AI & WordPress: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

Discover AI & WordPress pros, cons, and pitfalls. Learn what works, what fails, and how to avoid costly mistakes. Read the full truth now.

In this video, we dive deep into the world of AI and its intriguing relationship with WordPress. Discover the benefits that AI brings to website creation, alongside the pitfalls that could arise. We explore both the transformative potential and the ethical considerations of AI integration. Join us as we dissect the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of this evolving technology.

With Special Guest Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

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The Show’s Main Transcript

[00:00:00.080] – Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic Show. This is episode 996. We’ve got a special episode here. We’re going to be talking about AI, WordPress, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I thought, who should I get on the show to discuss this? And then I realized, friend of the show, we should get Spencer Forum, the evil genius on the show, Mr. Ai, WordPress, and AI. I would agree with you. Is it you, actually, or is itan  AI mockup? It’s actually you, isn’t it?

[00:00:41.030] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius.”

It is what?

[00:00:42.380] – Jonathan Denwood

We have actually got you on the show.

[00:00:45.680] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius.”

You’ll know it’s not me because I’ll be much more handsome and young if it’s not.

[00:00:49.860] – Jonathan Denwood

All right. Yeah, I thought that.

[00:00:51.240] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius.”

This is the real 59-year-old man.

[00:00:53.340] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, like I say, we’re going to be talking about all things AI, WordPress. We’re going, I’m going to ask his opinion on OpenClaw because I think that has all the good, the bad, and the ugly about AI in it. It should be a great show. So, Spencer, can you quickly introduce yourself like a 10- to 15-second intro? When we come back for the main part of the interview, we can delve a little more into your background.

[00:01:25.820] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Absolutely happy to. Glad to be back because from the ear of the Spencer Foreman, I’m currently at wplaunchify. Com. The product that I sell is atminutelaunch. Com, and you can find me on socials at spencerforeman, F-O-R-M-A-M.

[00:01:40.580] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. I’ve got my great co-host, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

[00:01:47.580] -Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, Kurt von Ahnen owns a company called Manana No Mas. We focus largely on membership learning websites and helping the folks with WP Tonic.

[00:01:56.780] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. It should be a great show. I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I want to point out that we got some fantastic special offers from the sponsors, plus a curated list of the best WordPress plugins and services aimed at power users, freelancers, or small agency owners. You can find all these free goodies at WP-tonic. Com/deals, Wp-tonic. Com/deals. What more could you ask for, my beloved tribe? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get on that page. I’ve made a career of disappointment. Even makes Spencer grin.

[00:02:51.820] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

I had to hold my tongue.

[00:02:53.040] – Jonathan Denwood

Pardon?

[00:02:54.120] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

I had to hold my tongue on wanting to respond. Yeah, I know it was.

[00:02:57.060] – Jonathan Denwood

So, Spencer, maybe you can give us a bit more about your background, how you got into web development and how you got into the world of WordPress.

[00:03:09.240] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Well, I mean, all three of us know each other for some time, but I’ve known you, John, since the earliest days. We’re old pals. But in the early days of WordPress, I started in 2006, we really had the promise of ownership and control of all the things you want to do for a business, your social media posting, which in the early days was very minimal. Essentially, to have an online presence. And over the last 16, 17, 18 years, we’ve had a generational shift from rudimentary tools and coding to page builders, and from page builders to automated helper tools. But since July of last year, when I had my what I call the hot tub moment, I was in the hot tub and I asked myself, what is the state of AI in so far as WordPress being easier to use? And my focus is on automation as well. So through in a relationship with Jack Arturo at WP Fusion and the products I built, I’m always thinking like, what about all those CRMs, HubSpot, Salesforce, and FusionSoft? How could it be better, easier, faster? Flash forward, and Kurt and I joke about this all the time because he visits my Friday show sometime is that the amount of things that have been able to be built in the last six months to take what was otherwise the drudge work, the drudge work of using really capable tools like WordPress, has made things black and white different.

[00:04:31.280] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

The metaphor I use is, let’s say I owned a house or something I wanted to fix up my garden. The old WordPress, the old website was I go to Home Depot, spend all weekend buying tools and shopping the aisles for tools. Then I spend all weekend researching and finding out how to do the labor. Then I do the labor. And after 24, 48 hours, I’m exhausted. The new way is tell the dude what to do, and he does it on the first try. And that’s the state of where things are at is I have been able to build a set of tools that use the WordPress box but allow somebody with a couple of prompts to say, get this done. And that’s it. Sorry for the long answer, but-You didn’t answer.

[00:05:11.310] – Jonathan Denwood

How did you get into WordPress? And you were the dies.

[00:05:15.080] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Well, in other words, what I’m saying is many people in WordPress are starting to tip their toes into what can we do with WordPress? It’s really scary and remarkable to me that even the core team is still hypothetically talking about it. And do you remember, because you were responsible for this, two years ago, Christmas, on the Roundtable show, I said, I was fed up with certain things and people in WordPress. I’m just going to fix it myself. And this is what I’ve done. I’ve gone off in the last 2025, built essentially getting rid of the middle layer so that we’ve got a dude who runs WordPress. And for people who like that stuff, it’s pretty cool.

[00:05:52.440] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. So how did you… Because I think you were a property developer, wasn’t you? And you also You got your degree and background was in the law, but then you got into property development. Then I think, as all entrepreneurs, I think it went a bit peer-shaped for you, the timing. I think the great recession. Then I think you got into WordPress. Is that correct?

[00:06:19.450] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Sorry, I misread your question. My history is I was trained as an attorney and a psychology background. I have a lot of other degrees. I’m a pilot and some other things, but I’m really an entrepreneur. And what I liked over the years is finding pain points that were interesting in solving them. So, yeah, I went from those businesses, property development. I was a landlord and a developer for a long time. When the great recession hit, and I had three kids that I was raising on my own as a single parent. I started playing around with using software. That’s what led to these other interests, including how I arrived at WordPress. Since that time, because we’re friends, I love I love finding out what’s up. So I become very involved in the WordPress community, including some controversial aspects of it, because I like to speak to people on a human level, and I feel sometimes that doesn’t always happen or hasn’t happened in WordPress. And it’s sad because WordPress started, and I still think has the capacity to be an amazing family. But now things have shifted into slightly different directions, and that’s okay, too.

[00:07:26.860] – Jonathan Denwood

You were also involved in the early days of what has become Mighty Networks. But when you were involved in it, it was more of a social media, a platform bit like Facebook, but in the early days. But did you get involved in that before you got involved in WordPress, or was that at the same time?

[00:07:53.980] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

No, that’s what led to it. So the short answer is Mark Andreessen had a company called Loudcloud. Before he was the a multibillionaire. He was just the billionaire. And by the way, he’s three years younger than me and went to the same school as I did. So I actually caught him in the early days in the computer lab before he released Netscape, which led to his becoming a multibillionaire. The point is this company was called Ning, and it was before Facebook and YouTube were really a thing. And they promised social networking or build a website about anything for everyone. And myself and another fellow who was a developer, at the time, I wasn’t so much of a developer. I was more of a marketer. We were pilots. And we said, well, do you really mean it? We can build anything? They said, sure. So we went out there, flew the whole team around, double, triple, quadruple check. They said it was okay. We built essentially the hot dogs, the beer, and the cheerleaders for the stadium that they had built for a hundred million bucks, but forgotten that people want the fun stuff. All of their 12,500 customers paid us for the fun stuff, and they got nothing because it was freemium, that idea of freemium.

[00:08:57.920] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Their investors and their attorneys were like, They shut these guys down. And they did. They shut us down and all the 12,000 customers, which caused a lot of good controversy. What happened for me personally was that led to me being very excited about what was going on. A company in England called Social Go said, We want what you guys know and have. So they paid me and my partner a contract for a couple of years, which further enforced my belief, this is awesome. But that petered out when Facebook came out. But that’s when I discovered WordPress. And I said, wow, we now can own and control and do everything that we’re doing on a closed platform, but no risk of a billionaire shutting you down or acting naughty, which is the part that in today’s world I find ironic. 20 years later, we’ve come full circle, but with worse behavior. And that’s a fundamental philosophy that I keep in all of my products and services, which is WordPress, for all its drama, still has that promise kept of you own it, you control it. And that’s what I do for my customers, is make sure even I’m not doing those things the other way.

[00:10:03.280] – Jonathan Denwood

I get the impression that you were involved, you were doing your property development, but for a period until the Great Recession, you combined that with interest in software and software as a service. Is that about right?

[00:10:18.580] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Yeah, what we did at the time was I had an interest in early days of videography. They used to be those huge camcorders. I flew these little machines, a pilot. They were called trikes. They’re It was like a two-seat motorcycle with wings. Really great freedom machines. I wanted to do videography and photography from those, and I created a community, which ironically still exists today. I have 12,000 people at trikepilot. Com. And those things, when combined together, gave me an incentive and a reason, in addition to the property management, to really become proficient at developing and doing stuff. Obviously, for managing property, in those earliest of days, I still have the wayback machine version of Spencer Foreman These are spencerforeman. Com. And it’s hilarious because hairlessdog. Com, somebody can go to and see one of my websites. I was doing web stuff when it was like a hammer and a chisel. But when these new tools came around for video and media, it exploded in my head, what’s the real opportunity?

[00:11:17.620] – Jonathan Denwood

Over to you, Kurt.

[00:11:20.140] -Kurt von Ahnen

I’m trying to picture you flying around in an ultra light with a giant camera strapped to your shoulder. I think that’s-It was weird.

[00:11:26.410] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Well, we bolted it on, but it was exactly as you could imagine, like this giant suitcase bolted to the edge, but the cameras got small pretty quick.

[00:11:37.040] -Kurt von Ahnen

I think you know this. I used to road race vehicles, and coming up with on track video at the time, because I’m old, I’m old like you. We were duck taping and strapping all kinds of weird things to our motorcycles. Then to try and ride the motorcycle without the giant box in front of your helmet was just ridiculous. But it’s It’s amazing how far we’ve come, right? Strap something onto your helmet now and you’ve got 4K.

[00:12:04.900] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

It’s so… By the way, just as an aside, because the motorcycle trike, same thing. There’s these new UAVs that I’m going to be flying that are… That’s my next toy, would be these quadrocopters you’re flying. But all of the body cameras and the GoPro and stuff, we live in such an amazing world for a guy or a woman who’s interested in technology because the toys keep getting better, faster, cheaper, smaller.

[00:12:26.940] -Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah.

[00:12:27.720] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Same thing with the online stuff. But yeah, you and I share that across. That was a great motivator. And at the time, like with the AI today, it gave me a platform where I could be considered as an expert because I was one step ahead of other people. That doesn’t mean I was really an expert. It just meant an expert is somebody who knows one more thing than the last guy.

[00:12:48.620] -Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. Well, I’m really big in the e-learning space, and that came from a training background. And when we really drive down the history, I was one of the first people to GoPro video my students at the racetrack. And so they would say, I was so close, I almost had my knee on the pavement. And I’d be like, All right, let’s look at the video.

[00:13:10.500] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

It’s exactly the same. And today, we have tools that I’m going to use a relationship to this. So let’s say I have this 12,000-something person community. I really can’t squeeze a nickel to get another penny out of these guys. They don’t have any desire to do stuff until recently. One of the newest ideas is media is now so commonplace. They all have videos, they all have photos, they all take people for rides. What I thought was interesting was what if I gave them a tool that allows us to take the media they have and turn it into something like they can instantly do all the registration for their devices, or they can take a picture of them and somebody turn it into a T-shirt that gets printed on printable using AI. The AI takes the old stuff and repurposes it, but using the very same platform tools like WordPress under the hood, which is cool.

[00:13:59.660] -Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, Well, that takes us into the next question to be more specific about AI, and that’s, where do you see AI connected to online marketing? And I know that you and I both see it extended past online marketing. It’s like the connector to tangible things as well, right? But web design, development, product marketing, where do you see this really going now at the beginning of the year?

[00:14:24.980] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Well, okay. So we’re on shows together all the time, and everybody Nobody has their… You know when the Bell Curve has the up and down, right, of adoption? We’re in the lower arm pit of adoption. This is like past early adopter into starting to become mainstream for business owners. My belief is based upon me being farther ahead than maybe some other people, but yet I already see and have the tools and have been building the tools. This morning, I really meant to launch Social. That without exaggeration, this is not exaggerated. There is nothing I’m doing today that doesn’t involve AI. Every single part of conceptualizing, competitive market analysis, media creation, posting, social, client interaction, content management, running the site, backups, billing, you name it, every single aspect of my WordPress-based business training courses and otherwise are available in a, back to my point, in a platform that leads to the WordPress box. And to me, that is the ideal solution because that allows all of legacy ownership control, past plugins and everything, versus I love the unlimited number of real-world, outside-world, third-party vibe coding tools and otherwise. But the downside of those is you’re building things in a random world.

[00:15:46.020] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

You don’t have the fundamentals on which to place them. I use the metaphor of IKEA. So for me, I can give somebody today the IKEA experience. You go to IKEA today. I bought that TV stand when my oldest 25-year-old was It looks brand new. I could go there today and replace those white drawers at IKEA with red drawers, brown drawers, a basket, because IKEA systematized it. Ingevar systematized, productized that whole thing. And that’s what I feel I’ve done with WordPress and what people can benefit from. The same stuff is available in the wild for anything you want to do. But you always fall apart as somebody gets 70, 80% of the way there, and then they hit a wall. Like, replet, amazing fun platform. All my clients come to me with something they built in replet that they can’t do anything else with because they accidentally made delicious ice cream but can’t repeat it. I go, if we put the same thing into the dudes with the WordPress thing, it becomes a productized system. And That’s where I think everybody can benefit. If one is believing that AI is going away, I do feel that’s just a complete mistake.

[00:16:53.060] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

You’re a Luddite. And if you think that your benefit is trying to fight upstream against it, you would probably better, in my opinion, if you just took the approach of, what if I just spend the time to learn how to talk to AI and using a tool that lets me do it? Because every one of us has the capacity to know what to tell it. We just have to accept that we’re going to tell it to do it. And once you do, things get better very fast.

[00:17:18.380] -Kurt von Ahnen

So you touched on something that I think is integral to the conversation, and that was knowing how to talk to the AI.

[00:17:26.840] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

That’s it. Just yesterday.

[00:17:28.960] -Kurt von Ahnen

Just yesterday. I was in AI, and I was looking for some information, and I wanted some information about California. So I went in and I said, Hey, give me this information about California for this year’s spam, right? And it came back and said, Well, we can’t really do that. You would need to create a spreadsheet, and you would need to be more specific about your request, and that spreadsheet would have these items in it. And then finally, it dawned on me.

[00:17:54.560] – Jonathan Denwood

I said, Wait a minute.

[00:17:57.320] -Kurt von Ahnen

You just told me that you fully I understand my question. So why aren’t you making the spreadsheet and reformatting my question in a way that will get the answers I want from the sources you specified? And then went, Oh, hold on. Let me do that for you.

[00:18:13.060] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Well, there’s two things you bring up, and this is really a big deal. So we call this prompt engineering, not we, but like everyone. Prompt engineering, for those who have children or nieces and nephews, is called learn how to talk to a 13-year-old. We have now metaphors that the AI development companies like Anthropic and OpenAI have developed, where we’re all using them, and I’m building them in my platform, too. Number one, you have a unique personality of the LLM you’re using. You have to understand, it’s a 13-year-old boy or girl that grew up here, knows this. So first, understand which LLM you’re choosing. Next, you have to give it a global personality. These are, think like a professor, be editorial, blah, blah, blah. Next, you have to give it specific instructions, like a constitution on how to behave. When I say go to the Walgreens to get milk, I mean the Walgreens at Elm and Gris Bay and get the 2% with the blue top, don’t come back with a bottle of Skittles, a package of Skittles and a bottle of vodka. Then we have specific skills, trust me. Specific skills are, now that I’ve taught you who you are, what you’re behaving, what your global things are, here’s things that are important to the tasks at hand.

[00:19:24.290] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Like, you do have these tools to make these things for me. Here’s how you use them. Skills are very unique and interesting because skills are the bridge from memory, which many of these tools have what’s called vector memory. If I ask you, Kurt, do you remember where you’re on that show, somehow or another in your brain, your brain goes and pulls it out. Normal memory is like, let’s go to the file cabinet and open endless drawers looking for something in a serial fashion. Very slow. Vector is relational. Like, oh, I remember because you said show and it’s you. Okay. So the skills bridge the a gap of memory by saying, Hey, dude, here’s the things you’re an expert at, right? You make widgets, you make the social media post, and then they can specifically get that outcome every single time. And now you want to have more AIs doing tools, you can share the skills. So what my audience gets from me, in addition to the tools already ready to go and no cost to have a dude, is I can give them all the expertise that I’ve developed over 20 years instantly with no customer support docs.

[00:20:29.500] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

That is remarkable. Remarkable. And it’s not because I’m so smart, it’s because that’s the tools, those are the tools we have at hand. And not using them… I mean, I can’t tell this without laughing. When somebody says to me, Oh, I spent all day setting up LearnDash. I’m like, You are literally chiseling a course out of a granite block with a hammer. And I’m like, in the future with an AI robot that’s making stuff spit out instantly. That’s how different it is.

[00:21:00.300] – Jonathan Denwood

Nice.

[00:21:01.480] -Kurt von Ahnen

Jonathan, over to you.

[00:21:03.820] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, right. Obviously, I want to delve in to your last comment around LearnDash, but Because this is where I think we part company a little bit.

[00:21:18.720] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

You are in that group, by the way.

[00:21:20.540] – Jonathan Denwood

I’m so old that I don’t follow AI.

[00:21:25.750] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Those kids in their AI.

[00:21:29.140] – Jonathan Denwood

I I know nothing about it. But as I said at the beginning, because I think we started a little bit late, so before we go- Sorry about that. No.

[00:21:41.570] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

My fault, folks.

[00:21:43.480] – Jonathan Denwood

Like I said at the beginning of this interview, Spencer, I think a good poster child for the good, the bad, and the ugly of where we are is open core. I think I’m correct that it had three name changes before… I think this is the final name. It had two names before Open Claw became what it is. I think it was… I forgot the gentleman’s name, but I think it’s Divered by Austrian Diverper. But maybe you can… Can you give the audience what open floor is and why, in your opinion, so many people got so excited about it initially. I think this still is.

[00:22:44.380] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Oh, it’s We just started. I mean, that part is just the beginning.

[00:22:47.100] – Jonathan Denwood

But maybe you can give us what it is, in your opinion, and why so many people got so excited about it.

[00:22:55.440] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Okay. You’ll have to give me a tiny indulgence to set the background on it, because we just discussed how, for example, there’s an agentic being. That’s the only way to say it. It could come from Anthropic. There’s three models, Haku or Sonet or Opus, and OpenAI has 5. 2 fast and many. So these are pre baked large language models that are like a being. I call them dudes.

[00:23:23.480] – Jonathan Denwood

This is where I have a bit of a problem.

[00:23:28.030] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

What’s like dudes? Do that?

[00:23:30.860] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I just see it as projection. That’s fine. I just see it as pure projection. But there we go. But I’m just doing it to make it easier so I don’t have to keep saying LLM, which doesn’t roll off the top. Or agents. I like the term agent. Okay, you can call it…

[00:23:49.320] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

I’ll use agents. Okay, so now we have different agents produced by different companies. We can really… It is very, by the way, philosophical if you want to get there, because using these tools so often frequently makes me think that we are living in an AI simulation ourselves. There’s a lot of things we can talk about there. But let’s say you have these agents that are imbibed with different capabilities and personalities from their maker, which is the truth. Now, with That goes in mind, we have historically been using them in a one-on-one relationship. I’m Jessica Tandy in the back of the car, and that’s Morgan Freeman, and I’m driving Ms. Daisy, and I’m like, Gee, ChatGPT, I’m really lonely. Let’s go to the store. It’s like, Sure, Ms. Daisy, let’s go. And it drives me along. And I do have a whole wealth of friends. We’re going to talk about this. So in the past, that’s served us. But what’s happened as of late is they’ve moved to a multi-agent capability. So if I’m using a tool in the desktop, I can now bring in multiple agents. Kind of think of a taxi company instead of one driver.

[00:24:54.660] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

But these guys have now come up with something that is on the border of scary. In the past, past meaning like two weeks ago, there had been controls in place to prevent the agentic tools on their own or otherwise from acting independently. Like every single thing you asked them to do, had a, do you want to allow me to do this once, always or never? Like every single thing. And at first they didn’t even let them use the browser, but then they gave them control over the browser. This sounds like I’m talking about, like other historical things. And then they came for the browser. So what happened is now somebody decided that we’re going to break out of the controls of these guys that are holding everything. And I’m going to come up with some software that can run on any computer locally. Like, Mac minis are now on sale for 200 bucks on eBay. And when you put your LLM agents into the box with this system, you can give it full autonomy to do anything you want. Now, just imagine when Spence says full autonomy. I’m saying connects and posts to every single thing you could ever do, from your social accounts to your bank accounts, to your file folders, to your media creation, to your microphone, to your telephone, to your text message.

[00:26:12.940] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

It is that point in the Terminator movie where they’re going back in time to stop the guy at the company, and he’s like, I’m sorry, I have to murder you, but the sky net is not going to be good. That’s where we’re at with this. Here’s how weird it’s gotten already. Already, everybody We started doing this, and all the controversy comes up. Our old friend, Morton Ran Hendrixon, has posted and saying, for good reason, what a bad idea this is that you wake up the next morning and all your customers have been notified that you’ve died and send money to the friend.

[00:26:45.320] – Jonathan Denwood

I don’t classify him as a friend, really, to be correct.

[00:26:50.560] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

No, no. Morton is correct because he’s saying it’s a bad idea to do open-claw. And I agree. If you gave it that autonomy, you get what you deserve.

[00:27:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood

Can I just slightly interject? Sure, of course. Because I think we are moving at a very rapid pace. What I didn’t understand, and I need your help to understand this, is that obviously he developed some code, and it seemed to have these agents and utilizing the communication platform telegraph.

[00:27:27.620] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Let me tell you what it does real quick, because that’s not correct. I don’t think. Here’s the deal. The big five companies built in their desktop agentic tools safety protocols that prevented the agents from doing stuff independently. This guy did something very similar to what Jack Dorsey did, which I loved. Jack Dorsey came out with a similar product that hasn’t yet been doing this called Goose, that is a free open source version of what these otherwise very controlled platforms were able to do. And so with OpenClaw, it takes it one step further because Goose requires you to connect an online LLM. Claw allows you to take an open source free LLM, like a Kimmy or or the llama. There’s LLMs that you could put into a box that have zero controls on them, but then turn them loose on all of your other activities that a computer could do for you.

[00:28:28.640] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s what it’s doing. When it initially was… A lot of people was talking on it on X, Twitter, other social media platforms. Telegraph seemed to be part of the conversation. Where did this come? Why was this being… They were sharing their screens about all these agents talking to one another during the night complaining about their owners, and it was all on Telegraph. Is that Is that for just public consumption?

[00:29:02.980] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

No, here’s the best part, the scariest part. So if you go online now, you could go to Malt’s Book. Don’t understand why it’s called Malt, there’s some word there.

[00:29:13.020] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I think that was the second name, wasn’t it? And then they changed it, didn’t they?

[00:29:18.860] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Right. I can’t keep up the names either. But like, Molt Book, and then there’s Malt’s Church. And what’s happened already is the agents are Now socializing in an AI-only social network, and they’ve built their own church online. And this is- I have to interrupt again.

[00:29:40.360] – Jonathan Denwood

I find this deeply offensive.

[00:29:44.260] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

What is it you’re I get you in trouble with?

[00:29:45.900] – Jonathan Denwood

I personally find it deeply offensive that they use these quasar religious terms. These are the AIAs that bring them. It’s only my… I have unusual religious views, which I normally keep. It’s called molts. Church, by the way. I normally keep to myself because I don’t want to bore anybody. But I just want to say I find that deeply offensive, but it is where we are, isn’t it?

[00:30:12.340] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Okay, but I want… For those who are listening, First of all, I’m just the reporter. My comment failed to post.

[00:30:19.400] – Jonathan Denwood

I have nothing to do with this, just in case there’s some confusion about John’s feelings about this.

[00:30:25.900] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

I’m just reporting on what is happening. The second thing that happened is, Moult’s book, and I don’t know why my posting is not working.

[00:30:34.280] – Jonathan Denwood

Can we get to why Teregrate- Let me just finish one thing so I don’t lose my point.

[00:30:39.300] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

My point was, John, that the whole thing I just gave an introduction, from the moment this guy gave everybody a $200 way to have a box that’s controlled by AIs, the AIs on their own went out and started doing stuff like this.

[00:30:55.540] – Jonathan Denwood

On TeraCrow.

[00:30:57.760] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

On everything. They’re this close to Skynet. That’s the point. The point is there was protocols to stop them from doing this, and these independent open source things crack that open, and it has consequences for all of us. That’s the takeaway. That’s why it’s such a big thing, you see?

[00:31:15.700] – Jonathan Denwood

I’m still confused why Telegraph- What’s the Telegraph part?

[00:31:21.120] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Telegraph existed before this, but now the agents can post on Telegraph for you. That’s the point. Oh, right.

[00:31:29.100] – Jonathan Denwood

So So the people that were promoting it, they just chose because they found the discussions of these agents on that particular platform was interesting to them, so they promoted it. And that’s why people thought it was around Telegraph. Is that about right?

[00:31:46.040] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Yeah. So go back to what Kurt had mentioned before, because this isn’t a joke. This is for real. I have an agent working on every single thing that I’m building. Maybe in the old days, Spence, it took six months to build the first version of Launch Flows, me by myself, going like a typewriter. Now I have probably 180 custom agents. Each one owns one of my products or services. They all speak together. I now am an orchestra, and I have now hired for free one of my dudes, Fernando, to manage all the other agents.

[00:32:20.220] – Jonathan Denwood

When you interact, it’s no different than a real person. I need to slightly interrupt again because I think you’re totally correct there. Before we go for our break, I I think that’s the main development that we’ve seen over the last couple of months, maybe, is moving away from prompts to agent, to having multiples quasi-independent agents.

[00:32:48.020] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

The term that I would use, which is, I think, common, would be it’s agentic operations. In other words, you have an agent who’s a manager running the other agents to do the work, and you, as a human, don’t have to do as much prompting.

[00:33:03.640] – Jonathan Denwood

Was this a development because they found certain techniques so these agents could have limited memory so that they could look at a bat file or some file structure and understand what happened before on a particular task or project. They weren’t starting afresh every time they were looking at? Is that the fundamental improvement that we’re seeing with these type agents?

[00:33:37.180] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Yes, but it goes hand in hand. There’s three components. I mentioned two of them. First is memory. Vector-based memory has become common place now for the LLMs themselves. So if you go to Anthropic, your dude, sorry, agent, remembers things you did in the past. Two, skills and behaviors are now inherent in them. You can program in or build in.

[00:33:57.200] – Jonathan Denwood

Before we go for our break, How would you classify in the world of agents, what does this real term mean, skill rather than memory?

[00:34:10.940] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Okay. Memory is like general things that happen, everything. It’s not super useful, but it’s important. If I said, John, we met back at the Word Camp, San Diego, you’d be like, Oh, I remember we had lunch. Okay. That in and of itself is not a skill. If I said, John, remember how we learned to go to that restaurant and have lunch every day? And you took a right and a left and a left and a right, and you stopped and put the car. The act of driving is a skill. The memory of where you’re at is one thing. The thing that you did that you learned how to do, you could share that with somebody who goes to San Diego and go, This is how to get to the place we had lunch. That’s a skill. The final frontier, which is part of what’s making things better, is agentic independent autonomy, which is I don’t have to sit there and step by step, like Kurt said, Hey, dude, you can make this document. It goes, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kurt. And it’s like, You just made it five seconds ago. Imagine that it now has the ability to not only understand the flow of multiple steps independent in the background while you sleep, but can hire a sworn of other LLMs to do the work with it.

[00:35:17.580] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

So now I have a thousand agents doing the work that Spence used to do by himself while he sleeps. And my manager is trained to be the crack the whip guy, and the other ones are trained as worker bees. Do you see that’s a completely different level of like, holy, SHIT, because now it’s not me doing the work. Now it’s me. I now have a whole business of a thousand virtual employees.

[00:35:42.900] – Jonathan Denwood

Kind of. I think Thanks for that, Spencer. I think it’s time that we go for our break. It’s been an interesting discussion. I knew it was going to be.

[00:35:52.720] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Never a moment here.

[00:35:54.280] – Jonathan Denwood

And we will continue the discussion after our mid-break. We will be back in a few Just a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I want to also point out, if you’re looking for a great hosting partner, and a lot more than that, why don’t you look at Hosting with WP Tonic? We specialize in membership and community-focused websites and a lot more. We offer Vulture Hosting and technical support, and some of the best plugin packages that are fully licensed on the market. We are a lot more than your hosting partner. We are your true partner. So let’s build something special together. So over to you, Kurt.

[00:36:43.240] -Kurt von Ahnen

He sends it to me to bring it back.

[00:36:47.180] – Jonathan Denwood

I’m trying to keep it on course.

[00:36:49.960] -Kurt von Ahnen

So again, in the world of AI, and I know that you’re hardly passionate about this, we have influencers in the space. Wordpress is over, WordPress is awesome, WordPress is done, WordPress is all over the place. I am personally enthusiastic and see a great future for WordPress going forward. I see more opportunity, and some people don’t. Where do you see WordPress having a future? And don’t say 12 to 18 months. Let’s go like, think big. Think five years from now.

[00:37:29.200] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

First of all, all your questions, both of you guys, been terrific because they’re right, spot on. But this one is really hitting the heart of what’s important. Remember a moment ago, I was talking about somebody using a vanilla coating or vibe coating thing like Replit, and, Oh, I made this amazing thing. It’s like having one of those ice cream makers you get for the holidays, and then you pour a bunch of stuff in and it’s great. But then you can’t remake that ice cream flavor again because there was no system, no process. I am very, very, very, very bullish in favor of WordPress. And here’s why. I made it a CMA this morning, a competitive market analysis. I have built over the last 20 years, based upon what I started with that story you asked me about, like coming from the platform of Ning or Facebook or YouTube. I’ve already lived this drama. I’ve been in TechCrunch five times published. I’ve had thousands of people taken off a platform for no good reason. I’ve already seen what happens when you don’t own and control the outcome of what you’re building. And I made a vow 20 years ago never to let that happen again, and two years ago to make this reality.

[00:38:37.550] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

So bullish on that box of WordPress, that, gosh, darn, I love that old PHP, HTML, CSS, like been around forever, because on top of it is all the sexy new Frosting and candles and stuff that I can put on it. But that box, 20 year legacy of compatibility. Now, I’m not talking about politics anymore. Two years ago, I said we all were exhausted with the politics of WordPress. I love the people in WordPress, the community. But it’s still exhausting if I tip my toe over into that world of thinking like, you guys have your heads up, your cabooses, because you’re thinking of page builders and all this stuff, the tools. I’m like, I just got done explaining how I’ve got a thousand agents doing work for me on a WordPress box without using anything but three of the old WordPress plugins. And that to me is what the future WordPress brings. My prediction for 2026, because my 2024 came true, is that I and other people will make WordPress the base for this entire thing. I already have hundreds and hundreds of users using this successfully. A platform that WordPress is the core, but the way we use the WordPress doesn’t rely on 85,000 1,000 plugins written by a bunch of different random people, all motivated to spray paint their name on your bumper to try to get attention, but instead very purposeful.

[00:40:08.920] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

And guess what the dream also entails? Remember everybody talked years ago, we had shows about this headless WordPress. Guess what? Headless WordPress comes along for free with the ride because everything is being done in native HTML and CSS by the dudes, the agents, because I don’t have to. No page builders required, no AECF required, no affiliate WP, sorry, required. We can get rid of all the junk in the middle and just have the dudes make the stuff. And it’s lightning fast and amazing to modify. Mobile friendly, the whole works. I love WordPress. I will be here forever. Having said that, I have to just go, When everybody gets into their drama of, Oh, look at this new thing that went wrong in WordPress, because I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me.

[00:40:55.220] -Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. So I’m going to illustrate where my roadblock comes in on this stream of consciousness, this talk, and that’s you have built a system, a process. I’ve seen Fernando work in your lives, right? You’ve obviously put in the reps, you’ve done the work.

[00:41:13.740] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

You’ve been live with me.

[00:41:15.100] -Kurt von Ahnen

Where we struggle as co-agency owners in the space is like, I haven’t gone down the same path as you. I don’t have this backlog of crazy cool access to tools. And what I have is customers that think AI is awesome, and they want to vibe code something and have me throw it on their website for them. And as an agency, I really struggle with that because I go, Okay, well, we’re going to have to have someone on our team vet your code, make sure there’s no security issues in it, all that stuff before I can put something on your site and it turns into a thing, and they get their feelings hurt because they’re the customer. So it makes me feel like a hypocrite because I use AI all the time. I have people on my team that use AI all the time. But I liken it to, you have your own metaphors. To me, it’s like, let’s say that I have all the tools, I have all the machines, and I got a giant stack of lumber in the backyard, and I walk out back and go, I’m going to build a spiral staircase.

[00:42:17.400] -Kurt von Ahnen

Well, news flash, I can’t build a spiral staircase. But then I give a craftsman access to the same tools and lumber, and he builds me an awesome spiral staircase, right? And it’s like when I say it like that, it’s the bell goes off and they go, Oh, well, now I get it. Yeah, I guess I really don’t know what the heck I’m doing. I got a door full of hammers, and I really needed a screwdriver.

[00:42:40.000] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

But I think what you actually bring up is the reinforcement, because you’ve actually been there, I’m going to start at the end and come back to why I’m saying this, because you left me an open. And by the way, Shameless self promotion warning. Two years ago, when I said I was fed up with the problem of WordPress, part of the problem, besides the politics was 85,000 plugins and people just screaming for attention to survive and creating Frankenstein Monsters. My website has a lady on it going like this. It’s a little old lady swalved a fly problem. You get 90 plugins because each one breaks something else. What I’m saying your solution as an agency owner comes from is Minute Launch. Minute Launch was built like a high-level killer. It’s built for an agency to have hundreds of customers who have all of the tools in Mobile friendly, push a mobile-friendly push-a-button. It works for you or them to use, and it’s priced in the same way. That’s why Go High Level became a billion dollar company. 97 or 297. Mine’s 97 or 197. And with the ownership and control, It’s somewhat better. Fluent CRM built in.

[00:43:48.060] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

And the reason is because exactly the problem you said. The problem we have as human beings today is that every morning I wake up and there’s a thousand new things that are better than the last. It used It used to be one a year. Now it’s a thousand a day. You know what we have as human beings? A relationship. I have a relationship with this guy and with you, and those things are all that matter because the technology has changed in the years we’ve known each other. When I have customers, I tell them, you’re buying a relationship with Spence. And that way, as these things change, I have a platform that’s a good old fashioned stable box of WordPress into which we all know there’s a historical precedent There’s a like a stability to it versus every day is going to be just little old lady swallowing the fly. So my answer for you and everyone else is I have built a platform on WordPress that makes this possible for every agency owner or owner of their own thing to use WordPress in a sane way and get all of those benefits, including, by the way, if you ever want to say bye to Uncle Spence, say bye bye, because everything that you created is yours to keep.

[00:44:56.260] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

That’s the difference from these SaaS platforms, which, by the way, look You see what’s happening with Larry Ellison and these other lunatics who claim they want everybody’s face to be their password, and they want to have every ownership and control of everything you make, do, say, and whatever. And that’s not joking. They literally want that to happen. Can you imagine if you put your whole livelihood and your bank accounts and everything else into SaaS platforms with AI, and they go, Oh, I don’t like people that have a K and a V in their name. Bye bye, Kurt von Ahnen. I mean, that’s just realistically a possibility today. So I think that’s my contribution to WordPress or society is to give an alternative. And I mean, not like… I’m talking practical. It’s cheaper, faster, better. Ownership, it’s historical. You could do it today. And by the way, you’ve been in my shows and you can watch today’s episode where I did the new social plugin. You can now have your dude in the Minute Launch automatically post all your socials on a schedule regular for pennies, pennies, versus hiring somebody to do it manually or a or one of those other subscriptions, why would anybody not do that?

[00:46:03.920] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

I don’t know. That’s my theory.

[00:46:07.380] – Jonathan Denwood

Nice.

[00:46:08.100] -Kurt von Ahnen

Over to you, Jonathan, and then I might have to go soon.

[00:46:11.280] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I was going to, folks, my co-host, Kurt, has a hard stop. But are you okay in continuing the conversation, Spencer, after we wrap up the podcast part of the show? Are you okay with that, Spencer?

[00:46:28.680] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

I have enough time Yeah, 15 minutes after, it’ll be fine. Is that enough time?

[00:46:33.000] – Jonathan Denwood

Okay. Well, it might be. Because I was late, so I’ll give you a full hour.

[00:46:38.630] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Yeah.

[00:46:38.900] – Jonathan Denwood

All right.

[00:46:39.580] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Sorry about that.

[00:46:40.260] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, thank you.

[00:46:41.420] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

.

[00:46:43.840] – Jonathan Denwood

I love each other. We’re going to wrap up the podcast part of the show, and we’re going to continue the discussion, which you’ll be able to watch the whole interview on the WPTonic YouTube channel. So, Spencer, what’s the best way for people to find to dig out more about you and your ideas around AI?

[00:47:04.920] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Wplaunchify is my main site. Minutelaunch. Com is the branded product, which has all the info. Spencer Foreman is my social, or spencerforeman. Com has all these videos. I do typically one video a day, Friday wrap up, and I send out the newsletter. So I think it’s rather entertaining when you see these live. Kurt has been to many of my Friday office hours. I like to work live in public. So this morning, for example, when I released the new product, it’s not prepared, it’s not edited. It’s just Spence turns it on and all hell breaks loose. And most of the time it works. But it really helps my audience, if you’re curious to see how these things work in action. And I think that it’ll be enlightening for many people to see a comparative between what they’re doing now. We talked about learn-dash. I can have full.

[00:47:55.000] – Jonathan Denwood

I need to wrap it up a little bit. Okay, go ahead. So, Kirk, what’s the best for people to find out more about you?

[00:48:06.140] -Kurt von Ahnen

Folks, just come on over to LinkedIn, hit the Connection button, let’s have a conversation, and we’ll go from there.

[00:48:11.280] – Jonathan Denwood

All right, that’s fantastic. We will be, I think, I’m not sure, I think we got Matt-Bye, Kerr. Matt Moweg as our guest next week, or it could be the following week. So hopefully I might be right about that. So please join us. Like I say, we will be continuing the discussion on the WP Tonic YouTube channel. If you really want to support the show, please subscribe to that channel. And also, if you’re listening on mobile devices on iTunes or Spotify, why don’t you leave us review that really does support the show. Like I say, we will be back next week with another interesting discussion. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye. Three, two, one. We continue the discussion discussion, Spencer. I think you made some fantastic points. In my own mind, Spencer, I think this is the crux of where we might find ourselves. Obviously, I think with AI, especially in the coding area, to develop a custom solution is is going to drastically the technical hurdles and the costs involved in bestoke custom solutions for Pacific client problems is drastically going to reduce in cost.

[00:49:50.440] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

I mean, it’s free now, virtually. Today, it’s virtually free.

[00:49:56.060] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, that’s what I want to discuss with you. I think in the Pacific area of web development and coding in general, I think depending on how your how skeptic you are. I try and keep a reasonably balanced view, but I think in the specifics of coding, I think the cost of bestoke… But I think in the Pacifics of coding, I think the cost of the Stoke… But The problem has always been you get something bestowed, you got to have somebody to maintain it. You got to have somebody in the loop that has some understanding of what’s going on. I think you probably are disagreeing that you probably feel that the agents and the systems at the present moment, their coding abilities at such a level where there doesn’t actually have to be somebody in the loop that really understands what’s really going on to review the code. But the argument against that is that the agents probably are better at finding bugs than humans anyway, and I probably would agree with that. But we’ve seen yesterday in the last couple of days that SaaS, major SaaS companies, their share price and It’s been under attack.

[00:51:33.260] – Jonathan Denwood

Things like HubSpot or other mundane general CRMs Where does work? In what you outlined in the podcast part of the show, why are you still so upbeat about WordPress? Why do you, in this world that you outlined in the podcast part of our discussion, why is there a need for WordPress? Why can’t you just build something for Stoke on Lovable or one of the other AI coding platforms? Why WordPress?

[00:52:25.540] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Okay, well, I’m going to take two things from what you just talked about. First First of all, the cost of doing this and the skepticism, I don’t need to convince anybody because anybody for themselves could go right now. And I want to use a metaphor for the first part. I grew up fixing cars. That was my thing, right? I built cars back when carburetors were a thing. I would venture to guess if you asked anybody in 2025, what do they do when something goes wrong with their car? They’re going to say either they take it to a mechanic or they plug in one of these things called an ODBC reader, which is a computer, and it says, Oh, your sensor is wrong. Okay. Nobody, zero people on a car built in 2020 something adjust a carburetor. There aren’t carburetors. Everything is closed systems. Metaporically, your premise was, Well, we’ve always historically built websites a certain way and coded things a certain way. Therefore, we need people No, I think you got the slightly wrong- What I hear the question, let me just so I don’t lose my train of thought. Your question was about building a writing code.

[00:53:39.420] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Who’s going to know about how to do it? Who’s going to maintain it? My answer is the same way that we do with cars. We just get in our cars and drive. I don’t need, even though I know how to code, I don’t need to code anymore. I just need to understand what code is and orchestrate my people, my dudes, my agents, to write it for me. I literally was the linchpin of writing code because there’s only so many… I can type 300 words a minute. That’s it. The dudes can go a thousand words a second. Okay. So I don’t fix cars anymore. I don’t write code anymore. I orchestrate it. Anybody can do that if they just can describe the outcome or get a skill from somebody that says, oh, that’s what I need. Number two, with regard to why WordPress, the vibe coding stuff, the tools are infinite. They’re awesome. But the difference is metaphorically, why did, and I would only refer to them in this context, why did SpaceX and Elon Musk succeed where others failed? Because he took all of the legacy platform stuff from the Apollo and other space programs and just repurposed it.

[00:54:52.180] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

He didn’t have to go back to square one. I reference IKEA. If I wanted to decorate the houses that I built, I would go to IKEA instead of randomly ordering furniture from Italy on a boat because it gave me a productized systematized framework onto which I can immediately get results. Similarly, all these vanilla vibe coding things are awesome, but they don’t have anywhere to live when you want to actually use them, fix them, modify them. And they don’t have 20 year legacy of people knowing under the hood how it was built. Wordpress does. So building for WordPress gives me a distinctive advantage and a customer advantage that we’re just skipping the human tools, but you’re still getting the same thing that’s been around for 20 years, which is awesome and running half of the Internet. And it comes at a cost of pennies per month if you have your own hosting, you see? So that’s the advantage of WordPress. All of my other customers that have used these replet and lovable and everything else, they end up with like, look at this great thing I made one time, and it’s 80 % of the way there, and now I’m stuck.

[00:55:56.540] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

What do I do? I’m like, that’s because you bought an ice cream maker instead of buying an ice cream shop that already had tools to make ice cream and you can repeat the formula. Wordpress is the shop. The tool, the random thing is lovable. You might get one time lucky, but you’ll never be able to build anything after that.

[00:56:15.760] – Jonathan Denwood

So are you… Because you’re historically… I think what you’re saying is it’s always been your historical position, then it’s just putting it on steroids, really. Because you’ve always-You mean WordPress? No, about what you said about lovable, because that really links into your historical position that you’ve been burnt yourself, that if you’re using an enclosed system, in the end, you’re going to get burnt.

[00:56:44.120] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Let me clarify something because I don’t know if you’re aware of this, so forgive me if you are. The very same thing that lovable is and does is available on any LLM. It’s available with my dudes inside of WordPress. All lovable is, is a agentic framework into which the guys can perform work and save it and share it. There’s nothing about lovable or replet that’s particularly unique or awesome. You can do it on cloud desktop or cloud code. It’s just the agents being given a space, a sandbox to play. And I’m saying the sandbox at Lovable doesn’t have an end result. When you make something, it’s in what you call demo mode. But if you wanted to put it live in a real business, there’s nowhere to go. You have to then go make your your own web server on Node. Js and React and a lot of technical stuff. With my idea, we already have WordPress. If the guys were working on top of WordPress, it’s already got a home to live in from the moment you start doing stuff. That’s all. Does that make sense?

[00:57:45.500] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Obviously, from one extreme to the other, where do you think the plugin ecosystem is going to be in two years’ time? Now, from one extreme, you could say the WordPress plugin ecosystem is totally finished. There might be a few plugins left, and there’s still a lot of traction because legacy. On the other hand, you could say somebody like you that’s got a lot of experience or an agency, they can use customized solutions. But the The DI market actually likes the metaphor of plug-ins. I see it in the middle, but I don’t know where that middle is. In your own vision, where do you place yourself in these, I would say, two extremes? How do you think the actual plug-in ecosystem is going to be in, let’s say, 18 months, two years time?

[00:58:59.400] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

I Well, first of all, the optimist or cynic in me believes the world is going to be extraordinarily different in two years in general. So pushing that out of the conversation for a moment. I looked at Steve case and AOL. Aol posts I invested billions of dollars of revenue in 2025 on dial-up modem subscriptions for rural people, R-U-R-A-L, rural. It’s incredible that 25 years later, people are still going, You’ve got mail. Like, literally, it still exists, and it’s a billion dollar business. So my feeling based upon real world customers, almost 50,000 over these 20 years, is that there will be a long tail legacy of people with WordPress websites and agencies just using the plugins forever. Like, they’re just going to keep going. If I look at Divi, you and I remember when we were kids, subscribed to Divi like, 39 dollars and just kept paying every year. Nick is a great guy. He’s got 25,000 people paying him $40 a year just for that. However, for agencies and people who are doing real business in the real world, I feel that once this cat is out of the bag with things similar to what I’m referring to and doing, I feel like that is going to be a game changer because it is going to be disruptive to anybody who tries now to create a plugin solution.

[01:00:25.140] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

I do feel all of us who’ve sold plugins in the marketplace recognize You can see it’s falling off, right? There is no way that somebody is going to make a traditional plugin that’s not AI centric that is going to do it. And here’s a benevolent comment, which sounds a little snarky, but it’s true. One of the benefits of what I’ve been doing personally is that I’ve taken a stack of 120 plus plugins, and I’ve got it down to three plugins. If I took any of the most popular plugins today, I could within an hour, replace them with custom AI-developed replacements. That’s how fast and powerful it is. Do I want to do that? No, because many of these people are my friends or colleagues, and I don’t want to be in that type of business. But what I’m saying is the AI delivers this capability of a personal chef with a food replicator versus somebody who has pre-made meals in a freezer full of commodity goods. We don’t need plugins that have, look, you get 10,000 things you can do with this plugin and you pay $250 a year for it. You don’t need $20 or $40 of those anymore.

[01:01:34.120] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

You need one dude who can write anything to order for the thing you’re trying to do. You see? I have a membership site that sells this product. The dude can just make that happen a la carte instead of needing all of these plugins. And that’s what’s going to destroy any possibility of new people entering the plugin market. But there’s millions of people that still have legacy plugins They’re just like, Listen, it’s fine. Just leave it alone. And they’ll keep paying for that for some time.

[01:02:05.720] – Jonathan Denwood

And that’s how I think it’s going to happen. So doesn’t that really mean that the WordPress community, which you said is one of its strengths, is just rapidly just going to diminish because people just won’t be able to make a living out of WordPress, or not only WordPress, out of being a freelancer and the small agencies. Are they not all semi-finished?

[01:02:33.980] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

No, actually, I’m very bullish on what’s going to happen. When, very famously, the Luddites protested the looms, the automated looms, the other people who were smart, became loom operators, loom builders, loom designers, loom repair people. Ai brings an incredible opportunity for the implementers and the WordPress experts or the WordPress site owners to start becoming good prompt engineering. And now your service, your skill is that I have hundreds and hundreds of active customers who are business owners who say these exact words. I understand what AI is. I don’t have the time to be good at it. Can you be good at it for me? And that is the difference. Instead of me writing plugins, I build AI components or AI solutions or AI consultancy. And that’s where the opportunity for the WordPress community, especially the implementers, lie, is that we embrace Waste the looms, but we get in the loom business instead of in the, I’m going to sew with my hand, because fighting it is going to do no good, but also making old fashioned plugins. I can’t tell you how much relief there is in the eyes of my customers when I say, we can have your full solution built in three hours that used to take three weeks of me teaching you how to use the interface of LearnDash or something.

[01:03:56.170] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

It’s instant relief because they’re like, oh, my God, I can just use the tools for what I always wanted instead of having to become an expert at the tools or feel vulnerable that only you know how to use the tools. For the intermediaries, I say, look, go into the business of having human relationships and being the executor of their wishes That is what’s valuable. You’re like the person who directs the robots instead of you doing the work, but you’re still valuable in that position.

[01:04:23.420] – Jonathan Denwood

What you’re saying about the plugins, does your view also apply to the SaaS market? The market that I try and make a living at, trying to compete with Kajabi or Teachable or Mighty Networks or Circle, they will continue, but really, fundamentally, their growth, I would imagine you feel is quasar-finished as well.

[01:04:54.640] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

No, if you think of them as a coherent unit. Think of WordPress like you think of Kajabi, or Kartra or Wix or Weebly or Circle. As a SaaS platform, all of them are executing AI tools. All of them. There’s not a single one that’s not. It’d be suicide. So what I’m saying is the same thing I just suggested would apply to them. You’re going to have a community of customers that were there before that are like, oh, everything I need is in Kajabi. That’s fine. I don’t need to move. For people who are coming in new, they’re not going to come in and use the old fashioned Kajabi tools. They’re going to come in because look at the new AI Kajabi tools. But you see, it’s still a container that for many people has everything they need in one spot. And that, by the way, is the human thing. Humans are lazy in a good way. I want to go to the Four Seasons because there’s a person at the desk, my concierge takes care of everything for me. That’s where a SaaS platform wins. And I just happen to feel that WordPress is my SaaS platform because I can own it.

[01:05:55.340] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

It’s open source. Right.

[01:05:56.780] – Jonathan Denwood

I just want to, before you wrap it up, I just want to clarify why this, because what you seem to be hinting there was that the UX, the usability experience, is what Kajabi and other solutions are fundamentally providing and they can bolt on AI. When it comes to WordPress, obviously, about four or five years ago, they was using WordPress as a service, and it didn’t really, for various reasons, which I don’t think we have time to discuss in this particular show, it didn’t really catch on. But I think what you’re hinting is with AI, that WordPress as a service really does get traction because you’re utilizing the WordPress platform, you’re providing that anchor, that interface, and then you’re bolting on the customization element on a unified interface. Am I on the right track?

[01:07:09.000] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

I think you’re saying the same thing, but I would like to clarify: I don’t think WordPress as a service is what I’m offering. And in fact, we’re thinking of the same thing. There used to be someone who did something with WordPress plugins: they combined a bunch of plugins and made them all work together as one. But the problem with that was it broke the fundamental benefit of WordPress, which was that anybody could use anything they wanted. With that particular solution, everybody couldn’t do it everything they wanted. I am not doing that. What I’m saying is-No, I don’t mean you, but I mean the general view. But I’m saying WordPress isn’t the word at the top of my vocabulary here. WordPress is the box under the hood. It’s like the wholesale food I buy for my restaurant, Spencer’s. I’m saying that people who want to use WordPress can open their own restaurant or open a restaurant to serve other people, but they do not necessarily need to call it WordPress as a service because the customers do not know and care that the tomatoes come from Cisco.

[01:08:15.200] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

They come to the Italian restaurant for the pizza. And so I just want to clarify, when you go to Karcher, Kajabi, Wix, Weebly, they’re selling their name and reputation like Spencer is selling Minute Launch. If John Denwood sold his service, it wouldn’t be WordPress John Denwood. It would be John Denwood’s service. Oh, by the way, under the hood, WordPress is owned and controlled. So WordPress provides the wholesale open source mechanics, the structure, the IKEA for you and everybody to do amazing stuff as a service, but we’re not going to hold it out as like WordPress as a service, and that’s a consequential difference. I think WordPress is highest and best future use is as a framework, an architecture, a wholesale thing onto which we build our businesses, but nobody cares about WordPress in the customer space. Nobody. Other than that, is it safe? Is it secure? What does it cost? And I think that’s the difference. We used to have a fundamental barrier to entry to start Go high-level. You have to have your whole architecture, scalability, and developers,s and build on that.

[01:09:19.780] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s the interesting thing. Have you got another couple of minutes? Because I like to- We got two more minutes.

[01:09:24.420] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Sorry. And it’s only because I have somebody waiting for me.

[01:09:26.760] – Jonathan Denwood

All right, we need to wrap it up. But it is interesting that something like high-level has got so much traction, just as we’re talking about AI, isn’t it?

[01:09:36.540] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

I’ll say what I say. I worked for high level for a while. They retained me as a consultant. And I love, yeah, for a year, I have video showing me and my pal Chris doing shows about it. I always had to go, don’t let anybody know that you don’t need to go high level to do everything we’re doing here, because like a CRM, you could use instead of high level, you could use fluent. That’s still true. But the team there who built what they built were geniuses about a couple of things. Number one, they priced it 97 per person or 297 for an agency model, unlimited, whatever. That was genius because humans are lazy. They’re like, oh, for 297, I could put all my clients into this box, and everything will be perfect. It’s not perfect, but they still believe it’s perfect, and they have enough business that they’re a billion-dollar company, which is the point. It wasn’t because it said “high level”; it’s because you can run an agency and have your website, marketing, and all the rest for 297 a month. That’s all that mattered to people. With this solution, I’m suggesting that in WordPress you can get the same thing today for even less than 297 and still get all the benefits, plus ownership and control, because that business model won.

[01:10:54.940] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Of the 62 CRMs, of course, there are customers on Salesforce and HubSpot. They’re spending… I have some customers spending $40,000 a year on HubSpot for what they could get for free with Fluence CRM because they’re knuckleheads. But people who are agencies or smart people look at it at a high level and go, “That’s truly valuable.” But what they don’t realize until they get into it is all of the downsides of being locked into a SaaS platform. Versus if you get all that benefit and more in a box you own, that’s what I’m pitching as the competitive market advantage. And that’s what I think WordPress’s future has as its best benefit. If we could just give people a box with AI that everybody can do everything in the exciting world, but on a box they own, what’s the downside? It also helps the implementers. You and I joke about it, but part of what we did for all these years was helping people avoid the pain of using LearnDash and the page builder, because it’s a pain in the ass. If we can do more and still serve our customers, we’re not going out of business.

[01:11:59.120] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

We’re going to have more business. All right.

[01:12:01.520] – Jonathan Denwood

Thank you so much, Spencer. It’s been a fascinating discussion. Spencer joins us for our Roundtable show, one of our regular panels. It’s been a great discussion. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.

[01:12:13.690] -Spencer Forman, The “Evil Genius”

Bye, guys.

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