We Review Our Best WordPress & SaaS Interviews & Guests For 2024 & Review Startup Bootstrapping at the Beginning of 2025
Join us as we delve into the exciting world of WordPress and SaaS in our latest video, showcasing the best interviews and insights from influential guests for 2024. Discover innovative strategies, expert advice, and inspiring stories to elevate your projects. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, this compilation is packed with valuable knowledge to help you thrive.
With Special Guest – Brian Casel: Designer, Developer, Entrepreneur, and Coach
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:01.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic Show. This is episode 943. We’ve had a bit of a break. I had most of, not most, all of December off. This is the second January, where we’re recording this show. So this is our first show of 2025. I’ve got my great co-host with me, Kurt. And in this show, we’ve decided that we would look back on our shows in 2024. It’s all merged, my beloved tribe. I could hardly think of a show. It’s all merged. I’m going to attempt to keep off some hot subjects, which I won’t, but Kirk will, because he has much more emotional intelligence than I do. But I’m going to get my co-host introduce himself, and then we’re going to some of the episodes that have stuck in his mind, unlike me, where it all merge, but I will attempt to find some highlights.
[00:01:55.230] – Jonathan Denwood
So, Kirk, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to any new listeners and viewers?
[00:02:00.550] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, my name is Kurt von Annen. I own a company called Manana Nomas. We work on membership learning sites, but I also work with WP Tonic and Lifter LMS directly.
[00:02:13.800] – Jonathan Denwood
Before we go into our review of 2024, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I’d like to point out we’ve got a great free resource for you, freelancers and agencies owners. It’s a created list of the best WordPress plugins. Every one of them has been used by myself or by my team. It’s the best services and like I say, plugins. You can get this free resource that will save you a ton of time by going over to wpiphon tonic. Com/deals, wpiphon tonic. Com/deals, because some of the sponsors have also got some great special offers on that page as well. So go over there and consume those free goodies. I know you love them. So, Kirk, I’m relying on you to get this ball rolling I’m just not in the mood. I’ve had a month off. First time I’ve had a month on podcasting in about 10 years, but I just needed it. So I’m in this… What’s that term where Are you going back to school, college, and there’s a term for it?
[00:03:50.330] – Kurt von Ahnen
I don’t know. I was just going to say malaise. I’m in the same spot. You said, introduce yourself, and I got all tongue-tied, couldn’t even get a simple sentence out.
[00:03:58.350] – Jonathan Denwood
No, there we go. That’s It’s never stopped me. I can waffle, beloved bribe. So ball over to you. Where would you like to start in all the interviews and round tables that we’ve done?
[00:04:13.810] – Kurt von Ahnen
Interviews and round tables and things that we’ve done, there’s a couple of things that make them stand out to me, anyway, from a personal perspective, Jonathan. One is through this process, you’ve introduced me to a lot of cool people that I’m actually still in touch with or to products that I’ve actually started to use. And I think that’s a line defining thing. It’s like if we interview somebody and I’m inspired after doing that interview to actually try their product or keep using their product, then it must have been a really good show. Must have been a really enlightening show. We had a guy on, I think his name was Ryan Roberts, and I’m pretty sure you called him Rob for half of the interview. And he’s the one that had that project called Write Blogger. Do you remember that one?
[00:05:01.770] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I do. Yes, but it’s the endearment. Guests should not take it the wrong way where I get their names from because I get everybody’s name, Ron, don’t I?
[00:05:15.370] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, that guy was interesting, and it was interesting enough that I signed in the right blogger to try it. And then here is what I like about it. I actually subscribe to it. I still use the product today. Is it as flashy and cool as the new version of ChatGPT or cloud or Lama or any of these things. Let’s be truthful. No, it’s not. The interface is very, very simple. But what I like about it is I don’t want to spend half my day figuring out how to be an AI expert. I just don’t. I want to be able to leverage a tool that’s pre-prompted to give me the output that I’m looking for, and that’s what that right blogger tool allows me to do. I can take a video, slap it in there and say, here’s a video, use the transcript and make me a summary post or make me a transcript or make me a… And it has different pre-programmed prompts to do all that stuff. And the interface is pretty convenient. So I use it quite a bit and I really enjoyed doing that show. I thought that was a good one.
[00:06:21.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
When we can come away with an actionable tool, like something that gives you a process that saves you time or makes you more efficient, I get pretty excited about the show.
[00:06:29.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’ve been looking at the list as you’ve been talking about that particular guest and one of the things, because obviously it’s been in some ways a rough year, 2024, for WordPress. I’ve had my ups and downs business-wise, but generally, in pure financial terms, 2024 was quite a good year. But I haven’t made progress. Well, I was making really good progress, but for various factors, that slowed down at the end this year, but I’m still optimistic about 2025. But looking at, I think one of the strengths of WordPress is the quality of people that are still involved in it. Just to name a few names, Brian Jackson. Really a great WordPress entrepreneur. He A month ago, he helped me quite a bit on a particular technical issue, and he didn’t ask for any payment. He’s coming on the show to talk about his plugin this month, But he’s experienced with helping as being a top-end SEO Marketing Manager for Kinster and running his own coding shop with his brother and plugin shop and being a real niche, but being successful, keeping the costs down and keeping his independence. Another one who’s a friend of the show is Devon from GiveWP.
[00:08:22.130] – Jonathan Denwood
Another excellent WordPress entrepreneur now works for a major Teller, and a major hosting company, but really sickly intelligent, good-looking. Every time I see him, I want to be sick because he’s everything I’m not. I’m only kidding, I tried. But a really great guy, but really still down to earth, not a bullshitter.
[00:08:59.330] – Kurt von Ahnen
What’s cool All about him, though, is he’s the same person that you see at WordCamp that you have a beer with that you have on the podcast. He’s the same person all the time. He’s very consistent and very generous with his time.
[00:09:12.410] – Jonathan Denwood
Tom from Converseo that sponsors the show and is a personal friend. I would say we are friends. Obviously, I’ve known Tom for a number of years. We Rock solid individual, runs a really ethical company. Jason, a personal friend from W, I’m going to mention the name that must not be mentioned. Founder of WP Engine, probably still has a little bit of equity in it, hasn’t told me. Obviously, sold the company a few years ago, the majority of it, but another quality individual. Like I say, we’re not close friends, but I think he would have no problem saying that we’re friendly. Another entrepreneur, WordPress entrepreneur, SaaS entrepreneur, very well for himself, but still very down-to-earth individual, rock solid individual. Any other names come to mind?
[00:10:30.050] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, there’s a few, and I hate to just go from recent memory, but we had Jack Arturo on recently. He’s a very dynamic individual to me. I met him in person at camp. I’m friendly with him through other friends in WordPress, and then we did the show with him. And what I really appreciated about that particular episode, even though it scared the pants off me, was he was very bold in his take on recent WordPress politics. And he’s been pretty vocal. And I think if we’re going to be really honest about something that I think is attractive about Jack Arturo and how he represents things, is he was very public about his adoption of Fluent CRM and his process to adopt that as his communications. And I think that you and I both use Fluent, and so to know that we’ve got that in common was pretty cool.
[00:11:30.150] – Jonathan Denwood
Jack, he’s a solid guy, done really well for himself with WP Fusion, but that’s another rock solid success story that’s well deserved. He’s spent a lot of time building that business, a lot of personal commitment. Doesn’t let his customer base down him and his team. Obviously, his success isn’t all based on him, It’s based around his leadership and his hard work of his team. He doesn’t mince his words, but I don’t think he does it in a spiteful, malign, because I’ve never noticed that in his personality at all. I think he just not prepared to take any nonsense.
[00:12:27.770] – Kurt von Ahnen
He is such a unique blend because Because I know personally he is very tolerant of anything. He’s not a judgmental person in terms of lifestyle, representation, any of those things. He’s all of the positives that you want in society from that, but he’s also a business person, and he holds the line. That, to me, is the best combination of professional that’s out there.
[00:12:53.420] – Jonathan Denwood
When he was taking on, when he was trying to get WP Fusion going, he still taking private clients and he was working with me on it. There was one particular client that’s absolutely mad. I mean, as bonkers as they come. I only realized about halfway in the project how mad and how aggressive this individual was. They kept increasing the spec and not wanting to buy any extra money for it. Jack was involved, was helping me build this project out. I was project manager, and he went beyond the core duty to try and get this project out the door and done. And the client never was happy and whatever. But we found out that we were the third forth attempt to try and get this thing done. And it was never because… But he’s a true professional. Another person I’ve known for years that I think would be happy to say I was a friend is Matt Madejia. Matt, I call him the Soundutsy because obviously, I’m so happy that he found a great home with Gravity Forms. And it’s enabled him to have the space to do things in WordPress that he wants to develop.
[00:14:42.030] – Jonathan Denwood
When I was starting in podcasting almost nine, 10 years ago, I can’t believe it, folks. He was one of my first guests on my show, and it was to say the show was really rough would be understatement of the But he chose to come on, and I could tell I had my first co-host who also was a sound nutsy, but was also bonkers. And I could tell For that, Matt was thinking, What the hell? Why did I come on this show? But he was still very gracious. He was a good guest, and it shows the quality. So I’m really happy that… I think things are going really well for Matt, and I’m really happy for that.
[00:15:38.390] – Kurt von Ahnen
Matt’s a great example of good things for good people because just look at his generosity in… I could probably call it an adoption the way these two act like they love each other on X. Him and Mark Zemansky do stuff together.
[00:15:53.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Robin.
[00:15:55.050] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, he’s a Robin to the Batman. It It’s evident that Matt has an open attitude about new faces, new people, new personalities, and he’s just really gracious with his time and his expertise. I really appreciate folks like that in the space Yeah.
[00:16:16.170] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s been tricky for Matt because obviously he’s tried… Because obviously he wants to be the defined professional news source for the professional market, a WordPress agency owners, freelancers, which you got to understand, folks, that’s part of the market that I try and pitch this podcast to, but I’m not attempting because I haven’t got the bandwidth, nor am I interested in becoming that. I have no interest in becoming the independent version of WP Tavern. That’s not what I want to achieve. I have no interest in that. But it’s been tricky for Matt to keep that balanced independent media position where you got some independence when you’re dealing with something like the great leader and his problems with WP keeping the engine. But Matt has done a good job, I feel, of keeping that balance. Would you agree with that, Kurt?
[00:17:37.950] – Kurt von Ahnen
He’s done a wonderful job of creating that balance. I can’t…
[00:17:43.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, right.
[00:17:45.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
Really can’t articulate strongly enough. He’s in a position where he, I don’t want to say had to watch what he said, but it’s like, he didn’t stay completely quiet, but he didn’t go bonkers off the deep end. And he’s just got a really good way of having an even temperament in his communication.
[00:18:06.670] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re going to go for our break now, folks, our midway break, and we’ll be back with some other insights about 2024.
[00:18:16.750] – Brian Casel
Hey, can you guys hear me? Yeah, good, Brian. I am so sorry for missing this. This is like the second time this happened this week. My whole alerts system with my calendar is something’s messed I missed the alert.
[00:18:31.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
Using Microsoft Outlook, aren’t you?
[00:18:33.670] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you want to do, Brian? Do you want to join us as a review? And then you want to come… I’m booked for the whole January, but do you want to book for February to do a one? Because I still want to do this interview because I think it’d be great. Do you just want to join us? I don’t know if you can, because we’re just going through our previous guests, but we could talk about you coming on the Roundtable show, and then you might want to comment on anything that we say, or do you want to go?
[00:19:03.810] – Brian Casel
I’m open to whatever you want to do. I’m here, I’m probably late, and I don’t know if this was a live show?
[00:19:11.430] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, the only problem, see, the reason why we could have stopped and do it is that Kurt’s got to go at 10:00. But if you want to do an episode after Kurt’s done, because I’m freer this morning, I don’t know what your time restreints are, Brian.
[00:19:33.730] – Brian Casel
I’m open now, but I’m happy to come back on another time if that’s better.
[00:19:40.090] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, we discuss it when we get this show out of the way. So I introduce you, so we got a guest as well.
[00:19:47.990] – Brian Casel
My apologies again, man.
[00:19:49.240] – Jonathan Denwood
No, it happens, Brian. I thought it was illness. I didn’t think you would… Me using a… That wasn’t my doing. That was my assistant using a 10-year-old picture of yours. You’re still a handsome beast, Brian. Right, so three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a great first half where we’ve been talking about the guests that we had in 2024. Before we go into the second part of the show, I want to point out, if you’re looking for a great hosting partner that provides everything that you would as a freelancer in a hosting partner, why not look at becoming a partner with WP Tonic? They offer some great packages for the WordPress freelancer. You can find more information by going over to Wp-tonic. Com/partners, Wp-tonic. Com/partners. Also, we got a great guest joining us for For the second half. He was a little bit delayed, but he managed to join us. He had some technical problems. But we have Brian Castle with us. Brian came on our roundtable show at the end of 2024. He’s a great WordPress entrepreneur. Not WordPress, but SaaS. But I think you’ve got a history with WordPress as well, haven’t you?
[00:21:26.430] – Jonathan Denwood
You got your chops in the online entrepreneur world with WordPress, and you kept your distance, but it’s on your radar, isn’t it?
[00:21:38.240] – Brian Casel
I mean, yeah, first of all, my 2025 is clearly off to a rough start. I came half an hour late for this call. My apologies. I have a whole new Mac set up here, and I think my notifications are all screwed up. But anyway, yeah, I was in WordPress for a while. I don’t use WordPress anymore myself. I still love it.
[00:22:01.780] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll forgive you, Brian. I’ll forgive you.
[00:22:04.880] – Brian Casel
Yeah. I mean, I still have a lot of friends and people I enjoy doing some pretty great things in the WordPress world. So I try to stay in touch through them and whatever bits of news and product updates that I can keep track of. I don’t know what you want to get into here, but I’m starting to work on whatever bits of news and product updates that I can keep track of. I don’t know what you want to get into here, but I’m starting to work on I build software, mostly with Ruby on rails, and I’m starting to build a block editor and a content, CMS-like tooling in the Ruby on rails stuff. So I think in the next couple of months, I’ll probably dive back into WordPress just to see what the UI is looking like these days and maybe get some inspiration.
[00:22:51.800] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think what we were saying in the first half, Brian, is that we were looking because I struggled the world Straddle. Straddle? Straddle? I can’t talk. So yeah, I’ve had the month off. This is my first podcast and I can already talk. But I mix in the world of bootstrapping and WordPress. Bootstrap startup, stroke WordPress, because there’s a lot of people that are in both camps, or they start with WordPress, and then they go into bootstrap SaaS, Because- That’s exactly what I did. Yeah, because I’m in both camps, really. So We were talking about some of the great guests we’ve had from WordPress and from bootstrapping. When it comes to bootstrapping, because you do your own great podcast as well, and you do that with a friend of the show that’s been on the show a couple of times, Jules G. G. Jules is another great online entrepreneur and got a bit sculched with Shopify. I think he appreciates WooCommerce now. So how do you see the world of bootstrapping? Do you think there’s still an enormous amount of opportunities? Because I’m thinking in some ways there is, but also I feel there’s a little bit of tinnitus around people, around subscription.
[00:24:42.250] – Jonathan Denwood
I call it subscriptionitis.
[00:24:45.200] – Brian Casel
It’s really interesting. You talk about the… I have some thoughts on the subscription stuff. But I think in general, bootstrapping is still the best, in my opinion. There’s always going to be a place for the venture back or any And there’s also in between investment vehicles, like Tiny Seed and things like that, or just angel investors. But the idea of bootstrapping an idea that you have for a product, especially if you’re in the WordPress ecosystem. And I think WordPress still, like it did for me over 10 years ago, still today is… Maybe it’s an open question with all the drama lately, But just in terms of if you are a consultant or you’re working at a job and you’re trying to bootstrap your very first product, a plugin for WordPress is a great way to start that stair step thing that Rob Wallen talks about. You can do that on many other platforms as well. Maybe there’s an open question whether you want to have the platform risk of WordPress. But all that aside, it still powers so much of the Internet that you have a user base and distribution strategy built in, and that is the hardest thing for a bootstrapper to achieve.
[00:26:07.940] – Brian Casel
Building a product is easy, especially if you have product skills, but finding people to use it is always the hardest thing.
[00:26:15.020] – Jonathan Denwood
Market fit, as they say, Rob. Rob’s a friend of the show as well. We have interviewed Sokert, I think Rob Rowland. He’s not a close personal friend, but I think Jason Cole, and he would be in me saying that we’re friends. Rob sent me a book. He sent me a book as well.
[00:26:37.490] – Kurt von Ahnen
Jason didn’t send me any books.
[00:26:39.800] – Brian Casel
I think everybody’s an internet friend.
[00:26:43.000] – Jonathan Denwood
But Rob’s been on the show a number of times, and I would classify him as a personal friend. But he came on the show, and he’s always got great things to say, isn’t he, Kurt? I think he came on the show a couple of times in 2024. Anything stuck in your mind or our discussion with Rob?
[00:27:06.910] – Kurt von Ahnen
For me personally, I go back to generosity. He comes to the show, shares openly, pretty transparently, I think, and then he always has some next step. So it’s not that he is just continuing to piggyback off the success of six years ago. It’s like he’s got a new book that’s coming out or he’s got a new meeting that’s coming together. But every time we’ve met with Rob, he’s had something new to discuss, and he’s added a lot of value to the conversation. And to me, I think of it from the listener’s perspective. If I’m going to ride my bike and listen to a podcast while I’m bicycling, I want to come away with some actionable value piece or something like that. I think that that’s always delivered when Rob shows up on the show.
[00:27:54.600] – Brian Casel
I know Rob pretty well as well. The thing that, obviously, is just an He’s an awesome dude, and you know he’s the person that means well and doesn’t… I don’t know if you can curse on here, doesn’t BS people. But the thing that I really appreciate about what Rob shares across all of his channels, obviously through his podcast and videos, but I’ve always found that his conference talks are some of the best as well. What I really appreciate his perspective And from that perspective, is that it’s unique because he has access and exposure to so many SaaS companies, not just his own, but literally hundreds of SaaS companies. And that’s not just from a person having an audience of hundreds. He literally invests in them. So he knows them intimately. And so when he writes a book or gives a talk, it’s literally based on data and trends that he sees firsthand across hundreds of companies. And there are very few people who have that level of access. Even whatever you listen from someone like me talk about on a podcast, I can only speak to my personal experience from my small handful of companies, and that’s going to be completely biased with my own experience.
[00:29:20.190] – Brian Casel
But that’s why it’s really good. You get a lot of insights into what’s actually happening in the world of SaaS there.
[00:29:28.710] – Jonathan Denwood
And I think Rob’s pretty fast about the people that he has around him. So I do appreciate him accepting my invites because I don’t think him and his wife are prepared to… And there is I’m bringing this up, Brian, is we got to be frank here, Brian. There’s a lot of iffy people in online marketing, online SaaS business. There’s a lot of-I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s a lot of really iffy characters around, isn’t there, Brian?
[00:30:01.970] – Brian Casel
I think that you’re absolutely right, of course, but I think that, especially in our circles, I talked to Jordan about this on our podcast. I feel so lucky to be in an industry that is so well connected. We’re just naturally connected through podcasts, through X, through Blue Sky, through conferences, Slack groups, whatever it is. I don’t know any other industry who is this well connected. All my other friends in life who are doing other things, not in the Internet software industry. They don’t have stuff like this where they’re talking about what they’re working on and they’re sharing all their… So not only being connected and being able to have relationships, no matter how close you are or from afar or remote or whatever. But I think that being so well connected for us makes it easy to know who’s real and who’s full of it. Like, Because it’s just reputations. And if somebody is either scamming people or is just not truthful about the stuff that they share, they’re either not going to be relevant and nobody’s even really going to know them or they’re just going to have a really bad reputation. But we all know all the really good, trustworthy people doing awesome work.
[00:31:24.550] – Brian Casel
It’s pretty obvious.
[00:31:26.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. One of the guests that Molly I enjoyed chatting with another Jonathan, so I’m bound to. I like Jonathan World. He came on the show. Yeah, I thought you might know Jonathan Brian. He struggles. He’s got a quite inferential YouTube channel, WordPress, really big in Generate Press, which is a great theme, but it’s much more than a theme. It’s a page builder. It’s a platform for building WordPress sites. I think if I wasn’t really investing in Cadence WP, I would use Generate Press. But I think if you’re doing true higher semi-custom or full-custom, I would look at Generate Press anyway. Because I think with bricks as well, if I was in that higher. And I really enjoyed my interview with him. What about you, Gert? What did you think about that?
[00:32:30.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
Fun guy to talk to and super, super knowledgeable.
[00:32:34.420] – Jonathan Denwood
Another quality person. I’m not very close with Jonathan, but I sense that he was a pretty open, pretty bright guy.
[00:32:43.260] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. And And then it was weird because Generate is one of the ones I haven’t used. So it was a conversation with somebody with surrounded around a product that I was completely vacant from. But he was really informative on the interview.
[00:33:01.050] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, another. I’m looking at the list as we are talking.
[00:33:07.470] – Kurt von Ahnen
Do you remember Christian Taylor when he was on the show?
[00:33:11.400] – Jonathan Denwood
Christian Taylor. Terrible names.
[00:33:13.900] – Kurt von Ahnen
Long A prepared guy that’s an expert in YouTube?
[00:33:17.270] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. I thought that was a really, really…
[00:33:21.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
I hesitate to say great, because we’re the hosts. But I thought that was a really good interview because the topic was how to become a WordPress YouTube influencer. We had someone on that’s noted for that success, which was pretty cool.
[00:33:36.560] – Brian Casel
You, too. That’s something that I’m trying to crack into. I’ve been trying to crack into it for the past year. It’s so hard to stay consistent.
[00:33:44.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
Brian, not for nothing. I’ve gone from 72 subscribers to 94 subscribers. So I am kicking Fanny going into 2025.
[00:33:53.660] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve managed to grow the WP tonic. We’re over 4,000 subscribers now, but I’ve produced about over 500 videos. Just this month, I just hired a video editor to work with me.
[00:34:12.220] – Brian Casel
And just yesterday, we published the first two videos that he edited, and we have a queue of more coming out. After a year of trying to do it all myself, I was like, the only way I’m actually going to stay consistent with this thing is if I have a system where I can just flip on my camera, do my thing, and I put it in Dropbox, and he does the rest.
[00:34:32.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I just do. I would love to get editor. I got editor for my podcast, and I would love to get into the situation because I would love to increase. But the style of videos, I just do a bare-bone edit, and I’ll just get it out there.
[00:34:49.240] – Brian Casel
With our podcast, we do no editing.
[00:34:53.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Don’t you?
[00:34:54.700] – Brian Casel
Literally. We finish our call and it goes live.
[00:34:59.790] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, I do that, but I don’t know how to edit them. I hire proper because your sound- We just use Riverside audio equalization thing and put it on the internet.
[00:35:11.440] – Brian Casel
That’s it.
[00:35:13.050] – Jonathan Denwood
Another guest from the The Bootstrap Startup World rather than WordPress was, I’ll get her name right. Do you remember her, the red red hair lady that talked about- Was that the branding expert? Yes.
[00:35:35.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, she was good. She was good. She was friendly.
[00:35:39.510] – Jonathan Denwood
Can you know about her? I like her.
[00:35:42.270] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, I just remember we had her on for branding, and I think that was how to start building a knockout brand was the name of that one?
[00:35:51.250] – Jonathan Denwood
I can’t remember, and I apologize to our guest, especially her. I can pull it up in a heartbeat.
[00:35:58.670] – Kurt von Ahnen
Emma, I was just marketing by Emma.
[00:36:02.130] – Jonathan Denwood
No, it was another lady.
[00:36:03.580] – Kurt von Ahnen
Emma Schirmer-Tameer.
[00:36:05.990] – Jonathan Denwood
That was another lady. I’m talking about the red hair lady. Episode 906. She wrote a book with her- She was the one that said Russell Brunson was wrong. Yes, well, I’ll give her full marks for that. Russell and myself. I’ve not been very kind by statements over the years with Russell. Highly intelligent individual, but I went to one of his lives five events, and I’m used to hard sell, but my God, click funnels. They attempted to try and persuade me to… I didn’t have the money anyway, so they were wasting their time. But They were getting people to sign up for.
[00:37:02.950] – Brian Casel
I have to assume that ClickFunnel is still doing as well as they always have. I do feel like I haven’t heard much about them in the last year or two, as much as I did in years prior.
[00:37:15.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, this is- I think we have our own marketing channels that reach a lot of people, and I’m not getting those. Well, we better get off because I can’t even remember the name of a guest that I brought up.
[00:37:24.790] – Kurt von Ahnen
Her name was Georgianna Laudy.
[00:37:27.750] – Jonathan Denwood
Laudy. You must know her, Brian. She She was quite good. She wrote a book about funnels and onboarding with her. She has a co-founder. She’s based in British Columbia, and she was really good, very intelligent, very sharp lady. But when it comes to ClickFunnel, I think with ClickFunnel, because we need to get off, because I butchered her name. Thank you so much, Kirk. I struggle with names, Brian.
[00:37:58.910] – Brian Casel
I don’t know people by By their Twitter avatars.
[00:38:01.720] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s all I’m doing. Yeah. With ClickFunnels, I think they had, when they brought out ClickFunnel 2, when you got legacy code and you’re revamping, and also I think they felt that, and they were right, Kajabi was really trying to muscle in on their world. The heat was warming up and they knew they had to revamp, so they brought out ClickFunnels too. But they had a lot of technical problems as I heard. They had a lot of influencers online saying it was buggy, and it’s taken them… I think I’ve heard that it settled down, but I think this-I know Andrew Culvert fairly well.
[00:39:04.300] – Brian Casel
I think lately, he was elevated to CTO over there, or leading the tech side on ClickFunnel. So I know And I know him and his track record of building awesome software, especially with Ruby on rails. So I would assume that the latest versions of ClickFunnel are pretty rock solid But that’s been cool because he started as a bootstrap SaaS person, had a SaaS and sold it, and then built one of the most popular framework, site builder frameworks in rail. Funnel’s called Bulletreen. Then I think that started getting used by ClickFunnel. Then he joined the ClickFunnel’s team, and now he’s up there really leading the show over there.
[00:39:56.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but I think they struggled. But if they’re due, they didn’t do what Kajabi did, because Kajabi, obviously, you had Kajabi. This is going back a few years, but Kajabi had their Kajabi one. Then it was a bit messy with reliability. Then they brought out Kajabi 2, and they literally dumped all the people that signed up for Kajabi 1. They didn’t offer any grandfathering or anything. They just dumped them. I think people that got burnt, they are still bring it up in Reddit, and I know when the Kajabi is mentioned, because that was a bit ugly, to say the least. But in some ways, Brian, I’m surprised how well WordPress is doing, because not for what has happened in 2024, because even in the freelance agency world, it’s only a small element of that world that even knows there was a blow up between the great leader and WPA. Oh, yeah.
[00:41:14.930] – Brian Casel
I know we- Only a tiny set of people that are even interested, right? I think whether it’s this recent thing or any of the recent, or any other dramas that has ever happened at word camps or whatever. But Nobody cares. Nobody knows about that stuff.
[00:41:32.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Nobody does. I told you, only those that really follow it. I don’t even have any idea.
[00:41:35.960] – Brian Casel
I’m actually curious from both of you about… We can look at the numbers all day and see, whatever, 50, 60 %. I don’t even know what the percentage of the Internet is still using WordPress, of course. But just anecdotally, are you seeing long-time WordPress professionals or WordPress people pivoting away and starting to professionally embrace other platforms? I guess I ask that not just out of the recent drama and stuff, but I was noticing this well before that. I haven’t said for the last three years or so, friends of mine who… Anyone who is in the SaaS or whatever, and they need to build a marketing website or a blog, nine times out of 10, they’re not choosing WordPress. Just in my experience. They’re going with things like Webflow or Statamik in the Laravel ecosystem or any other.
[00:42:39.780] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that’s part of your bubble.
[00:42:41.840] – Brian Casel
Who do you think the average users.
[00:42:46.610] – Jonathan Denwood
I haven’t even heard of Stanomic. I think Webflow, obviously, they had an enormous amount of external investment, and they were doing quite well. But then they started bunning the prices up, didn’t Even now, each Webflow, just in terms of what I hear about most from people, that has started to fall off a little bit.
[00:43:08.720] – Brian Casel
What’s the other new- To answer your question, I think, but in a strange way, I think I have been quite critical consistently around Gutenberg, even though I want Gutenberg to succeed.
[00:43:26.850] – Jonathan Denwood
I think through something like Cadence W or Generate Press, I think it’s quite usable now. I think if you’re in the professional, full build-out, move from design to development, I think using bricks is a professional-level tool now, which wasn’t available because I think for those that were doing full custom design and development, full stack development. All that was WordPress had become very stagnant. But you always had to develop a theme from the ground up if you were doing full stack, full custom work. But then Elemator was always a hot mess because it was Divaitus, wasn’t it? It took about produce, it made Divi or people… And I love the founder of Divi, and I love the people that work for Divi, but I can’t stand it as a web development platform. But Elemator It is the same, a more controversial company, but their marketing and how they positioned in the market and how they managed to get over 6 million users, and their advertising and their video are very original, very fantastic placement. But as a tool, it’s a hot mess, isn’t it? Would you agree, Brian?
[00:45:10.670] – Brian Casel
I do think that from just a pure product standpoint, if you are choosing… There’s different use cases, right? If you’re choosing, I need a CMS for my marketing website, for me and my small- I’m going to have to intervene, Brian, because I want to continue our discussion, but my great co-host is probably going to have to leave soon.
[00:45:33.470] – Jonathan Denwood
So, Kirk, would you like to say goodbye to the listeners and viewers? Because he’s got a hot time.
[00:45:41.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
I don’t ever want to say goodbye. I want to stay forever.
[00:45:45.560] – Jonathan Denwood
No.
[00:45:46.310] – Kurt von Ahnen
I have to run. If people want to connect with me outside of the show, just hit me up on LinkedIn. I’m on there almost every day, or visit maniananomas. Com.
[00:45:56.720] – Jonathan Denwood
Right, that’s fantastic. We’re going to wrap wrap up the podcast part of the show. Hopefully, Brian can… Can you stay on for another 15 minutes? We’ll continue the discussion with Brian, and you’ll be able to watch the podcast and the extra content on WP Tonic YouTube channel, but we’re going to wrap up the podcast part of the show. Brian, how can people find out more about you and what you are up to, Brian?
[00:46:27.800] – Brian Casel
Yeah, let’s see. Lately, I’m most I’m active on Blue Sky. You can find me over there. I’m also still on X.
[00:46:34.190] – Jonathan Denwood
I haven’t left there yet. You’re given up on the Nazi channel.
[00:46:38.150] – Brian Casel
What’s that?
[00:46:39.480] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re given up on X, the Nazi channel. I don’t know.
[00:46:43.480] – Brian Casel
I post both of them. I enjoy Blue Sky.
[00:46:47.380] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m still on X. I haven’t gone on Blue. We have to discuss your experience of that being in the bonus content. It’s best to find you on Blue, is it?
[00:46:58.040] – Brian Casel
Yeah, I guess so. My company And then I’m building right now is called Instrumental Products.
[00:47:03.310] – Jonathan Denwood
I love the name.
[00:47:06.910] – Brian Casel
Me and my small team, we build MVP V1 SaaS apps for new products. I’ve been doing that for the past year. We’re doing a lot more in 2025, and I’m building out some tools for the Ruby on rails ecosystem, which I’m sure your audience is probably more in the WordPress- You got to mention your great podcast with Jordan as well. Of course, yeah. Co-hosting with Jordan Gal on bootstrapweb. Com. We’ve been at that for over 10 years. I can’t believe it. We’re going to record another one next week.
[00:47:42.580] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’ll regularly listen to it. You do a great job there. We’re going to finish the podcast show, but we continue the discussion and you can watch that on the WP Tonic YouTube channel. We got some great guests coming up in January, and I think Brian is going to join us in February for a full interview because he’s got an enormous amount of experience, so I’m looking forward to that. He was going to join us for this round for 2024, which he has, but he had some technical problems. But he will be with us in February. We will see you soon, folks. Bye.
[00:48:21.140] – Brian Casel
See you.
[00:48:23.540] – Jonathan Denwood
I was thinking of going on Blue a bit as well, but I feel fragmented as it is. I try and keep a consistent presence on LinkedIn, which- I’ve always tried to get onto LinkedIn, but I- And it’s just a ghost world, but podcasting is a ghost world. That’s the other factor. I’m a dyslexic. I never really fitted in into the education. I say that in my 30s, I managed to get a degree in a master’s as well. My 30s were my… I was running two businesses in the UK as well at the same time. But I thought for some reason I needed higher education, so I got a degree and a master’s masters, which I’ve hardly ever used because I’ve always worked for myself. But I didn’t enjoy my degree because- I sometimes regret not doing it.
[00:49:29.590] – Brian Casel
I have I have bachelors and something not related to what I do every day. But I sometimes regret not getting a computer science degree. I wish I had done that when I was in college because all the computer science I ever learned was self-taught, and I always feel like I would be a better builder programmer if I had some CS background, but maybe not.
[00:49:55.400] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, there’s such a diverse… I forgot The individual is famous, but the name’s left me. He said, If you want to learn not to program, do a computer science degree. I can’t feel it. That’s how I’m doing business, right? Yeah, you could do I’m glad I did not do a business degree. No. But get back to it. I feel stretched as it is because I try and keep a consistent present on LinkedIn. I don’t know why, because it’s a bit a ghost area. I try and keep Twitter. I use lists, and I just post, and I keep away from the drama because I find it quite toxic.
[00:50:42.120] – Brian Casel
The only thing I like about Blue Sky is that it seems there’s more engagement. Whenever I post on Twitter, and I’ve been on Twitter since 2008, these days, when I post on there, very rarely gets replies because their algorithm will just push one way or the other. And Blue Sky seems more like the early days of Twitter.
[00:51:05.240] – Jonathan Denwood
What’s been… Because my biggest feeling, Brian, is I love podcasting, and I think I’ve got a very passionate Well, I think I’m amazed that my listening figures. A lot of that was my roundtable show that’s always been a bit racy, but that’s been a two-edged sold for me. But it’s getting any engagement engagement out of people. Podcasting is useless, but maybe it’s just me. Has it been difficult to get any engagement or response from listeners through your podcast?
[00:51:39.110] – Brian Casel
Never. It’s like we forget that there’s people even listening. We have listeners, but not-None of them email you or. Again, literally on Twitter and Blue Sky and some email, just a handful. I can see from the stats that we have a couple of thousand people listening every episode.
[00:52:00.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s about what I get. I get about 4,000 to 5,000 a month downloads.
[00:52:06.430] – Brian Casel
I think that’s probably around the same as us. I think that podcasting is a one way relationship. People are listening in their car or when they’re out driving. It’s not like social media where they’re engaged both ways. I don’t know. But I think that YouTube… We don’t put our podcast on YouTube, but I’m trying to do YouTube.
[00:52:31.990] – Jonathan Denwood
I do. I’ll give it a rough edit and I’ll put it on.
[00:52:35.400] – Brian Casel
That seems to be where people will be a little bit more interactive because they’re seeing you and they’re sitting there and they can type comments.
[00:52:43.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, really, the WordPress, my WordPress really has nothing because I specialize in boutique hosting and development of membership. What you were saying about WordPress, I think in your particular, which you speak for yourself, but you seem to have now your communities, maybe Ruby on Rels and David.
[00:53:10.510] – Brian Casel
Yeah, I also know a lot of people in the Laravel ecosystem as well.
[00:53:14.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, you’re in both camps because they’re the-Yeah, I build in Ruby on Rails, but I’m friends with a lot of Laravel people.
[00:53:20.310] – Brian Casel
I’ve built a little bit with Lara Bell.
[00:53:22.160] – Jonathan Denwood
And David, he replies he’s supposed to I think he said he will come on the show.
[00:53:34.210] – Brian Casel
Dhah?
[00:53:35.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I’ve always had… He’s very controversial, but I’ve always… I don’t agree with everything David says, but he always puts a rational argument to some extent. I agree.
[00:53:47.420] – Brian Casel
I really enjoy listening to him and Jason Fried.
[00:53:50.830] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and he’s not boring, is he? Because a lot of people in tech are extremely boring, aren’t they? It’s a total yawn fest, isn’t it? Let’s be frank about But he always replies to me… When I outreach- He’s pretty successful. When I touch, he personally comes back to me saying, I must have some reason, because I don’t think he tolerates idiots.
[00:54:17.750] – Brian Casel
No. Yeah, he doesn’t go on a lot of external podcasts, but he goes on a few, so that’s good.
[00:54:25.700] – Jonathan Denwood
I had the interview with the great… I call Matt Mowek, the great leader. That’s just my English sarcasm coming out. He dealt with me in the way that somebody that’s had a lot of media training does. And The power diamix is so out of place that he just… It was like watching… I can’t watch the interview, Brian, because it’s like watching a cat playing with a mouse. Hard to watch with But I don’t want to be really rude to my guests because they are my guests. But I was pretty direct.
[00:55:11.720] – Brian Casel
In this situation, he needs to be… Any press with him right now, since the drama should be direct, he got himself into it.
[00:55:25.220] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll put this to you. I just want your feedback because you’re outside it and your income isn’t reliant on it, so you can be as honest as you like. There’s a lot of people in the WordPress community that rely on favors from him, so they can’t be honest or they work for automatic. You’re not going to get any honesty there.
[00:55:49.980] – Brian Casel
When it was really heating up a couple of months ago, I think I talked about this on Bootstrap Web. That’s what really It angers me about it. Because like you said, I don’t really care. My income is not dependent on WordPress. But yeah, the people who would have a lot of influence of And people trust their opinions in the WordPress space, they cannot speak out or speak- Well, they fear him. They fear him because their businesses are so tied into them.
[00:56:26.590] – Jonathan Denwood
So. Because I’m a It’s a hosting company. I make a reasonable living. I’m not rich, but I’m not bothered. It’s more about I can pay my bills and my independence. That’s really important. Yeah.
[00:56:44.560] – Brian Casel
To call out unfair or wrongdoing of Matt, you or anyone else who’s actually doing business in WordPress, it just doesn’t make business sense to do that.
[00:56:58.890] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll I’ve tried to keep my balance because I don’t hate WP engine, but it’s like having emotional feelings to big white chalk. It’s a bit of a waste of time, isn’t it? It’s a business.
[00:57:15.930] – Brian Casel
But I think it is the thing that has probably already started to wash over. It’s in the rear view a little bit, but it’s also a stain that I think is going to make… I’ve already definitely seen this with bootstrapped people who were planning new products in the WordPress space have pivoted to other platforms or big companies like spinning up new things. I’ve seen that with actual companies.
[00:57:42.350] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m surprised that because I wouldn’t react because to me, in some ways, it’s much about nothing.
[00:57:50.330] – Brian Casel
I think on the surface, it is. I think a lot of the drama stuff doesn’t matter. But the idea of if you’re going to start a new business today, the distribution channel is dependent on the whims.
[00:58:07.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it depends if you’re going to use the directory. But with your Jordan’s experience with Shopify was horrendous, wasn’t it?
[00:58:17.040] – Brian Casel
Yeah. That’s the platform risk. I think Jordan knew going into Shopify that there is always that platform risk, and he ran right into it, and it was a bad experience for him. But I think that a lot of people who are bootstrapping- The reason why you’re interrupting, look at Elemator.
[00:58:37.330] – Jonathan Denwood
They built that. The great leader despises Elemator. He He hasn’t gone after them like that.
[00:58:48.760] – Brian Casel
But if you think about it like this- But he never stopped them from building a six million user base on WordPress, did he?
[00:58:55.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Right.
[00:58:56.720] – Brian Casel
But I mean, if you’re… Let’s say you’re a bootstrapper and you start a plugin business, and it does a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue, and that’s great. You have a nice business right there. The most likely next outcome for that is to sell that business at some point, and move on. But if you’re trying to sell a business that is built on WordPress today, sure, you can sell it. But it’s definitely going to be a question now from any potential buyers, what is the extra level of risk that a buyer would be taking on in buying a WordPress-based business versus some other business? And that new level of risk is not there before all this drama. That could impact the valuations that you could see from selling a WordPress business or who might be willing to buy your business. I know that selling your business is not everyone’s end goal, but it is for a lot of people. And That’s going to be a new question that buyers would have to ask, I think.
[01:00:04.810] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, we’re going to wrap up the bonus content now. As I said, we were back next week with another great guest. Hopefully, Brian will join us in February. Thanks for being such an insightful guest. We’ll continue, hopefully, the discussion in February, Brian, when you come back for the full interview. We’re going to wrap it up now. We’ll see you soon, folks. I want to have a quick chat with you, Brian. I’ve got a question in the stream.
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