Running A Successful Web Design, Marketing, and Development Agency In A Changing Market of 2024
Master the Art of Running a Web Design Agency in 2024’s Evolving Market. Elevate Your Business with Cutting-Edge Insights.
Dive into the world of web design development in 2024 and learn to navigate a rapidly changing market confidently. Explore innovative approaches, best practices, and proven methodologies that will set your agency apart from competitors. Get ready to adapt, innovate, and succeed in an era of constant evolution. Don’t miss out on this essential video for aspiring web design entrepreneurs.
With Special Guest Mark Szymanski
#1—Mark, Can you give the audience some more detailed information on how you got into web design and became an agency owner?
#2—What have been one or two significant problems related to building your agency, and how did you overcome them?
#3 – What do you think of these leading competitors to WordPress?
– a – Wix Studio – https://www.wix.com/studio
– b -Squarespace Circle – https://www.squarespace.com/circle/
-c – Webflow – https://webflow.com/
-d- Duda – https://agencies.duda.co/
#4—What are your thoughts on Gutenberg, focusing on its usability for agency owners in the first half of 2024?
#5 – How will AI change web design in the next 18 months?
#6—If you had your time machine (H. G. Wells) and could travel back to the beginning of your career and business journey, what essential piece of advice would you give yourself?
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
The Show’s Main Transcript And Links
[00:00:00.650] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to another WP Tonic Show. I’m looking forward to this discussion. I know how to say it, but I look forward to most of our guests on the show. I do appreciate them spending an hour with us on their busy day. We got Mark with us. I’m going to go straight into it. I’m going to butcher his surname, though totally, but you’re prepared for that, aren’t you, Mark?
[00:00:25.750] – Mark Szymanski
I’m 100% prepared. Yeah, give it a shot.
[00:00:27.550] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s a tradition of the show, my inability. I got to the stage, Mark. I can’t even pronounce my own surname. I’m going to do the card there. We’re going to go straight into it. Three, two, one. Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic Show. This is episode 909. Oh my God, we’re getting close to the big 1,000. Who could I rustle up for the 1,000 show? I’m going to have to start thinking about that—I listeners and viewers. We’ve got a really great guest. I know I say that every week, but I really, indeed mean it. We’ve been on the roll lately with some fabulous guests. We’ve got Mark Schmesky. I’ve totally put But he’s grinning, so he’s not still offended. Mark is the owner of Find It Tech, a web design agency on the East Coast. We will be discussing all things WordPress agency, the main competitors, and a lot of other stuff. It should be a great show. So, Mark, would you like to give a quick 10, 20-second intro of yourself?
[00:01:46.840] – Mark Szymanski
For sure, yeah. Jonathan Kerr. Thank you guys so much for having me. You have the pronunciation right there because I think that’s more the Polish, like the. I’ve been cheating my whole life and just saying Sąanski, so anything works.
[00:01:57.910] – Jonathan Denwood
I was tempted to do that, but then I went to Google. I do practice. This is the terrible fin, Mark. It’s not like I’m ignorant. I actually do practice. I know you mean what? It’s her names of the guests, but it makes absolutely no difference, Mark. I still ball it up.
[00:02:15.570] – Mark Szymanski
It’s all good. I don’t take offense to it. I appreciate it, brother. But yeah, no. So thank you for the intro there. Yeah, my name is Mark Smanzky. I have a YouTube channel. I’m now much more involved in the WordPress community. I’ve been building websites since 2018 in my agency, Find a Tech. But ultimately now, I’ve just, like most of us, gotten way deeper into the WordPress community aspect of it, which is a good and bad thing. Can be here and there. But yeah, I’m really enjoying it, meeting a ton of great people. I’ve yet to meet a single person in this community that I don’t think means well and is contributing heavily.
[00:02:52.400] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you haven’t been on this show yet. So there we go. So, Kurt, there’s quite a few people in the WordPress community I don’t wish well for. And they don’t wish well for me, I don’t care. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners of yours?
[00:03:12.800] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah, sure.
[00:03:14.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
I own the agency MananaNoMas. We focus largely on membership and learning-type websites. I also work directly with Lifter LMS and with the great Jonathan at WP-Tonic. Yes.
[00:03:26.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Kurt is a great agency owner in his own right, and he really helps WP-Tonic as well. So before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show, I’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Just also want to point out that we have some special offers from the major sponsors, plus a curated list of the best WordPress plugins and services. What more could you ask for? And you can get all these goodies by going over to Wp-tonic. Com/dils, Wp-tonic. Com/deals, and you find all the goodies there. What more could you ask for? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get from that page. So, Mark, let’s delve into it. So basically, what’s the How did you get into web design and into agency and WordPress? What led you down this winding road, Mark?
[00:04:41.240] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah, great question. I think I was thinking about this question, and I think there are three things that I would attribute it to. The first thing was my family, specifically my grandmother and my mom, had a restaurant, just a tiny diner here in Pittsburgh, for 30-plus years. So I was always around that. I’m only 28 now. So I was literally there a couple of weeks after I was born. I was always there. I was working. I was always around entrepreneurship, hard work, things like that. So that played a significant role, I think, subconsciously. Then I went to college at the University of Pittsburgh, a class of 2018. I started in computer engineering, moved to computer science, and eventually ended up with an information science degree. So the idea there was it went from more technical to more technical mixed with personal skills in business stuff. So that reinforced a lot of that. I learned the basis of my website building there, HTML, and CSS a little bit throughout those years, just the fundamentals. But it really gave me a good idea because I think differently about building websites rather than from the design perspective. I think more from the development perspective, I think that that’s what that did for me.
[00:05:50.670] – Mark Szymanski
And then, out of college, I had just a regular corporate-style job at a local real estate agency for two and a half years. And that experience taught me a lot in a short amount of time. I was able to climb up the ranks of a more minor team but go from working alongside people in the tech department. I was marketing tech in a way. I wasn’t in real estate, but I was working for them. Was sitting next to people that were doing ASP. Net, like coding and stuff, while also sending out blasts. Yeah, I know. Actually, that was my first experience. I was like, oh, maybe I should do this. And I was like, no, let’s try something else. And then I found WordPress, and it’s the And from there, it just continued to compound. So I left that job right before COVID times just because I wasn’t feeling it. I just got tired of being an employee and started my own thing. And it’s been going well. We’ve been doing great. And that’s my main thing, obviously, the agency and also now the content and everything like that. Just really trying to get in the community more.
[00:06:57.270] – Jonathan Denwood
So I think after your degree, I think a A lot of people got two choices. Either they’re going to go the freelance route and maybe then at some stage start their own agency and work for small, medium, and gradually work, if they want to, work up the food chain to higher-level clients, or they can try and build a portfolio and learn CSS and then a JavaScript library, React, Vue, and really concentrate on building a really solid portfolio and a couple of free clients, maybe. Why did you choose not to go down the JavaScript and try and get a coding job with one of the major Facebook, Google, that route? Why did you go down the agency route? Or did it just happen, basically?
[00:07:55.990] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah, I mean, like most things, it did just happen that way. But at the And at the same time, my job that I actually had, the W2, the actual employee job, was more of a catch-all. I ended up being the director of marketing, again, small team at that Corporation, that company. So I wasn’t doing a lot of that coding and stuff like that there. Throughout my collegiate time, I did learn some Java, I learned some Python, but that wasn’t ultimately the degree that I ended up with. So I probably could have went that route, and I I do have people that I know that went that route, and they’re making well over $200,000 now working for Amazons and things like that, which is definitely a way to go. But for me, what happened was I slid into that employee job, and then I was just like… It was a weird thing. I was like, I feel like I can do… Not that I can do this better, but I feel like I can… There are things that I want to change that I can’t change. There are things that I want to improve upon, but maybe that’s not the priority of the business owners and stakeholders and things.
[00:09:02.040] – Mark Szymanski
And then that ultimately led me to like, well, why don’t I just try to find a skill? And at that point, I didn’t even know WordPress. And then I learned WordPress. And then I just started really freelancing from that point. And then from there, I was able to make it a full-time thing That’s fantastic, Mark.
[00:09:16.810] – Jonathan Denwood
Over to you, Kurt.
[00:09:18.750] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, just kudos to Mark. I mean, he’s literally half my age and he’s got the agency going and he’s got the tech chops in the background that I didn’t have. I came up through Macromedia, Dreamweaver, HTML websites and stuff. And then I just started messing with blogs. The next thing you know, I’m making websites for small nonprofits and just doing side gigs. And now we’ve got an agency. It’s like it just over time, it just keeps growing and growing. So I wish you the best on that expansion.
[00:09:51.270] – Mark Szymanski
Appreciate it.
[00:09:52.920] – Kurt von Ahnen
If we had to ask as you were growing, what you were doing, what would you say would just be like, we don’t need the whole list, but just one or two highlighted major problems related to building the agency. Because everyone comes up against that, you’re a freelancer or you’re an agency. You created a job for yourself or you’re creating your empire. What were the obstacles that you ran into?
[00:10:20.500] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah, great question. Not the first one to get that. Obviously, I’m not going to give you any crazy answers here. I’m going to give you the ones that everybody has to go through but goes through in their own way. I would say- I’m not the likes crazy. We can get into that. I’m not opposed to going there. But for this, specifically, I would say the biggest things are imposter syndrome and just charging more from a sense of understanding that what you’re doing is of value to people. And it’s a skill just like anything else. If your sink breaks, you’re going to call a plumber, you’re going to have to pay them. And for some reason, as we all know, there’s this weird thing where we feel like sometimes companies don’t want to pay a lot or or pay at all for website and web services because it’s not tangible enough sometimes. And I think the biggest thing that I’ve had to realize was the first website I did was for $500. And it was honestly way more complex than things I’ve seen. And I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have custom post types.
[00:11:14.480] – Mark Szymanski
I was trying to shove everything. It was a nightmare. But it was such a good learning experience. And I know every part of the world is different, everything like that. But just understanding that you’re providing value. And most companies care about ROI. That was another big one that I understand. To try to sell their goal rather than sell this beautiful functional thing that we all can do. You have to sell the actual what this is going to do for them rather than just the thing itself. That was a big one. And I’ll say one more because I know other people are doing this, delegation. I’ve definitely struggled with this. I’m getting better at it, but just delegating it as you build a team out, whether it’s in-house or even outsource, like 1099, conscious subcontractors, those two things. Like understanding your your worth, charging your worth, and then also delegation along the way, I think, of the biggest things.
[00:12:07.150] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, the charging your worth thing, the imposter syndrome, it’s tangible. You can taste it if you’ve done this for any length of time. I remember yesterday, a guy that was senior to me in the automotive field asked me to help him write a resume. I know this isn’t a website thing. So I was like, I can help you with your resume. And a week later, I had beautiful resume, one for him, one for his Really well formatted, really well written, the whole thing. He was like, Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it, whatever. I was like, Okay. He said, Well, how much to owe you? I said, $75. Thinking I’m giving him a deal. He laughed and walked away. That’s crazy. I’m not paying $75. He thought it was a joke and walked away and I was like, Well, a pro would have charged them like $1,000 for a resume set, right? So that was my first real bout with imposter syndrome. I was like, I definitely got to start writing things down. I definitely got to put things on contracts. I definitely We’ve definitely got to make this appear bigger than it is. And what’s easy to us is really difficult for others.
[00:13:05.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
We have to remember where our skill set is.
[00:13:08.690] – Mark Szymanski
100%.
[00:13:09.580] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Hey, Jonathan, over to you.
[00:13:11.810] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, before I go on to the next question, I got a follow-up question. And so in your agency, it’s based in Pittsburgh, East Coast, near some very high population areas. But are you a generalistic web design agency? So you take on with the proviso that the client has the resources to pay what you normally charge? Or have you found a particular niche that you like to specialize? Or do you still a generalistic web design agency?
[00:13:45.980] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah, this is another one that’s often debated, and there’s no real right way to do this, but people have had many different ways of success because I’ve been constantly looking at this. There’s website as a service now where you’re basically paying per month for what have you. As far as my model right now, if I write a proposal, it’s a amount of money for the website design. And then we also offer the maintenance and hosting everything that comes along with WordPress. And I bundle into that a little bit more of like, hey, we’re going to meet every month. We’re going to talk about things that maybe we need to talk about SEO. Maybe we need to talk about some pay for click stuff like that. So we can, again, go Going back to that ROI play. So I bundle that all in there with that. But the specific to the niche, never really found one and have gone back and forth on it. I used to love, like you, Kurt, I built… My favorite project so far was a learning management website, membership platform for wealth advisors. And I was working with the client for their firm, and then they wanted to create a a platform that they could train other wealth advisors, memberships and video content and blogs and courses and all that stuff.
[00:15:09.100] – Mark Szymanski
So I built this whole thing like Buddy Boss and like learnDash at the time and all this other stuff. And loved it because of the complexity.
[00:15:17.350] – Jonathan Denwood
Funny enough, Mark, I know a partner that could have helped you.
[00:15:21.430] – Mark Szymanski
If I would have known Kurt at that point in time, I definitely would have reached out. And the funny thing is, I I built all of that and I was like, I built an Elementor, and it became such a mammoth. And it got slow, and then I had to refactor some things and all that. But the point of me saying all that is I really enjoyed that project because I felt like, I don’t know if I still feel like this, but I always felt like brochure websites are cool, but they don’t… To me, it’s harder to sell the ROI of a brochure website rather than an e-commerce website where it literally says how much money this website is making you every single month. I’m not saying that there’s no way to sell the ROI of a brochure website, but to me, I’m just more analytical in that factor. So that was something that I did hold, and I still love building those types of things. But ultimately, it’s still pretty general. But I do think the one thing, the last thing I’ll say is that a lot of people, I think, have had some success with service-based industries.
[00:16:19.040] – Mark Szymanski
Even if you don’t niche just like something service-based, because it’s easier to talk about SEO. If they’re localized and they’re hitting certain places, you can have city pages or service area pages. That’s something that I actually have been doing doing more of recently. And I think it’s just, again, it’s more of an easier ROI play in a sense, because it’s like we’re not just building you an about contact, whatever. We’re actually filtering in other things that’s going to drive traffic there, which is just part of a bigger marketing approach, which hopefully that’s the thing that people actually value when they come to us.
[00:16:49.530] – Jonathan Denwood
So what’s been some of the best ways that you’ve generated the right type of clients then when you go hunting? Do you go hunting or is it just inbound? You concentrate on SEO and inbound for Pittsburgh area? What have been some processes where you’ve gone on the hunt if you do go hunting, if you know what I mean?
[00:17:13.540] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah, for sure. I think most of it has been referral. The vast majority has been referral because it’s like you get one client and then you do a really good job and they refer you to other people. That being said, though, in my more recent experience, just creating content around this and sharing it with my network on LinkedIn, for instance, has generated a lot more buzz. I’ve already gotten more leads and the company has just started to grow a little bit more because of that. The other thing I would say is not just not referral from your past customers, but I actually I don’t know this because I haven’t studied it to an incredible depth, but I don’t hear enough about it. So I’m going to make more content on it. Partnering with other providers in similar verticals, for instance, in ours, we don’t want to touch email. We don’t necessarily want to touch the technical stuff that a business might need, a corporation or a small business. So one of the ways that I’ve literally gotten leads is from partnering with technical, like IT people. And then they end up maybe building a simple website for somebody, but then they’re like, Hey, they need something better.
[00:18:17.200] – Mark Szymanski
Hey, go see, find a tech market, find a tech. So that’s one way. But I really think that the biggest thing is content marketing in a way. The only other thing that I would say is just from a messaging perspective is an incredible amount of authenticity. I’m working on a redesign for Findatech right now. It is going to be the most direct, authentic thing that you’ve ever seen because I’ve realized who I do not want to work with. If they fall into that, category, it’s going to be either that’s totally fine, go find somebody else, or here, we will send you somewhere else. Because we know who would possibly want a client like you. So go that route. Because that’s the biggest thing with agencies and people doing this stuff It’s like, you got to know who you want. You got to know what websites you want to build, what people we want to work with. And unfortunately, it just takes some time to figure that out sometimes.
[00:19:08.040] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, on to the next question, unless you got a follow-through.
[00:19:12.750] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, I’ll be quiet.
[00:19:14.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Too quiet. Oh, this is a fun one. So obviously, this podcast, we’re aimed at WordPress and bootstrap SaaS. I cover both because they’re the That’s one of the areas that interest me the most, Mark. But we have competitors. I know it’s a shock horror, Mark, the WordPress. We have competitors. I’ve listed a few here. So first of all, have you tried some of the competitors? And where, before we go into the specifics, this list of four that I’ve outlined, where do you think WordPress is in 2024 compared to some of the leading competitors in the professional agency, regional agency market?
[00:20:12.130] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah. So I’m not going to lie, I’ve been using WordPress since 2018. I had a short stent with Webflow, and I have definitely worked with Shopify and Wix and Squarespace. I wouldn’t say to the degree that… Obviously not to the degree that I work with WordPress. So some of the stuff that I would comment on here is not going to be like, I’m in there every day and I hate this specific thing about it.
[00:20:34.500] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I’m asking for a general, the business, the reflection. When you’re talking to your other agency’s owners, if you do talk to them, are they moving away from… You get the sense they’re moving away from WordPress and looking increasingly at these other solutions.
[00:20:54.070] – Mark Szymanski
Definitely, yeah. So most of the people that I talk to are obviously WordPress people as far as agency owners and everything like that. I don’t hear anything about people wanting to move away from WordPress. I think WP Minute, Matt Madera, just an hour ago, had a chat with Sam Harrison over at Webflow. That was a really interesting one. And the thought there was comparing WordPress and Webflow. I thought that was really insightful because I didn’t know too much about Webflow. I think Webflow is probably, if I was going to switch, that would probably be the first one that I would look at, it seems like, because it seems like it’s the most robust. But again, when you really break it down, you have to ask yourself about the open source question always comes up. Is that’s a high reason that people stay with WordPress? I think from the general landscape of agency, if we’re talking like that- It’s the agency, because you’re in the agency, you know. Exactly.
[00:21:46.380] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s about finding a tool that delivers what the client wants, but in the most efficient, cost-effective way, because a project that spirals or inflates will cost… It’s just eating away at margins for the agency. So they’re interested in getting this out. That satisfies the client’s aspirations, but does it in a way that’s cost-effective.
[00:22:14.650] – Mark Szymanski
Let me give you one specific thought on this that I’ve heard many times is sometimes people say, use the best tool for the job. And while I understand that, I think from a scalability perspective, maybe you could pick maybe a WordPress and a Shopify if you don’t want to do like, word commerce or anything. But from what I understand, let’s use Webflow as an example. I don’t think it does e-commerce extremely well. So why you would pick one? I’m just thinking from a bigger perspective. As I continue to grow the agency, I would have to have almost multiple teams where you had a Webflow team and you had a WordPress team. So my thought from an agency perspective is I’ve actually always wanted to keep it as consolidated and concise as I’ve specifically built my stack and evolved it over time where I could create smaller sites if I needed to, not maybe real small sites, but a standard site. But then I could also maybe get a Lifter LMS involved or something like that and build a more advanced site. You know what I mean? That’s why I love WordPress, because you can absolutely build small, cheaper projects, but you definitely build bigger ones as well.
[00:23:24.840] – Mark Szymanski
I would rather have that all in one type thing than multiple different different tools and have to learn and deal with all those different tools and all the other benefits.
[00:23:33.350] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s part of this, but if you don’t want to publicly state it, I totally understand. But I know also it varies. But what is yours? Where does your pricing start? Actually not. Are you prepared to divulge that? You’re rather not.
[00:23:49.600] – Mark Szymanski
A hundred %. I’m an open book. I, the average project, I don’t, I really, I’ve said this, I don’t really want to do anything under $10,000 ever again because And again, you can preface it with I live in the United States. Okay. So I don’t know how it changes.
[00:24:05.950] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m moving to Pittsburgh.
[00:24:08.860] – Mark Szymanski
I don’t know if I’m fishing in the right pond. I haven’t figured that out fully yet, but I I don’t ever… But the point is that I used to say that, but I will put one caveat in here for anybody that just hears that and is like, wow, I wish I could do that. It’s not necessarily I want to do websites for 10,000 or more. It’s not necessarily that. It’s more like I have I’ve screwed myself so many times. I just want to do this amount of work for this amount of money rather than doing this amount of work for this amount of money, which I’ve just done so many times. I told you, I’m on a website. It’s crazy.
[00:24:43.530] – Jonathan Denwood
I I totally agree with you, and it’s fantastic. You’re in the position where you got enough leads coming in. With that statement, I would imagine that you’re working mostly with an established company with a gross turnover of half a million to a million. I think, is that about right?
[00:25:03.870] – Mark Szymanski
That’s pretty fair. Yeah.
[00:25:05.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Because then if you grow half a million, they’re probably not in a position to pay 10,000, and to be truthful about it. But there’s plenty of So there’s a lot of companies doing that, especially in Pittsburgh. I’d imagine there’s enough companies out there. So let’s go to the fund. I’m just going to name it. I just want your instant gut reaction.
[00:25:29.270] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah.
[00:25:29.960] – Jonathan Denwood
And give it a mark out of one to five. So. You should be used to this now, dad. You’ve been with me for almost two years, a year and a half. Wix Studio, what’s your initial gut reaction? Is that it?
[00:25:54.700] – Mark Szymanski
Maybe a three, I don’t know. Two. It’s tough. I’ve been in Wix It’s not fun. It’s not fun.
[00:26:03.410] – Jonathan Denwood
Can you elaborate? Not fun. Because actually, I remember the days where… Because I had a retail business in the UK, and I did a degree, and I did a master’s as a mature student, and I did web design as a hobby, and I got in as a flash developer, action scripting, and I got into JavaScript in the early days. And Wix used to be all flash-based. It was a flash interface. It’s improved enormously, my understanding of it. And they’re spending enough on YouTube adverts for their studio solution. My God, every effort I see is for Wix Studio. So you said, oh, horrible. What’s some of the things you didn’t like?
[00:26:56.340] – Mark Szymanski
I mean, I would just say that I like to I think that I am pretty adept at taking in a new UI and understanding this isn’t WordPress, right? It’s not the same. WordPress has its own problems, obviously, which we will get to, I guess, right? But WordPress has- Oh, yes, we’ve got to do that.
[00:27:15.220] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m classified as a hater of WordPress. You’re some real arseholes in the WordPress community, isn’t it? Some real fucking arseholes. I don’t think I’m a hater.
[00:27:25.950] – Mark Szymanski
I think you mean well. So the admin, for instance, WP I could look at that. What I try to do, if I ever explain this to you, I don’t want to explain to you how to use WordPress. I want to explain how to use a CMS and the principles of what WordPress has done well for the most part, and page builders have done well, and hopefully Gutenberg continues a trend going well. Those types of things, I wasn’t able to even understand when I was in the Wix space for a short amount of time and playing around with it here in the last year or two.
[00:27:58.340] – Jonathan Denwood
You got that feeling, I’m I’m a professional. I’ve always got these many years. This should be this bloody hard to get it going. Is that what was going through your mind?
[00:28:10.080] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah. I mean, UIs and UXs are tough. I’m not trying to shit on Wix necessarily, but I’m saying But the biggest thing that always needs to happen, though, is understanding who these target markets are for. And again, WordPress has its own issues in this regard with the different tools and everything. But understanding, is this built for a DIY or Where is this built for an agency owner that is trying to produce websites at scale, which is very different than somebody just trying to… It’s not like either one is right or wrong. It’s just two completely different things. And there’s no way they could be the exact same. So that was my vibe when I was in there with the Wix stuff. But again, it could have changed since then, but that’s my thought.
[00:28:49.410] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I think they’re spending all their budget on advertising myself, but there we go. What’s the next one? Squarespace, initial reaction and score, So Squarespace, I’ve actually been in more recently because I’ve had some other colleagues of mine that are building in Squarespace, and I’m like, oh, God.
[00:29:07.780] – Mark Szymanski
And they asked me… I’ll give you an example, though. And this isn’t specifically about them, but I do think it’s actually a broader issue that needs to be talked about more. If you are doing design, like some other vertical of design, and then you get asked, hey, can you do a website, too? And then you say, yes. And then you say, oh, yeah, I’ll just throw it in Squarespace or Shopify or whatever. The thing The thing that happens, the thing that literally happens to me because I’m literally friends and associates with these types of people, Hey, you know all about websites. Can you help me connect my DNS and stuff? I’m like, Bro, what are you talking? Again, I’m not trying to make fun or poke fun at those people. I’m just saying from like, if you take a step back and you look at the situation, you are literally telling people that you know what to do when it comes to a website. At the core of that is literally connecting a domain to hosting or to a platform. And if we’re having trouble with that, that’s a fundamental piece. I’m going a little off track here.
[00:30:05.660] – Mark Szymanski
I’m giving you an anecdote with the Squarespace situation. But my point is, I went into Squarespace, and actually, I was like, this is a little weird the way they tell you to do this. Just even setting up the DNS record. I don’t fault those people specifically, but I think it speaks to the fact, again, that it’s not built for people that are actually trying to do this at scale.
[00:30:25.600] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I think you were highly insightful because I When I came to America, I worked for a couple of regional agencies for a few years and working for regional large agencies, and it was a wake-up call, the crazy stuff I was asked to do. But it appeals Square. There’s a lot of PR or people that are not one or two agency, and they’re more in the PR graphic space, and they just love Square Space because their clientele, they can just throw it up and they hate WordPress. But I think the URL is better than Wix. Would you agree with that?
[00:31:13.860] – Mark Szymanski
I would say so, yeah. It’s a better platform like that, but I think it still has similar types of issues.
[00:31:20.510] – Jonathan Denwood
But I don’t think if your agency, you would use Wix or Squarespace, I just don’t think you would do. So I think your insights were spot on. On to the next one. Webflow, you’re an issue. Oh, you didn’t give a mark for Squarespace. You slacked.
[00:31:38.980] – Mark Szymanski
I would say let’s put Wix at a two and Squarespace at a three.
[00:31:42.910] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think I agree. Webflow, what do you think of it? And give it a mark. Don’t slack. You got to give it a mark.
[00:31:51.540] – Mark Szymanski
I’ll give it a mark right away. I don’t think Shopify was on the list, if we’re talking about the same list. So I would say that Webflow is probably And Shopify is a little different animal. But overall, Webflow, I would give maybe a 3.5 or a 4 just because I’m going to give WordPress a five, if we were ranking it overall. And Webflow would be, again, like I said, probably my next thing. If something happened crazy to WordPress, which we never know, then it would probably be the next place that I would at least consider if I was going to continue to do the things that I’m doing. Because of the way that I was in it and I was like, this at least makes sense to me, especially Especially from coming from now dabbling in my years in Elementor and now my years in Bricks. It’s got it. You know what I mean? It’s got it. It’s got a lot of really good things going for it. I don’t know about the e-commerce situation. Another thing is just not just the open source, not just it not being open source, but more so the idea of, and I don’t know because I’m speaking slightly out of my depth here, but what I’ve heard is there’s add-ons and things that you have to integrate.
[00:32:58.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Are they going to need to get more money out of you. It’s a SaaS, so it’s dependent. All these add-ons, all these extras.
[00:33:06.470] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah. And I’m not saying that I don’t pay for plugins and things now, but I think it’s a different type of situation and different type of system, obviously, than a WordPress. So again, we criticize certain things about WordPress, but I do still think it’s the best that we’ve got. I put Webflow right below it there, like 3.5 or 4.
[00:33:26.490] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think that’s fair. What a name. The last one, but I can’t stand the name, Doodal. Am I pronouncing it correctly, Doodah?
[00:33:38.190] – Mark Szymanski
I don’t even know. Honestly, I’ve never seen it other than this in your list.
[00:33:41.690] – Jonathan Denwood
I might be a dyslexic, listeners and viewers, but I think this applies in January. Do not select names that people can’t pronounce for your startup company. It is not a good idea. Don’t be too creative because the domain is available at a price that you can afford. It It does need to be a pronounceable. So what do you think of their solution?
[00:34:09.780] – Mark Szymanski
I’ve literally, this is the first time I’m looking at the website here on my screen, so I don’t even know if I can comment on it.
[00:34:14.980] – Jonathan Denwood
You can’t find it on their agency, the price. So that tells you something. But I went to their normal, and it’s similar prices to Webflow when you go to the normal version because they got no price on the agency page, which was a little bit alarming. Right.
[00:34:31.390] – Mark Szymanski
Right. If I could just give an opinion on that without knowing anything here.
[00:34:38.310] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it never stops me, well.
[00:34:41.240] – Mark Szymanski
The only thing I would say is I’m looking at Built with and it’s like, I guess it’s, if I’m reading this correctly, it’s almost a million.
[00:34:51.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I don’t. And I’ve never heard of it. I don’t even come across anybody. It’s like finding a website built on Drupal, isn’t it?
[00:34:59.380] – Mark Szymanski
I’ve never come across So the only thing I would say is, oh, well, that’s interesting. Is Webflow actually only have 500,000? Yeah, they’re not even know that.
[00:35:10.330] – Jonathan Denwood
They’re not even know that. They’re not even know that. They’re not even know that. They’re not even know that. They’re not even know that. They’re not even know that.
[00:35:13.180] – Mark Szymanski
I have no idea But I would have to assume without doing more research right now, that Duda is a really specific market, almost, maybe in a way. I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m barking up the- I just I think they’re spending like a $3 million a week on YouTube ever.
[00:35:35.430] – Jonathan Denwood
So I think that’s their problem. But there we go. I think my English sarcasm is starting to come out there. I think it’s time to have a break and Kirk can ring me. We’re going to go for our break, folks, and we’ll be back in a few moments. Three, two, Yes, we’ve had a Butcher’s on the competition, folks. We’ve had some fun. Mark’s up for it. Kirk’s eyes are just getting wider. But before we go into the second half of the show, I want to point out that you should sign up for the WP Tonic newsletter. I write it myself, folks, and I cover WordPress and tech every week. You won’t find this in the other WordPress newsletters. Like I say, what could go wrong with me writing it? To get this weekly rag, all you have to do is go over to WP-tonic. Com/newsletter, WPI don’t see your typing, Mark. You should be going. Sorry. Wp-tonic. Com/newsletter and sign up. It will be in your inbox every Monday. What more could you ask for? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get from that newsletter. So let’s go over to you, Kurt.
[00:37:10.710] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I’m going to change up the question a little bit. We were going to ask about Gutenberg and how you think it’s going for 2024. But in your previous answers, Mark, you mentioned both Elementor and Bricks. So without going-Oh, this is where I get the heat mail.
[00:37:30.980] – Jonathan Denwood
This is where it starts. These fanatics, these religious fanatics will start. That’s who you be.
[00:37:38.110] – Kurt von Ahnen
So without making an encyclopedia out of it, what was your general experience in acclimating yourself to Elementor, and then how would you compare that to your use case with Bricks?
[00:37:57.220] – Mark Szymanski
So when I first got into the WordPress ecosystem, when I first learned about it, my first experience, and this was again in 2017, 2018. So it was definitely, I’m not sure when Elementor came out and when page builders became a thing because I haven’t looked at the history and I didn’t know at that point. But when I first installed WordPress, I thought I had to install a theme and just use a template theme, like something that was pre-custom design at the point, and you could just drop pictures in here. You had no customization. You couldn’t move anything. I was like, what the hell? I almost left WordPress because I thought of that.
[00:38:29.250] – Kurt von Ahnen
Then I found-.
[00:38:31.310] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah. Well, then I found Elementor, and I was like, oh, well, I want to create a website like anything, where I could drop pictures anywhere, I could do different things, I could leverage maybe some CSS or whatever. And It ended up being a pretty simple adoption process, I want to say, over time, once I got Elementor and Elementor Pro. And then the biggest change for me right around that time, I was talking about the membership website. I found JetEngine. I I was able to do nested querying loops and everything. That was a huge game changer because it just made my functionality go away through the roof. But so to answer that part, Elementor was always pretty straightforward to me. It seemed like a good platform as far as I don’t want to say DIY, but learning Curve-wise didn’t seem too crazy to me. I was able to pick it up. Then recently, over the last six months to a year, I realized I actually butted up against those situations with Elementor and the idea of divception, just the way they created it long ago, which again, they created an incredible product, but it has issues once you start to scale, unless you do a lot of work to feel like to rein that in.
[00:39:40.020] – Mark Szymanski
Once I realized that and I had those issues for myself, I was like, I need to look for a different solution. I found guys like Kevin Geary, Dave Foy. I found like, bricks. I was looking at different options as well, breakdance and all that. I was like, this seems way like- Did you have to swear? Did I swear?
[00:39:56.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, Bright Thorns. Did you have to swear?
[00:39:59.650] – Mark Szymanski
Sorry. All right. I didn’t know we weren’t allowed to swear. My bad. Just kidding. Yeah, so anyway, I won’t say that again. But anyway, I’m looking at those different tools, right? And I’m thinking, brick seems like the closest thing that I could get to being a developer without actually being a developer, you put a heading in, it just puts in the HTML rather than all this other stuff. So I tried it and I loved it. And I thought it was really… There’s a lot there, but I felt like it was pretty easy to adopt as well because it went back to more of the traditional way that I was accustomed to a long time ago, where it was actually more of a… I’m not even using a lot of the predefined elements and things, testimonial sliders and stuff. I was already accustomed to doing that in Elementor, building it myself. But now this is just a better approach. So I don’t know if that answers the question, but it was easy with Elementor, and it was almost easier with Bricks just based off my experience. I don’t know if that’s the same for everyone, though.
[00:40:59.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I’m actually going through a little bit of a fit myself. So I was like you described. I didn’t know Elementor was out when I was trying to figure things out with the old code editor, trying to go through and tweak things and change things and some CSS stuff. And I wasn’t brilliant in that sense. So I struggled. And then I started to adopt Elementor a little bit, and then I got a little spoiled and I started putting it on everything, right? And I just started building wacky things at at high speed. And I was really enjoying it. And then, I’ll say it publicly, they had a couple of updates come out. And here I am hosting customers’ websites, and these websites went to white screens with the updates. And I was like, so my email is blowing up. I had a real job. This was a side hustle at the time, right? So now my side hustles become my headache. And I’m trying to fix these problems, roll back plugins and get people’s websites back up and I have. And I tried bricks. I just tried bricks again last week, and the same thing happened.
[00:42:05.250] – Kurt von Ahnen
I am not a developer-minded person. I’m more of an implementer-minded person. So I would use the sliders and the testimonials and the things. And when I go to move those things over in bricks, my screen starts flashing like crazy, and I have a hard time even figuring out where the element is actually landing on the page. It just the visual experience isn’t smooth to me, but I tried to put Elementor in that site, and it locked up that website this week. So I’m like, Gutenberg just continues to get better and better for me. And I’m thinking I might be a blocks builder for the rest of my life if things don’t clean up with the page builders. And without going too long, Jonathan, I think that takes us to the next question, which is, what are your thoughts on Gutenberg, focusing on usability for the agency owners this year?
[00:42:57.000] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah. Yeah. So that was real quick on that, Kurt. I totally feel that. And again, it parlays into this. I still go back in more content that I watch, both sides will say, right? I don’t really like the idea of sides, but every angle, right? The more I see, the harder it is for me to give a positive answer to that question because I just did a two and a half hour stream last week, and I was just trying to understand understand the… You can’t really say the word marketing of WordPress, the WordPress project, because I think they will even say that there isn’t really marketing because it’s a project, right? I mean, there’s marketing team, but it’s not really like… They’re not spending thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads and stuff. Totally understand that. But my thing is, everything that I’m seeing is exactly like what you’re saying as far as the Gutenberg is continuing to get good. The people are amazingly talented and working hard. The direction, and as Jonathan points out, the management of it is questionable in a lot of times because it’s like, where are we headed?
[00:44:09.300] – Mark Szymanski
Who are we building this for? It doesn’t matter. I don’t think it matters if you’re building an open source project or a product Are you headed in the right way or not? You know what I mean? I mean, who are you building it for? To me, you ask a question like, what are they doing for agencies? They’re definitely doing something for certain agencies, from what I understand. But I am not one of these agencies. These agencies that I’m talking about are, I guess, 10 up, where everything is crazily get controlled and all that stuff. And they’re working with sites that are obnoxiously huge or something. I need to dig more into that. But the To rein the answer in, as a small agency owner, a small, medium size, which I think a lot of us are, I don’t really know if Gutenberg is doing anything for us. It feels like it’s being built directly for the average WordPress user, which is apparently a DIY, which I’m totally fine with, that makes sense. But it’s just I feel like it’s a miscommunication. That’s the whole thing. It’s not like it’s a bad product necessarily. It’s not like it’s not getting better.
[00:45:13.820] – Mark Szymanski
It’s always been like a miscommunication as far as I’ve been seeing and hearing it. And it’s just taken a long time, too, obviously, as we know. So it’s just a lot of tough variables there.
[00:45:23.870] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. And there’s definitely a split between full site editing versus the block editor. And it’s all in the same I mean, to me, that’s the same. It comes with WordPress core. But if I go with Cadence and the block editor and the Cadence Pro stuff, I got unbelievable options in that interface to build and design and work there without technically having a page builder in place. But to your point, like you said earlier, right tool for the right job. Sometimes I jump into one of my old clients’ websites that’s on Elementor, and it takes me like 35 seconds to realize, it’s an Elementor site. And I go in, I go, click, click, bing, bang, boom, boom, save, publish, done. And it’s like, man, that was easy.
[00:46:04.080] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah. I don’t know. It’s for me.
[00:46:09.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Be true for Mark. I think some of the problems that Gutenberg’s faced is I think you can apply it to Alimator because I think when you get a very large user base and you really don’t focus on what it really is meant for, and I think this has affected Animator because is it aimed at the DIY? But a lot of agencies in the WordPress space adopted Animator because it was clearly in its time, the best solution, best page builder. Obviously, Beaver Builder initially took market share. They’re still going, they’re still a great team, but Animator with their VC backing and they’re under Ben. I think Ben, the marketing director who’s coming back. He’s actually coming back on the show in May. They had the budget and they’re very creative in their marketing, and the core product was the best at the time. And it was the agency market that really pushed it, really gave it traction. And then they wanted to go into the DIY market and self-hosted, and blah, blah, blah. And they lost focus, in my opinion, and they’re trying to get that back, but the competition… But When it comes to Gutenberg, I think they got a similar problem because, and I don’t agree with everything Kevin says, but the one thing I do agree in Kevin, trying to produce a solution solution that can appeal not only to the professional agency market, but also the pure DIY individual is practically impossible, in my opinion.
[00:48:12.720] – Jonathan Denwood
It would have been better off that the true DIY product was wordpress. Com, and you offered a more sophisticated solution for the agency for wordpress. Org. But that’s too common sense a solution. We got to go on a winding road, haven’t we? But where I don’t agree with Kevin is, and I understand why he focuses it, because he’s on… And I want to see if you agree with this statement, is Kevin’s total focus on code quality, and don’t get me wrong, code quality is important to me, but because of his products and his products, he and he really believes this. He says, Well, the code quality of Gutenberg is awful. I’ve got to be honest with you, apart from the most top projects I’ve been involved with, any project I’ve been involved in, I’ve never had anybody come to me and say, I want to audit of the code quality. They want a site that functions, that’s quick to load, that has good SEO. They’re the thing that the end user… I’ve never had somebody come to me, apart from the most top projects, which were over 50,000 to $100,000, come to me and talk about code quality, or does it adhere to the modern CSS framework or layout?
[00:49:54.460] – Jonathan Denwood
I understand Kevin’s fixation about I also understand his community because they are totally in that world and they’re fixated about it as well. But as an agency owner, I’ve never had a client below 50,000 ever bring it up. What’s your thoughts on what I’ve just said?
[00:50:20.020] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah. So I think I’m a good example of this. I don’t think I said this yet. Well, a little bit with the element or divception thing, but That actually was causing me issues. The code quality, I feel like to some degree, started causing me issues in that realm, maybe other things as well. But I was always on good hosting and things like that. So it wasn’t a shared hosting problem. So my thought on that is I am not as I’m not reading every line of code. I’m not seeing all that, but I can look in the dom and see roughly what it’s look like. I think that that is an issue that it’s only a problem when it becomes a problem. And like you said, if it’s over $50,000 and people actually care about that, then obviously you need to make sure that you have a tool that can do that. But if you never plan on doing that, then probably not the end of the world. I never tell anybody, use bricks, because, specifically because of the code quality. And I reference that because I think it’s a… I think it is a nice feature.
[00:51:17.960] – Jonathan Denwood
Here we go. We got a comment here. So full control of cold is mandatory. Not the nice thing to have. I’m sorry, Isaac. Below 50,000, your bloody clients don’t care shit, mate. I’m sorry. You care because you’re a web professional and you just love this. And I appreciate you’ve been on the show, but clients don’t care under a certain budget. They just don’t care. It’s a delusion. It’s a fantasy, folks.
[00:51:47.660] – Mark Szymanski
The one thing I would say is, and I know Isaac is in my stream. I appreciate you being here, brother. The one thing I would say specifically to that is it is definitely nuanced. If we start Well, the law comment. The one thing I would say is that from accessibility law and things like that, apparently there is a bigger push now with regulatory stuff on accessibility. Kevin talks about this all the time. So if you’re building with a builder that’s not doing that, I think you are putting you and potentially your clients at a little bit of risk. How much of a risk? I don’t know. We’d have to see. But it’s something to consider for sure. But I’m using Bricks because of some of those reasons. But I can’t tell you that I’m literally looking at every single line of code. I’m just trying to do some of the best practices as I can. But there’s a ton of them. I don’t know how Kevin sleeps at night knowing all these things. He’s just like he’s a robot. So I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there.
[00:52:46.040] – Jonathan Denwood
I love him to bits. I think one of the few because we are big in cadence because the type of clientele that we’re helping. But I also, to be truthful, If it’s a higher class client, I’m probably looking at a pure hand-coded solution to some extent. I don’t know. I think one of the players If you’re in the professional agency space and you want to use Gutenberg, I think Generate Press has done good things. I think they’ve just introduced a class-based system to this solution. The problem is that they’ve really aimed it at the agency because you just get a blank page, and it’s really for the custom website starting around $10,000. If you’re If you’re not the 5,000 market, you’re doing a semi-custom job, basically. If you’re going to make any money out of it, you’re taking a theme and you’re customizing it to some degree. But that’s only my… So on to the next question, which I’m going to throw over to Kurt so I can get out of this because I’ve just stuck an enormous hole for myself every night.
[00:54:12.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
Maybe just a little hole. We ask everybody, almost everybody, Mark, the deal with AI and how it’s affecting them. So are you currently using AI? And what do you see it largely affecting for you and your agency in the next year, year, year?
[00:54:30.430] – Mark Szymanski
Yeah. So I’m definitely utilizing it here and there, like with either images like Midjourney or ChatGPT. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Claude recently, so I might check that out. To keep it short on AI, I’m bullish on the idea and what it can do for you. I still think that for the foreseeable future, at least in the short term, we’re still going to need to do stuff. It’s not going to… It can automate things, it can make things way faster. The thing that I found is I’m actually a terrible at times. You have to be- There’s no hope for you, Mark.
[00:55:04.700] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re doomed.
[00:55:05.920] – Mark Szymanski
You have to be a good prompter to get anything worth its salt out of these tools, or else it’s just going to spit out super generic stuff.
[00:55:13.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Sometimes it’s quicker just to We’ve got a frog, didn’t it?
[00:55:17.100] – Mark Szymanski
Exactly. So that’s a really big thing that people have to understand that it’s not just… Can’t just read your mind, know exactly what you want. It’s literally like telling an employee what to do. You have to give them good instruction. There’s still a lot of stuff there.
[00:55:29.860] – Jonathan Denwood
So My ex-wife expected me to read her mind. You know that? She just expected me to know.
[00:55:37.770] – Mark Szymanski
Just didn’t work out.
[00:55:38.640] – Jonathan Denwood
I haven’t got that ability to read my mind. That’s funny.
[00:55:44.240] – Mark Szymanski
But the only other thing that I would say, specifically to the website stuff is, and it goes back to the other Gutenberg things, and it’s a broader question at like a 50,000 foot view, is where do we ultimately see this going in the direction? If we took a look at how many people are building their own sites, versus how many businesses want sites for cheap, versus how many businesses are willing to invest, and then we think about how many people are building their own sites versus agencies building their own sites, where does AI end up playing into all of that? That’s a really interesting question, and I think that that may sneak up on us. Not that it’s going to take jobs necessarily, but I think there is a fair amount of people that might be like, instead of, I’m going to build a website agency and I’m not going to care that much and I’m just going to do the minimum, it might lop off some of those people. Because if I was a business owner and I could go to ZipWP and just literally zip something together, if they start marketing directly, it’s about the business owners that want the thing, but they don’t want to go all the way into building it.
[00:56:45.860] – Mark Szymanski
So they could just be type a couple of things in and then have something. That’s where it might get a little interesting. But I don’t necessarily see that affecting my business or people that want to build those bigger websites because it is a different audience. It’s more established business. It’s more like that. So I’m not worried, but I do see all those- I think you’re deluding yourself, actually, Mark.
[00:57:06.950] – Jonathan Denwood
I think because I was listening this morning for my walk this week in startups, and they had a guy from MIT, and he’s got a AI called Liquid AI. If you listen to the latest episode. He reckons in three to five years, they can have general AI, and that will be the end of us. The machines are going to just sterminate us, Mark. So just enjoy your sofa the next three years.
[00:57:32.550] – Mark Szymanski
Whatever. We’re just chilling, then. I’m just going to shut it down tomorrow.
[00:57:35.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Just prepare your sofa at the end. They’re coming for you, Mark.
[00:57:42.090] – Mark Szymanski
See how it goes.
[00:57:46.260] – Jonathan Denwood
I did understand some of the podcasts. I’m not the sharpest tool, but I’m not the sharpest. But it was a complicated podcast. I recommend it to the listeners and viewers. If you want to scare yourself, listen to that last episode of This Week in Startups. That gets you going. So, onto the previous question. So if you had your time machine from HT Wells, and you could go back to the beginning of your career that was so near compared to me, I’ve got most of it. On your business journey, what essential piece of advice would you give to yourself?
[00:58:27.630] – Mark Szymanski
It’s a great question. I would honestly say understanding. It’s a joint thing. I want to stand… I love Matt, man. It’s awesome.
[00:58:39.370] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, look at this; I did cover it. The blood you have. Thanks, Matt. Thanks for the guy’s words. Cheers, mate. You’re going to be so true. It’s so true as well. That’s funny.
[00:58:51.620] – Mark Szymanski
I would say it’s a conjoint thing: just don’t be afraid to start talking. As you start learning things. You have that little bit of imposter syndrome, and you don’t know if you can do something. But the thing is that if you want actually to grow your business or your brand or whatever, you have to start talking. I don’t mean to start spouting out random shit that you think you know already. It was five years ago; a mentor is the best thing in the world. I don’t necessarily mean that. If you take a more humble approach, you can start getting into a conversation. I already do it now. Just getting in a conversation is by asking questions and being curious rather than forcing your opinion. Indeed, we all have our opinions. But if you ask those questions and get involved, people start to know you, your business, whatever your goal is. So I would say do that as early as reasonably possible because Nobody ultimately knows what they’re doing. Everybody is always trying to figure it out. And I think that a lot of times I know I was, and other people are disillusioned thinking that they can’t do a live stream, or they can’t make some video content, or ask questions.
[01:00:00.720] – Mark Szymanski
I would just say do that as quickly as possible because it’s only going to help you as long as you’re doing it from a place of wanting to understand more and help people. I think that’s probably the thing I would say.
[01:00:12.760] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic, Mark. So thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s been a blast. I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve been on the whiskey this morning early. I’m an alcoholic. Well, Kurt records, I’m an alcoholic. Mark, what’s the best way for people to find out about what you’re up to, your latest posts and views, and whatever you have to offer the more extensive community?
[01:00:36.070] – Mark Szymanski
Absolutely. If you just type in my bio, that’s a link. It’ll take you directly to all my… It’s like a landing page with my socials and a few things I’ve done. My newsletter is there if you want to subscribe. But yeah, man, guys, this has been a blast. I appreciate you, Jonathan and Kirek. Thank you so much for having me on.
[01:00:51.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. And Kirek, what’s the best way for people to find out about what you’re up to, Kirek?
[01:00:57.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, in the next 40 seconds, I’ll be hosting the free sales call for Lifter LMS, and you can always find me on LinkedIn.
[01:01:04.770] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, he’s got to be off. I will be sending you a message through Slack. Thank you so much, listeners and viewers. If you want to support the show, please share it on social media and also join the YouTube channel WP-Tonic. You have a load of additional content that you’re bound to enjoy. We’ll see you next. We’ve got some fab guests coming up in April and May. You’ll be amazed who I’ve persuaded to come on this whole rag. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
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