The Role of WordPress Professionals & Agencies Is Shifting In 2025
The role of WordPress professionals & agencies is shifting in 2025—learn the key trends shaping the future of web development.
In 2025, the landscape for WordPress professionals and agencies is evolving rapidly. This video delves into the emerging trends and challenges that are reshaping their roles, from the rise of AI-driven tools to the increasing demand for specialized services. Discover how these changes affect project management, client relationships, and overall business strategies. Don’t miss out on insights that could redefine your approach.
With Special Guest Kimberly Lipari CEO of Valet.io.
#1 – Kimberly, can you tell the WP-Tonic tribe how you got into the semi-crazy world of WordPress?
#2 – WordPress professionals and agencies’ roles seem to be shifting. What have you observed recently in this area?
#3 – What are some of the most important lessons you have learn being that you are purposely a small WP agency in a sea of big fish?
#4 – With your team’s 10 years of experience delivering maintenance and support, what key things have you learned?
#5— Are there any AI tools or services you have been using remotely or regularly that you would like to share with the WP-Tonic tribe?
#6—If you had your time machine (H. G. Wells) and could travel back to the beginning of your career, what advice would you give?
This Week’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:00.950] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic Show. This is episode 961. In this show, we have a fantastic guest. We got Kimberly Lapprini, the CEO of Velvet. Io. Kirk’s laughing at my pronunciation, but that did reasonably well for me. You can laugh, Kirk. Kimberly’s got an enormous amount of experience in WordPress and running Velvet. Io. We’re going to be discussing the changing landscape and many other things. So Kimberly, could you give us a quick 10, 15 second intro of yourself? And when we go into the central part of the show, we’re going to your background in a bit more detail.
[00:00:59.530] – Kimberly Lipari
Yeah, sure. Valet Web Services used to be WP Valet a long time ago, before we rebranded. We started doing some lifting and moving migration stuff, and then stumbled into maintenance, support, development, and consultation. Then, which is what we do now for SMBs and larger, not quite enterprise, but a couple of enterprises, but mostly sitting that sweet spot between those.
[00:01:26.720] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. I’ve got my ever-patient co-host, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:01:36.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
Sure. My name is Kurt von Ahnen. I own a company called MananaNoMas. We focus largely on membership and learning websites and do some training. We also work with WP Tonic directly.
[00:01:46.490] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Like I said, it’s going to be a great interview. I think the world of WordPress is changing a bit. Kimberly has a load of experience, plus some of the lessons she’s learned on her entrepreneurial journey. It should be a great interview. But before we go into the meat and potatoes, 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 also want to point out that we got some special offers from the show’s sponsors, plus a curated list aimed at the WordPress professional with the best recommended plugins and services WP Tonic utilizes. You can find all these goodies by going over to WP-Tonic. Com/deals, Wp-tonic. Com/deals, and you’ll find all the goodies there, my beloved WordPress professionals. What more could you ask for? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’ll get off that bunch. I’ve made a career of disappointing my WordPress tribe. So Kimberly, I need to love that, Kimberly. I get more DMs about that than anybody else. Yes, brought a smile to Kimberly. So, Kimberly, maybe you can go into more detail about how you got into the same crazy world of WordPress.
[00:03:17.960] – Kimberly Lipari
What’s the phrase, an unwilling entrepreneur or thrown into the fire? My background is industrial engineering and drafting for survey engineering. So it was quite a shift from that background to this one. But software, software, right? I figured I knew AutoCAD, so that I could do anything. Asterisk Insight. Spoiler alert, it’s not the same. I eventually learned. But I had started my young life, graduated from college, got married, and we’re starting a family, and I had the opportunity to move. So during that process, I was like, I’m going to do some website stuff. I’ll build a website, do some things. I had a little side project, breaking it a lot during those first few months. And one of the places I was using tools and looking for help was WPMU Dev. And they had an opening for a support agent. And I was like, maybe I’ll send them an email. And I did. And that was the one qualification I think got me hard was, hey, I broke it a lot, but I also fixed it. So they took a chance on me. And from there, I got into learning more about plugins and code and writing documentation.
[00:04:47.400] – Kimberly Lipari
And that’s where I met my original business partner and shifted into WordPress. Everybody else fell in love with the community from the get-go.
[00:04:58.580] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Over to you, Kurt.
[00:05:01.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, we all got those weird starts where we didn’t think, Am I going to do this? And the next thing you know, we’re doing it. And like, years have passed. You’re like, Where did my youth go? Went into this WordPress thing. But the roles, they seem to be shifting a lot, right? Especially with AI, tools, and hosting and stuff, to consider from an agency perspective. It used to be download, extract, and load it up for people, and there were things you had to do. Now, a lot of that has dissipated. So, as the roles have shifted, what do you observe, especially recently, in this area for being an agency? What’s the role for an agency now?
[00:05:45.270] – Kimberly Lipari
Yeah, I think part of the curve in the beginning was that nobody knew anything. People who were asking for help because we did have to do data migrations initially, where everything comes down to my local machine, and then gets moved over to whatever the new host is. Those sorts of things, and nobody knew anything. And then there was this influx of everybody knew too much. People come asking about very specific tools, processes, or themes. And I think we’re seeing that the return to nobody knows anything anymore, because there is too much information out there. They don’t know what to choose. It’s coming not from ignorance, but from too many choices and what’s available. So I feel like the roles have shifted from something more tactile, hands-on, do it, and then more to fulfilling requests, very transactional. And now I’m seeing this shift into more consultation. Let’s talk about your options. Let’s talk about why these things are. Let’s talk about why you need or don’t need something and why you should approach it a certain way. So that’s a wave that I’ve noticed over the years. And I think we’re moving back into being able to talk a bit more about services provided and why we do things.
[00:07:08.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’s interesting because in my own experience, sometimes I’ll catch myself actually saying to a client, What I’m actually bringing to the table is, you have 60,000 plugin choices, and I’m going to show you the 20 that I make a living with. And then they’re like, Oh, yeah. Because it takes a ton to figure out all that stuff. What’s good, what’s good? What’s bad? What works? What doesn’t?
[00:07:32.000] – Kimberly Lipari
It does. There’s a really great story I point to that this guy had a really big boat, a problem with the engine, and he called all these mechanics in to look at it, and nobody could fix it, nobody could fix it. Then he finally gets this one guy that comes, pulls out this one small hammer, and just taps in one spot, and it automatically starts to function and work again. The guy says, Here’s my invoice, and it’s 10 grand. He’s like, What do you mean 10 grand? How Why can it be that much? He said, Oh, I’ll itemize it for you. It’s just a hammer, $1, knowing where to hit the hammer. That’s the remainder of the balance for the cost. That’s so true.
[00:08:12.400] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah.
[00:08:13.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Jonathan, back to you.
[00:08:14.890] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s So what areas do you think… Because I’d imagine, I’m only surmising this, because we have at WP Tonic a very diverse client base from people that don’t really know that much about WordPress to those that have been building websites with it for quite a bit to enterprise level. So what are some of the key areas that you think that a lot of people question you the most and causes the most confusion?
[00:08:54.260] – Kimberly Lipari
Lately, probably the most common thing has been around security. I had a client come and ask about running a security scan on the domain or something, a RAPID7 scan. When they start asking questions like that, they start talking about security. But with WordPress, we know, especially with managed hosting, a lot of times, there’s got to be some translation that happens in there. So a lot of people, I think, are getting more interested in security, and we’re having to maybe explain a little bit more about what are the nuts bolts when it comes to WordPress, specifically, and then where you’re hosted as well, and how that overlaps with stuff like the OASP, top 10 thing. There’s, again, that translation piece of how do we talk about it in terms that relates specifically to what we do.
[00:09:47.860] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you… Personally, in my self, one of the things I think causes a lot of confusion is what is managed WordPress hosting? What is that? Because to me, it’s been a term that’s been degraded to such a level that nobody really has a clear, I have a clear idea what managed WordPress Hosting is, and I try and perform that at WP Tonic, and I think Kirk would agree that with his help and the rest of my team, we do our best. But I think it’s a totally semi-degraded term. What in your own mind is managed WordPress hosting?
[00:10:40.770] – Kimberly Lipari
Well, I will agree with you that it has changed so much over the years and what it was invented as and where it’s being used and I think how it’s generally understood. I guess I’m part of the O. G. Crowd when it comes to how I think about it. And if I’d explain it to someone that doesn’t know anything about hosting, I’d say that there’s a difference between the hardware that your application runs on and the software that drives your website. And manage hosting is a service that takes care of that hardware to make sure that the software can run optimally because all software is different. And so it’s going to need an environment primed to run it at its best. So a managed host is someone that is going to take care of a lot of those things that you don’t want to worry about, that you might not have the ability. I couldn’t. I stay out of hosting. It’s a black box for me. But that’s how I think I would frame it for someone who wants to know the difference between, do I put this on, Hey, my IT guy says we have an AWS instance, versus, Hey, maybe you should consider manage hosting.
[00:11:55.890] – Jonathan Denwood
The way we deal with it is that we do update all the plugins We ask the client to ask us to install a plugin so we can check it over, so it’s not going to cause a problem. If there’s a problem with the update and they report it, we’ll sort it out. We But as part of our managed hosting, we will not do small… We will advise through our ticketing system and assist as much as we can. But if they want us to actually do do actual changes and things to their website, they’ve got to go on one of our support plus plans. That’s the dividing line that we place. I think it’s taking me a while to work out where that dividing line is. But I think we’re in a reasonably good place. Would you agree, Kurt?
[00:12:53.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Lately, it seems to be working really, really well. The hard part, of course, is always educating the client because if If you give them admin access to the site, all bets are off because you can tell them what you want them to do. But that doesn’t mean that’s going to be what happens.
[00:13:08.060] – Jonathan Denwood
If they do start installing and they make a mess of it, we tell them, We’re sorted out this time, but if you keep doing it, we’re not going to help you. Or you’re going to have to go on a support plus plan because you’re not listening to us. And that normally does the trick, doesn’t it? Back Good to you, Kurt, for the next question.
[00:13:32.770] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, and this is making a fairly large assumption, right? But it says, what are some of the most important lessons you’ve learned being a smaller WordPress agency, especially in light of some of the larger agencies that are out there?
[00:13:52.670] – Kimberly Lipari
Most important. Just because you choose to be small doesn’t make it easier. We tried to go the traditional, I guess, or expected route many years ago, and it’s a big choice. I think you’re just choosing your pain at some point, depending on which direction you want to go. But I think that remaining small, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that you really need to choose which you’re paying attention to, choose what you’re adopting, choose the type of information that you want to share in the limits on education. Jonathan gave a great example, putting boundaries around what your services involve. That’s a great example of something like that. Where you want to say something or you know something, but you really… That conscious choice to not enter an arena or we could do this ourselves, but maybe we won’t, just to make sure that you protect that choice to stay small.
[00:15:02.800] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, that’s pretty insightful. We recently moved from California to Kansas, and that change in economic environment allowed us to be able to say no to certain projects. In California, we needed the money. We had to say yes to everything that came through. But when we moved to Kansas, we had the ability to say, Oh, that’s not really the best fit for us right now. I’d recommend these three providers. And the customers were happy, and obviously the people that got the referrals were happy. And I was thrilled because it opened us up for work that better suited our skill set. And I think that, to me, became the art of staying small, being flexible and being able to pick and choose. Whereas I think with a larger, if I really did the office building in the cubicles and filled full of people, I think I’d be back in that space where it’s like, we got to say yes to every project and someone on this team is going to get the unlucky, draw the straw to do it.
[00:15:56.110] – Kimberly Lipari
Yeah. It’s a lot of pressure. Did you find it scary at first when when you were able to say no, or was that exciting for you?
[00:16:03.970] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, no. So exciting.
[00:16:05.520] – Jonathan Denwood
So exciting because- He’s never had trouble saying no to me.
[00:16:09.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, you can say no to Jonathan, but he just keeps talking about what you said know about until you finally just do it?
[00:16:17.260] – Jonathan Denwood
I am persistent, aren’t I?
[00:16:19.030] – Kurt von Ahnen
He is persistent. All right. I guess that handles that question, Jonathan. Over to you.
[00:16:24.910] – Jonathan Denwood
I want to explore it some more. So what is That’s basically your business model, Kimberly? Because obviously, I’ve been to your website, very nice. Kimberly had to try and attempt to fill in a form on my own on the WP with little success, but we were in the midst of upgrading our server to a bigger vulture high-frequency server at the time, which we are successfully done, Kimberly. It’s a massive website, the WP Tonic website is truly massive website. But you got a very nice website, but I did notice, I think I’m correct on this. I’m sure you’re going to correct me, there are no prices on it. Is it all initial free consultation, seeing that you’re a good fit and then you quote? Is the base of the business ongoing maintenance and support? If that’s the case, also, Obviously, you’re going to say recommendations, but I would have thought there must be other methodologies that you get leads, and maybe you could share those with the audience.
[00:17:43.180] – Kimberly Lipari
Well, I think part I know what you see on the website is not very strategic. We are like the cobbler’s kids. Our own shoes could use a little bit of work. And the other part of it is a a reflection of where Where are we at, where are we going? I think we’re like a lot of agencies right now, just feeling out what’s the next three to five years look like, and how are we going to repackage or pivot to be able to service what we’re seeing that clients are needing.
[00:18:18.770] – Jonathan Denwood
Have you got any conclusions? Have you come to any conclusions around that, Kimberly? That you want to share? Not yet. I can’t share the secrets yet. Well, please do, Kimberly. Please share a little secret I’m kidding.
[00:18:30.610] – Kimberly Lipari
I think to answer the question about maintenance, yes, that is a large portion of what we provide as a standard… At a standard rate, it just depends, which is why we usually don’t put pricing on the website because we fit people to their website and what it needs. So not everybody’s going to come to you with the same stack or with the same stuff in place. So we like to be able to fit people where Where they belong so we do the right things for them. And once we have that in place, we talk about what do you need for support? And that becomes an add-on to your plan. And from there, any project, that’s a a whole box in and of itself. I think overall, I’m looking at what does maintenance really need and mean and include right now? Over the years, we’ve made adjustments, like we put patch stack in as a standard feature, and adopted different types of workflows for stagings. That’s a big thing that we believe in that not everybody does. So just trying to make sure that what we’re doing reflects what is best for the type of people that we serve.
[00:19:47.150] – Kimberly Lipari
So I think we’re going to probably adjust a little bit more, see what else we can put in as far as context, like what is helpful maintenance. If we can, I don’t know, find some way to to bring that to the surface, maybe send some emails, track some metrics or something. And then I’m seeing consultations going to be a much bigger, probably part of the future for a lot of people. So I don’t know how we package that just yet. But I think that’s going to be something that a lot of people probably want and be adding on, not just us.
[00:20:24.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think when it comes to the support because there’s been some conversations from Matt Madeas and some articles on his website, WP Minute, which I would highly recommend to people, and about support, but there’s all different types of support levels. There’s a big difference between having a couple of hours and what I call semi or full enterprise-level support. To me, there’s in between, which I call semi-enterprise, and then there’s what I call enterprise. What I call enterprise is when I have some clients that have been with me a number of years that have spent a lot of money with me, when I get a text message, they have my text number, they have my direct I emailed. I asked them to go through the ticketing system for non-urgent. But if I get a text message from them, and if I’m not available, I may Kirk or a couple of other people that are dealing with that level of client, they get a reaction in less than an hour. But they’re spending thousands of dollars a month with But you got to put strong boundaries because I have some… Well, they’re with us. If they start understanding, obviously, we have to part ways.
[00:22:14.750] – Jonathan Denwood
If They refuse to understand, they are spending $79 with us per month. Well, you didn’t reply to our email the same day. Well, no, we don’t. That’s the brutal fact of it. Has it been education? How do you respond to what I’ve just outlined, Kimberly?
[00:22:41.710] – Kimberly Lipari
Well, I feel it in my soul because there’s plenty of $79 a month clients who have $2,000 a month expectations, right?
[00:22:52.610] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s- Well, they got Gucci taste in a Walmart budget.
[00:22:56.500] – Kimberly Lipari
Yes, 100 %. I know that feeling. I could sympathize with it as well. I think, you just sometimes you have to handle on a case by case basis. We had a client come in sometime last year that seemed like it was going to be a great fit. And that’s why we talk a lot before we decide on anything. So we want to make sure this is what you need to tell me, and we interpret and we sort out how we can do the best job for you. But about three months in, it was, well, you didn’t tell me about this, and you didn’t tell me about this, and I’ve got an email about this because I’m following this over here, and you haven’t said anything. So what is it that you really need? What is it that you really want? Do you want advice? Do you want a weekly call? Do you want to chat? Or do you want me to help you with your website? Do you want me to do the changes that you need? Do you want me to keep the software updated? Do you want to work on landing pages? So finding a balance to communicate how you work because everybody does differently.
[00:23:58.570] – Kimberly Lipari
The clients work differently. Our agencies will work differently than other agencies. So that’s why I think match is so important, but definitely draw on boundaries. We love our group, our shared support inbox, and we have an emergency form so that everybody can get notified. Sometimes you have to hold that line for correct procedure as well. Because if you go too far outside and make exceptions, then your own internal workflow gets ruined because everybody’s going different route.
[00:24:29.960] – Jonathan Denwood
Which is how much they pay me.
[00:24:32.870] – Kimberly Lipari
Yeah. If you want to pay for the help, then absolutely. But sometimes it’s what people think is involved in doing support or doing WordPress or doing website is not the reality. Some people don’t want to change their mind about what they think it should involve. That’s why there’s someone for everyone.
[00:24:54.410] – Jonathan Denwood
You got any comment about this, Kurt?
[00:24:56.830] – Kurt von Ahnen
I just listened to the two of you, and I think this is such a difficult topic for agencies to discuss because on one hand, you know something, right? And it’s like you just know it, and they just want a piece of your knowledge, and then you don’t share it right away, and you get labeled as a gatekeeper, right? Oh, you’re just gatekeeping. You’re just holding on. No, there’s only so much of me that can go around, and everybody wants a chunk of this and a chunk of that, a chunk of the other. I do some support work for other sources, and I can’t tell you how How many requests a week I get for. Can’t we just jump on a Zoom call and you can show me this real quick? And it’s like, no. No. No, I cannot.
[00:25:40.310] – Kimberly Lipari
To tack on to that, Kirt, though, as well, I think a lot of clients don’t understand. Most of us are probably obsessively helpful, and we get ourselves into those situations where we’ve done it or we’ve made the exceptions. And a lot of times, our response is not out of any meanness or prioritizing money. It’s just really, truly that we know that we can be obsessively helpful. And yes, we probably would jump on the Zoom call if we had the extra 30 minutes this afternoon, but we don’t.
[00:26:13.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, and that 30 minutes is never 30 minutes. Never. I think Jonathan will jump in and agree. I tend to be a little overly helpful sometimes. Someone will purchase a program, a platform or whatever. They’re supposed to get 45 minutes It’s I’m an hour and five. Someone buys five hours of time and next thing, I’m in it for seven hours. But I get- You’ve got better, actually. I’ve gotten better. I have. But in my mind, it’s like it’s a partnership. I want to see them succeed. I don’t want to work on something that’s going to fail. I want to get them to the finish.
[00:26:48.150] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, there’s some clients that really appreciate that you’re doing the extra mile for them. They verbally say it. There’s other people, they just take it because they’re giving you a minimum amount of money that they deserve as much time as they demand. And the more time you give them, it’s like feeding alcoholics never satisfied They’re alcoholics, aren’t they? So they will keep on drinking until they’re dead. So it’s obviously different, but it has certain elements to it, doesn’t it, Kimberly? You’re smiling, so I think you agree with the outline. If you don’t want to say it out loud.
[00:27:37.400] – Kimberly Lipari
I understand the sentiment.
[00:27:40.800] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, you just need boundaries and systems. So So do you think, just to finish off before we have our mid-break in Berlin and go into the second half, do you think that this is the area where freelancers, obviously, if they’ve got a lot If you don’t want to answer this question, I understand. Is a lot of your work, your support is white-labeled and you’re working for larger agencies as a subcontractor, or is it just direct with clients? Secondly, do you think that a lot of freelancers, when they get to a certain level, they don’t really understand the amount of commitment and processes that they’re probably going to need to be to provide effective support?
[00:28:33.360] – Kimberly Lipari
Yeah, both very good questions. We tried the white label thing. It doesn’t work. We are all direct now. It doesn’t work for us. I don’t want to say it doesn’t work as a concept, but for us, the way we work just doesn’t jive with the white label model. As far as freelancers, 100 %. I think that it’s difficult when you are working for yourself and there’s one bottom line and one stream of where the money comes in and out and where it goes. That’s how you plan your day and how you plan your work. But whenever you start moving into larger businesses and companies, and then you have to adjust and add on and tack onto that. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics that doesn’t always come easy, but It’s also counterintuitive sometimes to why people enter freelancing to begin with. So it’s just a matter of being self-aware. I’m a fan of being self-aware.
[00:29:41.350] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, yeah. Oh, well, there we go. I’m sorry, Kimberly. We’ve had a good discussion. We’re going to go for our mid-break. Got a couple other quick messages from our major sponsors that are much appreciated. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a fantastic chat with Kimberly. We’ve covered some great areas. Before we go into the second half, I want to point out, if you’re looking for a great WordPress partner, if you’re taking on a larger project in the membership, subscription, community area, and you’ve taken on this big client and it’s just a little bit too bigger than you thought, why don’t you look at Hosting and also being a partner with WP Tonic. We specialize in community membership, large, medium websites. We love to be a partner with you. You can find more by going over to WP-Tonic. Com. Tonic. Com/partners, wp-tonic. Com/partners. Let’s build something special together. So over to you, Kerr.
[00:30:58.630] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I feel like we’ve We talked about the maintenance and the support that we were going to talk about. So we’re going to jump on to the next topic, which is AI, artificial intelligence. I know I’m going through my own battle with artificial intelligence right now, but are there any tools or services that you are just glued to that help you through your day to day? Or is there anything that you’re relying on that you can share with our audience that you just-Personally or as an agency? Well, let’s do both, personal and agency.
[00:31:31.290] – Kimberly Lipari
We are AI curious as an agency, but there is nothing that has become a must have, can’t live without, really just bring in the value to restructure anything around it at this point. For me, I’m a huge ChatGPT user, but I’m also a big believer in it’s a tool and you have to use it correctly. So Sometimes it’s just organizing my thoughts. Yeah, I got all these things. And can you help me either prioritize or figure out how these things link together thing? Sometimes I use it to really simplify. We talked about earlier, we know a lot. We’ve got a lot going on that we’ve watched and we’ve learned. And can you help me explain this much simpler than I want to put it in this email? I need this to be instead of three paragraphs, three sentences. So I I rely on it heavily just for, I guess, organizing my brain. But as far as agency tools, nothing that’s that stand out yet that I think I’d point to and be like, Hey, you guys got to try this thing. But if you know something that I should look at, you tell me. But nothing as of yet.
[00:32:51.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
I find it so interesting because you separated things personal versus business. I tried one of those AI calendar things, right? Because I’ve got stuff from Lifter LMS, from W. Plutonic, from Mariano DeMal.
[00:33:05.430] – Jonathan Denwood
He got very frustrated last week. He was trying to blame me for his Zoom not connecting with our team calendar.
[00:33:11.830] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, Zoom broke three weeks ago and broke the automation in Calendly.
[00:33:15.870] – Jonathan Denwood
It wasn’t me that did that, Kerr.
[00:33:17.870] – Kurt von Ahnen
It was a disaster for me. I tried one of these AI calendars. We take all your calendar, and then we prioritize, and that’s what it sounds good. We color code. I’m Okay, yeah, I’m in. Kimberly, I couldn’t disconnect from that thing fast enough. That was stupidity on steroids. I said, This is no, sir, re. I am not going to let this machine- He’s had a few weeks of roughness, Kimberly.
[00:33:46.560] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m rubbing off on him. He was so bright-eyed and bushy three years ago when he started working for me. He’s just dying of death, Kimberly. No, it’s not true. He’s much more optimistic than I am, Kimberly.
[00:34:00.980] – Kimberly Lipari
To be fair, though, when you’ve been in the game as long as we have collectively, when you try a new software or a new PM system or something like that, you’re expecting to be disappointed, probably from the get-go, because 95% of the time you’re like, It’s not even near as good as the sales page. I think since you mentioned meetings of crisp, I did find crisp, and I do like that a lot for calls and stuff. But yeah, I can imagine, right? You’re just like, Oh, another piece of software let me down, instead of I went in optimistic.
[00:34:32.330] – Kurt von Ahnen
I thought, maybe this is my savior. It’s not my savior. I’ll stick with my conventional, personally done time blocking and keep my day straight because that thing was a mess. Things that I have used that I actually really like. And at the risk of advertising on the podcast, I tried that ZipWP for… If you do Astera and Aster Pro, it asks if you want to have a AI website made, blah, blah. And I thought, this is I’m like, This is going to be garbage. And I have some clients that are very much on the template plan. We’re going to get a template and change our heading in our pictures. That’s fine. I don’t hold that… You don’t need a custom website for everything. And so I said, Well, let’s give this piece of junk a try. And Kimberly, I was amazed. I was like, you put in a title, a paragraph, you hit build the site. It says, What layout do you like? What colors do you like? Do you like these pictures? I’m like, These pictures are awesome. And then it was like, website. And I was like, I told my customer, here is your template and you’re hosting is $79 a month and we’ll update your plugins for you every month.
[00:35:38.400] – Kurt von Ahnen
And she said, this is awesome. And I was like, job well done, Kerr. Job well done. So that worked, right? But I think to your point, we have to try them and validate them and verify them for our own use case because that tool probably isn’t going to work that way for all those clients in those positions. It just worked really well for her that time.
[00:35:59.790] – Kimberly Lipari
Yeah. Yeah, it’s not a Swiss Army knife for sure.
[00:36:02.670] – Jonathan Denwood
I think I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, Kimberly. I think, obviously, I see it as template on heat. That’s how I put it. On fire, probably that’s a more appropriate term, is that it’s… Obviously, we’ve had starter themes linked to certain builders for quite a while. But then they had very generic content, and getting copy from clients has always been a nightmare, or getting any copy that was usable on a website, because I cannot tell you the amount of times I’ve heard, ‘well, I’ve got a degree in English, so I can write all the copies. ‘ If I had $10 every time I’ve heard that one, I wouldn’t say I would be rich, but my bank account would be certainly better. So I think it’s great that, like I say, it’s like templateing on fire, what we’re seeing with AI, and it also overcomes this terrible thing That you keep asking for written content, and you keep asking, and you keep asking, and it never appears. But I think you’ve got to be very clear about the results that they’re going to get from this. That, yes, you’ve provided this service and it’s up and running, and it’s done quicker, and it looks reasonable.
[00:38:01.290] – Jonathan Denwood
But you’re seeing people saying on YouTube, especially, that it will get results. I think you got to be very clear around that discussion. What do you think- Which results exactly? What does results mean? It’s not… Google is not a website just totally filled with AI content. They’re not going to look very appealing to it, shall we say? And does it really persuade anybody that goes to a specific important page to actually do something? Will it convert? Will that client’s bottom line be better from having this website. And I think a lot of people… We’re at the end of middle 2025. I think there’s a large outside the community that are listening to this podcast that don’t understand the fundamental differences. What’s your own thoughts about this, Kimberly?
[00:39:24.750] – Kimberly Lipari
Well, I’m nodding because I agree. I think a lot of There’s a big misconception, I think, in the purpose of content and where it should come from and why we’re writing it. Would we normally tell clients, don’t write the content for yourself. Don’t write what you want to say, write what people want to hear. So if I’m putting in prompts into an AI generator for content, and I’m like, hey, how can I sell this thing? And this is what I believe about it, then it’s just a loop back. You’re in your own little echo chamber, and that’s what it’s going to give you back to yourself. And then you put it on the website, and then does it actually do anything? No. Is it because AI wrote it, or is it because you didn’t prompt it correctly, or you didn’t shift the need for the page to what you were trying to get out of the AI tool? So I think it’s a lot of misunderstanding people not understanding what your content is supposed to do. It’s not just words on a page. You have the sales element, you have the technical SEO element, and expecting a robot to understand that, especially when it still needs a human to interpret the prompt and tell it what it needs to do and spit out, it’s only as faulty as Was it operator error we used to say sometimes in support?
[00:40:48.560] – Kimberly Lipari
Was it operator error? It’s like that. You’re risking a lot of operator error, and people just assume if it’s AI, it’s smart, and it’s going to take all that out. But that’s not the case. You can’t get around that.
[00:41:01.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
Oh, go ahead.
[00:41:03.030] – Jonathan Denwood
Go on now, you guys.
[00:41:04.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
I watched an AI seminar just yesterday where somebody was teaching it how to animate a picture. I got to tell you, the prompting geniusness that went into making that product. I was watching it and I thought, I’m not learning a thing. There’s no way that I’m going to be… I am not a linguistics genius. I mean, Grammarly says I use more words than 96% of the people of Grammarly. I still don’t know the words he’s using. I’m like, This is crazy.
[00:41:38.730] – Jonathan Denwood
No, but I think on the end, I don’t want to get the listeners and viewers of this discussion to get the impression that I’m AI negative because I am the king of AI, actually, Kimberly, as Kurt would tell you. Tell me more. I’ve invested a ton of money and I use it every day, but I think it’s case to case. We do another… Kurt helps me with another show, and I’ll put in a topic for next week. When it comes to presentation slides, making white papers, lead magnets, there’s some exciting tools out there that will enable people. They will need editing and checking over, but they are very impressive, Kimberly. I do a number of podcasts because I’ve got another business. I’ve got two businesses. The other one is in the real estate marketing sector. It’s going to be later on this afternoon, and we’re going to be talking about platforms that a lot of clients cannot talk in front of a camera. They just totally seized up, or it comes across extremely artificial. There are tools now, Kimberly, where you can take a video from a client and put them into a platform, and they make a clone of the client.
[00:43:09.850] – Jonathan Denwood
And then you can give that clone a script, and it’s automated. It’s not perfect depending on the tool, but there’s morphologies. You can make that clone. It’s actually shocking, actually.
[00:43:30.330] – Kimberly Lipari
It looks like them. I’ve seen something like that. My favorite is when they do it with the babies lately, where they put the babies on the… But I have seen where they do it with… Spruce up the professional image, right? If someone’s not really good on camera.
[00:43:46.750] – Jonathan Denwood
Because I’ve attempted to try and force people in front of the camera and giving them some coaching. If somebody isn’t really, really not comfortable in front of the camera, you’re really wasting their time and your time, because there’s so much resistance, and there isn’t the motivation to overcome the resistance. But I’ve been blown away with some of these platforms when it comes to cloning people. It’s actually not me. You’re actually watching, Kimberly. It’s actually AI that’s been talking to you, Kimberly. Sorry, I thought that was a bit of a joke. I just want to touch one thing until I throw it over to for the last question. You didn’t touch about how you get lead generation. Obviously, I suspect you’re going to say it’s through recommendation, but is there other one or two, Mufoja’s How has that work for you when it comes to lead generation, Kimberly?
[00:44:49.740] – Kimberly Lipari
I am the worst person to ask about that. I really am. We have been so We’re lucky, I think, just that we’ve worked a lot on referrals, and we’ve just made friends and sorted out. It’s really that best match scenario. If you just make friends and then you figure out who fits where, and people think of you if they need something or- Or is there a particular industry that’s been attracted to you?
[00:45:22.550] – Jonathan Denwood
Is there a particular sector, or are they very diverse, your client?
[00:45:25.780] – Kimberly Lipari
They’re very diverse. They’re very diverse. So we We usually get connections through marketing, marketing roles that will move from one sector to another, and they’ll say, oh, hey, my old company, or their networking. They’ll say, Oh, you need website stuff? We know somebody. And then I think we used to be on many years ago was the top 10 maintenance lists that were… Now there’s a bazillion of them. They were probably only four or five years ago. So between I think we actually had one come through ChatGPT, like suggested us. So we’re looking into that a little bit.
[00:46:05.970] – Jonathan Denwood
There you go, the AI gods love you, Kimberly.
[00:46:08.470] – Kimberly Lipari
Yeah, it must be. But we really just take them as they come and we have not… We’re terrible.
[00:46:14.750] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m a bad example. I actually look forward to becoming a pet of the AI gods, actually.
[00:46:20.410] – Kimberly Lipari
I’m nice to them. My husband says all the time, Why are you? It’s because they will take over the world, and I want them to leave me alone. I think they’re going to be much nicer than other people, actually, much more compassionate, because we don’t show a lot of compassion most of the time.
[00:46:35.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Over to you, Kurt.
[00:46:41.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, Kimberly, this one wraps it up. This is a tradition for us. We ask folks, if you had your own time machine, like an H. G. Wells or a TARDIS, if you watch Doctor Who, we would say, Hey, if you could travel back to the beginning of your career and risk that whole see yourself yourself in your timeline and die thing. If you could risk that whole paradox, what advice would you give yourself?
[00:47:05.620] – Kimberly Lipari
I don’t know.
[00:47:09.290] – Jonathan Denwood
You can’t say not coming on this podcast, Kimberly.
[00:47:12.480] – Kimberly Lipari
Oh, no. In fact,.
[00:47:14.460] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s just a joke, Kimberly.
[00:47:16.940] – Kimberly Lipari
I might not even get in the machine. I think there’s something to be said for ending up where you are. My life has taken so many lefts, unexpectedly, twists and turns that I feel like this is the biggest lesson, and maybe I could go back and tell myself to learn it sooner, is to ride the wave. You’re never going to be as in control as you think you are or you will be when you grow up because that never happens. You’re never going to catch the rains. And so maybe enjoy the ride a little bit more and don’t stress because it all works out.
[00:47:55.750] – Kurt von Ahnen
Man, you sound just like me when I talk to the kids at church. I never grew up, and it all works out. I always tell the kids, You worry too much about things. I’m 57. I’m telling you, it will all work out, or you’ll die.
[00:48:08.250] – Kimberly Lipari
But I still worry too much about it, so maybe I should go back in that time machine so that currently, even though I know it in my brain, it doesn’t mean I always walk the path.
[00:48:18.460] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve got a slightly different response, combining much of what you said. I think getting yourself in the correct position and having the skills that, when the opportunity comes, you can take it up, and having learned from your mistakes, you see the opportunity and can take it. But I do honestly feel, especially in the top echelon of our society, there are a lot of people who dismiss the variable, and that variable is called luck. We tend not to want to understand how fragile we are and how much we depend on just sheer luck for a lot of things, because that’s very brutal to realize that, because we have no control over luck. That’s why many people resist that, which I think is quite a lot of what is luck. I think you can make yourself luckier by your actions, but we are very dependent. But a lot of people would say, I’m not correct on that, Kimberly, but I think there are many perspectives, and I’ve heard something similar when you talk about manifesting and you get what you put out, and then it comes back to karma.
[00:49:47.430] – Kimberly Lipari
I think there’s a version of truth in all of it. We are who we make ourselves to be. So, how does that fit into what we call luck or manifesting or just luck of the draw, or- Well, Kimberly, the good news is you’ve got a very relaxing persona. When a client’s website is down and they’re desperate for it to be retrieved, your calming words calm their frustrations. Cool in a crisis, Jonathan. If nothing else, I’m cool in a crisis.
[00:50:20.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’m sure you are. I think you probably are. So Kimberly, what’s the best way for people to find… Kirk, excuse me for that. Kimberly, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:50:36.580] – Kimberly Lipari
I am not incredibly active on social media, but you can find me on LinkedIn.
[00:50:42.080] – Jonathan Denwood
You mean you don’t waste your life commenting on people who will never listen to you anyway?
[00:50:49.890] – Kimberly Lipari
I used to think that was the way to go. Then I had kids and learned how much it matters what people online say because I’m watching that all the time.
[00:50:58.560] – Jonathan Denwood
It took me ages to learn, Kimberly, that when somebody asked me for my opinion, they won’t listen to my opinion. So what’s the point of sharing it? Kurt, what’s the best way? Especially when it’s around politics. Was anybody asking, What’s your opinion? If you get out of this conversation as quickly as possible. So, Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:51:30.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
For business, all of our stuff is at maniananomas. So maniananomas. Com, and then maniananomas for our ex-account and Facebook. LinkedIn is the jam if you want to reach out personally and make a connection. You are the king. I am the king.
[00:51:46.470] – Jonathan Denwood
As I said on Twitter, there is only one king, did I? Did you like that little comment?
[00:51:52.070] – Kurt von Ahnen
You did. I saw that you also commented on Katie, and you’re calling her the queen.
[00:51:57.130] – Jonathan Denwood
She’s the queen of everything, isn’t she? She’s English, successful, good-looking, everything I’m not. So there you go. She must be the queen. It’s been joyous talking to you, Kimberly. Hopefully, you will come back later in the year or next year for another chat. We’re going to wrap it up now, folks. If you want to support the show, why don’t you go to the WPTonic YouTube channel? I’m making videos every week there. If you feel like you If you want to support the show, subscribe to that channel. That would be a great way to support the show. We’re one of the few totally independent voices in WordPress and one of the longest shows in the WordPress professional space, so your support would be welcome. We will return next week with another great interview or our semi-notorious Roundtable show. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye..
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