Matt Mullenweg The Merchant of Chaos & Complexity
What’s Wrong With WordPress And How Can It Be Fixed? We had a great conversation with Marc Benzakein about WordPress and Matt Mullenweg’s future.
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:31.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back to the WP-Tonic show this week in WordPress and Sass. This is episode 936. In this episode, we’ve got a great guest. We got Marc Benzakein. I probably totally butchered.
[00:01:06.250] – Marc Benzakein
It’s Benzakein. It sounds like a medication.
[00:01:09.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, Benzakein. I need one this morning.
[00:01:13.970] – Marc Benzakein
That’s okay. Your other. Your other compatriot over there, Nathan Wrigley, mispronounces my name on the regular, so.
[00:01:22.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Do not take it personally, Mark. I managed to butch almost every guess.
[00:01:27.910] – Marc Benzakein
That’s okay.
[00:01:29.690] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s become a tribe. The tribe that listens to this is greatly amused by it. Mark’s has a great history in WordPress and the WordPress community. He came on my radar with a great interview with Matt Mullenweg a few weeks ago. He agreed to go on the show before Matt Mullenweg’s hand grenade with WP-Engine. As I said, Mark came to my radar with a great interview with the other Matt. And it was around a WordCamp presentation that Mark did. I can’t remember how far ago you.
[00:02:15.950] – Marc Benzakein
I did that, but it was in July. July of this year. Yeah. So recent. Yeah.
[00:02:22.900] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Right. So, we’ll discuss some areas he covered in his recent interviews and a few other things. So, Mark, would you like to introduce yourself to the tribe quickly?
[00:02:38.530] – Marc Benzakein
Sure. My name is Mark Benzocaine, as we’ve already covered. And. I am currently the marketing manager for the main WP. And before I get too far into anything, I have to remember to do the disclaimer I’ve been doing on this particular topic. Everything expressed here is strictly my opinion. It has nothing to do with the main WP or site district, which is another company that I. I do some marketing for them; their opinions are their own. We haven’t ever shared our views other than what they are. They have seen me do here. So these opinions are my own. Or, if we talk about this presentation, they’re the opinions of people who have provided emails or other things to me, and I’ve chosen mainly to keep them anonymous. But, these opinions are my own, strictly opinions and observations. They are nothing. They are not necessarily always facts or accusations. Before that, I worked for WordPress for about 13 or 14 years. I was the manager of operations at Server Press. We made a desktop server, which was a popular local development platform that we ran for many years, for about ten years, just, you know, going around being me the rest of the time.
[00:04:10.080] – Marc Benzakein
So, father of eight, I guess I should throw that in there before I go any further. Before I go any further, nobody looks very calm. I’ve got no money. There’s nothing to sue me for. Okay. I’m a father of eight. All right.
[00:04:32.910] – Jonathan Denwood
Sorry. That took my breath away. I can’t imagine it, but there we go. So, yeah, I’ve tried to recover from that tribe. So, unfortunately, we haven’t got our great Kirk with us. He’s doing a presentation at a conference this morning, but he’s been a regular, so I said, you got full permission, Kirkland. Get at it. Before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great interview, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I want to point out we got some great special offers from the major sponsors, plus a created list of the best WordPress plugins and services plus a load of other free goodies. You can get all these goodies by going over to wphentonic.com deals, wphentonic.com deals, and all the free goodies. What more could you ask for from my beloved WordPress tribe, WP tribe, or whatever feed I can utilize?
[00:05:59.190] – Marc Benzakein
I think the tribe will partake in WordPress this week. Yes, but I’m not. I’m not optimistic.
[00:06:07.370] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, none of us. None of us are that too positive, are they? But you can find all the goodies there. What more could you ask for my beloved tribe? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re gonna get on that page. So, Mark, let’s go straight into it. Like, say, like what Mark said this is. And as my unofficial legal counsel, Spencer forum, has told me to say, this is for educational purposes only. That’s the key phrase my informal legal counselors are so good to utilize.
[00:06:48.820] – Marc Benzakein
Right. I used to subscribe to some stock trading services, and they did live streaming a lot and livestock trading. That’s how they always started as well. This is educational purposes only. This is what we’re doing, you know?
[00:07:04.120] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. So let’s start in. Based on your last Wordcamp presentation and your discussion with Matt Medeas on his great podcast, was you that surprised when the hang, I call it the WordPress hand grenade, exploded between Matt the great leader and WP engine, was you that surprised, or did you feel not the Pacific problems that these two camps are having, but was you anticipating something brewing somewhere?
[00:07:46.440] – Marc Benzakein
Well, you know, um, I I’ve always said, and this is, this is, uh, you know, something that, that I’ve said probably since the first time that I really started paying attention to the WordPress community and people started referring to Matt as the benevolent dictator, I always, I would always say, you know, the thing about a dictator is they will choose to give up benevolence, but they’ll never choose to give up being a dictator. And so in that sense, I wouldn’t say that I didn’t see it coming. I think that what happened was it reached a boiling point really fast, and I started to watch the Q and a from, actually, my hotel room at work camp us. And about 15 minutes into it, I was like, oh, my goodness, this is going to be a huge disaster for the community. That was the first thing that I thought about was, was the community. And, and, of course, there. So in answer to your question, no, I wasn’t surprised, and at the same time, I was shocked. And I think that it’s a matter of, you know, we went from kind of a lukewarm temperature to boiling in a matter of minutes, and I think that that’s probably what threw me off and shocked me the most.
[00:09:26.770] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah.
[00:09:29.030] – Jonathan Denwood
So to recap, you wasn’t that surprised? Well, it’s, it’s like anything, you are surprised even though intellectually you knew something was coming when it still happens.
[00:09:42.590] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah.
[00:09:43.330] – Jonathan Denwood
The emotional side and the surprise of the moment, as I call it, is still there. Even though you intellectually you knew something was coming in your personal life or business life, you got a pretty good idea something’s brewing.
[00:10:00.300] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah.
[00:10:00.870] – Jonathan Denwood
But you still are surprised when it still happens. Is that a good recap?
[00:10:05.380] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah, I mean, I think that what it really boils down to, and I, you know, my, as a kind of a metaphor, or you look at, for instance, the hurricanes that are going on with Florida and of course, all of our thoughts and hearts and anything we can do is with them. And I’ve got so many people, we all know so many people there, but you can be kind of intellectually prepared, but you’re never emotionally prepared for it until it happens. And I think that that’s what the community at large is dealing with right now, is kind of the emotional aftermath of it happening. And then there’s this unknown of, okay, what’s going to happen next, what’s going to happen next? And then trying to deal and plan for that and prepare for that. And there’s a lot of emotional baggage or bandwidth that’s tied up in that.
[00:11:07.250] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, yeah, I want to discuss that because I’ve, I’ve been doing this podcast now for about eight years. I can’t believe it, actually, nor can the listeners believe it. And I’m supportive of WordPress. It’s been pretty good to me. I’ve had my ups and downs with it and the WordPress community or some elements of it, but generally it’s been pretty good to me. But I’ve never really bought into this. I call it the cult of WordPress. There are many in the WordPress community that they treat. I’ve seen it in other organizations and a little bit people that I know that have been members of religious organizations. And I’ve seen it when I was a young man in politics where people over looking for the right word, that they link their personal identity to a political organization, a spiritual organization. And I’ve actually seen this in WordPress in my opinion, where people, their whole social baggage, their almost their whole identity is linked to the WordPress community. And I’ve never bought into that because I think it’s quite dangerous myself. So, and also I never really built, I never really bought into what the great leader said to me.
[00:12:44.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Never. It never passed the sniff test. As I get older, I’m very blase about what people say to my, to me and in public, I really look at their actions rather than what they say because I think when we younger, we tend to be influenced by what people say and don’t watch what they do.
[00:13:13.400] – Marc Benzakein
Right.
[00:13:14.860] – Jonathan Denwood
So this is very long winded. But what I’m saying is I never bought into it. But what I’ve been surprised is when I talk to other people, they really, really bought in to the concept that this was all open source and all the kind of cultural baggage that went into it, but I never bought into it. Do you think I’m one of the rare exceptions and also that actually, a lot of people really bought into it in a big way.
[00:13:47.900] – Marc Benzakein
Judging from my circle of friends within the WordPress community and the people that I’ve known for years and years. I don’t think that, that you’re rare. No. I think that, I think that most of the people that I’ve spoken to, in fact, I got a phone call from someone who’s no longer in the WordPress community. I got a phone call last week and he, and he was like, well, it finally happened, you know, and we all kind of, I think we all kind of knew something was going to happen, and we all knew that it was a cult of sorts. Sure. But I think that what, I think the people who are disillusioned the most are the people that are newer to it, people that have come into it in the last couple of years, I would say Covid or during COVID and haven’t had the in depth conversations and the very real conversations and, and establish the very real personal relationships that a lot of us have within the community to be able to get a little bit deeper. And I would just, as someone who has fallen for hero worship one or two times in my younger life, I would say, never, ever put all of your eggs into one person.
[00:15:17.250] – Marc Benzakein
You just, you just can’t do that because they’re still human. And this is the thing that we do have to keep in mind. I mean, right now, there, there is a community that is furious with Matt. There’s no doubt about it.
[00:15:29.880] – Jonathan Denwood
But there’s also an equal community that are not very happy with WP engine.
[00:15:37.640] – Marc Benzakein
Right. Right. And, well, I mean, that’s, that’s a whole nother story. I mean, it really has created this situation. I guess it’s called the streisand effect or something like that, where this isn’t binary. It doesn’t, you know, and I don’t want to use the word evil, but I’m going to. Two things can be evil in a situation. I’m not saying that they are. I’m just saying that two things can be evil. But one thing is more drastic as far as its far reaching implications. And so you focus your attention on that. And, yeah, there are people who, you know, and then this is kind of creating this sort of civil war, right. That’s going on with the people who are like, on one side or the other. And these are people that I still call my friends, and I don’t want to go to war with them. We just have different opinions and we still have to provide for our families and we still have to do all the things that keep our own little world going.
[00:16:37.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, the fundamental thing, Mark, is that the, the key fact it is open source project.
[00:16:43.210] – Marc Benzakein
Yes. But once again, we all, I mean, once again, most of us knew that it was not open source, but not. Right. We knew that Matt held all the keys to the kingdom and we knew that all it would take is one little thing for Matt to pick up his toys and go home. Now he hasn’t done that yet, and I say yet because there’s still obviously that possibility with announcements, like he’s going to announce something today, tomorrow and Saturday. So, you know, and I haven’t been following it actually. Yeah.
[00:17:20.920] – Jonathan Denwood
There’s only so much I really got to concentrate on my businesses.
[00:17:25.510] – Marc Benzakein
Right.
[00:17:26.060] – Jonathan Denwood
I run two businesses on WordPress technology and that’s my, and I do this podcast as a, a way of promoting my businesses but also giving to the WordPress community. Right.
[00:17:37.920] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:39.490] – Jonathan Denwood
I, about six years ago, I accepted the situation, Mark. I made a couple blog posts that it was when he said he was like the king of what, you know, leader, you know, it just rubbed me up the wrong way. Big ways. Right. It just really rubbed me up the wrong way. But about six years after, I think it’s about five, maybe four to six years, when he made that statement, he was.
[00:18:13.590] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah, right.
[00:18:14.660] – Jonathan Denwood
And I just, I just accepted the situation for what he was. Right. Because he, I was told by people that he owned everything and I just accepted the situation. It wasn’t going to change. He owned everything. What going by my unofficial legal counsel advice, he came on the show, my unofficial legal counsel Spencer forum, and we had a discussion and Spencer is still registered lawyer and he’s been there for a number of years in the technology space and we discussed it publicly and that it looks like Matt’s really got himself into a terrible position.
[00:19:06.160] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah.
[00:19:06.990] – Jonathan Denwood
And he would be wise to try and settle this with WP engine as quickly as possible. But I don’t think he probably will do what? Well.
[00:19:18.700] – Marc Benzakein
I don’t, and here’s, I’m fascinated by neuroscience and one of the fundamental principles of neuroscience is this idea of survival instinct. Right? So you get into that reptile brain side of things and what happens is when you have convinced yourself that you’re in survival mode, you’ve painted yourself into a corner. All of a sudden, right and wrong goes out the window, collateral damage goes out the window. You’re just in survival mode. And so I kind of feel like somehow or another, just looking from outsider view, looking in, it feels like this is a, you know, someone who may have painted himself into a corner and feels that they’re in survival mode and doesn’t know how to get out, except for to fight. To fight their way out. And so I don’t see it going. I think things could have been okay right up until maybe right after the cease and desist. But the minute that the actual complaint was filed, I think that’s when we reached this point of no return, of working our way out of a corner. And. And the thing is, it really. I don’t think it would be. I mean, the damage, the collateral damage.
[00:20:51.000] – Marc Benzakein
I mean, this whole idea of scorched earth is. Is just amazing when you think about how much collateral damage there is as a result of scorched earth. Anything that scorched earth, the people who suffer. I mean, you watch. You watch a monster movie, you watch Godzilla versus Mothra. Everybody gets smashed, right? All these innocent people running around getting smashed. That’s what happens.
[00:21:14.980] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it is the language. You know, cancer, this, the other.
[00:21:20.850] – Marc Benzakein
They’re extreme terms.
[00:21:22.550] – Jonathan Denwood
When you decide to utilize those. That type of language in public, there’s going to be consequences, isn’t it?
[00:21:29.890] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah. Yeah. And so I am. I’m extremely concerned. I’m concerned for Matt, um, because, yeah.
[00:21:38.280] – Jonathan Denwood
In a bizarre way, I’ve had one interview with him. He handled me with ease, even though I tried to get some answers out of him, but he just played with me. Yeah. Which I expected. But I quite like Matt. He’s done me no harm. I don’t.
[00:21:58.500] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah, and me neither. But. But I look at my friends, and I see the harm and the mental. The mental drain and emotional drain. And, I mean, you have people talking about, you know, upping their therapy sessions and. And, yeah, I mean, I have a dark sense of humor, so I’m english.
[00:22:23.660] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m pretty dark for English. My sister says I’m. What I consider to be funny is pretty sick.
[00:22:31.250] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah. But. But the reality, I mean, I use.
[00:22:33.900] – Jonathan Denwood
Humor as a coping in a little bit. I just. The reason why I started grinning and laughing at what you’ve just said, but I’m sure, is that I compare it to something like the Ukraine. Well, I just. I just. For all the drama and entertainment and for Matt and other people at WP engine and other people, is very upsetting, but I just kind of compare it to fighting a war, you know, being in Ukraine.
[00:23:04.840] – Marc Benzakein
Sure, sure.
[00:23:05.910] – Jonathan Denwood
I think, yeah, it’s. It’s not pleasant, but this isn’t the Ukraine either. This isn’t.
[00:23:12.730] – Marc Benzakein
Well, death, you know, certainly. Certainly putting things into perspective is important, but also we have to realize that this is 100% of the reality that people are dealing with on a day to day basis. And so it’s still traumatic. It’s, you know, and, and I can’t imagine for a second, I can’t imagine what it would be like to live in Ukraine and, and deal with that. You know, I mean, I used to have a cousin who lived in a country in Africa called Burundi, and he said he’s, you know, this was back in the nineties, and there was, you know, civil war going on constantly at the time. And he said he slept with a gun under his head, you know, under his pillow every single night because he didn’t know when he was gonna. I can’t imagine what that feels like. So when you put it on paper and you put it in perspective, it does seem, it can certainly seem trivial in the grand scheme of things, but at the same time, this is 100% of what people are having to deal with every day just to survive and just to live. When we have people in the WordPress community who are literally living out of their cars or in their cars, and now they’re having to deal with this additional kind of stress of, you know, I may be living out of my car, but I can at least, you know, get some food.
[00:24:38.050] – Marc Benzakein
And now I don’t even know whether I’m going to be able to do that in the future. You know, whatever that self talk is or whatever their reality is, it’s important to at least be sensitive to it. And I’m not coming down on you because obviously we all grew up with the not wanting to eat the food on our plate and our parents saying, well, there’s children starving and name your country. So we all grew up with that put it in perspective thing. But once again, when you’re in survival mode, all you’re trying to do is survive. And for some of us, that survival mode is very real. And some of it, it is, it is that we’re just convinced that we’re in survival mode at some level, but it is still very real and it is still what drives us.
[00:25:24.960] – Jonathan Denwood
So, yeah, let’s move on. What more could we say that won’t get us into some joint serious trouble?
[00:25:38.120] – Marc Benzakein
I don’t think you’re going to get into trouble.
[00:25:39.890] – Jonathan Denwood
And, oh, I think there’s a lot of people gunning for me on both sides of this and some other groups in the WordPress community, wider community. My name is Dirt Mark.
[00:25:54.830] – Marc Benzakein
Well, I think that isn’t there saying that if nobody likes you, it means you’re doing something right or something like that, isn’t there.
[00:26:01.770] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I’m not a psychopath. I do care what people think of me. But on the other hand, when I got to my age, this part of me that doesn’t care.
[00:26:09.510] – Marc Benzakein
Fun.
[00:26:10.090] – Jonathan Denwood
Really.
[00:26:10.510] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah.
[00:26:12.050] – Jonathan Denwood
So in, I’ve been thinking about this second question. We’re going to do this second question and go for our break. But I was kind of, I call the decision a few years ago from the great leader that we were going to go down the react route and then Gutenberg. And then I, when I last, when I interviewed him, he said the Gutenberg project was a ten year project. Right. Which was news to me. I never heard that one before. And Gutenberg, I called the Gutenberg the people behind Gutenberg, and I call them the merchants a complexity.
[00:27:00.840] – Marc Benzakein
Makes sense.
[00:27:02.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Do call the merchants of complexity the crowd, you know, and I stole that term from Dhh, you know, David from 37 signals. And actually, he’s agreed to come on the show in the new year, actually, Mark.
[00:27:21.850] – Marc Benzakein
Oh, nice.
[00:27:24.180] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, he says he’s going to come on. He said he won’t discuss this particular subject. Anything else is on the cards, but he doesn’t want to get involved in this at all.
[00:27:32.980] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah, well, that’s going to. He’s smarter than some of us.
[00:27:35.400] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. He’s very intelligent, much smarter than me. But he has agreed and I think he’s the type. We’ll keep his word. But, so I stole that from an interview. The, but they are, in my opinion, and the way it was decided, and I think it’s had some major consequences in the WordPress community, this decision to basically, and I think I, I couldn’t really work. I could understand the editor needed a revamp, but on the other hand, you could just leave it to third parties to provide that. But then you saw what happened with Alamator, because in some ways, Alamator built a whole system based on their page builder that’s out of the control of MACD. And I thought, I thought part of Gutenberg, it seemed to be launched just as a content editor, and then it really broadened out into a website builder. And I think it was driven what he could see with animate or I just don’t think, because I think in all business models, there’s pinch points. There’s, there’s where people gain control over whole industry because they have control over those pinch points. You see that, you see that in a lot of industries where there’s a lot of people not making a lot of money, but then there seems to be a few that are making a ton of money, and they make money because they have identified the pinch points, as I call them.
[00:29:27.190] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you think? But I think there’s been whole consequences about. And I think the. I think all the other things that we discussed were there, but I think it’s just a gut feeling in me, Mark, that the way this Gutenberg project was handled in the direction it went, and the merchants of complexity, I think that put gasoline on the five, you know, do you think I’m on the right track at all? You do think I’m deluding myself.
[00:30:05.290] – Marc Benzakein
First of all, disclaimer number two, I don’t follow all this quite as much as a lot of people, and I will say that I do remember when we, you know, when they started talking about Gutenberg and when it was announced and all that, there was a lot of concern about Gutenberg replacing page builders, and it always seemed like there was going to be more to it than it. Just being an editor of sorts, my concern with just what I’ve seen with Gutenberg has really been. It feels like these merchants of complexity, as you like to call them, they haven’t done a lot. It seems like the project is confusing to so many people because there isn’t good documentation, and people are having people who wanna contribute to it and everything, they get confused and walk away from it because they just don’t even know where to begin. As far as intent goes, I don’t know that I can really speak to the intent of where things are going with it. That’s, you know, a pure speculation thing, but I don’t necessarily think you’re wrong. Does that address your question?
[00:31:43.310] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I haven’t totally. I’m just putting. I just wanted to check if you thought there was any substance and where my mind’s going, but I haven’t totally fulminated. I just. It’s just a feeling, rather than. It’s just a gut feeling that this, in some ways, is all linked in a kind of pattern. But I haven’t totally recognized.
[00:32:04.140] – Marc Benzakein
I wouldn’t put it past it being a pattern. I wouldn’t put it past some, you know, greater scheme of some sort.
[00:32:13.780] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t think he likes other people building bigger businesses than what he’s got with automatic. I just think he likes that.
[00:32:24.810] – Marc Benzakein
I mean, there are people who have suggested that the reason he’s going after WP engine is for that very reason. I don’t know. But WP engine is certainly a company that is financially or fiscally giving automatic a run for its money. And I. Some people have speculated that I, that I’ve heard that that’s why he’s going after them. So it certainly does fall into a pattern, if that is in fact the case.
[00:33:06.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I think this is a good spot for us to have our break, our middle break. We got a couple of messages from our sponsors that are much appreciated, that helped cover the costs of producing this show to you, great tribe. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Mark’s dealt with my wandering questions. Well, we’ve heard.
[00:33:36.770] – Marc Benzakein
I have eight kids. I know all about wandering questions.
[00:33:39.430] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Did I mention that you seem so relaxed? I don’t get it. I’ll be more than happy. I just. I haven’t got even one of childless. I’ve got nobody. Oh, I’m so depressed now. I’m not.
[00:33:55.280] – Marc Benzakein
No, I’m sorry.
[00:33:56.130] – Jonathan Denwood
I didn’t.
[00:33:56.490] – Marc Benzakein
I don’t want to depress you, but if you’d like to talk about that later, I can help you with that, too.
[00:34:00.930] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, now, obviously the things that are not in our lives we paint as green, but the reality can be a bit different to our fantasy, can’t it? But on the other hand, I’m sure you get great joy from your family.
[00:34:14.210] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah, it’s a double edged sword, but for sure, more joy than anything else.
[00:34:20.330] – Jonathan Denwood
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[00:36:16.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. And then at the same time, the decision how to deal with the technical legacy question. WordPress has been around for about 20 years, that it prides itself in backward compatibility. I just feel that it’s all, it’s totally understandable. There’s other open source projects that never dealt with technical legacy that well and it led to those particular projects being quite damaged. But I also think you can just take it too far. And I think one of the problems with WordPress, apart from everything else that we’ve discussed is this allegiance to backward compatibility and it’s been just being taken too far. You got any thoughts and insights about this?
[00:37:13.210] – Marc Benzakein
I agree. You have to draw the line somewhere. I think that, I mean, I don’t know how you can, how, you know, how far back do we go now? Are we with backwards compatibility? I don’t really even know the answer to that. Or if it’s, I don’t think it’s all the way back to the beginning, obviously, but maybe part of it is that is WordPress relying on, you have to update WordPress because hosts are enforcing a certain level of PHP or, you know, so therefore it’s just going to make older versions of WordPress automatically obsolete, you know, or for that matter, WordPress is saying, okay, we’re only supporting PHP X. I don’t know. But then, you know, is that that old code getting ripped out of WordPress and, and all of that. But I, I agree that you have to draw the line somewhere and, and probably somebody needs to be like on top of that and, and kind of say, okay, this is as far back as we go and, you know, but also, once again you run into that problem of, well, WordPress is on x percentage of the net of the web, you know, it’s 43% or whatever we’re at today.
[00:38:48.170] – Marc Benzakein
And of course the statistics are available as to how much of what version is out there. And do you just say, okay, after, you know, anything less than 10% of all WordPress versions or 5% of all WordPress versions, that’s the version that we’re cutting it off at. And we’re not going to, you know, we’re going to no longer support that. And if you look at like companies like, you know, not open source companies, but companies like Microsoft or even, or Apple, you know, when they, well, they’re.
[00:39:20.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Two great examples because, yeah, they’re like two. I actually think it can come across a little bit tutorial and Apple, especially their hardware, I think it’s five between five and seven years. But I think that’s reasonable where your, your Mac will be updatable. Microsoft, they are serve servants of backward compatibility and I think that but even.
[00:39:52.610] – Marc Benzakein
Then they draw the line. They’ll say okay, we are no longer supporting Windows eight or Windows seven or whatever but they give you plenty of warning. Now the main difference is every time you open up your machine you’re going to get a warning that says okay we’re no longer going to support this. But a lot of people who have websites, they hired a developer to do their website. They don’t know what platform it’s on and their developer may be long gone but their website might have been working this whole time and you know, and so they’re not as likely to get the memo as say because you don’t want a forward facing warning on the website that says as of such and such a date this version of WordPress is no longer going to be functioning. So it’s a little bit more of a challenge, I think. But the philosophy is sound that you have to get rid of the old stuff if you’re going to move on in a big way. And when you consider SAS models like say wix or something like that, they just update and update and update and you’re always on the latest version.
[00:41:12.780] – Marc Benzakein
You have to get rid of a certain amount of that legacy in order to be able to move forward. Otherwise you’re spending more time worried about backwards compatibility and you’re not moving as fast as the rest of the industry and it slows you down as far as progress. Do you want your developers working on new things or do you want them working on backwards compatibility? I mean that’s, that’s.
[00:41:38.580] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s all very difficult. I just felt, I just, it’s just my personal view that it’s just been taken a bit too far. This. Yeah, backward compatibility, sure. But there is a sweet point. You can’t please everybody and it, there is no right or wrong. You just got to internally debate it and try and find a happy medium.
[00:42:03.260] – Marc Benzakein
There will always be somebody who feels they’ve been dictated to no matter what the decision is. So the minute you start implementing anything and you just have to look at what’s better for the masses or majority of the people out there.
[00:42:21.960] – Jonathan Denwood
So. Right, let’s go on. So this term, founder mode, mode mod is term that’s sprung up on Twitter. X. I refuse to call it X.
[00:42:37.040] – Marc Benzakein
I still, I do too.
[00:42:39.400] – Jonathan Denwood
You can call it.
[00:42:40.410] – Marc Benzakein
Speaking of being dictated to. I’m not going to call it that.
[00:42:45.240] – Jonathan Denwood
It’S Twitter, not X Files. I’m concerned now. It’s kind of linked in my mind, you know, when it, you know, I was aware of it, but then I kind of pushed it to the back of my mind because, you know, it is what it is. When it came out this, the way that Matt had organized WordPress, WordPress Automatic, the foundation WordPress into this, I think you could take in the way he’s organized the structure. I think you could take.
[00:43:31.900] – Marc Benzakein
I think to call it convoluted would be an accurate description.
[00:43:37.900] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. If this thing is allowed, in my opinion, to stagger on and what my unofficial legal counsel has told me, that this isn’t going to play well for Matt. This isn’t, this isn’t going to be a happy outcome for him. Actually, my unofficial legal says that if he goes to court, he’s going to be laughed at and he puts at risk this structure, been put under the control of the court because he’s opening himself to all sorts of legal troubles. So. But, you know, is it just when you got. You’re mixing with the type of people you’re. He’s mixing with and you’re in that kind of world which we will never be part of? Personally, myself, I don’t even want to be part of it, so it’s got no interest to me anyway. Do you think you just, you get into this founder mode attitude? Do you think that’s part of the problem as well?
[00:44:55.960] – Marc Benzakein
I absolutely agree and think that that is a problem. I think one of the things that can, can happen is you can sit there and you can tell yourself, look, I made all the right decisions up to this much, and look at how big we are. So all of my decisions are therefore good decisions. And then you convince yourself that kind of like, only I can see the future and only I can do this. And then when you get to that point where you can afford to surround yourself with not necessarily the people who will tell you what you need to hear, but the people that tell you what you want to hear, I think you buy into that narrative and then you allow less and less for the possibility for collaboration and for the ability to make mistakes and to own them. And I think that, look, I know how to run a, you know, a small company. I know how to. I know the operations of, you know, anything up to maybe 50 people in a company would I want to be in a position of running a company. I know what my limitations are.
[00:46:15.560] – Marc Benzakein
I don’t think I could run a company of, you know, 1500 people or a company. You know, I kind of have this mentality of, like, once your company gets big enough that you have an HR department and a legal department, it may be time to bring in people who are actually experienced with running a company. Most of us are not experienced in that way. And that’s when you see a lot of founders either fight to hold on, and some do evolve, but I would say largely a lot of them don’t. I think it just becomes too much. And a good, in my opinion, a good founder knows their lane, and they might be able to, you know, you look at people like, say, for instance, back to Apple, you look at Steve Jobs, you know, you get more and more, or even what’s his name from Amazon. Can’t believe I forgot his name, but I, you know, what’s that?
[00:47:19.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Bezos.
[00:47:20.180] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah, Bezos, right. You know, they get more and more like an eagle’s eye point of view and less and less in the hands on stuff. And I think that one of the issues is with this founder mode thing is that the founders want to keep their hand.
[00:47:33.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s kind of, there’s cuddly Matt and then there’s dark Matt. And I’ve only dealt with Cuddly Matt. Matt on the pr that comes on my podcast. And we have a chat, and he’s extremely friendly, and we have a pre chat and a post formal chat, and he’s extremely dynamic and friendly to me. But then there seems to be dark Max particularly. Very friendly, isn’t it?
[00:48:14.880] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, some might argue that that’s an emotional intelligence thing. I I’m not saying one way or the other because I’m not a psychologist as well as not being a lawyer, but. But some might say that that’s an emotional intelligence thing. And. And a matter of dark Matt comes out with dark Matt when. When cuddly Matt feels threatened, you know, I don’t know, but I do feel like there reaches that a company, when it grows, it reaches where the founder is. It needs to take more of a hands off approach and step back a little bit and still continue to provide vision and remove roadblocks for his team to do what they need to do.
[00:49:07.610] – Jonathan Denwood
I do think. I know might be totally wrong here. I do think that you do need respect, but you also need a little bit of fear, people, if you’re in a position of authority. I know this isn’t light, but I just. I just think it’s the reality. I think unless you’re a sociopath or psychopath, you got to have emotional empathy and need for the bet, for the better of the organization. But also, if people don’t fear you at all, they won’t respect you.
[00:49:45.390] – Marc Benzakein
Well, I think that. Yes, that’s true, and that is a fine line, but a position in and of itself provides a certain amount of fear.
[00:49:57.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes.
[00:49:58.230] – Marc Benzakein
You know, so you’re already starting off in this. This kind of position of, you know, fear me just because that’s your title, and. And then, of course, what. But what you don’t want is you don’t want people to fear irrational behavior. You know, the only reason that you want to be fearful of a leader is because you’re not doing your job in the first place.
[00:50:25.630] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I was just saying, because I’m very torn on this, and I just want you join. So I was, as I was working too late last night, finishing off something and taking my painkillers for my toothache, and I’m so fearful. Dentist, Mark.
[00:50:45.560] – Marc Benzakein
Well, everybody hates a dentist, and I’ve.
[00:50:48.250] – Jonathan Denwood
Got two quotes already, and they give me two totally contradictory. Some noxus of my agony. Right. And the amount of money it’s gonna cost to sort it out, Mark. But I was listening to a lady who’s based in Australia. I won’t mention her name. And she was scathing on that. I mean, it was. It was 45 minutes on YouTube. Absolute assassination of him. I mean, on the other hand, I think that’s well over the top because I’m kind of stuck in the middle because I honestly don’t think he’s doing himself any favors. And we all make mistakes, but as we get older, we learn the number one. The number one thing that you need to do when you’re in a mess is stop digging.
[00:51:47.390] – Marc Benzakein
Sure. Yeah. But if you’ve surrounded yourself, once again, if you’re in a position, and I think this happens with a lot of people who kind of have set themselves up in an ivory tower, if you’ve surrounded yourself with people who are going to tell you what you want to hear, you’re not going to necessarily know, hey, it’s time to stop digging here, because everyone is encouraging your behavior.
[00:52:16.050] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s a bit like Matt made us. He had great. He thought. So, father, what’s gonna sort everything out? That you could go to her. And I. I wasn’t surprised when she resigned, because I thought. I thought about over a year ago, six months ago, that her position was unattainable, that it was totally painful. I would have, unless I was in severe financial situation where I had no option I would have resigned six months ago, you know, so I wasn’t surprised that she disappeared.
[00:52:56.040] – Marc Benzakein
Well, you’re talking about Josepha. I missed. Yeah. Yeah. So, Josepha. I’ve known Josepha for. Since before she was with automatic. I. She was the. The first word camp I ever went to by myself was at wordcamp, Kansas City, 2013 or 14, and she was the first person to greet me. And she and I became fast friends because she does that with everybody. Josepha is an intelligent, principled person. So, no, this didn’t surprise me because she. She sticks to her principles above all else. That’s one thing that I know about her, is that the principles will always come first. And if she saw something. But that is an indication of, you know, of issues. When someone that I respect, who is closer to a situation says, look, this is not tenable anymore, you know, that is cause for concern. And I think that that’s what a lot of people are seeing, because she was greatly loved by the community, and people kind of took that as a dagger to the heart, in a way, when she left. And I know that she. Well, I don’t know that, but I suspect that before resigning, she knew that that was going to be the impact.
[00:54:28.410] – Marc Benzakein
And that’s probably the. If anything, that’s probably the once again, true speculation, but probably the, you know, the deciding factor, the thing that maybe kept her from deciding earlier on. Because she. Because she knows that she’s well loved and respected, and because she cares so deeply about the community and the people in it that she probably didn’t want to feel like she was letting them down.
[00:54:58.170] – Jonathan Denwood
I interviewed her. She was extremely pleasant. She wouldn’t really answer any of my questions.
[00:55:03.480] – Marc Benzakein
She’s smart.
[00:55:07.650] – Jonathan Denwood
I can only put the questions. I’ve got no tools of interrogation at my disposal. But she wouldn’t really answer any of my questions, nor would her boss really answer any of my questions. Um, I feel I have to put them, though, to have any credibility in my own spirit. I don’t expect people to answer anything I asked them to. Um, where do you. I’m gonna junk the last two questions because. You mean, I just want weird because.
[00:55:41.890] – Marc Benzakein
I’ve talked too much?
[00:55:43.010] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I’ve actually got feedback theme. Our last round table show, I butted in a lot, but I’ve tried not to butt in too much here. Have I done a reasonable job?
[00:55:59.700] – Marc Benzakein
Not, oh, I, you know, once again, I grew up in a family, even before the eight kids, I grew up in a family where our discussions around the dinner table was us having very heated discussions and opinions and butting in. And so I’m used to, I’m used to being the one who butts in and used to being the one who shuts up and listens. So, you know, I don’t, I don’t feel, I don’t feel like you’ve been out of line or it’s a conversation.
[00:56:29.050] – Jonathan Denwood
So where do you think this is all leading to? Because in the end, I think it could end up for the, for the bigger WordPress community. Things could work out quite well, actually. I think that this ain’t good news for the people involved, but I actually think in the bigger picture, Finns could work out or not. On the other hand, it could work out not that well. But I think there are going to be some fundamental changes coming up. What do you, or do you think things are just going to convert back to what they were before this hang grenade?
[00:57:06.520] – Marc Benzakein
I don’t think that. I don’t think they can go back to where they were. And I am going to, I am going to quote the wisdom of my, at the time, seven year old child.
[00:57:22.750] – Jonathan Denwood
You always want to listen to your seven year old child.
[00:57:25.640] – Marc Benzakein
I’m telling you, this kid, he has more wisdom than, I mean, he’s what people would call an old soul. But we were talking about one time about a friendship of, that was kind of going south of his. And he, he just looked at me, says, you know, he says, I think it boils down to sometimes you have to tear things down to the ground in order to build them up stronger. And I think that that is kind of what we’re dealing with right now is we are in this tearing down mode. And I think that WordPress is not going anywhere. I think is going to come back stronger, but it’s going to, it’s going to do a lot of collateral damage. It already has. It’s going to, it’s going to create a lot of non confidence in a lot of people. It’s going to take a while to build that trust back. And I think that the way that that trust can be built back in the quickest possible way is literally to strip one or two of the keys away from the king. And that probably has to do with the foundation and maybe even.org dot.
[00:58:42.080] – Marc Benzakein
But there’s also the possibility that you could have a bunch of hosts that form a consortium of sorts and say, look, we are now going to host the repository, and this is how it’s going to work. And all of that. I don’t know, but I think that, I think truly going from democratizing publishing to maybe democratizing the community a little bit more, I think, is the way that things have to go. And I think that when that happens, I think that WordPress will be stronger than ever. So that’s kind of, well, a lot.
[00:59:19.910] – Jonathan Denwood
Of people in a very tricky position because they don’t really want to fall out with him, but on the other hand, they are thinking to themselves, I can’t build any business and trust this guy anymore.
[00:59:32.810] – Marc Benzakein
Right. Well, that’s what I’m saying. With the trust factor here is definitely something to be considered. And the thing is, and this is where we talk about rationality, a rational person might look at it and go, okay, I want WordPress to be my legacy. I want this open source community to be my legacy. And the way to make this legacy even greater and stronger is for me to step away from certain things. And then people will still look at me as, like, the one who created this legacy in the first place. But now it’s. It’s bigger than I ever thought it would be. It’s bigger than I could have made it because I included so many other people in there in order to make this legacy, you know, what it became. And this is certainly what I hope for. And I think that there could be a lot of trust regained. If Matt were to say, you know what? Even if he were to say with the foundation, and I don’t know, I haven’t really looked into it this much, but if he were to say to the foundation, with the foundation, you know what?
[01:00:52.490] – Marc Benzakein
We’re going to make the board of the foundation seven people, and it’s going to be these people who actually have decision making power. So it’s not just that two of the three people, you know, could take away my trademark authority. Two people I’ve never heard of feels like he doesn’t even remember their names, right? So if there’s, like, seven people on a board who are active members of this open source community, who understand all the intricacies of WordPress, and he could still be a board member, even that could probably be workable, I would think. But once again, I don’t know enough about bylaws and all of that to be able to speak to it. But it would seem like if you just increase the board size a little bit with, like, active members, that would be useful, too. And, you know, active voting members that have to be voted on and off the board.
[01:01:47.430] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, he’s become a merchant of complexity, and Gutenberg, in my opinion, has become a merchant of complexity. And I think the thing. I think anybody can build something that works that’s really very complicated. It takes a genius to build something that’s powerful but also simplistic.
[01:02:09.090] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s, yeah, the, the, it’s kind of like a car, right? What’s under the, what’s under the hood can be as complex as you want it to be. But once you get into the, uh, into the driver’s seat, you know, you still want this be a gas pedal, you know, a shifter and a steering wheel. Right. So, you know, and you want.
[01:02:30.090] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you’re funny enough, you can, you can see that in modern car design. Car.
[01:02:34.000] – Marc Benzakein
Oh, yeah.
[01:02:34.560] – Jonathan Denwood
You can see that obviously. I have a Subaru and it has eyesight. That’s supposed to help you. But the truth of the fin mark is when the weather gets really severe, it switches off. When I really need eyesight to really work, the damn thing switches off. Well, when I been caught out in a blizzard or in a rainstorm and it’s coming down, I drove to Kansas a few months ago and I was in a rainstorm and I couldn’t. It switched off and I couldn’t even see two foot 5ft in front of me.
[01:03:23.280] – Marc Benzakein
Oh, yeah.
[01:03:24.150] – Jonathan Denwood
And that’s when it decides to switch off or when I’m in a blizzard, that’s when it decides to switch off. Off when you really need it. And, and you have these screens where you, you have to click a button, you know, when you’re driving, where you. Knob works perfectly fine.
[01:03:46.500] – Marc Benzakein
My girlfriend’s car is an electric and, and I love that car. It’s a great car, but everything is done from screen. It’s not a Tesla, but I, you know, everything is done from the screen and there are very few knobs to do anything. And so she’s like, well, how do I like, turn up the fan on this? If I want to get. Well, you have to go here then here, then here, then here. And it’s like, you know, and she’s like, how am I supposed to remember that? Well, repetition as opposed to, you know, it’s, there’s. Yeah, it’s a matter of. You don’t need to bring the complexity to the user experience. The complexity needs to stay under the hood of.
[01:04:27.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and I’ve never been a fan of react. I’m publicly. He does the job and I understand it, but I don’t like react and I don’t like the react community and some of the lead on, especially on YouTube, some of its public biggest influences, I think they’re pricks, you know, some of their biggest influences in the react community. I think they’re total douchebags.
[01:04:55.160] – Marc Benzakein
Tell me how you really feel about them.
[01:04:57.150] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but just. I’m not going to name them because they sue me, but they’re douchebags and they encourage douchebaggery, as far as I’m concerned, of the highest order. So I’ve never been. I’ve always preferred either view or levant, you know, or even ruby on rails, you know, I don’t agree with everything David says, but at least he’s got opinion, and I prefer that. But I’ve never been a fan of react, so that’s just me. All right. I think I’ve made enough enemies in this show, so I hope I haven’t.
[01:05:38.210] – Marc Benzakein
Made any, but I think you’d be very fair.
[01:05:41.470] – Jonathan Denwood
I think we’ve had a great discussion. I think we’ve covered a lot of stuff. Mark, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and your great insights and.
[01:05:54.450] – Marc Benzakein
Well, I don’t have any of my great insights.
[01:05:57.830] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I think you’ve probably got a.
[01:05:58.830] – Marc Benzakein
Lot of insights about a lot of opinions. I definitely have a lot of opinions. You know, I’m on Twitter at Mark Benzak, and that’s Mar.
[01:06:08.810] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, you want to get off that. That’s bad for you. Yeah.
[01:06:13.560] – Marc Benzakein
You know, I actually don’t mind Twitter, but I take it for what it’s worth or for what it is, and I don’t let the. I have a pretty thick skin, so. So it doesn’t really bother me to get into.
[01:06:27.500] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t expect any, any. I had a certain group of the WordPress community started gunning me and. Yeah. To say the lack of insight in Twitter was mind numbing. Well, I mean, it would be the understatement of the century.
[01:06:48.140] – Marc Benzakein
Sure. I mean, I think most social media, it’s kind of. It’s kind of that way. I really am a big fan, and I wrote a blog post, markbenzucane.com, which is a website in progress, but I wrote a blog post about being curious and not judgmental and which is, you know, a Ted Lasso reference. One of the. I think one of the best scenes in all of television is a scene where he talks about being curious and not judgmental. And I think that that’s really what we. What we need more of is. And Twitter is, of course, full of judgmental, but it is nice when people are curious.
[01:07:30.220] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s a bit like, you know, I must have done overdose thousand hours of podcasts and YouTube content over a thousand hours over the last eight years. And I got criticized for five minutes of an open discussion. But on the other hand, they don’t take the totality of the thousand hours. They only take in five minutes that they weren’t happy with.
[01:07:58.540] – Marc Benzakein
So we, you know, but that’s the other thing is we have to, I really feel like we have to be, we have to show grace to people and allow for them to be human because we’re all tired, especially after the last few weeks, we’re tired. We’re going to say things that we may not.
[01:08:18.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Because I wish, I wish Matt well.
[01:08:22.020] – Marc Benzakein
Yeah.
[01:08:22.750] – Jonathan Denwood
When he was doing his lot, last major interview, and it was interesting who he chose to do, though. He did a pr blit. And you gotta, you gotta say that he is prepared to be interviewed. You gotta give him credit for that. But it was interesting who he chose to be interviewed. And, but on some of those interviews, he did not look well at all. He admitted he wasn’t. He was not, you know, he had some physical complaint. It wasn’t his mental condition, but he didn’t look well. So I do wish him, I do sincerely wish him well because, and also I hope that this matter, it would be, in my opinion, it really would be best for him that this matter is settled as quickly as possible because I don’t think it’s doing him any favors at all, in my opinion.
[01:09:18.450] – Marc Benzakein
No, I agree. You know, and then there are some.
[01:09:23.610] – Jonathan Denwood
People seem to be getting delighted at the situation. I don’t get any delight out. I accept it for what it is and the things that are driving it, and I accept it. But I don’t get personal delight out of it. I feel I have to talk about it, but I will probably not talk about much more. Well, we’ve got a roundtable show coming up at the end of this month.
[01:09:49.510] – Marc Benzakein
I think, though, that I don’t know that I’d call it delight. I mean, I know what you’re talking about. I think it’s satisfaction more than delight in that they’re proven; there’s always a certain amount of satisfaction being proven right, which I think some of these people who have been very, very vocal have been very satisfied to see that a lot of the things that they’ve talked about, you know, are accurate. But I also suspect that they would rather be wrong, you know, or they’d rather see a change in direction that disproves the old information. But we’re humans, and we do, you know, we do get a little bit of dopamine. You see, we find out we were right about something. Well, generally, we’re validated for having those feelings. You know, there’s validation that they, hey, I’ve been saying this for a long time now. The community is validating what I’m saying. And I think that you know, it’s always satisfying to be validated. And it’s not necessarily that they want an ill wish ill will on Matt as much as they are satisfied that people are starting to see what they’ve seen for a long time and listening to them.
[01:11:09.360] – Marc Benzakein
It’s no different than a scientist who’s been laughed at for years, and then all of a sudden they’re like, oh, well, maybe there is something to these trees talk to each other or something like that, you know, and so I wouldn’t say that people are gleeful about, you know, I would disagree with you on that. People are taking a, a great enjoyment out of the fact that, you know, this is happening as much.
[01:11:40.240] – Jonathan Denwood
I think the bulk of people, but I would disagree with you. There is a certain there might be tiny minorities that you can watch them have been highly vocal. I agree with some of the things they’ve said about Matt, but it’s been the tone, volume, and utterances. But he has dug a grave for himself.
[01:12:08.450] – Marc Benzakein
I agree. I agree.
[01:12:09.830] – Jonathan Denwood
I have a heart for it.
[01:12:13.320] – Marc Benzakein
Well, I mean, I think that this is a situation of, you know, when the emperor has no clothes, right, and then the emperor has to deal with that and, and there’s a lot of emotional baggage that goes along with that. And, at some point, you hope the emperor looks at himself and says, oh, you know what? I am not wearing any clothes right now, and maybe I should put some clothes on. But, yeah, I know some people are probably happy about it. I am a unicorn and butterflies kind of person, as I’m told often.
[01:12:52.600] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t think my father said something to me, and it’s always stuck in my mind. He said, look, Jonathan, you don’t have to go looking for trouble. Trouble will find, you know, the idea that you live a self-righteous life and you’re doing things; the notion that disaster and trouble won’t come your way is delusionary. It will find its way to your door no matter how self-righteous you think.
[01:13:21.390] – Marc Benzakein
Absolutely.
[01:13:22.360] – Jonathan Denwood
But you don’t have to go gunning for it. Because it comes knocking on your door periodically anyway in your life.
[01:13:30.630] – Marc Benzakein
For sure. For sure. Yeah. There’s no hiding. There’s no hiding from it.
[01:13:36.160] – Jonathan Denwood
You don’t have to go looking for it.
[01:13:38.320] – Marc Benzakein
No.
[01:13:38.930] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s going to find its way to your door anyway, so. All right. I think it’s time. You’ve been gracious with your time. Of course, you’ve dealt with my madness. It’s been a great discussion.
[01:13:51.410] – Marc Benzakein
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
[01:13:53.210] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think we covered some great stuff, and I think we’ve tried to be as fair as possible, and I think we’ve achieved that. Mark. We’ll see you next week, beloved tribe, with another great interview. We’ll see you soon. Bye.
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