Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.
Verbatim text
Lee Matthew Jackson
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson. Hi and welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast. This is episode 35, and I promised you Mark Askwith. We have Mark Asquith. Now, if you don’t know who Mark is, he is a great guy from Barnsley in Yorkshire who has run an agency for many years but has also done a really cool thing with WordPress, and that is find a niche and then develop a platform using WordPress to allow people to have their own websites. It’s like a Squarespace sort of service, but for a particular niche. So I’m not going to give the game away. I’ll let you listen on and enjoy. But this is something that we’ve recommended you check out multiple times throughout the last 30-odd episodes. So sit back, relax, and enjoy. And don’t forget to head on over to the Facebook group on LeeJacksonDev.com/group. It’ll redirect you there and you can come along and have a chat. I’ve asked a few questions. I’m interested in how people run their agency because I want to improve mine.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And also other people have been asking some really great questions, talking about things like proposals, as well as contracts and all the other good stuff that an agency really wants to get good at and wants to minimise the time on as well. All right guys, we’ll see you over at the Facebook group. Sit back, relax, and enjoy. Hello, this is Lee at the WP Innovator Podcast. I am a Lancashire lad and I have with me in the house Mr. Mark Asquith from Tut Yorkshire. Mate, how you doing?
Mark
Good, thanks, mate. Pretty good.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Good. So all the Americans that are listening think we both sound the same right now.
Mark
That sounds about right. They all sound the same anyway. You guys all sound the same. Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Listen to Americans and I just can’t tell where they’re from.
Mark
Australia, most of them.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, actually, when I last time I was in America, a lady thought I was Australian and she kept looking at my wife saying, what did he say? As if my wife could translate. I was like, are you serious?
Mark
Yeah, you get Australian, you get South African. I’ve had New Zealand. I often get Scottish as well, which is interesting.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, I can imagine because you’re from quite up north. In Barnsley.
Mark
So yeah, close enough to Scotland, I guess.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, guys, if you don’t know Mark, I’m really excited to get him on. I met him over at the New Media Europe conference, but I’ve known of him for a while because he is a fellow John Lee Dumas fan and also a business partner in the Podcast Websites platform that they’ve launched together. But also he’s an all-round man about town, podcaster. He apparently was the youngest person to climb Mount Everest. And also has single-handedly kayaked around the world. Mate, how are you doing?
Mark
I am not bad. You forgot, uh, you forgot some of my other accomplishments as well, but we’ll, uh—
Lee Matthew Jackson
No, let’s hand over. So that, after that intro, you, you go for it. Tell us a little bit more about you and let people know who you are, your background, what it is you do. Go for it.
Mark
I, uh, created the Olympics. They were mine.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yes, that’s a big one.
Mark
I won the first 4 of the Olympics as well. Yeah, the white hair does give it away actually. And I once played a round of golf and got 18 holes in one, which was interesting. Nice. And yeah, that’s what I do. It’s just what I do. I’m a generally sporty guy. No, I’m terrible at sports actually, as it goes. I’m terrible at that. I’m more of a geek, as you know, probably similar to you actually. Very, literally sit behind a computer all day and make things. So that’s, I’ve been doing that for years and years and years now, it seems. And now I genuinely have got white hair, which is awful really. They’ve got just for, is it just for men?
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m pretty sure. Yeah, you see, you’re all right though, you’ve got hair.
Mark
I know, but I feel— I don’t know whether I’d rather have this kind of grain receding hairline or just be completely bald. I, I’ve got a really bad head for a bald head though. I shaved it once and I just look like an idiot, so I’m really scared of like what the future holds for me. That’s a serious concern.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Just look at the podcast image of the WP Innovator podcast and just think, that’s my future.
Mark
Oh no, I don’t know.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I think I’ve got a good shaped head for it though, I’m afraid.
Mark
So you have. That’s what I’m envious of. You do really do have a good shaped head for it. But no, I’m terrible with it. But it’s all right because no one sees us because we sit behind microphones, and we build WordPress things, which is alright, that’s what we like.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So mate, how did you get into— you mentioned WordPress— how did you get into building WordPress things? Tell us the story.
Mark
So I own an agency called Haxo, and we do work with all sorts of people. We sort of work across the planet really on branding and digital exercises, and we do all sorts of cool stuff. We just got one of the Adobe launch images, so when you launch Adobe Premiere, I think it is, you see our image now, which is fantastic. It’s a cool one. That’s what I’ve been doing since I was about, I guess around 23 when I quit my last job, and then I just kind of started using WordPress maybe 8, 9 years ago. It was still a blogging platform. I think it was WordPress 3 where it was just coming into its own as a good platform.
Lee Matthew Jackson
If it was 8 years ago, it would have been probably WordPress 2, or probably 2.7, 2.8, something like that.
Mark
That sounds about right. I feel like, and this is my pockmarked history of WordPress, I’m terrible at it, but I would imagine, I feel like WordPress 3 brought with it a lot more CMS-based options.
Lee Matthew Jackson
It did. Custom post types.
Mark
Yeah, for sure. That’s it. And we, we sort of jumped onto it then as an agency and saw it as more than a blogging platform because that was a weird time for web, you know, that was sort of the ass end of Web 2.0 and all that, you know, that, that where everything had reflections and all that good stuff.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And they were epic, weren’t they? You could actually buy programmes, couldn’t you, to create the reflection?
Mark
Yeah, exactly. Put your logo in here and put a reflection on it.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Reflect it for you.
Mark
Yeah, weird really, but I sort of got into WordPress around that time, I think, and realised that it was good for more than just blogging. I’ve just grown up with it in terms of a system, just seeing it develop on. I’m by no means a WordPress technical expert myself because I’m not a developer anymore. I’ve stopped being a developer. I don’t know, 3 years ago, 4 years ago. But I’ve seen it grow up, worked with some fantastic people who do push WordPress to its limits and just come to respect it as a platform that it is really. You know, I mean, just like you and just like anyone else that you know, we really take it apart and push it to its limits. It’s good because you can pretty much build out anything you need on it. I don’t mean that in the most obvious sense in terms of websites. I mean, if you want, you can build any platform that you want, probably on WordPress, which is awesome.
Lee Matthew Jackson
You’re right there. We’ve actually mentioned, I think someone’s mentioned that a couple of times as well. It’s the idea of you could use the backend interface as a fully fledged CRM system. Yeah, you don’t even need to build a website. It could be a CRM. You’ve got all those data types, taxonomies, boom, you’ve got a CRM. You’ve got a database of stuff you could manage for your own internal reasons, or you could even hoik that out to people and sell it as a SaaS application with a ready-made interface. Freaking amazing.
Mark
It is. It’s fantastic. And I think one of the funny things when people think of WordPress, I mean, you get these WordPress purists and I’m going to sound like an ass when I say this, but you get these WordPress purists who sort of go on about what WordPress should be used for, you know, and they talk about, well, this is, this is really what it should be used for. But actually no one really cares when it comes to like the business side of things. If you, if you’re working with a business or even you’re working with, with, um, even consumers, no one cares what your website runs on. No one cares what their website runs on. It’s very rare that you get a client, especially on the service side of things who say, well, it must be on WordPress. Yeah, I mean, there are some people that do that, but that’s generally because some, some geek in IT has said, well, WordPress looks like it’s all right, and then they’ve stuck that in a brief and you end up with a terrible brief. Like, genuinely, no one cares what the website is built on. Exactly.
Mark
So the fact of the matter is that WordPress is just very, very good for us. It’s good for developers, it’s good for agencies and for businesses who sell stuff on the web. And I think that’s why I’m so attracted to it because it’s just for us, you know, the guys that have had to tussle with Joomla and Drupal and all the rest of the god-awful things out there, you know, WordPress is a dream really, isn’t it?
Lee Matthew Jackson
It is, mate. You’re taking all the words out of my mouth. I kind of feel a bit emotional as well as you speak.
Mark
I’m crying a little bit.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I know.
Mark
I’ve taken my trousers off if that helps. Cool.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m in shorts as well.
Mark
Poor old guy. Oh yeah, that’s what I meant.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Larissa’s sat in here as well with me, with my legs out. Sorry, Larissa, she’s ignoring me.
Mark
So she should.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh no, she did. No, I couldn’t hear her because I had my headphones on. With regards to setting up WordPress sites then, mate, was your agency all about WordPress initially, or did you fall into WordPress afterwards?
Mark
So we’ve always been really pragmatic on it. I mean, we’ve built stuff on all sorts of things, right through from WordPress to obviously the Drupal and the Joomla of the world, but right through to sort of.NET-based CMS systems like MojoPortal. We used to do a heck of a lot. Really? MojoPortal. Yeah. Because we used to do a lot of councils, and we still do actually, where they just have a.NET framework in, they have a pile of Windows servers that they run their internal software on, and they just wanted it on a.NET platform. So we were always really pragmatic when it came to things like that. We were always one of those agencies that said, listen, it’s customer first, it’s customer first, it’s certainly not the technology first. But then the more people wanted things, the more that it just became easier to do things on WordPress. You just— for example, we did a One of the earliest websites we did was a property management system for rental properties on WordPress. You just find yourself to quote for it on other systems thinking to yourself, good Lord, I’ve got to build all this stuff. Like you said, at least with WordPress, custom post types, quickly set one of those up, add a little integration into something like Gravity Forms so you can just get user-submitted content, and actually the system’s built.
Mark
The funny thing around it is that I think a lot of agencies, certainly a lot of people that are— I wouldn’t say new to this, but maybe purists, you know, that are really WordPress purists if you like, they find it hard to charge for that. You know, it was always very much, well, I know, but this is a plugin, and yeah, this is, you know, can I really charge a premium rate for this because all I’m doing is using a plugin? Well, yeah, of course you are, but these guys don’t know how to use it. You’ve spent 10 years learning this knowledge and expertise of how to customise that plugin and how to build it on top of that plugin for what you need for your clients. Yeah, you know, you’ve got to charge for your time, you’ve got to charge for your skills and your expertise and so on. That was always like a bit of a transition for us because we were thinking to ourselves, wait a second, we’re used to building this stuff from scratch. You know, we did a property job on a.NET system once and literally had to build the thing from scratch, and it became a relatively high-priced website.
Mark
And then we thought, when we came to move to WordPress, we thought to ourselves, Christ, can we really charge this? And then when you take it apart, actually, as long as the value is the same to the client, then of course you can. So that was sort of our journey into WordPress. It was this surprising transition and then suddenly this realisation that holy crap, this thing does everything that we need it to do. If it doesn’t, we can pretty— not easily because you still need to be a bloody good developer, but you can bend it to your will, which is You know, that’s difficult to say of a lot of systems.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’ve got to admit, I’ve never met something I can’t yet do.
Mark
Yeah, exactly. You can do anything, can’t you?
Lee Matthew Jackson
Exactly. In WordPress, I mean. I mean, I can’t like lift 1,000 pounds of weights, to be honest.
Mark
You need to eat more. You need to eat more.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Eat more food.
Mark
It’s your diet. It’s your nutrition.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Do you do that on the side then? Is that like a side business? Sign me up. You could become my nutritionist.
Mark
I’ll be terrible at that. I do like nutrition. I spent a couple of years studying it, like, on the side, and then just realised that I like choc ices too much.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Still, you know, you learn by teaching, don’t you? So what you should do is become a teacher of nutrition. And before you know it, you’ll be off the choc ices.
Mark
I don’t know. I really like the bloody choc ices.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Okay. Well, if you ever meet Mark, buy him a choc ice. You’ll have a friend for life.
Mark
Oh, that’s no lie.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So there you go. So kind of that realisation that, oh crap, we literally can do everything in WordPress. Does that mean now that you no longer touch anything else, or if a client has a real need that does need anything else or does that even happen anymore? Are you just like, “Hey, we just use WordPress now.” [Speaker:JAMES] So, WordPress is always the default, especially on websites.
Mark
We’ve made a very specific and tangible shift in the type of websites that we do for the type of clients. We’re not interested in the kind of lower-end websites where you’re always arguing on budget and those are generally the guys that want the most customer service. We sort them at a very very conscious shift out of those a few years ago. So that forced us into using the system that was easier for us so that we could focus on the service side. You know, we could really give these people what they wanted in terms of customer service. And if you’re doing— if you’re trying to manage both sides of that, then one of them are going to fail. So we had to move into a system that we really knew, and WordPress was very obviously the one. And we still do— still build things pretty much from scratch. We’ve built a big education platform, we’ve built a big council forms platform, and they’re both done using Laravel. You know, they’re just on a Laravel framework. So I think it’s horses for courses, but yeah, 99% I would imagine is on WordPress for the reason that frankly, no one cares.
Mark
No one ever comes to us and says, can you sort us out on WordPress? It’s just, what’s the system look like? Is it easy to update? And of course, yeah, it is.
Lee Matthew Jackson
‘Can you create the following outcomes for me, please? Don’t care how, but we want to achieve this.’ ‘Yes, here’s your bill.’ ‘Excellent, let’s get crackalackin.’ Yeah, exactly.
Mark
You know, and I think a lot of, um, like, I think a lot of agencies and a lot of web companies sort of need to get off the high horse a little bit with that as well. Yeah, you know, it’s very much, uh, genuinely the customer does not care. They really do not care. Like you just said, they want outcomes and they want benefits and they want results. And, you know, the last thing that you want is some Burke web designer sat behind a desk saying in the proposal that it’s valid XHTML and it’s— we’ve got CSS3 that we use. Like, you see so many proposals that you come up against who are trying to sell things that don’t exist. Like, oh, these guys are going to use CSS3. What are you going to use, Axl? Just make sure you’re using CSS3. And you just think to yourself, get off my desk.
Lee Matthew Jackson
You don’t even know what you’re talking about as well. That’s the funny thing, isn’t it, when they start saying things like that.
Mark
It really is crazy. So yeah, I mean, that’s why we default to WordPress, because it’s just If you think about a proposal from an agency perspective, if you really want to list all the features in a WordPress instal, that’s going to turn out to be a pretty impressive proposal. Because there’s a lot of stuff in there like, ooh, calendars, eh? Yeah, calendars. You can really build a decent-sized proposal up just on WordPress’s basics. If you add your own personality and your own actual quality and your own project management skills, your own kind of marketing perspective on it, suddenly you’ve got a really good product that you can sell to people. So yeah, short answer, yeah, we use WordPress.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Sure, I like that. Well, I like asking these questions because you’ve kind of unpacked something that’s really valuable. I think we just need to kind of repeat as well, is where people don’t care, they— the end client does not care whether you use WordPress or not. And a lot of the design agencies, like you said, out there— and this is no judgement because I’ve done this myself— is we kind of go crazy on what we do and we forget to then explain to, as in what we do, what we use and how good we are at doing that rather than talking at the client saying, hey, my niche audience, here is your problem and here are the solutions. You know, we tend, even in proposals in the past, I’ve definitely gone in there with, hey, we do valid HTML, CSS, we use WordPress, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, forgetting to even talk about what it is the client wants. So that was a really good valid point and just a good reminder, especially when we’re putting proposals together. To not get too excited about the geek stuff, because that’s the stuff that we need to do at our desks and kind of keep amongst ourselves and actually solve the client’s problem verbally.
Mark
Yeah, it is definitely. It’s like having a proposal for a car and the car saying it has wheels. You know, it’s not like, what’s the benefit of those wheels? And what, you know, does this thing have aircon? Is it going to keep me cool? Because the outcome is I don’t want to be uncomfortable when it’s red hot weather like it is today. Yeah. You know, and I think, I think as designers, you’ve got—
Lee Matthew Jackson
What is this car, Mark? I think I want to buy it.
Mark
Yeah, come on down, mate. It needs some fluid in it though. Honestly, I’ve not taken it in for a while. But I think as designers and developers, we do sometimes forget that, that, you know, genuinely no one cares. They really don’t. And it sounds awful and really crass to say, but honestly, no one cares. And I think the sooner, as an agency, the sooner you figure out that all you’re here to do is provide solutions to people, and actually people buy you, you also stop worrying about the competition. You know, there’s 10 web agencies within 2 miles of you. You’ve got to forget about those guys, and the way to do that is not to sell your features, is not to sell your coding, it’s not to sell your kind of skills. It’s actually to sell your input and the outcomes that you can bring for people, and it takes a lot of learning to do that. People who are in agencies, and especially if you’re a designer-developer twosome or threesome, you know, you’re not set up for that. You’re set up to be the best web designer on the planet, and no one wants to buy that.
Lee Matthew Jackson
One of the things I’m thinking of, you know, you mentioned there’s within a 10-mile radius or whatever it was, there are tonnes of agencies. I mean, crap, there’s 3 in this village alone. I mean, they’re not agencies, but I know there are other web guys around, um, selling websites even in the same village as me. At what point, like, how, how did you stand out amongst the crowd? And I’m wondering, is it your podcast that helped you stand out as more of that go-to guy? Because you were talking about standing out rather than being the best web designer in the world and telling everyone how great you are. How did you stand out amongst the 10 billion agencies in a 3-foot radius of you?
Mark
So you just— I think the real thing is you’ve just got to be really— you’ve got— you’ve just got to have a bit of personality, you know. I mean, I talk about this in some of the talks that I do, and realistically, when you think about it, let’s just think you’re a web agency right now and You employ a marketing consultant to come and help you get all these new leads and to build your business and do all this good stuff that the marketing consultants say they can do for you. They’re going to tell you to market your USP. Well, what’s your USP as a web agency? You haven’t got a bloody USP because everyone’s got the internet, everyone can code, and everyone’s going to get content out of a client, and everyone’s going to, you know, theoretically sell whether they deliver it or not. They’re going to sell UX work, they’re going to sell a decent interface to you, they’re going to sell the project management skills, they’re going to sell all the soft stuff that we believe makes us stand out from the crowd and Being frank, it doesn’t. The only USP that we’ve got in the business, you know, if the marketers tell us to market our USP, the only thing we’ve got is ourselves and our personality.
Mark
And that is it. That is the simple fact of any service-based business, is that anyone can do what you are doing. That is it. Dead simple. And the only way that you can stand out is by being yourself. Now, I’m a pretty straight-talking, you know, I don’t really take any crap from people. I tell people exactly how it is. And if they don’t get along with it, then we’re probably not going to work together. But that’s all right. Because eventually that personality would have come out, and it’s better to come out now and, and find someone that we can work with. So that’s really how we’ve stood out, you know. Locally, we’ve always pushed the boundaries. I’m fortunate that the co-directors here at Hacksaw are very, um, very motivated in their own specific niches. So Kai Wilkinson in particular is an exceptional creative director, you know. He’s done some, some stunning work, and he’s always pushing us, he’s always pushing himself, and we’ve always just thought bigger in terms of who we can work with. You know, if other local companies are looking to work with the biggest company in the area, we’re calling Nycup.
Mark
You know, that’s the way that we— the way that we’ve always thought.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah.
Mark
Um, and I think that’s, that’s the thing you can do. I think you can always just be yourself. And it sounds really clichéd, but I think, you know, through the podcast, through the content, through podcast websites, through doing things like this, people start to know that, you know what, I actually really get along with this guy’s ideals, or this guy’s a bit of a dick and I don’t really get along with him. So, you know, you’re going to— it’s going to land one of two ways. You either get on with someone or you don’t. And I think that as web designers and as web agencies, sometimes we feel like we have to just fit a certain mould, like everyone is a potential client regardless of whether or not it’s going to be bad money coming into the business. You know, we’ve all taken jobs that we regret taking, and it’s being mindful and learning from that and then using your personality to try and act as a bit of lead qualification when you, when you’re talking to people. Um, so yeah, it’s been the podcast, it’s been, it’s been content, it’s been, uh, speaking gigs, it’s been, um, writing for places like Entrepreneur, that, you know, really straight talking.
Mark
Here, here’s the situation if you’re a web designer. Um, yeah, it’s just been that, just getting the personality out. And I think if, I think if other agencies can do that, I think it’s, I think it’d be better for the industry, to be fair.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Awesome. That’s really good, mate. And one thing that I’ve kind of been saving, which is the thing that I’m excited about more than anything to talk about now, is podcast websites that you did just mention. And we’ve talked a few times on the podcast about how people can create an online niche platform for a particular industry and be the Squarespace, as it were, for that industry. So we’ve all heard of Squarespace, all of us WordPress developers. Go, what a load of crap. I presume you do too.
Mark
I was just, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I was echoing that.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, yeah, silently. There you go. So, you know, and I’ve, uh, I’ve talked about how I’ve, with business partners, created an online platform for the events and exhibition industry, and that’s powered over 1,000 websites now over the last few years, all on WordPress using WordPress plugins that we created. For that niche, for that industry. And what I’m super excited to, to actually do is have you on to tell us just the storey behind Podcast Websites and how you launched it, and maybe drop a few of the plugins as well, or kind of the setup that you may have used to get this started. Because you are proof that here you go, you can set up, you can pick a niche, i.e., podcasters, create a web development platform for those podcasters, market it to them, and be successful with that, mate. So can you just tell us the storey about how you got started, how Yeah, I’ll shut up. I’ll just say go, go for it.
Mark
Sounds good.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’ll put my feet up.
Mark
So I started a show, Excellence Expected, in 2014, and did the usual thing where I knew I wanted to do a podcast. At the time I thought to myself, ooh, I’m going to interview people in business, thinking that no one else was doing that. And now everyone’s doing it, and I think everyone was doing it then as well, so I kind of came a bit of a cropper on that one. But I put this show together, ran for 150 episodes, and we’re just revamping it and doing doing a new season, which will be awesome. And you know, so I’ve been in podcasting for coming up to a few years now, and the funny thing that struck me was that podcasters generally are just people that like doing what they do. They generally fall into one of two camps, like the guys like you and me who have got enough tech savvy that they just do everything themselves because they get turned on by that, or the people that absolutely hate doing what they need to do. All they want to do is turn an ATR2100 on, sit in front of it, and talk about what they want to talk about, whether it’s DC Comics, whether it’s knitting, whether it’s whatever it is, whether it’s WordPress, you know, whatever.
Mark
Um, those people, a lot of them have been prohibited from getting into the space because they’ve got to deal with all this other stuff, you know. They’ve got to deal with where do you host your media, how do you get your RSS feed. But more importantly, like, that’s easy. You can just go to a media host and you can get that and it’s all done. But the problem is that most people then want to do something else with that podcast. So they want to use it as a bit of a spoke in the marketing cycle, you know, they want to treat it as a channel, or they want to build a business completely around the podcast. So to build coaching or to build consulting or just to sell sponsorship, you know, really simple stuff. But they’ve never built a website before, they’ve never done any of this stuff. So then they start looking at WordPress and how the hell do I instal this? What’s a salt? How do I get onto my Bluehost panel? Jesus, what’s this memory limit problem? So they go through all these pains that we all went through 10 years ago and sat there Googling.
Mark
But all they want to be doing is sitting in front of a microphone building this podcast. So obviously having the knowledge that I’ve got and being in the industry that I’m in, I realised that we could probably do something a little bit better for them. And we— around the same time, sort of, I was looking at WordPress as a, okay, what else can be done with it? And realised that as a podcaster, you’re compromising a heck of a lot of the time. WordPress is a great system, but it’s just not cooked for podcasting. You know, it does all right, but it’s not cooked up for it. It’s not completely optimised for podcasting. And I guess around that time I was on Entrepreneur on Fire with John and struck up a bit of a chat with him, you know, got to know him a little bit, turned into a decent mate, and just said to him, listen, I think we can do something for podcasters. You know, I think we can build a web platform that’s based on WordPress, so if anyone wants to leave, it degrades back to WordPress and they get the content exported, and you know, they can’t have any problems with we’re taking the content with them.
Mark
You know, let’s, let’s make sure this, this, this degrades back to something simple for these guys, but let’s build something else for them. Let’s build in many more podcasting tools. Let’s build in a player. Let’s build in a dashboard and interface and stats and media hosting, and let’s build in 24/7 support, tech support, podcast support. And, you know, let’s build that right into the WordPress dashboard using the Heartbeat stuff. And we did. We built that, and we, we went through an MVP process where we ran a webinar, um, did one webinar. We didn’t even have a platform then. We were just, just on the webinar saying to guys, listen, this is, this is new, this is what we’re thinking. If you give us some money now, we can probably reinvest that money and we’ll make this thing. And people did. We got like 130 people signed up at 50 quid a month. Wow. Yeah, it worked out all right. And then we just built from there. We did an MVP, we tested it through a beta phase, and then we’ve relaunched it, we’ve rebranded it, we’ve got We’ve got completely custom dashboard, a tonne of custom plugins, we’ve got completely improved podcasting workflow.
Mark
We’ve basically taken WordPress and put it on steroids for podcasters. And yeah, that’s the story, which kind of takes us up to today really, where we’re at 420, 430 users, really having not done anything with it, just the odd bit of marketing around it. And now we’re looking at really scaling that up. So that’s the storey of it really. A niche. We figured out people had a problem and, uh, just wanted to move it forward from there, really.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s awesome. So just one thing I think that’s quite important from that storey as well is that you guys validated it, didn’t you, as well, before you actually went ahead and built the whole thing? I think that’s a mistake I made many years ago with our first iteration of the event system that we built. I actually spent about 3 to 6 months building it and then realised I’d built something that people didn’t want, so we had to try and validate a completely different idea. So I love the fact that you guys kind of just validated the idea, got people on board before you’d, I think, finished building it. And then that gave you the ability to get cracking because you knew you had something that people wanted and needed and you could then deliver that. That’s a freaking awesome story.
Mark
It’s worth doing it. I’m a massive fan of, you know, I’ve been in the startup scene sort of on and off and sort of got a foot in that scene as well. And one of the biggest things that I enjoy about that scene is the, you know, the lean approach to it, the continual iteration, the experiments that you run to test your hypotheses, but also this idea that you shouldn’t build anything without a customer conversation. There’s an amazing book out there by Rob Fitzpatrick called The Mum Test, which is how to, how to question your customers, how to have customer conversations. And I think anyone in any business should read that. It’s amazing. The Mum Test, Rob Fitzpatrick. He’s a guy from London, actually. And it just, it teaches you how you can talk to people differently, how you can generate real feedback really quickly and really easily just through having some really, what you believe are quite inane conversations, but actually the learning that you get from them. I would always, any product that I’ve got now, I would always, always, always pre-validate it, and even to the point where I’d ask people to pay for it before we’ve even built it.
Mark
I’d really go to that extreme, as long as it lent itself to it. If you guys listening are thinking about creating some kind of niche WordPress platform, just get 10 people in a room, room and just, just talk, just talk them through. Just say, listen, tell me about what the problems are you’re having with your current ex, you know. Um, and the learning that will come out of that is ridiculous. And it sounds so simple, but honestly, no one does it. People just, they have the next big idea and they, they just go ahead and start building straight away. And that, that can be a big error, that at least, you know, if you’re not investing any money in it, at least you’re not losing the money. But you can lose so much time.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah. So guys, learn from my mistake and from Mark’s advice here. If you’ve got this crazy idea, go ahead, Validate it, talk with your potential client base, find that niche, talk to those customers, potential customers, see if you can actually get some money changing hands. Because there’s nothing like physical money changing hands rather than someone saying, oh, that sounds like a great idea, yeah, I’d use that. So you go ahead and build it, and you know, if people aren’t putting their money where their mouth is, then you know, that’s not validation. Real validation is getting some money in of people who recognise the value of what it is you have to offer slash are going to build, and they’re willing to part with some pennies, some shiny pennies to get that. Don’t charge pennies, that would be ridiculous. Do not charge pennies. But anyway, that’s fantastic. That’s an amazing story, mate. Um, with regards to the setup, is it WordPress multisite then, and you’re spreading it out across multiple servers? I mean, can you give us a little bit of an insight into how you’re doing it, or is that all hush-hush?
Mark
Uh, it’s semi-hush-hush. I’m not going to say too much because my co-founder Kieran would kick my ass. But the, um, it’s not WordPress multisite. No, we’ve, um, we’ve set it, we’ve set So it’s a lot, lot better and more scalable for people than that because we want people to be able to run. What if you want to create your own podcast network? You know, you want multi-site as a member. So no, we mean we’ve created it to be a bit more scalable than that, but it’s all automated. It all works really well. You know, you sign up at podcastwebsites.com, you want, you’ve signed up, everything’s, you’ve got a fully fledged working site that you can edit instantly within about 90 seconds. And that’s any time, you know, it doesn’t require us to be sat in front of the computer to do that. It works really well.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Fantastic. And did you automate right from the get-go, or did you initially do things manually and then build automation in later?
Mark
A bit of both, actually. The automation of the website setup was always there. That was always done. But we, in the beta phase, because we didn’t know if anyone was going to sign up, we didn’t build the checkout process, we didn’t build anything. We just got people on the webinar, signed up, took the details manually. We got them to fill in a briefing actually. We create a nice little process for that.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Sweet.
Mark
And, um, yeah, then we manually set them up, um, albeit with the provisioning automated.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And that’s, that’s another good thing we can learn from you then, mate. Sorry, I’m drilling questions out of you here, but you know, it’s really just picking up on, you know, if someone does have an idea for the launch of a niche product, then we can definitely learn from you here, mate. Because again, what you guys didn’t do is wait until everything was fully automated and perfect. You still kept going for it. So you were onboarding clients even before before the checkout automation process was finished. So that’s freaking brilliant. And again, people often work like I did. This is like therapy, mate. This is very emotional for me because I spent 6 months building a ridiculously complicated thing that nobody wanted.
Mark
It’s been done so many times. We’ve all done it, definitely. You only learn from it.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I learned from it, don’t worry. I built something that everyone wanted and that’s great and they still want it to this day. But it was just thinking back then, you know, guys, you know, don’t wait, get the minimum viable product out there, validate, money change hands, minimum viable product. And you’re listening to the man who has done it and done it really well, mate. I would want to do a round of applause for you, but I’m having to hold my microphone. So, you know, I’ll click my fingers to you.
Mark
Hey, that’s a weird thing. No one’s ever done that before. Thank you, man.
Lee Matthew Jackson
What, clicked the fingers, applauded you?
Mark
Unless they wanted something. Like, my wife does that if she wants something.
Lee Matthew Jackson
What, if she’s clicking you? Oi, get here!
Mark
Get over here, come on now.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Speaking of that, all right, let’s get personal now with regards to the wife. Do you like get super excited about something you’re doing in WordPress or the websites and you try and tell her and she’s like, that’s nice, dear? Or is she like mega into it?
Mark
And no, the former, definitely.
Lee Matthew Jackson
She’s definitely not into it.
Mark
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that’s the storey of my life though. Like, I’m a DC Comics nerd, she hates that. You know, what else do I like? Gym. She likes the gym. She’s a personal trainer, but she’s not interested in me going to the gym as long as I don’t get fat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s just, you know, that’s like whether we have common things.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I feel a bit better now because like yesterday, over the weekend, I was making something new. I was doing a Beaver Builder module that I was really pleased with. I was like, I really wish I could explain to you, Kate, how cool this is and how awesome it is. But I can even tell from your face, you You don’t want me to even start.
Mark
Yeah, I think that’s life.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I will now go and tweet how awesome I am.
Mark
Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson
In the hope that someone will heart it and then I’ll feel at least slightly better. So, all right. Uh, thank you. Thank you so much for telling the story. It’s been brilliant. I would love to know what has been your favourite WordPress plugin over the course of building the podcast websites platform.
Mark
Oh, that’s a good question. So obviously we build a pile ourselves, which is interesting. We’ve got a tonne of them. Everything that we do is modular and is running a plugin that we’ve built. So outside of those ones, I’m struggling to think of one. But to be fair, I think the one that I’ve grown up the most with is probably the standard issue Yoast SEO one, and I’m sure everyone says that. But I remember when it first came out, I guess in about 2009, I was pretty heavy into SEO, you know, when it was alright to do shit SEO. I was all right into that, and when I discovered WordPress had this plugin called Yoast, I was like, oh my word, my life has just got so much easier. And as the whole social media, I guess, evolution has come about and the way that people drive traffic through the sites now and the whole content marketing boom, that has grown up alongside it. I don’t think you should have any WordPress website without the Yoast plugin. But there’s tonnes of them. I mean, the other one is some of the backup plugins. Um, I love the backup plugins because it just takes care of everything and it means you can sleep at night.
Mark
Yeah. And it really does. It really does. You know, everything’s sorted for you, which is kind of nice. But yeah, I mean, there’s tonnes of them, but the Yoast one is always the first one that you instal without a doubt.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And that’s cool. Do you find, because Yoast is quite complicated, do you find you have to give your users training on Yoast? Uh, because I presume you load that into podcast websites, do you?
Mark
Yeah, when it changes. So they did a bit of an upgrade recently where they changed how the snippets were, uh, were edited and like the descriptions and the title. So we had to do a bit of training on that. That. But we’ve got a knowledge base, we’ve got a video tutorial library, monthly academy sessions, so it’s just replacing those really. So yeah, that’s one of the funny things about building on WordPress. You’ve got to keep up with the external influences, which are other people updating stuff. So that’s one consideration.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, that’s one thing. We’re always having to test stuff on clone servers before we just happily hit that upgrade button, because the minute you do, you could be creating issues. That’s one thing that stresses me out. That’s why I love those backup plugins.
Mark
Yeah, for sure. And you know, one of the things as well I’d always say is if you’re building a niche system, if you’re going to treat WordPress as a SaaS platform, software as a service, then disable as many of the updates as you can for users. You do not want them updating stuff. You know, keep that for you guys.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s freaking awesome. Well, thanks so much, mate. You’ve blown my mind. It’s been so cool listening to the story. I can’t believe— was it 430 you said or something like that, people signed up now already? Yeah, and you’re travelling the world. You were at Podcast Movement only last week, wasn’t it?
Mark
Last week?
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, it was.
Mark
Yeah, over in Chicago.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Amazing meeting up with, uh, all the guys. I think you’ll have bumped into Tim Page, previous guest on this podcast.
Mark
I love Tim. Yeah, I was on a panel with Tim. Tim’s a friend. He’s like— because he’s a big comics guy like me. Yeah, so we were on a panel with Air Webber and I know like Eric and, and the guys who were running the panel and We were just like two kids on the end of the panel talking about comics.
Lee Matthew Jackson
We’re like, completely from the pictures, mate.
Mark
Completely losers, honestly. But yeah, Tim’s a legend. Tim’s a legend. Does some good work over there. But yeah, complete geeks.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Brilliant. Oh well, as well, Jill, I couldn’t, I couldn’t get over, I’m afraid, this year, but I’m definitely going next year.
Mark
Yeah, you should enter to win some tickets, mate. We’ve got a giveaway at Podcast Websites.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s podcastwebsites.com. There is a giveaway. Go ahead and check that out. So how can people connect with you then, mate, if they want to? And then we will say adieu.
Mark
Yeah, perfect. So as I said, we’ve got a bit of a ticket giveaway at the minute. So podcastwebsites.com for all of that stuff. If you want to check out the agency, that’s hacksawstudio.com. And then my stuff, generally the epicentre of everything that I do is Excellence Expected. So if you Google Excellence Expected, you’re going to get me on there.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Indeed. And I would probably recommend people also check out his free resources. So it’s excellence-expected.com. There’s a couple of free resources on there that definitely talk to my heart, which are You’re Working Too Much. That’s a free ebook, the 14-Day Guide to Cutting Your Work Hours.
Mark
Yeah, that’s a good one actually.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Twitter Sins You Are Committing. I think both of those would definitely be valuable resources to go ahead and check out. And I’m sure then Mark will fill you in on how he was the youngest person to climb Mount Everest and all those other cool things that We confessed at the beginning. So nice one, mate. You’ve been an utter star. I probably want to kidnap you and have you on again sometime in the near future because 30 minutes is never really enough to ask all the billions of questions that I do actually have for you. Anytime. It’d be a pleasure. Oh, nice one. See, when the reason why I did that was because you’ve now said it on a recording. I can kind of send you that snippet.
Mark
So you’ve got me.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I like that. You promised.
Mark
You promised. Well played, sir. Nice.
Lee Matthew Jackson
All right. All right, buddy. Well, have a freaking awesome day. It’s nice to be able to talk to someone in the same time zone as me.
Mark
Yes. Doesn’t that make a nice change? I know.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So I can say have a great afternoon in this glorious weather unless you got it rubbish up there.
Mark
No, no, it’s bang on. It’s lovely. It’s about 30 degrees now, which is awesome.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, it’s after midday. Go and get a beer.
Mark
Have a good time. That sounds good, man. You too.
Lee Matthew Jackson
All right, mate. Cheers. And there we have it. Episode 35. It was brilliant. And I do hope you enjoyed the tapping history of British accents that we gave to you today. So if you wanna join us in our conversation, I’ll say it again if I’ve not said it a million times, but head on over to the Facebook group because that’s where good conversations are happening. That is leejaxondev.com/group. And hey, if you know anybody as well you think would get great value from the conversations that are going on over there, then please do feel free to invite them. That’d be fantastic. Now, also, I would be really, really honoured if you enjoyed this show, then head on over to iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you download your podcasts from and please give us a review. We’d really appreciate a good, positive review.
Mark
And hey, if you hate the show, how’s about we just keep that yours and my secret?
Lee Matthew Jackson
Seriously though, do get in touch on LeeJacksonDev.com/contact. It would be great to hear from you as well. If you’ve got any ideas for the show you want to be on because you feel like you’ve got a great story, just head on over, LeeJacksonDev.com/contact. Would love to hear from you. Okay guys, have a freaking awesome week. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen. I appreciate you all so much. Take care, be groovy, keep innovating.
