you so much, Zolo, for supporting WP Tonic and the Machine Membership Shows. It’s much appreciated. We’re coming back, folks. I just wanted to say we got some great special offers from the major sponsors. Plus we got a curated list of the best WordPress plugin, so you as a WordPress professional don’t have to troll the internet to find the best solution.
[00:04:52.140] – Jonathan Denwood
We’ve done all that work for you. To find all these goodies and discounts, all you have to do is go over to the WP Hypnotonic com deals, WP Hypnotonic. Com deals, and you find all the good is there. What more could you ask for in July 2023? I don’t think much more. So this goes straight into it, folks. So, Spencer, tell us about your new product stroke service launch kit. What is it? What problem does it solve? And why have you invested a lot of time and energy in it, Spencer?
[00:05:35.200] – Spencer Forman
Okay. Well, I think it would be fair to say there’s not one product and it’s more of a product I service. I think the fair word to use would be platform. I want everybody to imagine as I’m describing this, one of the core principles of WordPress that Matt Mullenwag has said since the very beginning, and I’ve been here almost since the very beginning, I think he officially got it going in 2005. I was around in 2006.
[00:06:03.330] – Jonathan Denwood
Open.
[00:06:04.070] – Spencer Forman
Source, and I just need to remind people this very briefly, open source is essentially the core thing that seems to get lost in a lot of the conversations about our business problems and the development problems and who’s being paid problems because the software is free. Free as in buy me a beer free or whatever he used to say nonsense. He also used to say the famous five minute WordPress install. But along… Do you remember that? So along the way from the early days of us sitting around the campfire, lots of stuff happened that we’ve all talked about before, like testing of what open source means when you had Chris Pierson and his thesis theme. And Matt’s like, I’m sorry, that’s not going to go down here because people, the code is theirs to do with what they want. And then the theme is challenging that when they bought Jigsaw and forked it and told people, go screw yourself on your lifetime deal. We’re going to All of these things have led 18 years later, overnight, to where we are today. And where are we today? There are two columns of people. They are tinkers and there are people who just want a solution.
[00:07:15.970] – Spencer Forman
The same like when you go to any other SaaS platform. You go to a Wix or Weebly or Shopify or Kartra or Kajabi or ClickFunnels or a CRM like Salesforce or any SaaS solution, people are going there because they have an outcome they desire and they mostly could care less about how does the code work and where did the features get added. They just want it to work. They want somebody to give them a reliable, stable place to run their business, and they need to trust that wacky things are not going to keep happening. Now, compare that to the current state of WordPress, where because of some failures in communication, the political structure of WordPress is uncertain. There is not a top down leadership in the. Org space. Third parties have come in and what, like some war movie. There’s tribes and there’s politics and there’s backstabbing and there’s wars and there’s everybody fighting for themselves and there’s a lie. I mean, it’s like you can make a movie. How does that help the end customer? Helps them not at all. How does that help the implementer, somebody who for the first 17 years of WordPress was able to make a living, a livelihood?
[00:08:36.790] – Spencer Forman
I’ve taught tens of thousands of people how to use WordPress to sell something to an end user because it was stable, it was reliable. How does it help them when every day of the week there’s a new announcement about something else being changed or something being broken or somebody fighting for this or somebody backstabbing this or somebody screwing their customers with an overlay that says they got to get another plug in to fix the plug in they already paid for? It’s a mess. So my solution has been the time was going to come and it was a two year process. And I give Sally Getch the credit for this. When Sally was talking on our old version of that WP Tonic Roundtable show about like, man, that Guttenberg is actually really good. That’s my best Sally Getch. And I’m like, Sally, you’re crazy. I’m Elementor all the way or I’m Divy and she was right. And so when we crossed the threshold, that Guttenberg as the page builder instead of classic became usable. And cadence, that whole thing became a set of tools. That, along with a few other things, finally gave me the Lego blocks that I could set up say, the time has come not to white label and customize WordPress into something different, but to just ignore all of the noise and curate out the specific things that when you put them together as a base kit, give an end user a starting point that anything can be done on without worrying about getting their own subscriptions, without worrying about their own software, without worrying about all the things breaking.
[00:10:11.780] – Spencer Forman
Why? Because there’s also been a development in the hosting space where there are now ways that not through multisite and not through cloning things on a regular server, but where we can have a standard set of plug ins that are updated automatically. And although we can improve it, like adding new features and stuff, that while the client is on the platform of launch kit, while they’re on that platform, they can’t change it. They can’t break it. They can do anything they want with the things that are installed, but they can’t just do Frankenstein or shiny ball and break it. Why is that useful? It’s because it gives them the exact relationship they need in an implementer needs, which is just like a SaaS service. If ClickFunnels has everything I need, I just use it, or I hire somebody like Kurt or Jonathan to help me with it. But I can’t just stick stuff in to break it or change it. I can make a request and maybe Russell will grant me that wish. Well, as the developer of launch flows h, I think it was like a cat. I thought I was muted. You’re going to get muted on that one.
[00:11:22.010] – Spencer Forman
When a developer is on, let’s say…
[00:11:28.440] – Spencer Forman
When you’re on ClickFunnels, when a developer wants to do something for a client, if they need a feature, they can suggest it. When I developed the launch flows, people had amazing ideas all the time. Because I have this curated stack anyway, and I wrote the plug in, just like Jack Arturo at WPFusion and stuff, I could implement their ideas typically the same day because the uncertainty of like, Oh, my God. This client has 90 million different variations in their set up was no longer an issue. So bring it all home. Launch Kit is a platform feature that I’m offering for end users and for implementers who would like to take that part out of the equation. If you’re an end user, it’s 97 % a month. It includes all the software, it includes all the email support. And if you’re an implementer and you want to put your clients on that, you share the revenue on that 80 20 right now. Now, the reason that’s useful is because that takes care of every thing. In other words, it’s not a traditional hosting thing, it’s a platform. But it comes with one magic trick that none of the SaaS platforms have.
[00:12:37.770] – Spencer Forman
Whose cat was that? Don’t worry about it.
[00:12:46.880] – Jonathan Denwood
He’s got dogs, cats, children. He’s got a whole.
[00:12:50.840] – Spencer Forman
Dad’s already. The one benefit it comes with, which you can’t get on any of those SaaS solutions, they say things like, Your data is yours, but what are you going to do with ClickFunnels data or Kartra or Kajabi or Sierra? What are you going to do with that? You can’t go anywhere with it. But in WordPress, because launch kit is not modifying the core stuff underneath, it’s managing it, and it’s not bothering to change your hosting into a multisite. When somebody wants to leave, that’s built into the promise. You want to leave? Here you go. Goodbye. Leave. And then go get your licenses in a traditional way. Go get your updates and support in a traditional way. So in other words, it’s a complete ideal relationship where somebody is acting as your concierge, acting as your expert, acting as your tour guide, and giving you or your client something that’s ready to use, all the drama removed. From the there… Hold on, one last thing, because I know it was a lot, but it’ll just make it easier. The kit has three other possibilities, the club, course, and pro. And these are natural marketplace things.
[00:13:58.960] – Spencer Forman
The club is where because we’ve standardized the Lego blocks and everything underneath, when you go to the Lego store, in the middle is all the random blocks and the kids are playing and having fun. But on the outside isles are all those boxes. I want the kit that has the Death Star. So the club is a way to get pre made kits of stuff. I want the parents club thing, I want the membership thing. It’s just arrangements of stuff, including maybe workshop or multiple week courses on how to achieve that. T hat’s an optional $97 a month. You could come and go, but you get all the assets you need. You get once a week workshops so that you can have office hours instead of just email.
[00:14:42.540] – Jonathan Denwood
The.
[00:14:43.180] – Spencer Forman
Third column is the courses. There will be people, but starting with myself and my team, who will be making courses on how to build your best LFT or LMS or LearnDash course, how to actually produce your best sales funnel, how to do customs. So in other words, because this platform is stable, because the inspiration is stable, we can teach people hands on what to do with those things, just like if you’re on Legos or IKia. And then finally is the pro. There will be people who want stuff done. Hey, Spence, I don’t want to bother doing this. Do you have somebody who can do it for me? And that’s where same thing, a pro can do this stuff. So all it is is a traditional marketplace idea, but instead of being locked into a SaaS where somebody can’t move it, it’s using word press underneath. And that’s it. I know that was eight minutes, but it’s…
[00:15:34.160] – Jonathan Denwood
It was actually, you’re getting close to 10 minutes actually.
[00:15:37.360] – Spencer Forman
We got to fill this.
[00:15:38.830] – Jonathan Denwood
Show out. Yeah, we do. Just to respond before I throw it over to Kurt, is that I do think this will be the… Obviously, Guttenberg having a more modern editing environment. Plus, I saw that there was a video from a friend of the show about the new backend environment.
[00:16:08.250] – Spencer Forman
Yeah, they’re modifying the editor again.
[00:16:11.510] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes.
[00:16:12.190] – Spencer Forman
Which will cause chaos, utter chaos.
[00:16:15.070] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, yeah, but it does. But I can see the logic to it, but it definitely doesn’t want to take two years for it to be implemented. I think, apart from those two things, what you’re trying to do and what you have verbalized is also the other factor that will determine if the WordPress project, all aspects of it continues or goes into dramatic decline. Can it incorporate more effectively the best aspects of SaaS, but incorporate it with the ownership and flexibility of open source. If it can combine those two things more effectively, I see it having a considerably good future. If it can’t, I don’t see it dramatically declining, but there will be a steady decline. So I do agree with your synopsis that you’ve outlined. I’m going to throw it over to Kurt for the next question.
[00:17:29.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
Spencer, I apologize for my allergies.
[00:17:37.770] – Spencer Forman
No, don’t apologize. It was funny.
[00:17:41.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
You’ve consulted, as you said, with thousands and thousands of folks. Obviously, you’ve launched this project for a reason. You’ve noticed the.
[00:17:52.250] – Spencer Forman
This is the third iteration of the same concept. The difference today is that in the first two iterations, the toolset was still in development. Word press was going through phases. The first version was HTML. The second version was early page builders. The third version is I’ve settled on Guttenberg blocks through the cadence stack. And it’s not because cadence is only exclusively the one to do it. It’s just because we need to achieve a stability to build a wasp experience, a SaaS like experience in WordPress.
[00:18:22.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
Nice. So when you think about all those things you’ve put together, what consistent patterns have you observed in working with all these agencies and entrepreneurs?
[00:18:32.210] – Spencer Forman
Well, it’s really simple. I mean, we can break it down to, first of all, the platform itself, the mechanics. I remember the good old bad old days of traditional WMM and Cpanel, and then the hosts were all like janky rack servers, barely able to keep up. We live in an abundant world now, but we’ve seen lots of examples, and I’m friends with many of these people and arguing in public with them, about how managed WordPress hosting is not really what it used to mean because there’s so much horsepower available. If you choose a regular stable host, as long as it’s set up with the proper caching and so forth, that conversation should just disappear. It’s like cell phone carriers. Most people are probably on 4G, maybe 5G. Nobody worries anymore about in most civilized areas, their cell phone service. I can’t get goshdarn internet here because I live in Chicago. But as far as the cell phone, hosting itself is a red herring. It’s the setup of the hosting. Somebody still has to configure the things, and instead of it, one button, everybody gets one thing. There’s a million choices. Very confusing. Number two, there’s still a few external services that everybody needs.
[00:19:42.370] – Spencer Forman
You need to have a payment gateway like Stripe or PayPal. You can’t do that yourself. That’s one of the few remaining external stuff. But it’s confusing for people when they’re started to have to set that up before they’ve even gotten their site going. One of the things we do at Launch Kit is we set that up built in with test keys for Stripe, so they are immediately winning by seeing the outcome. And then they just put their own, they press the button or they get their own keys and now they’re on their own thing. But helping them do that if they’re stuck is also part of the the bargain. The third thing, externalities are SMTP for email, marketing, automation, as well as transactional. Most hosting companies are not set up to do modern marketing. You’re going to get black flagged or whatever they call it, just going to be shut down. So people have to understand that the platform is also set up for modern marketing automation and marketing emails. And that’s something that has so many variability that we’re killing ourselves there, which we can do now very simply. Once that base platform is in place, then it’s just a matter of what is the outcome somebody needs?
[00:20:50.200] – Spencer Forman
There’s common threads. I have a membership site that I want to sell access to online course. I have a training or coaching business that I do live events and I want to save the archives. I do an in person. There’s formulas or recipes that are so common, we could just take it off the shelf and be done with it. Then finally, there’s the design. Cadence is brought to us with the native Guttenberg patterns, not the full site editor, not the crazy let’s make more templates. A methodology where right in front of you, you can see the page you’re building and you can just copy the blocks from our pattern library or side them and just go, Oh, I want that. Paste, type the words, associate the button with the product, and you’re done. More people than not do not want to go and edit the underlying full site editing theme. More people than not want a whiteboard that they can change. Look at ClickFunnels, Shopify, cartoon, Kajabi. They don’t have 50 million different things to choose from. They have one basic thing that you can change the style of or the content of. That’s where this whole full site editing thing is taking people in a direction that makes zero sense.
[00:22:06.220] – Spencer Forman
And I’m not going to argue about it because there’s that column.
[00:22:10.180] – Jonathan Denwood
Of end users. It makes sense for the professional. It’s trying to appeal to two completely different market, which is, if it was done in a slightly different way, it probably is achievable. But it just needs a lot more thought.
[00:22:31.940] – Spencer Forman
I don’t disagree with your point, but here’s where I feel like this has taken a turn for the worse. We accepted the Guttenberg editor instead of the classic editor, and we can make blocks and patterns. And that was a big hit to a lot of people because that requires skills in React and JavaScript and stuff. It took us out of HP. Underneath the hood was always the template. There’s traditional template, php with the template hierarchy. When you use cadence, that all remains. But cadence grabs a hold of that and through the existing forever customizer, gives us all of the custom abilities to build custom layouts and themes and everything. Where full site editing has just jumped the shark again, fair enough for a certain group of people, is it’s like, let’s gut the template structure system and the template hierarchy and put it into a React special version of whatever the hell this thing is in full site editing for a certain segment of people to use. But now you’ve got a layer added on a layer on a layer on a layer. When this thing happens with changing the interface of the admin, when all of a sudden the muscle memory of like, I’m used to this remote control and everything it did for 18 years goes away, 18 years.
[00:23:44.690] – Spencer Forman
All hell is going to break loose because the people who are well intentioned and really talented, who are building now in the core of WordPress, most of them have no idea what’s been going on before because they’re all new skill developers. They’re all come in with React and jQuery and stuff that wasn’t relevant if you were in WordPress before. And they’re like, Get rid of those real to real computer systems from NASA and let’s put in this new thing. And without that hierarchy of what’s gone before, we’ve seen five or six things in the core of WordPress where they’ve taken a part out, just, Oh, let’s gut this thing like short codes the other day, or Let’s gut this thing, like the content editor shows up as a native block. Oh, we need that. I guess we need to put it back in. It’s like, what the F is going on? It was a week where the main content editor couldn’t exist inside of a template that was built with full site editing. It’s like 18 years and you guys have to be told this the first time. So I’m trying to say this whole idea is to escape, but not escape by putting you in a cage and not escape like some of the hosting companies have done.
[00:24:53.270] – Spencer Forman
You’re never going to get that until we say you get it. But rather to give a stable platform where creative people for their own use or as implementers can finally achieve a curated way to just build cool stuff and get out of the hailstorm that keeps happening with the crazy stuff of WordPress. And while it’s fun to talk about, it’s really troubling when you have 100, 200, 300 customers. Their shit all breaks overnight because some well intentioned developer gutted the short code out of the core WordPress and it auto updated on you. And so forth. That’s all I got to say about that.
[00:25:37.840] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve just got a quick follow up question before we go on to the next one. So cadence, fantastic. But how do you see cadence reacting to the new back end interface and to full site editing in general? There’s ear, it’s really a framework in some ways. It’s a modern version of a framework. It goes back to studio press and Genesis, what cadence is. Utilizing blocks and more modern interface metaphor. But how do you think, because it’s a key part of your setup, how do you see them reacting to this?
[00:26:26.950] – Spencer Forman
Well, I have really good relationships with a lot of folks at Kden, starting with Kathy Zant and Carmen over at LearnDashP art, and there’s Matt over runs product market. There’s a lot of folks that are all over there. They’re on board. Even Ben Ritner and his team and everybody else that do cadence. Here’s the thing I want to differentiate. There was a time, I can’t remember the name of it. I don’t know why it keeps escaping me, but there was like six, eight years ago, somebody attempted to create a white label version of a bunch of WordPress stuff in a kit for creative people. I cannot think of it right now, but maybe if you know it, jump it out. But the problem with it was that they white labeled all the stuff. So they took the parts and melted them together and said, here it is as a platform. That’s exactly the opposite of what I’m suggesting. What I’m saying is so important is I’m curating out the stuff in its native form, delivering it ready to go at the base level on a platform, ready to use so that people can just start being creative.
[00:27:33.920] – Spencer Forman
Creators or implementers for credit can just start doing stuff and escape that hailstorm of all the variability. But it comes with a guarantee. As soon as you want to leave, just take everything you’ve got and go in three minutes or less on your own hosting or whatever. Then you just go to the individual un molested plug in authors and say, I want to pay you for support and updates. Because remember when we started this interview, WordPress is open source, free as in free beer, not as in free. I don’t understand what Matt’s talking about anymore, but the code is free. All of the people who have software in here have subscribed to and still maintain, including myself with launch flows. Our code is for anybody to take. It’s a badge of honor that I’m on GPL vault now because anybody can have launch flows if they want it. That’s not what I’m selling. What I’m selling is the curated experience of escaping the dramatic drama changes that go on in WordPress so that somebody could just be creative and build. But as soon as they grow, as soon as they want to do more, as soon as there’s something that I say, No, I don’t want to do that on the launch kit platform, go, leave.
[00:28:44.900] – Spencer Forman
Maybe you’ll stay in the kit, maybe you’ll stay in the club, or maybe you’ll stay in the probe. But you don’t have to be stuck on this platform because we didn’t melt all of that into one block of custom plastic. That’s the magic. So when people ask me, Spence, how have you taught 40,000 people and service all these clients? Because I figured out over these years, I raised three kids on my own, how to do more with less steps, Marie Kondo style. Right now, I can’t tell you how frustrating it is when every single part of word press is changing and every single third party is competing to have 50 versions of the same thing. How much distraction that is from I have a list of clients who are all just like, all I wanted was a membership site that I can launch today and get started. And it’s like they go over to cart truck, kajabi, ClickFunnels, whatever, because that’s delivered there. In WordPress, I have to start with, Let me explain. Org versus. Com. Let me explain why Jet pack is bad. Let me explain why you don’t want to go over to automatic or this or that.
[00:29:44.640] – Spencer Forman
By the time I’m done explaining all of that flea market mindset, people are long gone. But best of all, how much does it get started? How much does it cost to get started for my membership site? Well, what I could say now is it’s $97. Everything’s included. The hosting, the platform, ready to go. You’re up in five minutes. And if you ever want to leave or go with your implementer, go. That’s the point. It’s a pure SaaS solution but curated by somebody who has, let’s say, my mindset or energy because I feel like that’s my superpower over the last 18 years to take complex things and make them simple, but not in a way that requires us to build from scratch anymore. We’ve got the Lego blocks.
[00:30:27.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Got some more fabulous questions to ask, Spencer, based on these years of experience. We’re going to go for our break.
[00:30:34.760] – Spencer Forman
I was on show number three of this.
[00:30:38.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, you were.
[00:30:41.020] – Spencer Forman
With Bill Conrad back in.
[00:30:42.660] – Jonathan Denwood
The days. Don’t mention that.
[00:30:44.350] – Spencer Forman
We used to do this from the back of a wagon pulled by a horse in those days. Recorded it on vinyl.
[00:30:52.730] – Jonathan Denwood
Thanks for bringing that up. We will be back in a few moments, thanks. See you soon.
[00:31:03.460] – Spencer Forman
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[00:32:12.610] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back, folks. I just want to say if you’re a WordPress professional and you’re looking for a great hosting provider that really does understand WordPress, that specializes in membership and community powered websites, why don’t you look to become a partner with WP Tonic? We offer some great packages, we’re a great partner, and we understand WordPress really well and this particular space. To find out more, go over to WP Tonic tonic. Com partners. That’s WP tonic. Com partners. And you can find out more there. And we’d love you to become part of the tribe. So, Spenser, you know, you’ve consulted a lot of developers looking to enter the WordPress space. It’s still driving between 40 % to 43 % of all websites. What are some of the things through your consultancy side of your business, have you noticed when consulting developers that are attracted to the WordPress space but don’t understand the ins and outs of launching a new product service in the WordPress community? What are some of the things that you regularly see that they misunderstand?
[00:33:43.000] – Spencer Forman
They say if you live long enough, everything comes full circle. And in my experience, depending on which circle, 10 to 40 years. One of the things I can definitely say that is the new trend as a result of all the modern technology, like AI and so on and so forth, is something that I grew up with, something that Gen Xers particularly still find very attractive. What people want today from an agency or an implementer, as I call them in WordPress, is the concierge personal relationship, just get it done for me, but do it at a price that is not objectively taking advantage of me. Nobody is stupid anymore. The t’s all out in the open. So there were days I can recall back when CRMs first got started, like infusion soft, before it was possible to do that stuff, they used to charge $2,500 just for the privilege of talking to a salesperson and then charge through tens of thousands of dollars to implement it. We can do that now for $97 on a kit. With designing a website, I used to teach people how $2,500 to $5,000 for a basic four or five page HTML WordPress website was standard because you had to chop a tree down and carve it out of wood.
[00:35:03.960] – Spencer Forman
Nobody’s that dumb. You can go on the web and push a button or ask Open AI and the 20 page website spits out with bells and whistles. But you know what that’s created in people? The same anxiety that, let’s say, Steve jobs understood when we were all trying to buy Windows 95 laptops from Sony, and he’s like, Or you have one laptop, two sizes. You have one mobile device, two sizes. You have one desk top, two sizes, six choices. You’re done. Premium pricing for what you’re getting, but for you, immediately satisfied what you needed was, I need somebody to tell me what to do and how to do it in a way that makes sense and is immediately gratifying and it feels safe because there’s a real person behind it. You know, it doesn’t work anymore? Screwing your clients up and down, like trying to sell them something they know they could get elsewhere, trying to compete for lowest price. So what it means is that the clients want an outcome. You have to have the time or effort to learn by talking. It’s so simple. Asking, what do you need? What’s your problem? Does it hurt when you go like this?
[00:36:10.220] – Spencer Forman
Because they’ll tell you what’s wrong and then you take the kit as your stable starting point and you immediately can launch something that’s worth $5,000 in an hour. Maybe you charge them $2,500. T hey’re like thrilled because now they can actually use it because it’s got the interface that’s friendly to them or something that they don’t have to go out and buy 12 plug ins and have 12 other relationships with strangers to ask questions about. You see? So being a concierge at the Four Seasons but charging high at place pricing is the new it because your cost of delivering that is best Western. So you’re still making a really generous markup but your client is feeling like a rock star and they don’t feel stupid. And that’s the difference. And the same thing in the marketplace. I go after these companies in our space that are our colleagues because it’s so disrespectful to all of us when they put up stuff in front of their plug ins and things that try to scare the shit out of people about like, You brought this plug in and it’s a danger, criminal activity. And it’s like, Guess what?
[00:37:23.930] – Spencer Forman
By eliminating all that in the kit, the client doesn’t ever have to have that, W hat the hell is happening? Or, My whole site stopped working. Those are things that people want to pay to avoid today. So that’s what I recommend. If you’re an implementer, being a participant in this financial system and recurring payments, I know you can send somebody to Hostgator and get $85 one time. Well, with the kid, if you send a client, it’s $97 a month, and I’ll give you 20 % of that forever as long as the client stays there. Because that’s how I make sure that you want to keep sending people there and I can afford to do that because I’m not going through the same support problems of somebody who’s got an independent site where the person put in crazy stuff, blew it all up, and so forth. It’s like a little nest in a tree where the eggs hatch. And if the client is bigger, they might get little more.
[00:38:16.690] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, over to you, Kurt.
[00:38:18.880] – Spencer Forman
This is by the way, I wanted to just… Anybody’s listening, that was a sign of Jonathan. Jonathan and I have known each other for 16 years. That was his sign of like, Why do I keep asking him on to these shows?
[00:38:29.830] – Jonathan Denwood
Why? Over to you, Kurt.
[00:38:36.030] – Spencer Forman
I’m.
[00:38:37.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
Listening, Spenser, and I’m hearing it. I feel like I’m going to say it’s like you’re challenging my world view. I just want to put this out there. Every time as an agency that I have attempted to limit the options and give them a package and say, Here’s your template. All you got to do is put in your text and images and you’re good to go. And they go, That’s exactly what I want. And then I go, It’s done. Here it is. And every time I do that, they come back with, I don’t want this field. I don’t want this button. I need this button. I need this. And then I need advanced custom fields. I need my reporting to change. And it’s like.
[00:39:18.460] – Spencer Forman
This is not.
[00:39:19.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
What we did in the scoping. This is not what we discovered in the needs assessment. I have the recordings of what.
[00:39:26.740] – Spencer Forman
You asked for.
[00:39:27.650] – Jonathan Denwood
And I developed it. I think.
[00:39:32.000] – Spencer Forman
This is actually very healthy because I agree with you, but let’s differentiate the type of product or solution for a client that this is for versus the alternative. Okay, so let’s start with the premise. We can all agree, I believe, that no matter how you deliver a product for a client, you either put them on a sandbox or you set up a base site for them. So just getting the stuff that they need in the place where it’s stable or whatever is time consuming, even if you have an optimized system. And for the client, there’s an uncertainty as to is this mine right now or yours right now? Who owns it? Who’s paying for it? It’s like a complicated thing. So the first thing is to just say, what if we had a place that was inexpensive that the client signed up for, you get 20 % of the revenue of, and if they decided to stay there until a certain thing happened, they can. Okay, next, you bring up a good point. Whatever you decide to do as an implementer, there are going to be clients that have complex needs and they’re already mature in their wants and they just need a custom site.
[00:40:32.910] – Spencer Forman
For those people, it’s probably not a good match to use the launch kit because that’s not what it’s for. This is like a birdie’s nest in a tree for a client that wants to launch something that they would have put on a SaaS platform. Now, let’s compare that. If you had a client that wanted this custom WordPress solution but they wanted to use ClickFunnels, guess what? You’re going to have to bust your behind to go set it up from scratch on ClickFunnels because ClickFunnels doesn’t have something that you can compare those two things and say, if in your initial conversation with a client, they just need custom, custom, custom, custom, they’re not a good match for the kit. The clients that are a good match for the kit are the ones where get back to what’s in the kit. The things that I’ve curated in there have been after 18 years of experience. The minimal number of Lego blocks that accomplish the maximum number of feature requests in a way that simplifies overlap, which is a big problem in our space. Five plug ins all want to be frameworks and they all have 90 different dashboards.
[00:41:36.290] – Spencer Forman
Even Lifter LMS has this problem. Why is Lifter LMS selling it instead of WooCommerce? But the point is it’s a curated set of stuff so that as an implementer, your client doesn’t have to get lost but you can still show them. Copy paste, simple. Here’s how we did a custom layout for this sales funnel, this product, this whatever. Now, last thing, let’s say you have a brilliant idea as an implementer and you’re like, Spence, I love the thing, but if only it did this, I added in to the core thing, and then the next version that deploys that day or whatever, your client has it available, turn on or turn off the plug and use it, don’t use it. But they can’t break it because they can have any content, any change, even customization, even importing, exporting. You can do all of that. You just can’t change the core stack of plug ins without it being from the top down because that’s what screws up everybody. You see what I mean? So I totally get your concept, but there is also a basis for not every bicycle.
[00:42:36.700] – Jonathan Denwood
I think I’m going to speak for Kirk and move on to the next question is, there’s a number of buckets. I think what you’re trying to tempt to do, you definitely got it will appeal to a certain bucket of customers. But there’s a very diverse different… They’re in broad. It’s like a Russian doll is a better example. There’s definitely different Russian dolls, but in that Russian dolls, there’s a smaller Russian doll. There’s a subset.
[00:43:17.070] – Spencer Forman
Let’s just look at the other… Let’s use Elementor as an example. Birdie Hines, very clear, outspoken. Elementor’s left the building. I don’t want to speak for him. Elementor’s left the building because they went to their platform. And if you follow them, you can see customers are arguing with them about why.
[00:43:35.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you… I would slightly disagree with you because they’re tempting to go at two directions at the same time. The reason why I’ve interrupted you was that I feel you were totally correct until about 18 months ago. But you’ve seen, I saw it myself at WordPress, Portl and Portugal, WordCamp Europe in Porto, they were doing a load of outreach around the event. They weren’t allowed at the event, but they were doing.
[00:44:11.500] – Spencer Forman
Sub meetings. You’re talking about Elementor?
[00:44:13.550] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, and they were doing a PR exercise, and they’re consistent where it looked like they were, and they still are, they got their fully hosted solution.
[00:44:24.390] – Spencer Forman
But this isn’t about the politics. That was true. That’s another element of the drama. What I’m saying is a metaphor is Elementor has left the building to their own hosted cloud platform, and it’s been very clear in public now from Verity and other people in that team. They’re developing where it’s Elementor Cloud first. Oh, by the way, this runs WordPress stuff. Versus WordPress and use Elementor. And the things you’re referring to where they’re doing two things at once is because they have a legacy of people who are still in WordPress first who are like, Hey, man, why aren’t you fixing our stuff?
[00:44:57.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, what I’m saying is I wouldn’t know. I think realized when they looked at their sales that it’s a two edged monster because a lot of their sales come from the Quazile professional market. And trying to ditch the professional Quazile WordPress market is like cutting your own throat.
[00:45:18.160] – Spencer Forman
Let’s look at the reason. So the reasoning behind launch kit, and there is definitely a fork in the road as to who this is for, is that I have all these years learned what not to do. What not to do is not to modify the essence of the underlying code or software or hide who it’s from. It’s to take the original, free as in beer, the code is free and use it as it was intended to curate it into a system that removes all of the politics, removes all of the distractions, removes all of the core set up so that we have a starting point that anybody can agree on. And then at that point, give somebody as a sales tool, say, We want you to leave if you grow out of this. We want you to take this, get started fast, and take your client over to your own hosting if it’s good for your business. I want you to build solutions, but with one caveat. Build the solutions with the curated tools in the kit so that whatever you build can be then brought back into the ecosystem and updated from one place for the benefit of anyone else who wants to buy it from you and will take.
[00:46:28.950] – Jonathan Denwood
Advantage of it.
[00:46:29.770] – Spencer Forman
You know what I’m saying?
[00:46:31.020] – Jonathan Denwood
Like Legos. I definitely understand.
[00:46:35.770] – Spencer Forman
Legos are made out of wood for a reason because they wouldn’t snap together with the other 50 billion Legos that are.
[00:46:43.320] – Jonathan Denwood
So if you were the benign detater of WordPress, what one or two things, if you had the powers, if you were the head of WordPress, the benign detater, would you the God figure, the Godhead, if you were the Godhead, what one or two things about the WordPress community, whatever you want to call it, what would be one or two major things that you would change tomorrow if you were the master?
[00:47:23.060] – Spencer Forman
It’d be a shame if something happened to the leader.
[00:47:26.580] – Jonathan Denwood
The benign leader.
[00:47:28.870] – Spencer Forman
In all seriousness, we have to do this in a hypothetical, but I want to say before I do the hypothetical is in the real world as it is, I think the mistakes that are being made now can be remedied, but won’t be. But they could be remedied by recognizing that a marketplace in the. Org was set up and continues to exist that is no longer benefiting anybody because it is metaphorically a flea market or a school bus full of kids. And now there’s lots of tactics of infighting going on and consolidation and all the stuff we talked about before. So it’s unhealthy in the context of wanting to change the underlying core because while these people are all fighting in the streets over nickels and dimes and whatever to save their businesses. The core is changing and they’re clearly motivated by things that have nothing to do with being on the payroll or a unified front. We’re not in a wasp environment or a SaaS environment. We’re in a free for all situation that always leads to major disruption and not always good for the current owners. I feel a little insulted when I go to these word camps or when I’ve been to the word camps and I see the messaging is like this, pretend I don’t know what’s going on from the top down.
[00:48:50.680] – Spencer Forman
I think that Matt could, would, should be a Steve jobs or be any other… Mark Benioff, this is what Salesforce is doing and this is how it’s doing it. But not like in this random thing, we’re going to clean up the marketplace. Now, in my real world, do I have any aspirations as a 56 year old lowkey father of three to be running a SaaS 43 % of the Internet? No. I like my naps. I like my walks. I don’t like drama. I mean, I make drama, but I don’t like drama. What I want is to say there’s a little Well, in other words, the difference is I have a fundamental core belief system that is based upon being non duplicitous in life. I believe I’m a spiritual being, have a human existence. My name and reputation is all that I come into the world with. It’s all I leave with. I need to be completely truthful about everything I do because that’s the only thing that matters. I am the one it matters to. But to people who are in a relationship with me, that’s important as well. I find it very disturbing when people choose short cuts and they act one way in public and one.
[00:50:05.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Way in public. If you had the power tomorrow, what would you do? Here’s what I would do.
[00:50:10.450] – Spencer Forman
Number one is that I feel like the marketplace itself is broken because instead of people building features, they’ve been left to build platforms. That has to change immediately. In other words, sorry, there could be one or two choices of LMSs, lift their learn or LearnDash or something, and there’s a legacy, of course. But we don’t need 57 different choices for how to order posts inside of the editor. We don’t need six different plug ins that do this, that, and the other thing. And the problem is you can’t easily undo that. The cat’s been out of the bag for so long. But what you could do is to change it going forward. So for example, if they’re all hell bent on this new thing, this new version FFC and so forth, they could draw a line in the sand between the old world in Europe and the new world in the Americas. Anybody who wants to build for this new WordPress, guess what? There’s a built in build features for WordPress that have ability to be sold, but not entire plug in platforms. So that would be a fair way to do it because the oldy timey folks like us are like, okay, we’ll take the old stuff and keep rolling.
[00:51:26.580] – Spencer Forman
But the new marketplace is like, you’re all reacting all the rest of us are. Number two is I just think that automatic has to come forth and be honest and start hiring real people on real salaries like a regular company and stop pretending that this Tom Sawyer paint the fence thing works because the way that these changes are being made, they’re by volunteers who you can’t blame them. But it’s like a volunteer who’s been here for two years, who’s an expert in REACT, rips the guts out of the core or commerce or something and.
[00:51:59.830] – Jonathan Denwood
Breaks the end. I just want to quickly because I agree with point one, and I think you’re making a great point in point two, because it doesn’t mean that you can’t have volunteers, but volunteers need supervision and guidance.
[00:52:13.570] – Spencer Forman
They need to have a top down like this is the roadmap, not like, Hey, I just fixed it. Listen, I don’t want to sound geeky, but I’m in there as a self taught developer reading the… These are really nice, smart people volunteering. But it’s like two dudes at a coffee shop or three people, a woman and a man, they’re just talking as if nothing else exists. And then they have the authority to rip something out of core as long as two other people say yes to it. It’s like, what? How can you do that? It just doesn’t make sense for something that runs half the internet that there’s not a structure of responsibility, a hierarchy, a roadmap. You know what I mean? Can you imagine if any other SaaS company or product company ran like that? Like, it’s Apple’s volunteers. Somebody just modified the iPhone store. It would be impossible. So I don’t want that. I mean, what I want, what I think is going to be possible, and what I’m trying to achieve is I’ve taken the same method I’ve used since I was 10 years old. I found a problem that I’m fascinated by.
[00:53:17.460] – Spencer Forman
It amazes me that 18 years later, I’m still spending seven hours a day looking at this WordPress and it never gets old. And I think it’s because it’s the ultimate playground of building stuff for people that they want to pay. But in doing so, I am going to be like, here’s my element or metaphor. I’m willing to say, you know what? I’ve got a very contrarian view, as Kurt said nicely. I’m going to go out and say, anybody wants to follow me, use this. But you’re not locked in my cage and you can always leave and go back to the world of WordPress because I realized as a business person, that’s the only way to make it a guarantee that works. I think through doing that, I have a goal of signing up 200 people. I have a list in the tens of thousands. I want to sign up 200 people as early adopters. I’m going to put this link up on WP Launchify where you can sign up. It’s going to be 97 for the kit, 97 for the club, and 97 for the early beta adopter help us launch this build contribution thing.
[00:54:22.560] – Spencer Forman
And what that means is four weeks, the people who sign up will get to have all this stuff help us interact velly, This is what I want. I wish you could do this. L iterally help us build it. And I just need 200 people. And you’re welcome to bring your customers if you want because you can make money on that, too. But that is how I’m going to launch this. And I’m quite confident that those people will help us achieve something that many people really feel like it’s long overdue. And by the way, I love all the various hosting providers. And like we said, I’m good friends of Jason Cohen and some other people. They have all their reasons to do what they do to run their business, like jamming cash down people’s throat. But that’s another thing that I want to escape because when you’re starting out, those are the things that trip people up. And this is a way for me to just get everybody right to instant satisfaction.
[00:55:13.760] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. I think we’re wrapping it up actually. So, Spencer, what’s the best way to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:55:25.600] – Spencer Forman
Well, go to WP Launchify. Com. I’m going to put a panel up shortly with the this thing. I’m not announcing it officially until the 17th because it’s the four week mark of the summer. I’m going to visit my kids at camp and so forth. But sometime right before then, the panel be up to sign up. You can always email me, help me, WP LaunchFly. You’re welcome to have a free call with me there or social media. When this happens, like I say, I have no desire to stick my thumb in Mullen Wagon or anybody else’s eye. But I am absolutely, that’s what I meant by the drama coming in. I’m absolutely going to hold the sign up in public when people do things that are duplicitous, like pretending that their GPL plug in can have some crazy warning or telling the. Org people to do one thing, whereas in dot com, you’re making a deal selling everybody downstream. It’s not fair. It’s not right. And that’s where I just feel like we should all be on the same playing field. And then whatever happens happens. I just want to make a livelihood as I’ve been doing from WordPress, and I want to help other people do it as well, but with less drama.
[00:56:35.210] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. Thanks for that. Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find that out more about you?
[00:56:40.770] – Kurt von Ahnen
Surprise, surprise. I’m on LinkedIn. You can look me up on LinkedIn, Kurt Van Aten, the only Kurt Van Aten there. And anything online that’s manana no mas is typically me. Manana no mas, tomorrow no more.
[00:56:52.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Listeners and viewers.
[00:56:53.410] – Spencer Forman
I have a new website called ayer no mas.
[00:56:57.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Listeners and viewers, train this show, I want to dedicate this show to a group of people. I want to dedicate it to Robert Shaw on and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment on the 18th of this month. I’m going to publish this podcast a bit early. And like I said, I want to dedicate it to Robert Shaw, who showed tremendous courage, and so did his men attacking Fort Wagner. He died with his men. Their courage, his courage, and collective courage rejuvenated the Union’s will to fight and gave respect to the people on their knees to rise up and fight for the Union. It’s a great day of celebration, sacrifice, and his men’s sacrifice. I’ll see you next week, folks, for another podcast. See you soon. Bye. 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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