Attack of the Page Builders The Outlook For 2024 With Kevin Geary
We discuss the latest trends connected to building websites on WordPress, from semi-standalone page builders like Bricks to Gutenberg-based plugins like Kadence WP.
#1 – Kevin, can you give the listeners and viewers more detailed background information on how you got into web design and development?
#2 – What are some of the biggest challenges that web designers face at the beginning of 2024, and do you have any tips and insights on how these challenges might be better handled based on your experience?
#4 – What are the strengths and weekends of page-building solutions like Bricks and Elementor compared to a leading Gutenberg solution like Kadence WP?
#4 – I see the latest Gutenberg updates connected to complete website editing as confusing and poorly thought out; what are your thoughts on this?
#5 – Do you feel it’s possible with a semi-open source project like WordPress, which has around 43% to 45% of the market share, for it to be both a professional and complete DIY solution?
#6 – If you return to a time machine at the beginning of running your business, what essential advice would you give yourself?
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Sensei LMS: Sensei LMS
BlogVault: BlogVault
The Show’s Main Transcript And Links
[00:00:00.220] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic This Week in WordPress. This is episode 895. Yes, 895. I can’t believe it. We’ve really got a real special guest. I’ve been looking forward to this interview for the last couple of weeks. We have the notorious Kevin Geary isin the house on digitalgravy, I should say. Influencer, straight talker, It’s going to be a fantastic discussion. I think Kevin’s up for it. So, Kevin. Oh, by the way, unfortunately, I haven’t got my better half with me, Kurt. He’s on a family journey for the next couple of days, helping their relative. But he will be back next week. Kevin, would you like to quickly give the tribe a quick introduction, 20, 30 second introduction about yourself?
[00:01:15.330] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, for sure. I am an agency owner. I am a product developer. I’m an educator in the WordPress space. Those are basically the three legs of my stool, so to speak. That’s what I’m known for. So Automatic CSS is one of my products. Frames is an add-on product to Automatic CSS. I educate mostly in the realm of page builders like Bricks and Oxygen. I focus a lot on scalability, maintainability in web design and projects. That’s pretty much the quick rundown.
[00:01:54.970] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, you’re doing a fantastic job, I would like to say, Kevin. I’ve been watching some of your content recently, and I think you’re doing a fab job, Kevin.
[00:02:04.440] – Kevin Geary
I appreciate it.
[00:02:05.610] – Jonathan Denwood
All right? I don’t want you to say that to those people. Before we go into the meat potatoes of this great interview, I’ve got a couple messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few seconds, folks.
[00:02:24.070] – Kevin Geary
Tired of hosting providers that can’t handle high traffic loads? Convesio is here to help. Our platform can handle any amount of traffic, all without slowdown or crashing.
[00:02:37.390] – Jonathan Denwood
With immediate Slack support, performance optimization, and a team that thrives on resolving technical challenges, your e-commerce business is in safe hands.
[00:02:49.960] – Kevin Geary
Learn more about Convesio at convexio.
[00:02:53.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Com.
[00:02:56.780] – Kevin Geary
Are you 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, Jess used the code WPTonic, all one word, when checking out and give Sensei a try today.
[00:03:27.700] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back, folks. Also, I I want to mention we got a sponsor for January, that’s Cloudways. You probably all know Cloudways. It’s a fantastic WordPress hosting provider, really aimed at The WordPress professional, they’re doing a special offer. You can find their special offer and details of it and the other sponsors by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals. Wp-tonic. Com/deals. Not only will you find their great offers, but you’ll find a curated list of the best WordPress plugins and services that will help you build those fantastic websites for your beloved clients, what more could you ask for? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get from me, folks. I’m sorry to disappoint. I’ve made it a life’s journey of disappointment. So let’s go straight into it, Kevin. Maybe you can give us a quick background journey about how you got into web design, and then how did you decide that you were going to go into the training and the mentorship space? Because you feel busy in web design, and it’s a bit of a commitment. First of all, how did you get into web design?
[00:04:55.190] – Kevin Geary
I’ve been building websites since I was around 12. I was always fascinated with computers. I was always fascinated with the internet and being able to build things on the internet. Started very young. I remember around that age, middle school-ish, had a friend that was big into web design. He got me into it and just started to explore there, build things. Then I’ve always been an entrepreneur, lifelong, just I don’t really want a job. I want to I want to build things. I want to create things, and I want to solve challenges. I’ve always had businesses, and the web design side of things has always been like, it was always entrepreneurship first, and then my web design and development skills came along with that because every business I would start, I would be the person building the website for it and working to market it and leveraging the online space for doing a lot of that marketing, whether it was an offline business business or an online business. After a while, I started to get more into the concept of… First, it was blogging, following in the footsteps of like, Darren Rouse, a pro blogger, right?
[00:06:11.000] – Kevin Geary
And so the concept of like, can I write and make money? That was the whole thing, like back in 2005-ish, 2006. So I started there. And then I started to branch out to, No, it’s not like monetizing a blog. Let’s just come up with online business concepts and execute on those. And of course, I also I had a martial arts studio at the time, so an offline business that I was running. I was a martial arts instructor for a very, very long time. It was just my skills in all of these areas of web design and copywriting and SEO, because the online businesses, it was heavy, heavy, heavy into SEO. I was learning a lot of SEO principles at that time, content marketing principles. Then I started to dabble into Facebook ads and Google ads, things like that. So that got me into the advertising space. It was all of these skills being developed over years and years and years and years and years of trying to build and market my own businesses. And then I got into the agency space where I was like, you know what? I can provide a lot of value to other businesses.
[00:07:16.160] – Kevin Geary
I focus mainly on local businesses in my area. I did the agency thing. I still have my agency, but I’ve scaled it back a lot because of the way that automatic CSS and frames. I have an inner circle, a 1,500 plus developers, designers, freelancers who we do a bunch of trainings for, a bunch of coaching with. So I’m very, very busy on that front. And I enjoy going back to having a martial arts school. I I just am… My personality is like a natural teacher. And so when I know something or learn something, I just want to teach it. Also, my brain learns really well by teaching. So the more I teach something, the more I know it and understand it myself, myself. And so there’s a side benefit in that regard. But I just think it’s the natural way that I go about things. So it was, to me, the more that I’ve gotten into the teaching side of it, I actually enjoy it more than doing client work. If I had to choose between, Hey, let’s teach concepts and try to innovate workflows, which I’m known for a lot as well, is like, Let’s find the most efficient way to do these things.
[00:08:28.420] – Kevin Geary
That’s way more fun to me than sitting down and doing another client project, if I’m being honest. That’s how we got to where we are today.
[00:08:37.500] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. Thanks for that. What type of martial arts were you teaching in I was teaching Olympic taekwondo, and it was mainly to kids.
[00:08:50.440] – Kevin Geary
I was teaching regular classes because I have a studio. But then my big focus was on our competition teams. We actually had a travel competition team. We were traveling all over, going to USAAT events, AAU events, nationals, junior Olympics, things like that. That was the most fun part of that side of things.
[00:09:11.270] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t know if you want to discuss this, but you mentioned it in one of the videos I watched you have dyslexia. I also have dyslexia as well, Kevin. So has that affected your… Because I see slight elements of yourself in really. You’re a bit more intense, or I’ve been told I can be intense. I get a feeling of intensity from you. That might come from your martial arts, but get back to it, Jonathan. So did this… As the dyslexia also determine your pathway business-wise and your career paths?
[00:10:00.270] – Kevin Geary
I don’t think it’s determined anything, really. It certainly does impact things. It’s harder for me to learn certain things. People see me all the time on videos. Anything that’s a binary situation, my brain confuses it constantly. In development of automatic CSS, for example, there’s challenges that I’m trying to solve within the framework that probably take It took me two or three times longer to solve than maybe some other person because my brain goes and it just gets lost inside the challenge. It continues to run into points where it’s like, this is just not computing. I can’t really wrap my mind around it consistently enough to get to the conclusion. I have to sit there and work at it a lot longer and a lot harder. There’s just challenges like that within the work that I do, but it hasn’t really stopped me from doing anything and it hasn’t It hasn’t caused me to go in a different direction for any reason.
[00:11:04.800] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges that web designers… You got to focus on WordPress, but I think you got your own tribe. So that’s one of the reasons why you can be very honest. I think one of the problems of the WordPress community, as some fabulous people in it and some Some fabulous work being done. And it’s also got some real shit in it, but every community does. Every community. Just is. But there’s a lot of hidden aggression in the community in general. But I don’t think… Because you got your own tribe, you don’t feel that you have to be part of that little dance, really, a sense that you just want to be on Honest. They are your opinions, but you back them up with their models, don’t you? What do you think are some of the major challenges web designers face in the coming year?
[00:12:17.740] – Kevin Geary
Well, I think there’s the obvious things. There’s the AI side of stuff that everybody’s concerned about. To me, it is just the pace, the pace of our industry, the quickness with how the tools change, how the practices and workflows change around the changes in those tools. You look at stuff like CSS, you look at front-end JavaScript frameworks. There’s a lot of unknowns, and there’s a lot to know, and there’s a lot to keep up with. Also, the idea that this is a very multidisciplinary field that we work in. We’re all building websites, but if you look at what a website actually is, There’s just a tremendous amount of difference in the disciplines that go into building a successful website. I mean, anybody can build a website, but whether that website is successful or not is a completely different story. If you look at the agency side, I live in the agency world. And in the agency world, you’re responsible for building a successful website for the clients that hire you. And so you have to know things like not just web design, which that’s what the client says they want from the agency. We want a new We want a design or we want a new website.
[00:13:32.140] – Kevin Geary
And in their mind, they don’t understand all that goes into that. But the agency to make that successful has to understand user experience and UI design principles and copywriting and SEO and then good coding, and then maintainable practices, and on and on and on and on and on and on. If we only know web design, like an artist that learns how to use Webflow or something, but they don’t really know these other areas, sure, they can build a website, but it’s probably not going to be very successful. So it’s all of these different disciplines in an industry that’s moving very, very, very quickly. There’s just so much stuff to keep up with. There’s so much stuff to know, so much stuff to learn, so much stuff to keep track of. And then that’s on top of having to actually do the work. So it’s just very, very, very, I think, hard for maybe if I had to guess, a lot of agency owners, freelancers, etc, constantly feel like they’re maybe falling behind in this and struggling to keep up. Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. I don’t know. Everybody can speak for themselves. But if I had to guess, I think that that’s one of the major challenges that we’re facing.
[00:14:42.720] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think I also get that sense, actually. I think it’s always been there, isn’t it, Kevin? But I do think it’s gone on a little bit on steroids, isn’t it? A little bit.
[00:14:55.120] – Kevin Geary
That’s the problem is the acceleration is not linear. It’s getting faster. Faster and faster the more we go into it. If you look at something like AI, I think that’s only going to accelerate the speed at which these things go. These are people with an agency. They’re looking at the future of their agency. Can I survive in this environment? Just with the AI thing, a lot of people are already thinking, how long are we going to be around? Now, I tend to have a more pessimistic view of what AI is able to do and what it will in place and things like that. But it’s making a lot of people lose sleep at night, and that’s just one area.
[00:15:37.630] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I think around the AI question, I’ve had discussions on this show, and It’s a very broad term, isn’t it? Because you got the language pattern recognition side of it, and then you got general AI, which is human machine consciousness. I see no sign of machine consciousness. I really see what… But don’t get me wrong, I’m utilizing about three or four AI tools. I’ve been using them for the past, must be now almost eight months. Time goes quick, doesn’t it? I found them enormously helpful in the work I do on a day on a day basis, and they’ve become a key part of my day-to-day work. But I see the language recognition tools a bit like a glorified mechanical turk. It does. It outputs what you want to some extent, but it’s delusionary. It’s not a human being that actually thinks. Well, some people think, don’t they? Not as many as people as I thought. But that’s the English sarcasm coming out, Kevin. You seem to enjoy your small- I do.
[00:17:11.590] – Kevin Geary
I do. Yeah.
[00:17:12.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Or you might not enjoy the next couple of questions. But I think it is just the pace. But also, it is a very complicated scenario because it’s also It’s driven by the book of business, the type of clients you are trying to get. I think one of the strengths of Divi and nick Roach is that he really understood his target audience because I think he was one of them. That small town designer part-time, maybe have children that’s doing design work part-time, that’s doing the business card, the logo, the graphics for the van, everything for a small business His client and the small client wants them to build a website, and they only got a certain budget. They found Divi and all the community around Divi. I felt he’s positioning of elegant themes and Divi. I think he’s one of the sharpest business individuals in WordPress, really. I’m not a great amour of Divi. Never have always made up for me. A great amour of nick as a business individual. So I think it really depends where you’re pitching, because that type of web design, the limitations of budget and other factors is more different to a more larger agency that has three or four or five, 20, 30 people inside it.
[00:19:14.930] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you reckon? You reckon not? Was that a load of dribble?
[00:19:18.260] – Kevin Geary
Or was that- You mean in terms of how viable is divvy or how good of a product?
[00:19:24.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, the skills and knowledge and Because when you’re a more generalist, and you got to be a generalist because of the budget and the type of clients, the skills you need are a bit different. Then you go further up the food chain, you become a little bit more specialized, don’t you?
[00:19:47.650] – Kevin Geary
Yeah. I think there’s a sub discussion there around… You mentioned budget a few times. This is something I like to talk with agency owners about. I think that There’s a little bit of a paradigm shift that needs to happen around pricing and around budget and around what clients are willing to pay for. I mean, the idea that a lot of freelancers and even agencies, you throw out a number like 3,500, and it’s like they’re gasping and it’s like, oh, my God, that’s so high. Nobody would ever pay that for a website. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of agencies doing $35,000 websites routinely. And so The idea that even a local small business. Like I said, I’ve been an entrepreneur all my life. I know how business works. I know how business owners think. I know how cheap business owners think. And I know how successful business owners think. And if you look at a martial arts studio, I think when we opened the martial arts studio, we found our location and we basically plopped down 100 grand, and we signed a lease for $6,000 a month for the location. And so these are the numbers that real business owners are used to encountering.
[00:21:00.980] – Kevin Geary
And I think there’s an epidemic of agencies and freelancers who… It’s the classic e-myth thing. People can go read the e-myth book where it’s like they’re good at something, but they’re not necessarily good at business. And so they’re good at web design or good at development or whatever. And they’re like, Hey, I can start an agency because I have these skills. I’m good at these things. But they’re not really a business owner, and they don’t think like business owners. And so they come in and they’re doing their pricing, and they don’t know how to do their pricing. And they’re just, Well, okay, well, how many hours does it take me? I just put an hourly wage on it, and that’s all a mess. But then they’re also, I think a lot of times, just maybe they don’t have a lot of money themselves or they’ve never really invested a lot in their business. In fact, to get a web design business off the ground, you need a computer. That’s pretty much all you need. There’s not a lot of overhead, right? And so they’re coming up with numbers. I don’t know the businesses will pay $3,500 for a website or $5,000 for a website.
[00:21:55.200] – Kevin Geary
And there are a lot of cheap business owners out there. But the bottom line of all of this is that real businesses that really want to succeed and have what it takes to succeed have a lot more than $3,500 to invest and should be investing a lot more than $3,500. It’s the same thing like if I want a great car, I don’t go to the budget lot to get a great car that already has 125,000 miles on it. Probably not going to get me very far. But if I do want a great car and I want one with a good reputation, I go to a good brand and I pay a lot of money for a nice car, right? And I know exactly what I’m going to get and the level of service that I’m going to get, and I’m going to be much more successful car owner, right? Not a great analogy, but it gets the point across that if you have a business you care about, the idea that you would be looking to spend as little as possible or to get a budget person to basically build what amounts to a central online marketing hub for this business, especially this is like local service-based businesses.
[00:22:57.850] – Kevin Geary
My goal is to dominate my local area, like in search, in brand, in reputation, in everything. I can’t dominate when I get a budget freelancer who is using bottom of the barrel tools to build my site and manage it and so on. It doesn’t really have all the knowledge and expertise and experience that they need. Good businesses know they need to hire A plus people to win. And so any business that’s out there looking for a C or D player at a budget price is not really a serious business in my estimation, right?
[00:23:35.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I totally see where you’re coming from, and I agree with about 80 % of what you’re saying. I think the variables in it is that there’s a group of small business people, even in 2024, that don’t really understand, don’t know enough to make a value judgment. I feel sorry for them. They don’t have any knowledge to make a judgment, a value business judgment about the value of what they’re getting. They just don’t know. You got others that don’t have a budget because they’re starting up or they got a bigger problem with their business. Then there’s the type I also have come across a lot in my business career. And they’re business people, and basically they’re trying it on a bit. They’re trying to get the best value, but they also are trying it on a bit.
[00:24:46.390] – Kevin Geary
Here’s what I’m getting at. This is the point that I make over and over and over again. If you can do a budget website for a business, let’s say $3,500 is the budget amount, which a lot of the cheap business owners even struggle to try to pay that. The failure rate of businesses is insanely high. And the reason the failure rate of businesses is insanely high is because the people running those businesses aren’t great at business, and they don’t hire good advisors, and they don’t hire good people to help their business succeed. And so what I tell agency owners is, we either need to tell that person the truth about what it takes for their business to succeed and charge them according interestingly, or we need to let them go off and just do their thing. But let’s not be a part of their failure by serving budget-oriented clients with budget-oriented level of service and not really knowing what we’re doing. I’m always telling agency owners, let’s level up skills. Let’s level up our knowledge and expertise in these key areas so that we can really help people and stop just selling web design, but actually sell websites that do things for businesses in the real world.
[00:25:57.700] – Kevin Geary
When I was starting out in entrepreneurship, I realized, thankfully, I was very young at the time. It didn’t matter whether I failed or succeeded. But there’s a lot of business owners who come to us who are in their 40s, right? There’s people who are like, Hey, I’m tired of living the corporate life. I want to start this business on my own. I’ve gotten money out of my savings. This is what I have. This is my one shot. If this doesn’t work, I’m going back to the life that I know sucks. I’m going back to a regular corporate job. And so they’re going to hire a provider, right? And if they hire a budget provider, if they hire a provider that doesn’t really know what they’re doing, how to help this business be successful, that person’s dreams are. And that’s why I talk about this all the time, because these are real people with real lives in the real world who are counting on us to help them succeed. Their dreams are about to go in a dumpster fire, right? And they’re going to go with their tail between their legs back to corporate life because they went into business with the wrong mindset.
[00:26:58.030] – Kevin Geary
Everything’s got to be cheap, got to be real budget. I don’t have a lot of money. No, we need to get more money, right? If we want to start on the right foot, we need to start with a little bit more money, and we need to hire the best people for the job to make sure this has the highest chance of succeeding. What we don’t look at enough is the amount of businesses and the amount of websites that get built, the budget websites that get built, and they don’t exist a year later. That business doesn’t exist a year later. The amount that that happens is astronomically high compared to budget website that actually helps a small business succeed. Most of the time, they buy a budget website. It does absolutely nothing for their business. That business goes under because it has no real business leadership or advisory or anything else. And we never hear about it ever again, right? And that just happens day after day after day after day after day. And I just personally don’t really want to have my hand in that process. When a business owner comes to me and they say, I I have a low budget, what’s this website going to cost?
[00:28:03.050] – Kevin Geary
And I say, okay, here’s what needs to happen for this website to be successful. I mean, you’re looking at 15, $20,000 for a website like this. If we’re going to do real work in this area, And if they say, oh, I got $2,500, there’s not what we can do, really, with $2,500, right? And so looking at it from my perspective, where most businesses are used to signing a lease for six grand a month, right? Putting down 100,000 to build out a space. This is the money you have to come up with to make a real go at it unless the business owner themselves is very skilled and can do a lot of the work themselves and not have to pay providers. But if you pay budget providers, you’re going to get low level work and the chances of failure are going to be astronomically higher than if you collected a little bit more money and hired better providers out of the gate.
[00:29:00.750] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but you know, because when I moved to America, I was working in Northern Nevada. I was working as a developer for 2-3 local agencies. One was a very large PR firm. Another one is still the largest web design digital marketing company in Northern Nevada. They were hiring loads of juniors. They squeezed me constantly They didn’t really want to pay my rate. They were constantly… When that is a freelancer working for established PR firms and digital agencies, that’s your life, isn’t it? So This, trying to get the cheapest is… And then you got the whole subject of offshoring as well. But we make the whole episode about this, and you have to come back, hopefully, later on in the year, and we can have a discussion about that because that’s a reality as well, isn’t it? Not only AI. How are we doing for time? Let’s go for our middle break. We’ve only covered two of these, but the last two questions are quite easy. I think it’s time for us to have our middle break. I’ve really enjoyed the discussion so far with Kevin. I think it’s been very interesting Interesting. We will be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:30:33.610] – Jonathan Denwood
This podcast episode is brought to you by Lifter LMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress. If you or your client are creating any online course, training-based membership website, or any type of eLearning project, Lifter LMS is the most secure, stable, well-supported solution on the market. Go to lifterlms. Com and save 20% at checkout with coupon code podcast20. That’s podcast20. Enjoy the rest of your show. We’re coming back, folks. It’s been an interesting discussion with Kevin. I knew it was going to be. I was looking forward to it. Before we go into the second part of the show, we’re going to be talking about Gutenberg, and I’ll be seeing if Kevin is still pulling the arrows out of his back. But before that, I just want to point out, if you’re looking for a great WordPress hosting provider that specializes in learning management systems and community websites built on Buddy Boss, and you don’t want to deal with the normal headaches, why don’t you look at becoming a partner with WP Tonic? We’ve got some great partnership plans You can find more, and it also supports the show as well. I know you’re a loyal tribe.
[00:32:07.340] – Jonathan Denwood
You can find all about that by going over to wp-tonic. Com/partners. Wp-tonic. Com/partners. Find out more about that. We can have a chat. What more could you ask for? God knows. All right, all we go. Well, Kevin, you got into a little bit of trouble, didn’t you, Kevin? The great leader posted a Twitter. He was probably late at night. He was on the whiskey as he is. He was knocking a few whiskey soil in one of your twitters. I think it all started with you going on Jamie’s. First of all, how did that… I love Jamie. He’s a total Gutenberg fan boy. He omits it. I’m more like Paul from WP Tucks in my general attitude towards it. I can see the enormous possibilities. I’m extremely frustrated with the situation. So frustrated that I’ve given up on it to some extent, sometimes. How you got on to this video podcast thing with Jamie. Who organized it? Was it Jamie asked you to come on? Was it?
[00:33:39.540] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, if I remember correctly, he had messaged me about coming on.
[00:33:44.330] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll give I’m confused because I was surprised when I saw it and I watched it. It was one of the most hilarious interviews I’ve watched in a long time because it wasn’t what was said. It was the body language because as you just let it go and you told it the way that you saw it, his eyes just got wider and wider. He really didn’t want you on that interview in the end. He was very English. He was very diplomatic. But to say that what you were saying wasn’t going down well would be the understatement of the century, wouldn’t it? Was you sensing that? Because I sense you a bit like me. As I I get that. It’s a wicked side of me, and I would just play into it. I find it.
[00:34:38.260] – Kevin Geary
No, I mean, I knew ahead of time. I looked into his content and things like that. I knew he was a big block editor guy, but I’m not going on shows to just agree with whatever the guest normally says or does or pushes or promotes or whatever. Like you said, I just go and I tell it like I believe it to be. And I’ve always done that in my content. And I’ve always told people, if you think I’m teaching something wrong or you think that you have an argument to anything that I say, go ahead and Demonstrate. Demonstrate the difference or demonstrate how you can do it better. And I’d love to see that. And I’ve always put that out as an open thing. The problem that I have is that people want to, like you said, shoot people in the back with arrows. These are the people who typically can never seem to find the record button on any of their devices. It’s- It has been to some extent.
[00:35:40.990] – Jonathan Denwood
They’ll be sending you little Twitter videos and video and stuff. Lovely. They’re so generous of them to send it to you, isn’t it?
[00:35:52.570] – Kevin Geary
Well, the thing is, is most of the time what I get is just it’s either personal attacks or it’s You’re wrong, but they don’t really want to show how I’m wrong. Let’s just tell them that he’s wrong. And then it’s very minimally, very minimally. Now, with the Gutenberg thing, I do have to say, right? And I don’t know exactly which video you’re talking about, but I did the Jamie interview. Okay, that was one thing. Then I did very recently- Yeah, I watched it. A way that I tried to build in Gutenberg, right?
[00:36:25.760] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I’m not going to mention his name because I don’t want him to get grief. But this is only my take on it. I’ve met many like him, and they’re honest, but I don’t like stereotypes because I’ve had stereotypes based on me. But he’s very typical of a certain type in the WordPress community and their attitudes. They’re not being deceasful, but they live in their little bubble as well. You were getting hot and bothered a little bit, and I could understand why you were getting hot and bothered a little bit because it was insanity to some extent.
[00:37:13.500] – Kevin Geary
Well, yeah. I mean, I wasn’t even going to bring him up. I already dismissed him in my mind. I think the whole community already dismissed it as well because they can watch the videos if they want to. But my video wasn’t directed at anybody. It was literally directed at the block editor. It was, I’m going to build something in the block editor. You’re going to watch me. And it ended up being a huge struggle and a real problem. And there was things I just could not do. You just cannot do them in the block editor with native blocks. And that’s just a fact. And you can’t get around that fact. And so I put that video out there. It was very calm. It was very just like, here are the facts, here’s the experience. And then I said, if there a better way, please demonstrate it. Now, the first person who stepped up to the plate, giant swing and a miss, and came with insults. And the other thing that bothers me, obviously, in the insult side of things is when somebody insinuates that, I don’t know what I’m doing. Okay.
[00:38:18.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think that was the thing that was getting you going a little bit.
[00:38:21.510] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, go to the channel. There’s hundreds of hours of me doing this stuff, right?
[00:38:28.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I don’t agree with everything you say. But you’re definitely a professional webdesign and you know what you’re talking about.
[00:38:36.940] – Kevin Geary
Right. So the idea that we’re going to come with that as the initial attack. And then the second attack is like, everything I say and do is just to make a buck, basically. How dare you try my family. I found it extremely difficult to make a buck off of a builder that doesn’t even have an affiliate program. We could just start there. So the person doesn’t even do an ounce of homework. Just comes out of the gate with insults.
[00:39:04.650] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m sorry to interrupt, Kevin. Obviously, it’s difficult because I like my little sarcastic comments. There’s a bit of a lag. How dare you try and make a living, Kevin? And how dare you not work for the WordPress Gutenberg project for free and contribute hours of your time? How dare you not do that? It’s just disgusting, Kevin. And the idea that you can just dismiss everything that somebody says or does because they’ve made a dollar, right?
[00:39:40.370] – Kevin Geary
Like the minute somebody has made some money, oh, well, just everything that they say or do from this point forward can be just blindly dismissed now. So I just pushed all of that aside. And what I was going to say is there was actually two block editor, I don’t know what we want to call it, developers, whatever you want to call them, who Produced very thoughtful responses, very respectful responses, very insightful. Just like I watched the video and I was like, this is exactly what I wanted to see. Thank you. And this is the conversation. This is the thing that actually moves all of us forward. Because I think there’s a giant chunk of agencies and freelancers who are not being represented by the direction of the block editor. And I think it’s because The developers working on the block editor, honestly, do not know how we work or what our workflow looks like or what we care about. Like you said, they’re in a little bit of a bubble. I wanted to juxtapose. Here’s what it looks like to work in the block editor using our workflow, and we can’t do it. It’s just not possible.
[00:40:52.330] – Kevin Geary
My main point was this is a bad thing because they claim that the block editor is for everybody, and it’s not for everybody. There’s a large chunk of people that it is not for in its current state. Then I wanted to show what my workflow looks like in a page builder like bricks. I did the, Here’s me doing it in the block editor. Then I followed up with a video, Here’s me doing it in in bricks, and it took 17 minutes in bricks, and there were specific requirements that we had to meet. I meant every single one of those requirements in bricks could not meet some of those requirements in the block editor. It showed a very objective comparison of like, this is the workflow that we live in. The block editor does not provide this, and that’s the problem. Then some block editor people came and made some very insightful, respectful videos, which I watched. I still didn’t… I mean, if you look at the arguments that I made, they still confirm that the block- Oh, yeah.
[00:41:49.900] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m totally agree.
[00:41:51.900] – Kevin Geary
They’re into VS Code and they’re making custom blocks, and this and that, and custom block styles, and they’re going back and forth between VS Code and the block. I did.
[00:42:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve actually spent… I don’t always do my research, but I wanted… I’ve been really looking forward to this discussion with you. With a little spare time, because I normally work 80 hours because I’m trying to build my own retirement pot, so I’m not bankrupt when I’m 70. I work on average about eight hours a week already, but I’ve spent a lot of time in the background listening to your stuff and the other videos. I got to say, I think a lot of what you were saying was factually correct. The only thing is it was big down to that question in the first half of the show about the type of developer, the type, the budget. I don’t really think… But I can also see your response because I think the great leader when he was on the whiskey, he… I think you had to respond in a way because he made that situation appear. And bless him, he’s supposed to be coming on the show, so I’m going to have a chat with him as well. But I just… I think Rich Tabor, since he’s been on the Goombard project, he’s done fantastic work. Because Because it really was totally drowning.
[00:43:32.530] – Jonathan Denwood
It was totally drowning. At your point, five years. Now, come on. God’s sake. But it really was drowning. Then Rich, he’s done some amazing… Because he’s an experienced individual. But then I thought, Yeah, I can see it’s going somewhere. Then we had this full-site editing like, and my attitude towards that is very similar to Paul and W. P. Tutts. You got a fragment, it’s just fragmented. He’s off again, whatever journey it’s going on. Who knows where it’s like the yellow brick road. You don’t know where it’s in, you don’t know where it’s going. But I see the real power. You just see the possibilities and power. We were using the animator, and we still do a bit. I know divvy madness. I know. The comments are starting to come in there. Divvy madness, as I call animator. I’m not an act. If I only inflict myself on my own projects now, But I actually did know how to code, actually, Kevin. And looking at the code that divvy produces, oh, God. But you have to…
[00:45:13.920] – Kevin Geary
Well, and I was hoping with Divi 5.0 that that was going to be something that they addressed.
[00:45:19.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, we could discuss the. Because Divi’s got its… Not got Divi on the main. Elemit has got its own problems. And so is Divi, really. The It’s always had its problems, isn’t it? But I decided I’ve been using Cadence, and it’s not. And Ben, the Chief Developer and the founder of Cadence, and he sold the company. He’s doing some really great stuff. But unless you utilize something like Cadence and there’s some other options as well, you can even consider using Gutenberg to build anything of any professional level. And I know I’m going to get loads of hate mail coming my way, but in my opinion, that’s the truth.
[00:46:09.660] – Kevin Geary
Well, what I’ve discovered in all of this is that you can. You can, you just have to open yourself up to changing your entire workflow to do it. The workflow that most people are used to doing. And the biggest disconnect is this idea that WordPress is democratizing publishing and that the block editor is for everybody. And so you should be able to come over. A Wix user should be able to come over and just hop into WordPress and do the things that they do in Wix, but in WordPress and enjoy the open source nature of it. And that whole narrative is exactly what I said. It’s marketing BS, right? Because that’s just not the experience. And I proved it. I proved it in the sense that a Wix user right now to come over and do what they do in Wix has to add VS code into the mix. They If they have to add React into the mix or PHP into the mix or something else, they can’t just come over and start building stuff like they do. This is not reality in any sense. And I said, that’s fine. I’m okay with having to open VS Code and do stuff.
[00:47:16.650] – Kevin Geary
Just don’t tell me. Just don’t tell me that it’s for everybody at that point and that we’re democratizing publishing. This is where the disconnect is. The disconnect is in the marketing versus the reality of the experience. And so that’s really where the problem is. And that’s where I’ve learned watching, especially the latest two videos. Let me get their names because I just want to give them a shout out for a second because we saw the wrong approach to take. When I make a video and somebody wants to put their two cents into the ring, there’s a wrong way to do that. There’s a right way to do that. The first person did it the wrong way. The next two people did it 100 % right. And I loved watching their video. I love their response. I’m going to get their names right here. So we have Brian, I believe it’s Cordz, C-O-O-R-D-S, Brian Cordz. Phenomenal video response. And Daniel Zecaro, phenomenal video response. I found those very, very insightful, and I found them to be very Just like, well, insightful is the word, right? I didn’t know what the workflow people was. I didn’t know what they were going to propose as the workflow.
[00:48:21.840] – Kevin Geary
So it was very insightful to see their approach. And they showed, hey, you can accomplish this in the block editor. It just takes a completely different approach.
[00:48:32.240] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m not a great fan of Brian because he’s part of a posse that about over a year ago accused me of being a racist. So he’s not on my Christmas list, I’ll be honest with you. I was generous with that guy, and he just… But that’s this certain WordPress crowd. That’s what they like. But when it came- I know is the response that was given to me, which was exactly the response that I was looking for.
[00:49:01.670] – Kevin Geary
But the other bottom line in all of that, if you watch their videos, and so they’re proposing, well, if you want to do it in the block editor, this is what your workflow needs to look like. I would still just show that, guys, I did this in bricks in 17 minutes. And It’s fully scalable, it’s fully maintainable, it met all of the requirements. Every response video, I’ll just say, has taken well longer.
[00:49:24.910] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but they don’t even… It’s obvious they haven’t watched your video video because- Brian said he did. Well, he said- Well, he did, yeah. But the thing is, you were making… I did watch a little bit of it, even though it’s not on my Christmas list, as I say, I love the slang. I don’t wish you me all be, it’s just… You started talking, you got to add this plugin, you got to add that plugin. But your point of the video was native.
[00:49:59.530] – Kevin Geary
Right.
[00:50:00.280] – Jonathan Denwood
It couldn’t do an intermediate layout unless you got a kid, you’d show… Obviously, there was some pre-planning, but I actually thought you were quite fair because I thought what you were trying to do any intermediate front-end developer. That’s the type of work they do on a regular basis, don’t they?
[00:50:21.850] – Kevin Geary
Yeah. My main argument was this is not that if you look at that layout and your brain thinks custom blocks, custom block styles, PHP, React. This problem is solved. This layout is solvable with HTML and CSS. The idea that we have to go off into all of these other lands, which are not work… If we go back to the democratization and the for everyone concept, HTML and CSS are, I believe, way closer to everyone than React and PHP and using multiple different editors to try to accomplish this It’s inside of a WordPress concept that’s new. It’s a very, very convoluted approach when a simple approach, the fundamental approach, the approach that we’ve used since the beginning of HTML and CSS, can get it done. And so that was my biggest thing. It’s like, Hey, if you want this to be the workflow, tell us this is the workflow, and I’m good with that. I’ll adopt that if I need to.
[00:51:26.660] – Jonathan Denwood
I would like to see actually a more constructive thing It’s for you and Brian Gardner to do a video together because Brian, I’ve got the utmost respect for Brian. Yeah. You know, former founder of Studio Press. He’s another doing some good work in Gutenberg because I just don’t know enough now to really give an opinion. Actually, watching your videos, I might join your group because you’ve actually got my enthusiasm because I really enjoyed web design. It’s very creative. I might actually get back into it a little bit. I haven’t really got the time, but it was great. But I’m doing a video, doing a joint video or discussion with Brian because I have the greatest respect for Brian, and I know he really knows his stuff. I think that would be a more constructive discussion with him. Yeah, that stuff. Because he’s very… And he might be up for it. So I think the biggest concern about all this is that there’s a duality here. Frankly, because of the vacuum, that was Gutenberg, which was getting better than this full site editing. And I’m just pulling guesses out the air here, really, Kevin. I have no inside information at all.
[00:53:02.690] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it’s really driven by the requirements, and I think you touched on it, about the requirements that wordpress. Com needs. They want this Wix competitor. And all this which is brew of bad feeling that has imploded in the word press community about how the open source project is run. Matt’s position in there, he’s managerial style, which seems to be a whiskey bottle at night. And bless his heart. This is a human being. He’s not one of these gray corporate CEO types. Lise is here. But there’s a witches’ brew, it all imploded just before Christmas. You got that. And this Obviously, it’s open source, so you want it. It’s one of the powers that new people… Bricks is the example. Now, the developers behind it are extremely experienced. I think they’re based in Germany, aren’t they? The lead developer. They’re very experienced, but it’s amazing what they’ve built. And it’s one of the powers of WordPress that somebody could build something like that and into the market. But the downside is fragmentation. I’m trying to explain to somebody that’s looking to start WordPress. But to me, it’s such an unnecessary mess, isn’t it? It doesn’t even make any logic for how it’s ended up this way.
[00:54:58.800] – Jonathan Denwood
Have you got any insights about how it ended up this way.
[00:55:02.340] – Kevin Geary
Well, I mean, yeah, it’s the nature of themes and plugins, and everybody can build something and bolt it on to this main thing. I don’t think that’s the real problem that we face here is that the idea that you could build a Wix-like experience or a Squarespace-like experience, or you can democratize publishing and create a product that’s for everyone in this environment. And that’s why I did it with native blocks. Because in order to satisfy that requirement, it’s hard to get somebody to come over from Wix. And I explained this on the whole livestream, and I said, I don’t think this is the experience Matt wants people to have. And I’ve never personally met Matt. I’ve never had an extended conversation with him. Looking from afar, I think he’s a nice guy. And like you said, he seems very down to earth. He seems very accessible and approachable. And these are all fantastic things. So I don’t have anything to say bad about Matt. I’m just looking at the goal of WordPress, the stated vision and mission of WordPress. And if I were to put myself in Matt’s shoes as a business owner, thinking as a business owner who says, I want Wix people to be able to come over here.
[00:56:20.060] – Kevin Geary
I want Squarespace people to be able to come over here. Well, if that’s the case, when they install WordPress, you can’t tell them that the first thing they have to do is go choose from one of a thousand different block systems, right? Well, which one do you want to go to? Well, they don’t know. So step one is like, let me do a bunch of research and figure out which direction I want to go because the native controls, the native blocks, don’t get the job done unless I know React and PHP. And then I can actually get to… But no Wix user wants to do that. So that can’t be the solution. You can’t tell them, well, choose from one of a thousand block systems and themes, or get out your VS code and start writing some React and some PHP. You’ll be off to the races. Okay, we’ve already lost this person. This idea that we’re going to bring people from these other builder communities like this is a fantasy.
[00:57:13.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, yeah. I think you can only do it if you have a module structure. You have the basic edge and then you can bolt on another module if you want to do a certain amount, and then you fold on another module if you want to be a professional web. Because one of the problems with animator is you give that to a client. Obviously, you got divotitis. I don’t even know if that word exists. I think it’s to do with my dyslexia. I just create words. I call it, I call it, Alameda Divertitis. Dibs everywhere. I find it offensive to my origins of a web diverver. But it does the job. It’s very powerful and it’s got a big community. They’ve had their own problems, haven’t they? Because they seem to have gone… They’re trying to get… I think they’re losing market share to some other builders now And I think their problems were driven by the VC money. But on the other hand, I think the great leaders’ problems is people don’t realize, and it’s on Wikipedia, that he’s taken or automatic have taken, almost $900 million of investment over six investment periods. I’m sure those investors want something for their money because that’s not loose change, is it?
[00:58:46.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Almost $900 million. I don’t know how much money Animator took from their VC, but I think the problem People with Animator is they wanted it both ways. Obviously, their origins, the way they got traction was through the… And I’ve seen this with other people, their origin was through the WordPress community, the plugin, and But that is not what the VC. The VC is one of a SaaS product. So that they concentrated on the SaaS and they wanted… But then that has consequences around the plugin and that. Is that making any sense, Kevin?
[00:59:34.310] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, I think what we’re getting at is what would the approach be? What would a viable approach be? And I think we talked ahead of the call about this idea of, can an environment even be built for advanced developers and beginners alike? And what would that process look like? And so if it were me, and I was trying to make this a democratized publishing situation, a for everyone editor. I think if we break it down to fundamentals, the question would be, should we build a piece of software that is aimed at the lowest common denominator user, the ultra basics, the I don’t know really what I’m doing, I point and click in Wix. Should we build it for that person and then add on what advanced users need? Or that’s option one. Option two would be, do we build a tool that is great for advanced users and the exact people who really made WordPress what it is and then scale it back for beginners? To me, I think if we look at a lot, this is the problem with divi. Is an element or for me, they were designed for lower common denominator users and then have tried to accommodate more advanced users.
[01:00:50.620] – Jonathan Denwood
I think divi got their point. They’re on Gutenberg, they announced it. Where is it? I think they got their own problems. Sorry to interrupt. But yeah, I totally agree. I see where you’re coming.
[01:01:05.500] – Kevin Geary
Yeah. To me, I think it’s better to work backwards. Let’s build the tool that’s a very powerful tool and then find ways to scale it back and And Bricks is a perfect example of this in many ways. You can go in and they built it with a class-first workflow. This is a workflow that advanced web designers are used to using. This is the fundamentals of web design, HTML and CSS. We’re going to use classes. We’re going to be We’re going to organize those classes, style those classes, attach those classes to any elements that we want. We’re going to be able to change HTML tags to whatever we want. Everything can be done. There’s no limitation inside of Bricks. But a beginner that doesn’t know… I don’t know what a class-first workflow is as a beginner. Well, guess what? In bricks, you can come in and you could just turn that thing off. Then all the classes interface goes away and now it looks like Elementor. And so Bricks built for the advanced user and you can scale it back easily. I think that’s the way to go. I don’t think you’re ever going to win when you have the lowest common denominator user in mind, you build for them, and then just try to make it work for advanced users around that.
[01:02:10.120] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, thanks for that. I didn’t think it that way. I think you’re right about that, actually. All right. Before we go into the last two questions that are more fun questions, I thought I’d do this little game with you. I like the games. I’m going to give you some builders, some Gutenberg and some other builders. I like you just to give your reaction in one sentence or two sentences, all right? All right. There was a BBC show, I think, did this concept. Nothing I do, Kevin, is original.
[01:02:54.510] – Kevin Geary
Are you original anymore.
[01:02:56.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Probably not. I don’t think even I’m original. I’m just, I realized now I’m just a finn, that a load of BBC television. There’s a kid, a supped in and BBC Radio 4. Any originality is probably a delusion, actually. But who knows? So you start off breakdance.
[01:03:23.040] – Kevin Geary
So just one sentence.
[01:03:25.250] – Jonathan Denwood
One or two sentences. Your reaction if somebody said breakdance to you.
[01:03:29.770] – Kevin Geary
Breakdance, clean code, some workflow issues, which are fixable, very, very fixable. But that’s my general consensus right now.
[01:03:41.490] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, my problem with it is the owner. And his business choices. That’s my problem with it.
[01:03:50.520] – Kevin Geary
The thing I’ve started doing because the situation that I honestly don’t care anymore about what owners do or don’t do, because Because my job, especially creating automatic CSS, creating frames, creating these products and services for people, my job is to serve my users and my community. For example, Breakdance is actually a really good example. A lot of my community wants to be able to use automatic CSS in Breakdance. I look at these builders as, can we… Because we have a minimum set of standards for us to integrate with the builder.
[01:04:27.930] – Jonathan Denwood
He seems to be doing well on his website. He’s saying that they’ve got 17,000 users.
[01:04:33.900] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, he’s done a fantastic job, right? And they’ve gotten over the pump and he’s obviously extremely talented. And so a lot of our users want to use a CSS in Breakdance. My job is not to worry about any of the politics or drama, my job is to say, can we integrate with Breakdance? And Breakdance is an integratable builder. It meets a lot of the minimum requirements that we look for, where many, many, many builders do not. And so we have to give a serious We just look to breakdance.
[01:05:03.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Cadence WP.
[01:05:05.930] – Kevin Geary
I looked at it. It did not meet our minimum requirements for integration. There’s some divception issues, lack of variables and inputs, no class first workflow, no class workflow at all. It’s not my cup of tea. I look for things that give the developer points of control, global points of control for maximum maintainability and scalability of a website, because I think that’s one of the most important things when we’re building sites. Other than clean code and accessibility and things like that, maintainability is very, very, very important. The idea that all these sites are built like a card is used a thousand times across the site. And if a client comes along and says, I don’t like the border, color, spacing, whatever that card, then we’re going to go copy paste a change a thousand times across all. This is not the situation that we want to be in. It’s not the life we want to live. So I look for maintainability. And Cadence has no maintainability from what I can tell, until they integrate with partially synced patterns in Gutenberg or something like that, there’s just no way to ensure maintainability. So it’s a nonstarter for me.
[01:06:12.180] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I was expecting and I totally understand your position on that. We’re using it because I really believe in Ben, and it’s one of the few frameworks that enable us to help clients. We provide a set starter themes based on cadence, and then we help them because we got a lot of DIY people on our hosting, but we are a bit like Hosting Plus, so I describe it.
[01:06:43.830] – Kevin Geary
I do want to say that when I say it’s not for us or-No, I totally understand why you said that. The situation could change tomorrow. I have nothing against any of these things.
[01:06:55.050] – Jonathan Denwood
He is very responsive, Ben, to inputs, and he’s very intelligent. But they’re trying to build. They’ve got a lot of things they’re doing. A number of these theme developers and builder developers contact me, and they want to work with me to make some changes that would help in all of these different areas.
[01:07:15.560] – Kevin Geary
The more open they are to that, the more I really am interested in their tool. I’m completely open. I’m telling it like it is right now, but tomorrow, the situation may be different if they make necessary changes.
[01:07:29.860] – Jonathan Denwood
This is only a bit of fun.
[01:07:31.460] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, I just read. Everybody like, they’re not going to take this in context. They’re going to take- Oh, no.
[01:07:38.160] – Jonathan Denwood
This is recomb. More people are going to block you off Twitter. I got 8,000 more arrows in my back after this interview.
[01:07:47.340] – Kevin Geary
So I have to make it a point to, hey, let’s just… Everybody needs to know. Okay, it’s not personal. Being for a builder. Old-school, bloated, not up to standards. Extremely popular, but again, didn’t meet our minimum requirements for integration. When I look at a builder, I look for very specific things. If I hit too many early roadblocks and I’m like, it’s not going to work, I don’t look that much deeper, right? Unless I’m asked to, and then I will. So it’s not fair for me to go off into all these different areas of what’s wrong with it. All I can say is it didn’t It didn’t meet our minimum.
[01:08:32.050] – Jonathan Denwood
I totally agree. It’s a shame because the people behind it are some of the nicest people I’ve met. Very, very generous people. In some ways, they should have been hired at the beginning of this Gutenberg thing They should have great things. Yeah.
[01:08:47.450] – Kevin Geary
There’s a lot of… A ton of talent and the element has got a ton of insanely talented people on their team. Beaver as well. Some of this is when they built the product, there was a certain paradigm. And there’s a lot of technical debt. And they can’t just whip up these modernized changes. Like I said in the very beginning, the pace that this stuff is moving at is insane. And so a lot of it is just a technical debt situation where there’s probably a lot of stuff they want to do. In fact, I talked it at WordCamp to someone on the Beaver Builder team, and there’s a lot of stuff they want to do. And it’s just not… They don’t have a magic wand for this stuff, right? But they’re on board with it, and that’s what’s fantastic. As long as they’re on board with it, hey, let’s get it done.
[01:09:35.290] – Jonathan Denwood
I love this WordPress grand.
[01:09:42.990] – Kevin Geary
Welcome to the show, Andrew.
[01:09:44.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I don’t think anything I could say. This is a martial arts trainer. I don’t think any of my questions are going to make Kevin squir. I think it’s going to be the other way. I’m sorry, I’m getting a lot of it. The tavern, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I just went on the tavern to read the reply. It’s really Spectra.
[01:10:17.590] – Kevin Geary
I have not found a block editor, builder, whatever you want to call it, that really meets minimum requirements except for, and I haven’t looked into it in detail Not really enough, mainly time limitations. But Greenshift is one that’s probably the closest. I’m never even heard of that. You never heard of Greenshift? See, the other thing people have to understand is that when I put out comments about builders and things like this. I don’t think a lot of people… They’re not in my situation necessarily. It’s my job to know what these builders do and the code that they output and the features that they have. I literally have a local install right here with nearly every builder and block system that I could just queue up one.
[01:11:01.650] – Jonathan Denwood
This is the job.
[01:11:04.290] – Kevin Geary
People will say, oh, I don’t… They’ll criticize, but it’s like, I’m actually in every single one of them. I know the limitations of every single one of them. It’s not just me talking crap. It’s like I literally looked at it. I can queue it up anytime I want and I can try to build something in it in a moment’s notice. If anybody has a question about it, I can just queue it up and do it. I do this on live streams, right?
[01:11:29.270] – Jonathan Denwood
No, watch I watched your last one.
[01:11:32.110] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, so it’s not- I was listening to your last one. It’s like I have experience with all of these.
[01:11:37.180] – Jonathan Denwood
I was answering a thousand emails as I was listening to you. On we go. You’re all right for another 5, 10 minutes? Yeah. What shall we choose? Yeah, let’s choose Divi because I forgot the… He’s been on my show. You went on a podcast recently. The guy’s a great div. He’s another I’m the one who aimed at web designers. Giving them advice. I’ve forgotten the name. He went on the interview.
[01:12:06.440] – Kevin Geary
I was on his show?
[01:12:07.970] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I forgot what he’s saying, but he’s a great divi fan. You were very diplomatic, actually, Kevin.
[01:12:15.660] – Kevin Geary
I want to be. I want to because again, that’s the only way to build the bridges. I firmly believe in the maintainability side of things where divvy has presets. If we’re talking about divvy now, divvy has this concept called presets. Breakdance has a concept called presets. Generate has a concept called presets. I wrote an article that presets are not classes. They don’t act like classes. They don’t behave like classes, and they have a lot of limitations over classes. I think another fundamental part of all of this is- Well, can I just interrupt?
[01:12:48.860] – Jonathan Denwood
You were extremely fair with that video you did because you didn’t even go into the topography side of things because that It’s ridiculous situation with that, with. You were generous. You didn’t even go. You could have flamed that as much as you liked. You didn’t even choose to go down that route.
[01:13:11.890] – Kevin Geary
I tried to be as fair as I possibly can. I tried to be as objective as I possibly can. I’m just stating the facts as I see them. I think fundamentally, when we go back to, do we build a product for the lowest common denominator or do we build a product for people who know what they’re doing and then scale it backwards? The divvies, the elementors-What What do you think was your reaction when I say divvy to you then, Kevin? It lacks maintainability. Then they tried to add presets to improve the maintainability. But the reason they introduced a concept like presets instead of a concept like classes is because they’re targeting the lowest common denominator. They have a feeling in their head. And by the way, I’m an educator, and I did a whole free course, 19 episodes long, at least an hour each. Anybody that wants to learn page building and web design in the modern era can go watch this course 100% for free. I teach a class-first workflow.
[01:14:10.050] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I think that’s one of the problems because they got this technical debt, and then you got flex box, you got CSS grids. You got a whole different- But they’re rebuilding, divvee 5.0, right?
[01:14:22.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, they’re being say there for the. It’s almost here.
[01:14:26.940] – Kevin Geary
In credit, it’s almost here, okay? But it’s not going to have classes in it. It’s still going to have presets. It’s not going to have any… Nothing. They’re only fixing the builder workflow. That’s what they’re really focused on. And the builder speed, and I think that’s all great things. Fine and dandy. But the reason these builders have presets instead of classes is because they think that users are not smart enough to understand the concept of classes. And when I educate, because it’s really not that hard.
[01:14:57.170] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s linked to what I was hinting at. I’m going to think about your position because this build in the top one and then not from the bottom scenario, that was a new paradigm that you’ve put to me, and I like it and I’m going to think about it. But that’s why I was talking about in the first half about divvee, because I think they’re aiming at what they see as their users. Is that making sense, Kevin. And I think your position is they should build it from the top and then they modify it so it meets. So I see where you’re coming.
[01:15:41.540] – Kevin Geary
I was very hopeful about divvee 5.0. I was very hopeful about it because Divi has severe accessibility problems. It has severe divception code output problems. It has maintainability problems. So I was like, what are they going to do with 5.0 to address these things? Will the divception not addressed? I don’t I don’t know how much the accessibility has been addressed, but it’s a couple of accessibility experts that I’m in contact with who have tested it, and they basically relate to me. Still a shit show in that regard. And so a lot of the technical side of things was not addressed when they had a perfect opportunity to address it. I would love to know why those kinds of things weren’t addressed. Then the maintainability side of things, again, it’s like this concept of precess. It’s like, why are we introducing this new concept that has limitations when there is a concept concept that’s existed since the beginning of web design that doesn’t have these limitations? Just educate the user. I bring up Webflow all the time because people will say, Oh, you can’t. Nobody can educate. Okay.
[01:16:42.530] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you have to sway?
[01:16:44.550] – Kevin Geary
Web I know. I have so much respect for Webflow from what they’ve done from a tool and just a vision for their tool. They said, you know what? We’re going to build… That’s what they did. We’re going to build the interface that actual professionals can use. And then what we’re going to do, all these designers who aren’t devs who want to come over here and build websites, we’re going to educate them on how to do this. It’s like a novel concept, right? That’s exactly the boat that we should be in, right? Because that’s what elevates the industry. It doesn’t elevate the industry to make everybody and their mom able to say, I’m an agency now and I’m a freelancer now, and I can build websites for businesses. Because this takes us right back to we’re throwing businesses into dumpster fires because there’s people who don’t really know what they’re doing, trying I think in all this, you get back to the duality question of automatic and the great leader, one general, a Wix, and their backers.
[01:17:43.870] – Jonathan Denwood
But with Wix. You’re the professional trainer, trying to upstand it and utilizing the most modern technology in web design and that. It doesn’t have to, but there is a little bit of strain always going to be there a little bit. It could be a lot better.
[01:18:08.080] – Kevin Geary
The problem is Wix lies in their marketing, and I put this on Twitter, when they have You’re swearing.
[01:18:15.830] – Jonathan Denwood
It was a clean child. The bombs are being launched there.
[01:18:22.050] – Kevin Geary
This is where the fundamental problems come from. Wix and Squarespace, their advertising is a lie when they put on a pretty blonde model holding a computer and it’s like, look what I did. Anybody can do it. It’s so easy. Come on over to Wix. This lie that anybody can build a website. Ain’t nobody built… My mom put her down. I don’t care how many hours you give her. She ain’t coming up with a website on Wix or Squarespace or WordPress or anywhere else. Okay?
[01:18:51.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but Kevin and I are a lie, aren’t they? But Kevin and I are alive. But this is the problem The problem is WordPress bought that lie.
[01:19:03.650] – Kevin Geary
They’re like, Oh, we should be able to do that, too.
[01:19:05.900] – Jonathan Denwood
Let’s just- Well, I think it’s more their financial backers bought that lie.
[01:19:10.120] – Kevin Geary
Whoever bought it, the fact is that was bought, right? And this idea that we can create a builder for everybody that’s just like Wix, and you don’t have to know anything to come in and use it, and they failed in that regard. But this is where the problems come from. Yeah.
[01:19:26.250] – Jonathan Denwood
Got two more on them, and I’ll finish off the fire of question. So Alimator, when I say that, what’s your one or two sentences?
[01:19:40.120] – Kevin Geary
Mad props for innovating when they did innovate, creating something that did not exist at the time. Mad props for market… It’s undeniably successful. And they have a ton of-I wish I had their bank to came. Absolutely. The ecosystem that they’ve built, the way that they’ve… And nobody’s perfect. I know that they have some customer support things and some security things and yada, yada, yada, but massive. It’s undeniable. They’re their success. But as a tool in the modern era today, I wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. That’s just the reality.
[01:20:23.360] – Jonathan Denwood
I understand where you’re coming from. I think they got this technical legacy. I don’t know what was going. I think they would I think I got no whispers. I get many emails because I’ve been running this podcast, so I get a lot of twit DMs and little whispers. But I don’t actually know. And by the way, if I don’t want to whisper to me, DM me, please do, folks. I love being the center of intrigue. But you think they weren’t doing much? But there must have been. I think they were being driven by business goals or whatever they’re up to, but I agree with you there. So oxygen. What’s your reaction when I say oxygen?
[01:21:10.980] – Kevin Geary
I loved oxygen. I wish all the things that happened with oxygen didn’t happen with oxygen. I want there to be more builders like oxygen, like bricks, like quickly in the ecosystem. I think these are the builders that really elevate the game. These are the builders that are innovating, and they do truly give us an environment where we can do some really amazing work. Unfortunately, oxygen has gone downhill dramatically in terms of third-party ecosystem community, education, influencers, things like that. So, yeah, that one’s like…
[01:21:51.870] – Jonathan Denwood
I could be very… You’ve been very charitable to oxygen. I could be vicious towards that, but I’m not I’m going to because I’m in enough trouble, Kevin. I’ll finish off with you, beloved Rix.
[01:22:07.860] – Kevin Geary
Rix is the number one page builder in WordPress right now. It’s phenomenally powerful. It’s worked workflow is phenomenally efficient. Its third-party design library. The remote template system is allowing us. So with the integration of automatic CSS and frames, people are building custom legit professional websites 60 to 70% faster than they can do it anywhere else with those three tools. Bricks’ ACSS frames is the number one workflow in WordPress right now. If you have a It’s not a traditional approach to page building websites, right? If you want to open VS Code and live and react and PHP and all this stuff in the block editor, do you. But if you like the page building style approach, Bricks’ ACSS frames is the killer combination. It’s unbeatable right now. And so and bricks is one of the only environments that really allows that. Quickly is probably the second environment. And so if somebody wants something that does live in the block editor but gives you all the power that a normal page builder gives you, then you’re quickly. I think those are the top two tools right now, bricks and quickly crushing the game.
[01:23:27.300] – Jonathan Denwood
This is to finish off with the last question. If you had a time… Obviously, I come from England, so I was a great viewer of Doctor Who and the Time Machine. If you could add your own TARDIS and you could go back in time, Kevin, to the start of your career, what would be one or two things you would tell yourself? Don’t come on this show.
[01:23:50.110] – Kevin Geary
No, it’s been fun. I can’t wait for everybody to take all the stuff out of context and not…
[01:23:56.720] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, by the way, you paged zealots, you religious paged zealots out there. If you’ve got any complaints, just send them to Kevin. That’s right. He’s the judo expert. Stop me. Just send them to Kevin and see what replies you get.
[01:24:11.340] – Kevin Geary
I would have Started doing the education side of things a lot sooner. I went to the agency side of things first. And yeah, I enjoy agency work from time to time. But this is so much more, first of all, working with with other agency owners and freelance. There is nothing better. I literally wake up every single morning and there’s messages from people who… Because let’s go to the upside part of a lot of what I talked about. There are agency owners who had never charged more than $3,500 ever in their life for a website. And they’re struggling. They’re having trouble paying the bills. They’re not really feeling fulfilled in their work. I get messages every single morning from people like this who are now charging $15,000 for projects, $20,000 for projects. And they’re entirely An entire life, an entire outlook has changed. And this is far more fulfilling for me than waking up to a business is like, Hey, our conversion rate went up and we’re getting more traffic. And this is fantastic for our business. And that’s great. I like that, right? But impacting individuals who I know are like me, there’s nothing more fulfilling in that regard.
[01:25:24.680] – Kevin Geary
So I wish I got into the education side of things sooner. I wish I got more into the WordPress community be sooner. I mean, let’s be honest. Last year was the… I’ve been in WordPress since 2005. Last year is the first time I ever attended a word camp. Okay? That’s- Kevin. To me, I would want to do that over.
[01:25:44.270] – Jonathan Denwood
Kevin. Yeah. We’re going to have to have a one or two second break. I apologize about this, but I’ll be back in a second. Really sorry about this. So I interrupt. So we had to have a slight pause, folks. But yeah, I can understand why you get a real buzz, because a lot of people, it’s endemic, isn’t it? Undercharging, isn’t it?
[01:26:10.780] – Kevin Geary
Undercharging is huge in this industry. Like I said before, it doesn’t do our clients a service either. Charging higher prices and giving a higher level of service is better for us and it’s better for our clients, and it’s better for the industry across the board. I’ve said, Dimons, I don’t want this industry to turn into a used car situation. I spent a lot of time in the photography industry. I’ve been doing photography for a very, very long time. I saw what happened initially once the DSLR craze came out, where it’s like anybody and their mom can buy a DSLR, and suddenly they’re a photographer, and now they’re selling family photo packages and all this other stuff. And just time after time after time, people are giving 800 bucks, 1500 bucks, hiring these photographers who don’t know what they’re doing, going out and ruining weddings, ruining family photo sessions with their great grandparents, stuff that can’t be redone again. I don’t want that stuff happening in our industry, too. And it is. It is. There’s a lot of low level stuff being done. So that’s why I think we all, us, our clients, the industry, as it rises, we all win.
[01:27:16.580] – Kevin Geary
We all win more. And so that’s a lot of why I talk about standards, best practices, better tools, et cetera, et cetera. Because I’ll go back to say it again, there are real people being impacted in the real world by the work that we’re doing, and we have a responsibility to some degree for that.
[01:27:34.770] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Well, Kevin, I’ve really enjoyed the discussion, like I said, hopefully later on in the year, come back and have another discussion. I think it We’ve covered a ton of stuff. It’s gone on a little bit. You’ve been very gracious through your time. I do appreciate that. What’s the best way for people to find out more about you and your training and the other products that you also have, Kevin?
[01:28:02.730] – Kevin Geary
Go to geery. Co, and everything is there. There’s pretty much a link to everything that I’ve got going on from that one little hub.
[01:28:12.820] – Jonathan Denwood
We’ll make sure it’s in the show notes. If you go over to the WP tonic, we make sure there be a transcript and all the links, everything that you need, folks. We will be back next week. Like I say, I’ve got some fabulous guests that like Kevin, that have agreed to come on in January. Got some new bookings for February. It should be some great education material. We’ll see you soon, tribe.
[01:28:36.360] – Kevin Geary
If you ever want to moderate any discussions, like you mentioned with Brian Gardner or whatever, let me know.
[01:28:41.420] – Jonathan Denwood
I think that would be fun, actually. I might outreach to him and see if he’s up for it because Brian, I think it would be a really respectful, but also I think there will be differences, probably. I’m only guessing this on attitude, but Brian is very nice, respectful, but extremely knowledgeable like yourself. I think it would be a constructive discussion, actually. I think
[00:00:00.220] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic This Week in WordPress. This is episode 895. Yes, 895. I can’t believe it. We’ve really got a real special guest. I’ve been looking forward to this interview for the last couple of weeks. We have the notorious Kevin Geary isin the house on digitalgravy, I should say. Influencer, straight talker, It’s going to be a fantastic discussion. I think Kevin’s up for it. So, Kevin. Oh, by the way, unfortunately, I haven’t got my better half with me, Kurt. He’s on a family journey for the next couple of days, helping their relative. But he will be back next week. Kevin, would you like to quickly give the tribe a quick introduction, 20, 30 second introduction about yourself?
[00:01:15.330] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, for sure. I am an agency owner. I am a product developer. I’m an educator in the WordPress space. Those are basically the three legs of my stool, so to speak. That’s what I’m known for. So Automatic CSS is one of my products. Frames is an add-on product to Automatic CSS. I educate mostly in the realm of page builders like Bricks and Oxygen. I focus a lot on scalability, maintainability in web design and projects. That’s pretty much the quick rundown.
[00:01:54.970] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, you’re doing a fantastic job, I would like to say, Kevin. I’ve been watching some of your content recently, and I think you’re doing a fab job, Kevin.
[00:02:04.440] – Kevin Geary
I appreciate it.
[00:02:05.610] – Jonathan Denwood
All right? I don’t want you to say that to those people. Before we go into the meat potatoes of this great interview, I’ve got a couple messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few seconds, folks.
[00:02:24.070] – Kevin Geary
Tired of hosting providers that can’t handle high traffic loads? Convesio is here to help. Our platform can handle any amount of traffic, all without slowdown or crashing.
[00:02:37.390] – Jonathan Denwood
With immediate Slack support, performance optimization, and a team that thrives on resolving technical challenges, your e-commerce business is in safe hands.
[00:02:49.960] – Kevin Geary
Learn more about Convesio at convexio.
[00:02:53.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Com.
[00:02:56.780] – Kevin Geary
Are you 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, Jess used the code WPTonic, all one word, when checking out and give Sensei a try today.
[00:03:27.700] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back, folks. Also, I I want to mention we got a sponsor for January, that’s Cloudways. You probably all know Cloudways. It’s a fantastic WordPress hosting provider, really aimed at The WordPress professional, they’re doing a special offer. You can find their special offer and details of it and the other sponsors by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals. Wp-tonic. Com/deals. Not only will you find their great offers, but you’ll find a curated list of the best WordPress plugins and services that will help you build those fantastic websites for your beloved clients, what more could you ask for? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get from me, folks. I’m sorry to disappoint. I’ve made it a life’s journey of disappointment. So let’s go straight into it, Kevin. Maybe you can give us a quick background journey about how you got into web design, and then how did you decide that you were going to go into the training and the mentorship space? Because you feel busy in web design, and it’s a bit of a commitment. First of all, how did you get into web design?
[00:04:55.190] – Kevin Geary
I’ve been building websites since I was around 12. I was always fascinated with computers. I was always fascinated with the internet and being able to build things on the internet. Started very young. I remember around that age, middle school-ish, had a friend that was big into web design. He got me into it and just started to explore there, build things. Then I’ve always been an entrepreneur, lifelong, just I don’t really want a job. I want to I want to build things. I want to create things, and I want to solve challenges. I’ve always had businesses, and the web design side of things has always been like, it was always entrepreneurship first, and then my web design and development skills came along with that because every business I would start, I would be the person building the website for it and working to market it and leveraging the online space for doing a lot of that marketing, whether it was an offline business business or an online business. After a while, I started to get more into the concept of… First, it was blogging, following in the footsteps of like, Darren Rouse, a pro blogger, right?
[00:06:11.000] – Kevin Geary
And so the concept of like, can I write and make money? That was the whole thing, like back in 2005-ish, 2006. So I started there. And then I started to branch out to, No, it’s not like monetizing a blog. Let’s just come up with online business concepts and execute on those. And of course, I also I had a martial arts studio at the time, so an offline business that I was running. I was a martial arts instructor for a very, very long time. It was just my skills in all of these areas of web design and copywriting and SEO, because the online businesses, it was heavy, heavy, heavy into SEO. I was learning a lot of SEO principles at that time, content marketing principles. Then I started to dabble into Facebook ads and Google ads, things like that. So that got me into the advertising space. It was all of these skills being developed over years and years and years and years and years of trying to build and market my own businesses. And then I got into the agency space where I was like, you know what? I can provide a lot of value to other businesses.
[00:07:16.160] – Kevin Geary
I focus mainly on local businesses in my area. I did the agency thing. I still have my agency, but I’ve scaled it back a lot because of the way that automatic CSS and frames. I have an inner circle, a 1,500 plus developers, designers, freelancers who we do a bunch of trainings for, a bunch of coaching with. So I’m very, very busy on that front. And I enjoy going back to having a martial arts school. I I just am… My personality is like a natural teacher. And so when I know something or learn something, I just want to teach it. Also, my brain learns really well by teaching. So the more I teach something, the more I know it and understand it myself, myself. And so there’s a side benefit in that regard. But I just think it’s the natural way that I go about things. So it was, to me, the more that I’ve gotten into the teaching side of it, I actually enjoy it more than doing client work. If I had to choose between, Hey, let’s teach concepts and try to innovate workflows, which I’m known for a lot as well, is like, Let’s find the most efficient way to do these things.
[00:08:28.420] – Kevin Geary
That’s way more fun to me than sitting down and doing another client project, if I’m being honest. That’s how we got to where we are today.
[00:08:37.500] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. Thanks for that. What type of martial arts were you teaching in I was teaching Olympic taekwondo, and it was mainly to kids.
[00:08:50.440] – Kevin Geary
I was teaching regular classes because I have a studio. But then my big focus was on our competition teams. We actually had a travel competition team. We were traveling all over, going to USAAT events, AAU events, nationals, junior Olympics, things like that. That was the most fun part of that side of things.
[00:09:11.270] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t know if you want to discuss this, but you mentioned it in one of the videos I watched you have dyslexia. I also have dyslexia as well, Kevin. So has that affected your… Because I see slight elements of yourself in really. You’re a bit more intense, or I’ve been told I can be intense. I get a feeling of intensity from you. That might come from your martial arts, but get back to it, Jonathan. So did this… As the dyslexia also determine your pathway business-wise and your career paths?
[00:10:00.270] – Kevin Geary
I don’t think it’s determined anything, really. It certainly does impact things. It’s harder for me to learn certain things. People see me all the time on videos. Anything that’s a binary situation, my brain confuses it constantly. In development of automatic CSS, for example, there’s challenges that I’m trying to solve within the framework that probably take It took me two or three times longer to solve than maybe some other person because my brain goes and it just gets lost inside the challenge. It continues to run into points where it’s like, this is just not computing. I can’t really wrap my mind around it consistently enough to get to the conclusion. I have to sit there and work at it a lot longer and a lot harder. There’s just challenges like that within the work that I do, but it hasn’t really stopped me from doing anything and it hasn’t It hasn’t caused me to go in a different direction for any reason.
[00:11:04.800] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges that web designers… You got to focus on WordPress, but I think you got your own tribe. So that’s one of the reasons why you can be very honest. I think one of the problems of the WordPress community, as some fabulous people in it and some Some fabulous work being done. And it’s also got some real shit in it, but every community does. Every community. Just is. But there’s a lot of hidden aggression in the community in general. But I don’t think… Because you got your own tribe, you don’t feel that you have to be part of that little dance, really, a sense that you just want to be on Honest. They are your opinions, but you back them up with their models, don’t you? What do you think are some of the major challenges web designers face in the coming year?
[00:12:17.740] – Kevin Geary
Well, I think there’s the obvious things. There’s the AI side of stuff that everybody’s concerned about. To me, it is just the pace, the pace of our industry, the quickness with how the tools change, how the practices and workflows change around the changes in those tools. You look at stuff like CSS, you look at front-end JavaScript frameworks. There’s a lot of unknowns, and there’s a lot to know, and there’s a lot to keep up with. Also, the idea that this is a very multidisciplinary field that we work in. We’re all building websites, but if you look at what a website actually is, There’s just a tremendous amount of difference in the disciplines that go into building a successful website. I mean, anybody can build a website, but whether that website is successful or not is a completely different story. If you look at the agency side, I live in the agency world. And in the agency world, you’re responsible for building a successful website for the clients that hire you. And so you have to know things like not just web design, which that’s what the client says they want from the agency. We want a new We want a design or we want a new website.
[00:13:32.140] – Kevin Geary
And in their mind, they don’t understand all that goes into that. But the agency to make that successful has to understand user experience and UI design principles and copywriting and SEO and then good coding, and then maintainable practices, and on and on and on and on and on and on. If we only know web design, like an artist that learns how to use Webflow or something, but they don’t really know these other areas, sure, they can build a website, but it’s probably not going to be very successful. So it’s all of these different disciplines in an industry that’s moving very, very, very quickly. There’s just so much stuff to keep up with. There’s so much stuff to know, so much stuff to learn, so much stuff to keep track of. And then that’s on top of having to actually do the work. So it’s just very, very, very, I think, hard for maybe if I had to guess, a lot of agency owners, freelancers, etc, constantly feel like they’re maybe falling behind in this and struggling to keep up. Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. I don’t know. Everybody can speak for themselves. But if I had to guess, I think that that’s one of the major challenges that we’re facing.
[00:14:42.720] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think I also get that sense, actually. I think it’s always been there, isn’t it, Kevin? But I do think it’s gone on a little bit on steroids, isn’t it? A little bit.
[00:14:55.120] – Kevin Geary
That’s the problem is the acceleration is not linear. It’s getting faster. Faster and faster the more we go into it. If you look at something like AI, I think that’s only going to accelerate the speed at which these things go. These are people with an agency. They’re looking at the future of their agency. Can I survive in this environment? Just with the AI thing, a lot of people are already thinking, how long are we going to be around? Now, I tend to have a more pessimistic view of what AI is able to do and what it will in place and things like that. But it’s making a lot of people lose sleep at night, and that’s just one area.
[00:15:37.630] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I think around the AI question, I’ve had discussions on this show, and It’s a very broad term, isn’t it? Because you got the language pattern recognition side of it, and then you got general AI, which is human machine consciousness. I see no sign of machine consciousness. I really see what… But don’t get me wrong, I’m utilizing about three or four AI tools. I’ve been using them for the past, must be now almost eight months. Time goes quick, doesn’t it? I found them enormously helpful in the work I do on a day on a day basis, and they’ve become a key part of my day-to-day work. But I see the language recognition tools a bit like a glorified mechanical turk. It does. It outputs what you want to some extent, but it’s delusionary. It’s not a human being that actually thinks. Well, some people think, don’t they? Not as many as people as I thought. But that’s the English sarcasm coming out, Kevin. You seem to enjoy your small- I do.
[00:17:11.590] – Kevin Geary
I do. Yeah.
[00:17:12.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Or you might not enjoy the next couple of questions. But I think it is just the pace. But also, it is a very complicated scenario because it’s also It’s driven by the book of business, the type of clients you are trying to get. I think one of the strengths of Divi and nick Roach is that he really understood his target audience because I think he was one of them. That small town designer part-time, maybe have children that’s doing design work part-time, that’s doing the business card, the logo, the graphics for the van, everything for a small business His client and the small client wants them to build a website, and they only got a certain budget. They found Divi and all the community around Divi. I felt he’s positioning of elegant themes and Divi. I think he’s one of the sharpest business individuals in WordPress, really. I’m not a great amour of Divi. Never have always made up for me. A great amour of nick as a business individual. So I think it really depends where you’re pitching, because that type of web design, the limitations of budget and other factors is more different to a more larger agency that has three or four or five, 20, 30 people inside it.
[00:19:14.930] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you reckon? You reckon not? Was that a load of dribble?
[00:19:18.260] – Kevin Geary
Or was that- You mean in terms of how viable is divvy or how good of a product?
[00:19:24.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, the skills and knowledge and Because when you’re a more generalist, and you got to be a generalist because of the budget and the type of clients, the skills you need are a bit different. Then you go further up the food chain, you become a little bit more specialized, don’t you?
[00:19:47.650] – Kevin Geary
Yeah. I think there’s a sub discussion there around… You mentioned budget a few times. This is something I like to talk with agency owners about. I think that There’s a little bit of a paradigm shift that needs to happen around pricing and around budget and around what clients are willing to pay for. I mean, the idea that a lot of freelancers and even agencies, you throw out a number like 3,500, and it’s like they’re gasping and it’s like, oh, my God, that’s so high. Nobody would ever pay that for a website. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of agencies doing $35,000 websites routinely. And so The idea that even a local small business. Like I said, I’ve been an entrepreneur all my life. I know how business works. I know how business owners think. I know how cheap business owners think. And I know how successful business owners think. And if you look at a martial arts studio, I think when we opened the martial arts studio, we found our location and we basically plopped down 100 grand, and we signed a lease for $6,000 a month for the location. And so these are the numbers that real business owners are used to encountering.
[00:21:00.980] – Kevin Geary
And I think there’s an epidemic of agencies and freelancers who… It’s the classic e-myth thing. People can go read the e-myth book where it’s like they’re good at something, but they’re not necessarily good at business. And so they’re good at web design or good at development or whatever. And they’re like, Hey, I can start an agency because I have these skills. I’m good at these things. But they’re not really a business owner, and they don’t think like business owners. And so they come in and they’re doing their pricing, and they don’t know how to do their pricing. And they’re just, Well, okay, well, how many hours does it take me? I just put an hourly wage on it, and that’s all a mess. But then they’re also, I think a lot of times, just maybe they don’t have a lot of money themselves or they’ve never really invested a lot in their business. In fact, to get a web design business off the ground, you need a computer. That’s pretty much all you need. There’s not a lot of overhead, right? And so they’re coming up with numbers. I don’t know the businesses will pay $3,500 for a website or $5,000 for a website.
[00:21:55.200] – Kevin Geary
And there are a lot of cheap business owners out there. But the bottom line of all of this is that real businesses that really want to succeed and have what it takes to succeed have a lot more than $3,500 to invest and should be investing a lot more than $3,500. It’s the same thing like if I want a great car, I don’t go to the budget lot to get a great car that already has 125,000 miles on it. Probably not going to get me very far. But if I do want a great car and I want one with a good reputation, I go to a good brand and I pay a lot of money for a nice car, right? And I know exactly what I’m going to get and the level of service that I’m going to get, and I’m going to be much more successful car owner, right? Not a great analogy, but it gets the point across that if you have a business you care about, the idea that you would be looking to spend as little as possible or to get a budget person to basically build what amounts to a central online marketing hub for this business, especially this is like local service-based businesses.
[00:22:57.850] – Kevin Geary
My goal is to dominate my local area, like in search, in brand, in reputation, in everything. I can’t dominate when I get a budget freelancer who is using bottom of the barrel tools to build my site and manage it and so on. It doesn’t really have all the knowledge and expertise and experience that they need. Good businesses know they need to hire A plus people to win. And so any business that’s out there looking for a C or D player at a budget price is not really a serious business in my estimation, right?
[00:23:35.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I totally see where you’re coming from, and I agree with about 80 % of what you’re saying. I think the variables in it is that there’s a group of small business people, even in 2024, that don’t really understand, don’t know enough to make a value judgment. I feel sorry for them. They don’t have any knowledge to make a judgment, a value business judgment about the value of what they’re getting. They just don’t know. You got others that don’t have a budget because they’re starting up or they got a bigger problem with their business. Then there’s the type I also have come across a lot in my business career. And they’re business people, and basically they’re trying it on a bit. They’re trying to get the best value, but they also are trying it on a bit.
[00:24:46.390] – Kevin Geary
Here’s what I’m getting at. This is the point that I make over and over and over again. If you can do a budget website for a business, let’s say $3,500 is the budget amount, which a lot of the cheap business owners even struggle to try to pay that. The failure rate of businesses is insanely high. And the reason the failure rate of businesses is insanely high is because the people running those businesses aren’t great at business, and they don’t hire good advisors, and they don’t hire good people to help their business succeed. And so what I tell agency owners is, we either need to tell that person the truth about what it takes for their business to succeed and charge them according interestingly, or we need to let them go off and just do their thing. But let’s not be a part of their failure by serving budget-oriented clients with budget-oriented level of service and not really knowing what we’re doing. I’m always telling agency owners, let’s level up skills. Let’s level up our knowledge and expertise in these key areas so that we can really help people and stop just selling web design, but actually sell websites that do things for businesses in the real world.
[00:25:57.700] – Kevin Geary
When I was starting out in entrepreneurship, I realized, thankfully, I was very young at the time. It didn’t matter whether I failed or succeeded. But there’s a lot of business owners who come to us who are in their 40s, right? There’s people who are like, Hey, I’m tired of living the corporate life. I want to start this business on my own. I’ve gotten money out of my savings. This is what I have. This is my one shot. If this doesn’t work, I’m going back to the life that I know sucks. I’m going back to a regular corporate job. And so they’re going to hire a provider, right? And if they hire a budget provider, if they hire a provider that doesn’t really know what they’re doing, how to help this business be successful, that person’s dreams are. And that’s why I talk about this all the time, because these are real people with real lives in the real world who are counting on us to help them succeed. Their dreams are about to go in a dumpster fire, right? And they’re going to go with their tail between their legs back to corporate life because they went into business with the wrong mindset.
[00:26:58.030] – Kevin Geary
Everything’s got to be cheap, got to be real budget. I don’t have a lot of money. No, we need to get more money, right? If we want to start on the right foot, we need to start with a little bit more money, and we need to hire the best people for the job to make sure this has the highest chance of succeeding. What we don’t look at enough is the amount of businesses and the amount of websites that get built, the budget websites that get built, and they don’t exist a year later. That business doesn’t exist a year later. The amount that that happens is astronomically high compared to budget website that actually helps a small business succeed. Most of the time, they buy a budget website. It does absolutely nothing for their business. That business goes under because it has no real business leadership or advisory or anything else. And we never hear about it ever again, right? And that just happens day after day after day after day after day. And I just personally don’t really want to have my hand in that process. When a business owner comes to me and they say, I I have a low budget, what’s this website going to cost?
[00:28:03.050] – Kevin Geary
And I say, okay, here’s what needs to happen for this website to be successful. I mean, you’re looking at 15, $20,000 for a website like this. If we’re going to do real work in this area, And if they say, oh, I got $2,500, there’s not what we can do, really, with $2,500, right? And so looking at it from my perspective, where most businesses are used to signing a lease for six grand a month, right? Putting down 100,000 to build out a space. This is the money you have to come up with to make a real go at it unless the business owner themselves is very skilled and can do a lot of the work themselves and not have to pay providers. But if you pay budget providers, you’re going to get low level work and the chances of failure are going to be astronomically higher than if you collected a little bit more money and hired better providers out of the gate.
[00:29:00.750] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but you know, because when I moved to America, I was working in Northern Nevada. I was working as a developer for 2-3 local agencies. One was a very large PR firm. Another one is still the largest web design digital marketing company in Northern Nevada. They were hiring loads of juniors. They squeezed me constantly They didn’t really want to pay my rate. They were constantly… When that is a freelancer working for established PR firms and digital agencies, that’s your life, isn’t it? So This, trying to get the cheapest is… And then you got the whole subject of offshoring as well. But we make the whole episode about this, and you have to come back, hopefully, later on in the year, and we can have a discussion about that because that’s a reality as well, isn’t it? Not only AI. How are we doing for time? Let’s go for our middle break. We’ve only covered two of these, but the last two questions are quite easy. I think it’s time for us to have our middle break. I’ve really enjoyed the discussion so far with Kevin. I think it’s been very interesting Interesting. We will be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:30:33.610] – Jonathan Denwood
This podcast episode is brought to you by Lifter LMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress. If you or your client are creating any online course, training-based membership website, or any type of eLearning project, Lifter LMS is the most secure, stable, well-supported solution on the market. Go to lifterlms. Com and save 20% at checkout with coupon code podcast20. That’s podcast20. Enjoy the rest of your show. We’re coming back, folks. It’s been an interesting discussion with Kevin. I knew it was going to be. I was looking forward to it. Before we go into the second part of the show, we’re going to be talking about Gutenberg, and I’ll be seeing if Kevin is still pulling the arrows out of his back. But before that, I just want to point out, if you’re looking for a great WordPress hosting provider that specializes in learning management systems and community websites built on Buddy Boss, and you don’t want to deal with the normal headaches, why don’t you look at becoming a partner with WP Tonic? We’ve got some great partnership plans You can find more, and it also supports the show as well. I know you’re a loyal tribe.
[00:32:07.340] – Jonathan Denwood
You can find all about that by going over to wp-tonic. Com/partners. Wp-tonic. Com/partners. Find out more about that. We can have a chat. What more could you ask for? God knows. All right, all we go. Well, Kevin, you got into a little bit of trouble, didn’t you, Kevin? The great leader posted a Twitter. He was probably late at night. He was on the whiskey as he is. He was knocking a few whiskey soil in one of your twitters. I think it all started with you going on Jamie’s. First of all, how did that… I love Jamie. He’s a total Gutenberg fan boy. He omits it. I’m more like Paul from WP Tucks in my general attitude towards it. I can see the enormous possibilities. I’m extremely frustrated with the situation. So frustrated that I’ve given up on it to some extent, sometimes. How you got on to this video podcast thing with Jamie. Who organized it? Was it Jamie asked you to come on? Was it?
[00:33:39.540] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, if I remember correctly, he had messaged me about coming on.
[00:33:44.330] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll give I’m confused because I was surprised when I saw it and I watched it. It was one of the most hilarious interviews I’ve watched in a long time because it wasn’t what was said. It was the body language because as you just let it go and you told it the way that you saw it, his eyes just got wider and wider. He really didn’t want you on that interview in the end. He was very English. He was very diplomatic. But to say that what you were saying wasn’t going down well would be the understatement of the century, wouldn’t it? Was you sensing that? Because I sense you a bit like me. As I I get that. It’s a wicked side of me, and I would just play into it. I find it.
[00:34:38.260] – Kevin Geary
No, I mean, I knew ahead of time. I looked into his content and things like that. I knew he was a big block editor guy, but I’m not going on shows to just agree with whatever the guest normally says or does or pushes or promotes or whatever. Like you said, I just go and I tell it like I believe it to be. And I’ve always done that in my content. And I’ve always told people, if you think I’m teaching something wrong or you think that you have an argument to anything that I say, go ahead and Demonstrate. Demonstrate the difference or demonstrate how you can do it better. And I’d love to see that. And I’ve always put that out as an open thing. The problem that I have is that people want to, like you said, shoot people in the back with arrows. These are the people who typically can never seem to find the record button on any of their devices. It’s- It has been to some extent.
[00:35:40.990] – Jonathan Denwood
They’ll be sending you little Twitter videos and video and stuff. Lovely. They’re so generous of them to send it to you, isn’t it?
[00:35:52.570] – Kevin Geary
Well, the thing is, is most of the time what I get is just it’s either personal attacks or it’s You’re wrong, but they don’t really want to show how I’m wrong. Let’s just tell them that he’s wrong. And then it’s very minimally, very minimally. Now, with the Gutenberg thing, I do have to say, right? And I don’t know exactly which video you’re talking about, but I did the Jamie interview. Okay, that was one thing. Then I did very recently- Yeah, I watched it. A way that I tried to build in Gutenberg, right?
[00:36:25.760] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I’m not going to mention his name because I don’t want him to get grief. But this is only my take on it. I’ve met many like him, and they’re honest, but I don’t like stereotypes because I’ve had stereotypes based on me. But he’s very typical of a certain type in the WordPress community and their attitudes. They’re not being deceasful, but they live in their little bubble as well. You were getting hot and bothered a little bit, and I could understand why you were getting hot and bothered a little bit because it was insanity to some extent.
[00:37:13.500] – Kevin Geary
Well, yeah. I mean, I wasn’t even going to bring him up. I already dismissed him in my mind. I think the whole community already dismissed it as well because they can watch the videos if they want to. But my video wasn’t directed at anybody. It was literally directed at the block editor. It was, I’m going to build something in the block editor. You’re going to watch me. And it ended up being a huge struggle and a real problem. And there was things I just could not do. You just cannot do them in the block editor with native blocks. And that’s just a fact. And you can’t get around that fact. And so I put that video out there. It was very calm. It was very just like, here are the facts, here’s the experience. And then I said, if there a better way, please demonstrate it. Now, the first person who stepped up to the plate, giant swing and a miss, and came with insults. And the other thing that bothers me, obviously, in the insult side of things is when somebody insinuates that, I don’t know what I’m doing. Okay.
[00:38:18.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think that was the thing that was getting you going a little bit.
[00:38:21.510] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, go to the channel. There’s hundreds of hours of me doing this stuff, right?
[00:38:28.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I don’t agree with everything you say. But you’re definitely a professional webdesign and you know what you’re talking about.
[00:38:36.940] – Kevin Geary
Right. So the idea that we’re going to come with that as the initial attack. And then the second attack is like, everything I say and do is just to make a buck, basically. How dare you try my family. I found it extremely difficult to make a buck off of a builder that doesn’t even have an affiliate program. We could just start there. So the person doesn’t even do an ounce of homework. Just comes out of the gate with insults.
[00:39:04.650] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m sorry to interrupt, Kevin. Obviously, it’s difficult because I like my little sarcastic comments. There’s a bit of a lag. How dare you try and make a living, Kevin? And how dare you not work for the WordPress Gutenberg project for free and contribute hours of your time? How dare you not do that? It’s just disgusting, Kevin. And the idea that you can just dismiss everything that somebody says or does because they’ve made a dollar, right?
[00:39:40.370] – Kevin Geary
Like the minute somebody has made some money, oh, well, just everything that they say or do from this point forward can be just blindly dismissed now. So I just pushed all of that aside. And what I was going to say is there was actually two block editor, I don’t know what we want to call it, developers, whatever you want to call them, who Produced very thoughtful responses, very respectful responses, very insightful. Just like I watched the video and I was like, this is exactly what I wanted to see. Thank you. And this is the conversation. This is the thing that actually moves all of us forward. Because I think there’s a giant chunk of agencies and freelancers who are not being represented by the direction of the block editor. And I think it’s because The developers working on the block editor, honestly, do not know how we work or what our workflow looks like or what we care about. Like you said, they’re in a little bit of a bubble. I wanted to juxtapose. Here’s what it looks like to work in the block editor using our workflow, and we can’t do it. It’s just not possible.
[00:40:52.330] – Kevin Geary
My main point was this is a bad thing because they claim that the block editor is for everybody, and it’s not for everybody. There’s a large chunk of people that it is not for in its current state. Then I wanted to show what my workflow looks like in a page builder like bricks. I did the, Here’s me doing it in the block editor. Then I followed up with a video, Here’s me doing it in in bricks, and it took 17 minutes in bricks, and there were specific requirements that we had to meet. I meant every single one of those requirements in bricks could not meet some of those requirements in the block editor. It showed a very objective comparison of like, this is the workflow that we live in. The block editor does not provide this, and that’s the problem. Then some block editor people came and made some very insightful, respectful videos, which I watched. I still didn’t… I mean, if you look at the arguments that I made, they still confirm that the block- Oh, yeah.
[00:41:49.900] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m totally agree.
[00:41:51.900] – Kevin Geary
They’re into VS Code and they’re making custom blocks, and this and that, and custom block styles, and they’re going back and forth between VS Code and the block. I did.
[00:42:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve actually spent… I don’t always do my research, but I wanted… I’ve been really looking forward to this discussion with you. With a little spare time, because I normally work 80 hours because I’m trying to build my own retirement pot, so I’m not bankrupt when I’m 70. I work on average about eight hours a week already, but I’ve spent a lot of time in the background listening to your stuff and the other videos. I got to say, I think a lot of what you were saying was factually correct. The only thing is it was big down to that question in the first half of the show about the type of developer, the type, the budget. I don’t really think… But I can also see your response because I think the great leader when he was on the whiskey, he… I think you had to respond in a way because he made that situation appear. And bless him, he’s supposed to be coming on the show, so I’m going to have a chat with him as well. But I just… I think Rich Tabor, since he’s been on the Goombard project, he’s done fantastic work. Because Because it really was totally drowning.
[00:43:32.530] – Jonathan Denwood
It was totally drowning. At your point, five years. Now, come on. God’s sake. But it really was drowning. Then Rich, he’s done some amazing… Because he’s an experienced individual. But then I thought, Yeah, I can see it’s going somewhere. Then we had this full-site editing like, and my attitude towards that is very similar to Paul and W. P. Tutts. You got a fragment, it’s just fragmented. He’s off again, whatever journey it’s going on. Who knows where it’s like the yellow brick road. You don’t know where it’s in, you don’t know where it’s going. But I see the real power. You just see the possibilities and power. We were using the animator, and we still do a bit. I know divvy madness. I know. The comments are starting to come in there. Divvy madness, as I call animator. I’m not an act. If I only inflict myself on my own projects now, But I actually did know how to code, actually, Kevin. And looking at the code that divvy produces, oh, God. But you have to…
[00:45:13.920] – Kevin Geary
Well, and I was hoping with Divi 5.0 that that was going to be something that they addressed.
[00:45:19.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, we could discuss the. Because Divi’s got its… Not got Divi on the main. Elemit has got its own problems. And so is Divi, really. The It’s always had its problems, isn’t it? But I decided I’ve been using Cadence, and it’s not. And Ben, the Chief Developer and the founder of Cadence, and he sold the company. He’s doing some really great stuff. But unless you utilize something like Cadence and there’s some other options as well, you can even consider using Gutenberg to build anything of any professional level. And I know I’m going to get loads of hate mail coming my way, but in my opinion, that’s the truth.
[00:46:09.660] – Kevin Geary
Well, what I’ve discovered in all of this is that you can. You can, you just have to open yourself up to changing your entire workflow to do it. The workflow that most people are used to doing. And the biggest disconnect is this idea that WordPress is democratizing publishing and that the block editor is for everybody. And so you should be able to come over. A Wix user should be able to come over and just hop into WordPress and do the things that they do in Wix, but in WordPress and enjoy the open source nature of it. And that whole narrative is exactly what I said. It’s marketing BS, right? Because that’s just not the experience. And I proved it. I proved it in the sense that a Wix user right now to come over and do what they do in Wix has to add VS code into the mix. They If they have to add React into the mix or PHP into the mix or something else, they can’t just come over and start building stuff like they do. This is not reality in any sense. And I said, that’s fine. I’m okay with having to open VS Code and do stuff.
[00:47:16.650] – Kevin Geary
Just don’t tell me. Just don’t tell me that it’s for everybody at that point and that we’re democratizing publishing. This is where the disconnect is. The disconnect is in the marketing versus the reality of the experience. And so that’s really where the problem is. And that’s where I’ve learned watching, especially the latest two videos. Let me get their names because I just want to give them a shout out for a second because we saw the wrong approach to take. When I make a video and somebody wants to put their two cents into the ring, there’s a wrong way to do that. There’s a right way to do that. The first person did it the wrong way. The next two people did it 100 % right. And I loved watching their video. I love their response. I’m going to get their names right here. So we have Brian, I believe it’s Cordz, C-O-O-R-D-S, Brian Cordz. Phenomenal video response. And Daniel Zecaro, phenomenal video response. I found those very, very insightful, and I found them to be very Just like, well, insightful is the word, right? I didn’t know what the workflow people was. I didn’t know what they were going to propose as the workflow.
[00:48:21.840] – Kevin Geary
So it was very insightful to see their approach. And they showed, hey, you can accomplish this in the block editor. It just takes a completely different approach.
[00:48:32.240] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m not a great fan of Brian because he’s part of a posse that about over a year ago accused me of being a racist. So he’s not on my Christmas list, I’ll be honest with you. I was generous with that guy, and he just… But that’s this certain WordPress crowd. That’s what they like. But when it came- I know is the response that was given to me, which was exactly the response that I was looking for.
[00:49:01.670] – Kevin Geary
But the other bottom line in all of that, if you watch their videos, and so they’re proposing, well, if you want to do it in the block editor, this is what your workflow needs to look like. I would still just show that, guys, I did this in bricks in 17 minutes. And It’s fully scalable, it’s fully maintainable, it met all of the requirements. Every response video, I’ll just say, has taken well longer.
[00:49:24.910] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but they don’t even… It’s obvious they haven’t watched your video video because- Brian said he did. Well, he said- Well, he did, yeah. But the thing is, you were making… I did watch a little bit of it, even though it’s not on my Christmas list, as I say, I love the slang. I don’t wish you me all be, it’s just… You started talking, you got to add this plugin, you got to add that plugin. But your point of the video was native.
[00:49:59.530] – Kevin Geary
Right.
[00:50:00.280] – Jonathan Denwood
It couldn’t do an intermediate layout unless you got a kid, you’d show… Obviously, there was some pre-planning, but I actually thought you were quite fair because I thought what you were trying to do any intermediate front-end developer. That’s the type of work they do on a regular basis, don’t they?
[00:50:21.850] – Kevin Geary
Yeah. My main argument was this is not that if you look at that layout and your brain thinks custom blocks, custom block styles, PHP, React. This problem is solved. This layout is solvable with HTML and CSS. The idea that we have to go off into all of these other lands, which are not work… If we go back to the democratization and the for everyone concept, HTML and CSS are, I believe, way closer to everyone than React and PHP and using multiple different editors to try to accomplish this It’s inside of a WordPress concept that’s new. It’s a very, very convoluted approach when a simple approach, the fundamental approach, the approach that we’ve used since the beginning of HTML and CSS, can get it done. And so that was my biggest thing. It’s like, Hey, if you want this to be the workflow, tell us this is the workflow, and I’m good with that. I’ll adopt that if I need to.
[00:51:26.660] – Jonathan Denwood
I would like to see actually a more constructive thing It’s for you and Brian Gardner to do a video together because Brian, I’ve got the utmost respect for Brian. Yeah. You know, former founder of Studio Press. He’s another doing some good work in Gutenberg because I just don’t know enough now to really give an opinion. Actually, watching your videos, I might join your group because you’ve actually got my enthusiasm because I really enjoyed web design. It’s very creative. I might actually get back into it a little bit. I haven’t really got the time, but it was great. But I’m doing a video, doing a joint video or discussion with Brian because I have the greatest respect for Brian, and I know he really knows his stuff. I think that would be a more constructive discussion with him. Yeah, that stuff. Because he’s very… And he might be up for it. So I think the biggest concern about all this is that there’s a duality here. Frankly, because of the vacuum, that was Gutenberg, which was getting better than this full site editing. And I’m just pulling guesses out the air here, really, Kevin. I have no inside information at all.
[00:53:02.690] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it’s really driven by the requirements, and I think you touched on it, about the requirements that wordpress. Com needs. They want this Wix competitor. And all this which is brew of bad feeling that has imploded in the word press community about how the open source project is run. Matt’s position in there, he’s managerial style, which seems to be a whiskey bottle at night. And bless his heart. This is a human being. He’s not one of these gray corporate CEO types. Lise is here. But there’s a witches’ brew, it all imploded just before Christmas. You got that. And this Obviously, it’s open source, so you want it. It’s one of the powers that new people… Bricks is the example. Now, the developers behind it are extremely experienced. I think they’re based in Germany, aren’t they? The lead developer. They’re very experienced, but it’s amazing what they’ve built. And it’s one of the powers of WordPress that somebody could build something like that and into the market. But the downside is fragmentation. I’m trying to explain to somebody that’s looking to start WordPress. But to me, it’s such an unnecessary mess, isn’t it? It doesn’t even make any logic for how it’s ended up this way.
[00:54:58.800] – Jonathan Denwood
Have you got any insights about how it ended up this way.
[00:55:02.340] – Kevin Geary
Well, I mean, yeah, it’s the nature of themes and plugins, and everybody can build something and bolt it on to this main thing. I don’t think that’s the real problem that we face here is that the idea that you could build a Wix-like experience or a Squarespace-like experience, or you can democratize publishing and create a product that’s for everyone in this environment. And that’s why I did it with native blocks. Because in order to satisfy that requirement, it’s hard to get somebody to come over from Wix. And I explained this on the whole livestream, and I said, I don’t think this is the experience Matt wants people to have. And I’ve never personally met Matt. I’ve never had an extended conversation with him. Looking from afar, I think he’s a nice guy. And like you said, he seems very down to earth. He seems very accessible and approachable. And these are all fantastic things. So I don’t have anything to say bad about Matt. I’m just looking at the goal of WordPress, the stated vision and mission of WordPress. And if I were to put myself in Matt’s shoes as a business owner, thinking as a business owner who says, I want Wix people to be able to come over here.
[00:56:20.060] – Kevin Geary
I want Squarespace people to be able to come over here. Well, if that’s the case, when they install WordPress, you can’t tell them that the first thing they have to do is go choose from one of a thousand different block systems, right? Well, which one do you want to go to? Well, they don’t know. So step one is like, let me do a bunch of research and figure out which direction I want to go because the native controls, the native blocks, don’t get the job done unless I know React and PHP. And then I can actually get to… But no Wix user wants to do that. So that can’t be the solution. You can’t tell them, well, choose from one of a thousand block systems and themes, or get out your VS code and start writing some React and some PHP. You’ll be off to the races. Okay, we’ve already lost this person. This idea that we’re going to bring people from these other builder communities like this is a fantasy.
[00:57:13.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, yeah. I think you can only do it if you have a module structure. You have the basic edge and then you can bolt on another module if you want to do a certain amount, and then you fold on another module if you want to be a professional web. Because one of the problems with animator is you give that to a client. Obviously, you got divotitis. I don’t even know if that word exists. I think it’s to do with my dyslexia. I just create words. I call it, I call it, Alameda Divertitis. Dibs everywhere. I find it offensive to my origins of a web diverver. But it does the job. It’s very powerful and it’s got a big community. They’ve had their own problems, haven’t they? Because they seem to have gone… They’re trying to get… I think they’re losing market share to some other builders now And I think their problems were driven by the VC money. But on the other hand, I think the great leaders’ problems is people don’t realize, and it’s on Wikipedia, that he’s taken or automatic have taken, almost $900 million of investment over six investment periods. I’m sure those investors want something for their money because that’s not loose change, is it?
[00:58:46.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Almost $900 million. I don’t know how much money Animator took from their VC, but I think the problem People with Animator is they wanted it both ways. Obviously, their origins, the way they got traction was through the… And I’ve seen this with other people, their origin was through the WordPress community, the plugin, and But that is not what the VC. The VC is one of a SaaS product. So that they concentrated on the SaaS and they wanted… But then that has consequences around the plugin and that. Is that making any sense, Kevin?
[00:59:34.310] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, I think what we’re getting at is what would the approach be? What would a viable approach be? And I think we talked ahead of the call about this idea of, can an environment even be built for advanced developers and beginners alike? And what would that process look like? And so if it were me, and I was trying to make this a democratized publishing situation, a for everyone editor. I think if we break it down to fundamentals, the question would be, should we build a piece of software that is aimed at the lowest common denominator user, the ultra basics, the I don’t know really what I’m doing, I point and click in Wix. Should we build it for that person and then add on what advanced users need? Or that’s option one. Option two would be, do we build a tool that is great for advanced users and the exact people who really made WordPress what it is and then scale it back for beginners? To me, I think if we look at a lot, this is the problem with divi. Is an element or for me, they were designed for lower common denominator users and then have tried to accommodate more advanced users.
[01:00:50.620] – Jonathan Denwood
I think divi got their point. They’re on Gutenberg, they announced it. Where is it? I think they got their own problems. Sorry to interrupt. But yeah, I totally agree. I see where you’re coming.
[01:01:05.500] – Kevin Geary
Yeah. To me, I think it’s better to work backwards. Let’s build the tool that’s a very powerful tool and then find ways to scale it back and And Bricks is a perfect example of this in many ways. You can go in and they built it with a class-first workflow. This is a workflow that advanced web designers are used to using. This is the fundamentals of web design, HTML and CSS. We’re going to use classes. We’re going to be We’re going to organize those classes, style those classes, attach those classes to any elements that we want. We’re going to be able to change HTML tags to whatever we want. Everything can be done. There’s no limitation inside of Bricks. But a beginner that doesn’t know… I don’t know what a class-first workflow is as a beginner. Well, guess what? In bricks, you can come in and you could just turn that thing off. Then all the classes interface goes away and now it looks like Elementor. And so Bricks built for the advanced user and you can scale it back easily. I think that’s the way to go. I don’t think you’re ever going to win when you have the lowest common denominator user in mind, you build for them, and then just try to make it work for advanced users around that.
[01:02:10.120] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, thanks for that. I didn’t think it that way. I think you’re right about that, actually. All right. Before we go into the last two questions that are more fun questions, I thought I’d do this little game with you. I like the games. I’m going to give you some builders, some Gutenberg and some other builders. I like you just to give your reaction in one sentence or two sentences, all right? All right. There was a BBC show, I think, did this concept. Nothing I do, Kevin, is original.
[01:02:54.510] – Kevin Geary
Are you original anymore.
[01:02:56.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Probably not. I don’t think even I’m original. I’m just, I realized now I’m just a finn, that a load of BBC television. There’s a kid, a supped in and BBC Radio 4. Any originality is probably a delusion, actually. But who knows? So you start off breakdance.
[01:03:23.040] – Kevin Geary
So just one sentence.
[01:03:25.250] – Jonathan Denwood
One or two sentences. Your reaction if somebody said breakdance to you.
[01:03:29.770] – Kevin Geary
Breakdance, clean code, some workflow issues, which are fixable, very, very fixable. But that’s my general consensus right now.
[01:03:41.490] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, my problem with it is the owner. And his business choices. That’s my problem with it.
[01:03:50.520] – Kevin Geary
The thing I’ve started doing because the situation that I honestly don’t care anymore about what owners do or don’t do, because Because my job, especially creating automatic CSS, creating frames, creating these products and services for people, my job is to serve my users and my community. For example, Breakdance is actually a really good example. A lot of my community wants to be able to use automatic CSS in Breakdance. I look at these builders as, can we… Because we have a minimum set of standards for us to integrate with the builder.
[01:04:27.930] – Jonathan Denwood
He seems to be doing well on his website. He’s saying that they’ve got 17,000 users.
[01:04:33.900] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, he’s done a fantastic job, right? And they’ve gotten over the pump and he’s obviously extremely talented. And so a lot of our users want to use a CSS in Breakdance. My job is not to worry about any of the politics or drama, my job is to say, can we integrate with Breakdance? And Breakdance is an integratable builder. It meets a lot of the minimum requirements that we look for, where many, many, many builders do not. And so we have to give a serious We just look to breakdance.
[01:05:03.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Cadence WP.
[01:05:05.930] – Kevin Geary
I looked at it. It did not meet our minimum requirements for integration. There’s some divception issues, lack of variables and inputs, no class first workflow, no class workflow at all. It’s not my cup of tea. I look for things that give the developer points of control, global points of control for maximum maintainability and scalability of a website, because I think that’s one of the most important things when we’re building sites. Other than clean code and accessibility and things like that, maintainability is very, very, very important. The idea that all these sites are built like a card is used a thousand times across the site. And if a client comes along and says, I don’t like the border, color, spacing, whatever that card, then we’re going to go copy paste a change a thousand times across all. This is not the situation that we want to be in. It’s not the life we want to live. So I look for maintainability. And Cadence has no maintainability from what I can tell, until they integrate with partially synced patterns in Gutenberg or something like that, there’s just no way to ensure maintainability. So it’s a nonstarter for me.
[01:06:12.180] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I was expecting and I totally understand your position on that. We’re using it because I really believe in Ben, and it’s one of the few frameworks that enable us to help clients. We provide a set starter themes based on cadence, and then we help them because we got a lot of DIY people on our hosting, but we are a bit like Hosting Plus, so I describe it.
[01:06:43.830] – Kevin Geary
I do want to say that when I say it’s not for us or-No, I totally understand why you said that. The situation could change tomorrow. I have nothing against any of these things.
[01:06:55.050] – Jonathan Denwood
He is very responsive, Ben, to inputs, and he’s very intelligent. But they’re trying to build. They’ve got a lot of things they’re doing. A number of these theme developers and builder developers contact me, and they want to work with me to make some changes that would help in all of these different areas.
[01:07:15.560] – Kevin Geary
The more open they are to that, the more I really am interested in their tool. I’m completely open. I’m telling it like it is right now, but tomorrow, the situation may be different if they make necessary changes.
[01:07:29.860] – Jonathan Denwood
This is only a bit of fun.
[01:07:31.460] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, I just read. Everybody like, they’re not going to take this in context. They’re going to take- Oh, no.
[01:07:38.160] – Jonathan Denwood
This is recomb. More people are going to block you off Twitter. I got 8,000 more arrows in my back after this interview.
[01:07:47.340] – Kevin Geary
So I have to make it a point to, hey, let’s just… Everybody needs to know. Okay, it’s not personal. Being for a builder. Old-school, bloated, not up to standards. Extremely popular, but again, didn’t meet our minimum requirements for integration. When I look at a builder, I look for very specific things. If I hit too many early roadblocks and I’m like, it’s not going to work, I don’t look that much deeper, right? Unless I’m asked to, and then I will. So it’s not fair for me to go off into all these different areas of what’s wrong with it. All I can say is it didn’t It didn’t meet our minimum.
[01:08:32.050] – Jonathan Denwood
I totally agree. It’s a shame because the people behind it are some of the nicest people I’ve met. Very, very generous people. In some ways, they should have been hired at the beginning of this Gutenberg thing They should have great things. Yeah.
[01:08:47.450] – Kevin Geary
There’s a lot of… A ton of talent and the element has got a ton of insanely talented people on their team. Beaver as well. Some of this is when they built the product, there was a certain paradigm. And there’s a lot of technical debt. And they can’t just whip up these modernized changes. Like I said in the very beginning, the pace that this stuff is moving at is insane. And so a lot of it is just a technical debt situation where there’s probably a lot of stuff they want to do. In fact, I talked it at WordCamp to someone on the Beaver Builder team, and there’s a lot of stuff they want to do. And it’s just not… They don’t have a magic wand for this stuff, right? But they’re on board with it, and that’s what’s fantastic. As long as they’re on board with it, hey, let’s get it done.
[01:09:35.290] – Jonathan Denwood
I love this WordPress grand.
[01:09:42.990] – Kevin Geary
Welcome to the show, Andrew.
[01:09:44.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I don’t think anything I could say. This is a martial arts trainer. I don’t think any of my questions are going to make Kevin squir. I think it’s going to be the other way. I’m sorry, I’m getting a lot of it. The tavern, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I just went on the tavern to read the reply. It’s really Spectra.
[01:10:17.590] – Kevin Geary
I have not found a block editor, builder, whatever you want to call it, that really meets minimum requirements except for, and I haven’t looked into it in detail Not really enough, mainly time limitations. But Greenshift is one that’s probably the closest. I’m never even heard of that. You never heard of Greenshift? See, the other thing people have to understand is that when I put out comments about builders and things like this. I don’t think a lot of people… They’re not in my situation necessarily. It’s my job to know what these builders do and the code that they output and the features that they have. I literally have a local install right here with nearly every builder and block system that I could just queue up one.
[01:11:01.650] – Jonathan Denwood
This is the job.
[01:11:04.290] – Kevin Geary
People will say, oh, I don’t… They’ll criticize, but it’s like, I’m actually in every single one of them. I know the limitations of every single one of them. It’s not just me talking crap. It’s like I literally looked at it. I can queue it up anytime I want and I can try to build something in it in a moment’s notice. If anybody has a question about it, I can just queue it up and do it. I do this on live streams, right?
[01:11:29.270] – Jonathan Denwood
No, watch I watched your last one.
[01:11:32.110] – Kevin Geary
Yeah, so it’s not- I was listening to your last one. It’s like I have experience with all of these.
[01:11:37.180] – Jonathan Denwood
I was answering a thousand emails as I was listening to you. On we go. You’re all right for another 5, 10 minutes? Yeah. What shall we choose? Yeah, let’s choose Divi because I forgot the… He’s been on my show. You went on a podcast recently. The guy’s a great div. He’s another I’m the one who aimed at web designers. Giving them advice. I’ve forgotten the name. He went on the interview.
[01:12:06.440] – Kevin Geary
I was on his show?
[01:12:07.970] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I forgot what he’s saying, but he’s a great divi fan. You were very diplomatic, actually, Kevin.
[01:12:15.660] – Kevin Geary
I want to be. I want to because again, that’s the only way to build the bridges. I firmly believe in the maintainability side of things where divvy has presets. If we’re talking about divvy now, divvy has this concept called presets. Breakdance has a concept called presets. Generate has a concept called presets. I wrote an article that presets are not classes. They don’t act like classes. They don’t behave like classes, and they have a lot of limitations over classes. I think another fundamental part of all of this is- Well, can I just interrupt?
[01:12:48.860] – Jonathan Denwood
You were extremely fair with that video you did because you didn’t even go into the topography side of things because that It’s ridiculous situation with that, with. You were generous. You didn’t even go. You could have flamed that as much as you liked. You didn’t even choose to go down that route.
[01:13:11.890] – Kevin Geary
I tried to be as fair as I possibly can. I tried to be as objective as I possibly can. I’m just stating the facts as I see them. I think fundamentally, when we go back to, do we build a product for the lowest common denominator or do we build a product for people who know what they’re doing and then scale it backwards? The divvies, the elementors-What What do you think was your reaction when I say divvy to you then, Kevin? It lacks maintainability. Then they tried to add presets to improve the maintainability. But the reason they introduced a concept like presets instead of a concept like classes is because they’re targeting the lowest common denominator. They have a feeling in their head. And by the way, I’m an educator, and I did a whole free course, 19 episodes long, at least an hour each. Anybody that wants to learn page building and web design in the modern era can go watch this course 100% for free. I teach a class-first workflow.
[01:14:10.050] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I think that’s one of the problems because they got this technical debt, and then you got flex box, you got CSS grids. You got a whole different- But they’re rebuilding, divvee 5.0, right?
[01:14:22.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, they’re being say there for the. It’s almost here.
[01:14:26.940] – Kevin Geary
In credit, it’s almost here, okay? But it’s not going to have classes in it. It’s still going to have presets. It’s not going to have any… Nothing. They’re only fixing the builder workflow. That’s what they’re really focused on. And the builder speed, and I think that’s all great things. Fine and dandy. But the reason these builders have presets instead of classes is because they think that users are not smart enough to understand the concept of classes. And when I educate, because it’s really not that hard.
[01:14:57.170] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s linked to what I was hinting at. I’m going to think about your position because this build in the top one and then not from the bottom scenario, that was a new paradigm that you’ve put to me, and I like it and I’m going to think about it. But that’s why I was talking about in the first half about divvee, because I think they’re aiming at what they see as their users. Is that making sense, Kevin. And I think your position is they should build it from the top and then they modify it so it meets. So I see where you’re coming.
[01:15:41.540] – Kevin Geary
I was very hopeful about divvee 5.0. I was very hopeful about it because Divi has severe accessibility problems. It has severe divception code output problems. It has maintainability problems. So I was like, what are they going to do with 5.0 to address these things? Will the divception not addressed? I don’t I don’t know how much the accessibility has been addressed, but it’s a couple of accessibility experts that I’m in contact with who have tested it, and they basically relate to me. Still a shit show in that regard. And so a lot of the technical side of things was not addressed when they had a perfect opportunity to address it. I would love to know why those kinds of things weren’t addressed. Then the maintainability side of things, again, it’s like this concept of precess. It’s like, why are we introducing this new concept that has limitations when there is a concept concept that’s existed since the beginning of web design that doesn’t have these limitations? Just educate the user. I bring up Webflow all the time because people will say, Oh, you can’t. Nobody can educate. Okay.
[01:16:42.530] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you have to sway?
[01:16:44.550] – Kevin Geary
Web I know. I have so much respect for Webflow from what they’ve done from a tool and just a vision for their tool. They said, you know what? We’re going to build… That’s what they did. We’re going to build the interface that actual professionals can use. And then what we’re going to do, all these designers who aren’t devs who want to come over here and build websites, we’re going to educate them on how to do this. It’s like a novel concept, right? That’s exactly the boat that we should be in, right? Because that’s what elevates the industry. It doesn’t elevate the industry to make everybody and their mom able to say, I’m an agency now and I’m a freelancer now, and I can build websites for businesses. Because this takes us right back to we’re throwing businesses into dumpster fires because there’s people who don’t really know what they’re doing, trying I think in all this, you get back to the duality question of automatic and the great leader, one general, a Wix, and their backers.
[01:17:43.870] – Jonathan Denwood
But with Wix. You’re the professional trainer, trying to upstand it and utilizing the most modern technology in web design and that. It doesn’t have to, but there is a little bit of strain always going to be there a little bit. It could be a lot better.
[01:18:08.080] – Kevin Geary
The problem is Wix lies in their marketing, and I put this on Twitter, when they have You’re swearing.
[01:18:15.830] – Jonathan Denwood
It was a clean child. The bombs are being launched there.
[01:18:22.050] – Kevin Geary
This is where the fundamental problems come from. Wix and Squarespace, their advertising is a lie when they put on a pretty blonde model holding a computer and it’s like, look what I did. Anybody can do it. It’s so easy. Come on over to Wix. This lie that anybody can build a website. Ain’t nobody built… My mom put her down. I don’t care how many hours you give her. She ain’t coming up with a website on Wix or Squarespace or WordPress or anywhere else. Okay?
[01:18:51.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but Kevin and I are a lie, aren’t they? But Kevin and I are alive. But this is the problem The problem is WordPress bought that lie.
[01:19:03.650] – Kevin Geary
They’re like, Oh, we should be able to do that, too.
[01:19:05.900] – Jonathan Denwood
Let’s just- Well, I think it’s more their financial backers bought that lie.
[01:19:10.120] – Kevin Geary
Whoever bought it, the fact is that was bought, right? And this idea that we can create a builder for everybody that’s just like Wix, and you don’t have to know anything to come in and use it, and they failed in that regard. But this is where the problems come from. Yeah.
[01:19:26.250] – Jonathan Denwood
Got two more on them, and I’ll finish off the fire of question. So Alimator, when I say that, what’s your one or two sentences?
[01:19:40.120] – Kevin Geary
Mad props for innovating when they did innovate, creating something that did not exist at the time. Mad props for market… It’s undeniably successful. And they have a ton of-I wish I had their bank to came. Absolutely. The ecosystem that they’ve built, the way that they’ve… And nobody’s perfect. I know that they have some customer support things and some security things and yada, yada, yada, but massive. It’s undeniable. They’re their success. But as a tool in the modern era today, I wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. That’s just the reality.
[01:20:23.360] – Jonathan Denwood
I understand where you’re coming from. I think they got this technical legacy. I don’t know what was going. I think they would I think I got no whispers. I get many emails because I’ve been running this podcast, so I get a lot of twit DMs and little whispers. But I don’t actually know. And by the way, if I don’t want to whisper to me, DM me, please do, folks. I love being the center of intrigue. But you think they weren’t doing much? But there must have been. I think they were being driven by business goals or whatever they’re up to, but I agree with you there. So oxygen. What’s your reaction when I say oxygen?
[01:21:10.980] – Kevin Geary
I loved oxygen. I wish all the things that happened with oxygen didn’t happen with oxygen. I want there to be more builders like oxygen, like bricks, like quickly in the ecosystem. I think these are the builders that really elevate the game. These are the builders that are innovating, and they do truly give us an environment where we can do some really amazing work. Unfortunately, oxygen has gone downhill dramatically in terms of third-party ecosystem community, education, influencers, things like that. So, yeah, that one’s like…
[01:21:51.870] – Jonathan Denwood
I could be very… You’ve been very charitable to oxygen. I could be vicious towards that, but I’m not I’m going to because I’m in enough trouble, Kevin. I’ll finish off with you, beloved Rix.
[01:22:07.860] – Kevin Geary
Rix is the number one page builder in WordPress right now. It’s phenomenally powerful. It’s worked workflow is phenomenally efficient. Its third-party design library. The remote template system is allowing us. So with the integration of automatic CSS and frames, people are building custom legit professional websites 60 to 70% faster than they can do it anywhere else with those three tools. Bricks’ ACSS frames is the number one workflow in WordPress right now. If you have a It’s not a traditional approach to page building websites, right? If you want to open VS Code and live and react and PHP and all this stuff in the block editor, do you. But if you like the page building style approach, Bricks’ ACSS frames is the killer combination. It’s unbeatable right now. And so and bricks is one of the only environments that really allows that. Quickly is probably the second environment. And so if somebody wants something that does live in the block editor but gives you all the power that a normal page builder gives you, then you’re quickly. I think those are the top two tools right now, bricks and quickly crushing the game.
[01:23:27.300] – Jonathan Denwood
This is to finish off with the last question. If you had a time… Obviously, I come from England, so I was a great viewer of Doctor Who and the Time Machine. If you could add your own TARDIS and you could go back in time, Kevin, to the start of your career, what would be one or two things you would tell yourself? Don’t come on this show.
[01:23:50.110] – Kevin Geary
No, it’s been fun. I can’t wait for everybody to take all the stuff out of context and not…
[01:23:56.720] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, by the way, you paged zealots, you religious paged zealots out there. If you’ve got any complaints, just send them to Kevin. That’s right. He’s the judo expert. Stop me. Just send them to Kevin and see what replies you get.
[01:24:11.340] – Kevin Geary
I would have Started doing the education side of things a lot sooner. I went to the agency side of things first. And yeah, I enjoy agency work from time to time. But this is so much more, first of all, working with with other agency owners and freelance. There is nothing better. I literally wake up every single morning and there’s messages from people who… Because let’s go to the upside part of a lot of what I talked about. There are agency owners who had never charged more than $3,500 ever in their life for a website. And they’re struggling. They’re having trouble paying the bills. They’re not really feeling fulfilled in their work. I get messages every single morning from people like this who are now charging $15,000 for projects, $20,000 for projects. And they’re entirely An entire life, an entire outlook has changed. And this is far more fulfilling for me than waking up to a business is like, Hey, our conversion rate went up and we’re getting more traffic. And this is fantastic for our business. And that’s great. I like that, right? But impacting individuals who I know are like me, there’s nothing more fulfilling in that regard.
[01:25:24.680] – Kevin Geary
So I wish I got into the education side of things sooner. I wish I got more into the WordPress community be sooner. I mean, let’s be honest. Last year was the… I’ve been in WordPress since 2005. Last year is the first time I ever attended a word camp. Okay? That’s- Kevin. To me, I would want to do that over.
[01:25:44.270] – Jonathan Denwood
Kevin. Yeah. We’re going to have to have a one or two second break. I apologize about this, but I’ll be back in a second. Really sorry about this. So I interrupt. So we had to have a slight pause, folks. But yeah, I can understand why you get a real buzz, because a lot of people, it’s endemic, isn’t it? Undercharging, isn’t it?
[01:26:10.780] – Kevin Geary
Undercharging is huge in this industry. Like I said before, it doesn’t do our clients a service either. Charging higher prices and giving a higher level of service is better for us and it’s better for our clients, and it’s better for the industry across the board. I’ve said, Dimons, I don’t want this industry to turn into a used car situation. I spent a lot of time in the photography industry. I’ve been doing photography for a very, very long time. I saw what happened initially once the DSLR craze came out, where it’s like anybody and their mom can buy a DSLR, and suddenly they’re a photographer, and now they’re selling family photo packages and all this other stuff. And just time after time after time, people are giving 800 bucks, 1500 bucks, hiring these photographers who don’t know what they’re doing, going out and ruining weddings, ruining family photo sessions with their great grandparents, stuff that can’t be redone again. I don’t want that stuff happening in our industry, too. And it is. It is. There’s a lot of low level stuff being done. So that’s why I think we all, us, our clients, the industry, as it rises, we all win.
[01:27:16.580] – Kevin Geary
We all win more. And so that’s a lot of why I talk about standards, best practices, better tools, et cetera, et cetera. Because I’ll go back to say it again, there are real people being impacted in the real world by the work that we’re doing, and we have a responsibility to some degree for that.
[01:27:34.770] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Well, Kevin, I’ve really enjoyed the discussion, like I said, hopefully later on in the year, come back and have another discussion. I think it We’ve covered a ton of stuff. It’s gone on a little bit. You’ve been very gracious through your time. I do appreciate that. What’s the best way for people to find out more about you and your training and the other products that you also have, Kevin?
[01:28:02.730] – Kevin Geary
Go to geery. Co, and everything is there. There’s pretty much a link to everything that I’ve got going on from that one little hub.
[01:28:12.820] – Jonathan Denwood
We’ll make sure it’s in the show notes. If you go over to the WP tonic, we make sure there be a transcript and all the links, everything that you need, folks. We will be back next week. Like I say, I’ve got some fabulous guests that like Kevin, that have agreed to come on in January. Got some new bookings for February. It should be some great education material. We’ll see you soon, tribe.
[01:28:36.360] – Kevin Geary
If you ever want to moderate any discussions, like you mentioned with Brian Gardner or whatever, let me know.
[01:28:41.420] – Jonathan Denwood
I think that would be fun, actually. I might outreach to him and see if he’s up for it because Brian, I think it would be a really respectful, but also I think there will be differences, probably. I’m only guessing this on attitude, but Brian is very nice, respectful, but extremely knowledgeable like yourself. I think it would be a constructive discussion, actually. I think Brian, he’s got so much knowledge that he wouldn’t be intimidated in any shape or form about it.
[01:29:13.990] – Kevin Geary
I think it’d be awesome.
[01:29:14.820] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. We’ll see you later, Todd. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening. We do appreciate it. Why not visit the Mastermind Facebook group? Also, to keep up with the latest news, click Wp-tonic.com/newsletter. We’ll see you next time.
He has so much knowledge that he wouldn’t be intimidated in any shape or form about it.
[01:29:13.990] – Kevin Geary
I think it’d be awesome.
[01:29:14.820] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. We’ll see you later, Todd. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening. We do appreciate it. Why not visit the Mastermind Facebook group? Also, to keep up with the latest news, click Wp-tonic.com/newsletter. We’ll see you next time.
WP-Tonic & The Membership Machine Facebook Group
Why don’t you sign up and be part of the Membership Machine Show & WP-Tonic Facebook group, where you can get all the best advice and support connected to building your membership or community website on WordPress?
Facebook Group
