62 - Launching A Niche Theme

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 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 episode number 62 of the WP Innovator podcast. This is your host, Lee Dan, and today’s show is with Nate from Theme of the Crop. Now, this is brilliant because Nate is a guy who has come from an extraordinary background, so it’s a great story to building websites, to actually then niching right down and creating products really like themes and plugins, et cetera, for a very specific niche, and is doing really well. He’s balancing that with other work. And to be honest, there’s so many lessons, so many things that I drew from this conversation that I’m not going to spoil it. I’m just going to let you guys sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Before we go, don’t forget, we do have a Facebook group where we can talk about the stuff we’re learning and share cat Pictures. It’s leejacksondev.com group. All right, let’s go. Hello, this is lee at the WP Innovator podcast, and we’re at episode number 62 already. And today I have with me Nate from Theme of the Crop. Nate, how are you doing?

Nate Wright:
I’m doing great.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m doing. That’s good. Now, Nate, you hark from the United States of America, but for some reason, you got stuck in England, I hear, for what, how many years now?

Nate Wright:
10 years?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, 10 years. So how would you describe your accent? Because I’m really trying. I’m really struggling here.

Nate Wright:
Yeah, it’s just, it’s. It’s sort of a mix. I basically describe it as American, except I learned to enunciate a little bit more clearly in the uk.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Learn to enunciate because when we first got on the. On the phone to each other, I was like, I’m sure he’s American now, but I know he lives in England. And he also sounds like someone I’d chat to normally. It’s like, all right, mate, how you doing? Yeah, I’m sure you can do all that as well, can you?

Nate Wright:
Yeah, I don’t do the accents. I’m terrible at accents. It’d just be insulting if I tried. But, yeah, I pick up the slang, especially I’m up in Edinburgh now, so I’ve picked up a little of the wee Scottish slang.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, mate, I can’t like broad Scottish. No offense to any Scots listening. We love you, but I just can’t. I’ve lived here most of My life. I just can’t understand half of it.

Nate Wright:
Yeah. I live in Edinburgh, which is a little bit easier. It’s a struggle if I. If I go up north or if

Lee Matthew Jackson:
you go to Glasgow. Yeah, I mean, Glasgow. Glasgow for people who don’t know what Glasgow is. So that means, I presume, then, before this call, you had some haggis, neeps and tatties.

Nate Wright:
Of course.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Of course. And you’re currently drinking what, a Guinness.

Nate Wright:
Oh, that’s Irish iron brew.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, iron brew. Yeah, that sounds Scottish. Iron brew sounds Scottish.

Nate Wright:
Cool.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
All right, well, so guys, you’re listening to Lee and Nate. Nate has currently had haggis, neeps and tatties. Google that, you’ll know what it is. Scottish delicacy. I won’t tell you what’s in haggis. It’s gross. And. And he’s supping on a iron brew.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m having coffee. So, guys, you’re with us. And Nate, for the people listening who are just wondering what the hell we’re all talking about, can you just give us a very quick background about who you are and where you’re from? That would be freaking awesome.

Nate Wright:
Yeah. I’m Nate. I run Theme of the Crop, which is a WordPress themes and plugin shop specifically for restaurants. So I sort of sell and provide free and commercial plugins for restaurant menus, restaurant reservations, some kind of specific local business SEO stuff, and then kind of build themes on top of that feature set that kind of wrap it all up into a nice little bow.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Perfect. So you are a specialist WordPress developer, designer in the restaurant space market industry, I guess, whatever you’d call it.

Nate Wright:
Yeah.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Perfect. And just a background about you as well. How about you hit us with your favorite drink? Maybe it’s iron brew, I don’t know. And just a little bit about maybe how you got to end up in England.

Nate Wright:
Yeah, my favorite drink is still connected to my American roots. It’s root beer. You need a very good root beer, not just a crap one. And it’s very hard to find in

Lee Matthew Jackson:
the uk, but called sarsaparilla or something like that.

Nate Wright:
It’s similar. It’s not quite the same, but, yeah, it’s basically similar. But, yeah, really, really. Long story short, I came to the UK in 2006 to do my undergraduate studies at the University of Sussex down in Brighton. And there I met my wife and so I stayed. And it’s just been a kind of rollercoaster ride since then.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Is that your wife’s fault? No, I’m joking, mate.

Nate Wright:
It’s more my fault actually. Yeah, yeah. So before we moved to Edinburgh, I was in Cairo where I was working as a journalist for the Times of London.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Cool.

Nate Wright:
So, yeah, it’s been a bit of a, bit of a crazy ride, but now I’m quieted down up here in Edinburgh, working from home, living the dream.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, no, you are, you’re living the dream. So how did you, how do you go from being a journalist for the Times in Cairo and, and being in, in, in, in Edinburgh doing what you’re doing. This is there. Can you again, cut a long story short and just kind of unpack how that happened? Because most of us web developers come from a very random background. For example, I was training to be an actor and I’m now a web developer. So there you go. So what’s your story?

Nate Wright:
Yeah, I mean, I guess it’s similar in a way. I back from sort of high school days, my brother taught me how to make a website in the late 90s and I always just kind of used that as a way to earn money while I did other things in my life. So I worked as a volunteer and activist in Palestine for a bit and then decided sort of to go back to university and study international relations with the dream of being a journalist. And then. But all throughout all this period I was developing websites and improving my skills because it is just a very convenient way to make money on the side while I could pursue other things. So when I arrived back in Edinburgh and had a pretty stressful time out in Cairo, I thought, oh well, I quite enjoy coding and figuring out all these problems, so maybe I should just

Lee Matthew Jackson:
make that a career and the rest is history.

Nate Wright:
Yeah.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
And here you are. So if you don’t mind, if it’s not too painful, can you kind of go back to those early days when you made that decision of okay, I’m going to do this as my full time gig. What were they first kind of maybe few weeks or months. Like how did you get started?

Nate Wright:
Well, in some ways I never really stopped because even while I was in Cairo I was working as a stringer and I would do, I would still work maybe 5 to 10 hours a week on. Oftentimes my brother, who had several different websites, he would sort of spin off contract work for me and stuff. So I was doing. I sort of ramped that up a bit when I got to Edinburgh and started recruiting clients a bit more aggressively. And I suppose the big turning point, at least for Theme of the Crop was my brother decided he didn’t want to work on his websites anymore and he was going to go travel the world for a year. And so that blew away probably a good sort of 15 to 20 hours of work a week for me. And that’s where I sort of said, well, I could either ramp up and do the proper agency full time client stuff or I could try out this product market which people seem to be having success with. And so that’s why that’s when I sort of decided to make a theme, see if I could sell it.

Nate Wright:
And that sort of led me down the path of restaurants because back at that time, that was right around when, I don’t know if you remember, but themeforest was just about implementing these new rules around custom post types and what content can go in a theme and what has to be spun off to a plugin. And there was a lot of talk at the time about the sort of bloated theme marketplace and a lot of people encouraging new developers to go into niches. So I saw a niche as a way to not immediately compete with the sort of massive big brand themers right off the bat.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s brilliant. And that was a decision you made quite early on, guys. You’ll probably remember. We talk a lot about niching and niching till it hurts. There are a lot of agencies out there. There are tons of them. There’s probably, you know, there’s probably like 3 in 100 yard radius of where I’m sat right now at my home office. And pretty sure that’s the same for you.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Probably, yeah, we’re everywhere. But so exactly how the HEC do you stand out from all of that? And niching is so important. So I’m really pleased to hear that you’ve kind of, you found your niche. Why restaurants particularly?

Nate Wright:
Yeah, you know, I wouldn’t say that that was a like extremely well informed decision, but essentially what I did when I was first starting was I looked at a bunch of the different categories at ThemeForest and I looked at how many sales were themes getting versus how many competitors were in that niche. So there are some niches that are, you’ll find almost no competitors, but they’re also maybe not getting loads of sales. And I just kind of, I did some sort of back of the napkin math and I said, oh, restaurants looks like the best bet. So I’ll do restaurants without really thinking through the implications of that specific niche in all that much depth. But it ended up working out.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
So it’s always happy when there’s a good ending to a tale. Although this is obviously A continuation. Because this is something that’s going to continue to grow into the future. I think I take from that, buddy, that although sometimes if somebody’s looking to create, to go into a niche, because I guess some of us, even me back in the day, I didn’t have a particular niche. Everyone knows my niche is actually designers. I only work with design agencies. Eventually went found that. Eventually.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
But being kind of purposeful about looking at data that’s available to you and ThemeForest is a great resource for that, isn’t it? Looking at the number of themes in that and then making an informed decision. Okay, I’m going to commit to that niche and see where we go with that. That’s my takeaway from that, is kind of using data that’s available and rather than just necessarily coming up with a kind of licky finger, put it in the air and pick a random. You know, pick a random niche or a random industry, you’ve actually gone. And at least there’s been some thought process behind that. Maybe you didn’t think about everything and there’s a lot of unknowns, but at least there was something that informed the decision that you made. So with the guys to theme of the crop, obviously, from the very kind of first word I am drawn to is the word restaurant. Did you.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Did you enter the themeforest market with. With your first theme on restaurants or how you kind of go about creating and launching the product?

Nate Wright:
No, my first theme, which took me twice as long as I anticipated.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
They always do.

Nate Wright:
Yeah. Was rejected almost immediately from ThemeForest, as tends to happen to many people, which I know now, but did not really know then. And that set me off on a sort of mad scramble to see if I could sell this independently. And that was a rather fraught period, I would say, from the time I put my site up to my first sale was about a month and a half. So that’s pretty good. Yeah, I was pretty despondent at that point. But the positive side to that is it made me kind of desperate in a way that pushed me to just seek out all possible sources of incoming traffic. Because, I mean, when you’re new, you’ve got nothing.

Nate Wright:
There’s nobody coming in. I didn’t have any particular place where I could advertise my stuff, so I kind of had to learn all that as I went. So although I didn’t do that much research up front, which I probably should have done, it worked out just as well. I did that research after I’d launched. So I’m a Big fan of sort of just getting to market. And if you have a long ramp up time, as I did because I was still doing client work, I still had income. As long as you can kind of roll that out over a long period, then you have the luxury of learning as you go. And I doubt I would have ended up or made it all the way to launch if I had sort of put the pressure on myself to know everything and have everything nailed down ahead of time.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s something that I learned as well. But years ago I kind of spent like a whole year developing something. Never even. I don’t think I ever sold one copy of the thing. It was really depressing because I was just took too long. There’s something about kind of feeding the family, isn’t there? And realizing you have to make sales. There’s a real driver.

Nate Wright:
Yeah.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
To getting something out. Now you said, you know, you’ve got this theme, you’ve got a ready made market which rejected you. Unfortunately, that is themeforest, which is probably a good thing because obviously you’re now doing what you’re doing.

Nate Wright:
Yeah, I’m very grateful in a way.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, exactly. So there’s the silver lining, buddy. But, but how, you know, do you mind? You know, you said it took a month and a half before the first sale. And how did you grow. You can generalize, but how did you kind of initially start to grow the audience and get your theme in front of people? Because instantly most of us as developers or as you know, if we’ve developed a product or even just trying to advertise our service, we assume we need to go down the Facebook route and spend thousands of pounds of Facebook ads. Or it could be Google AdWords or whatever. A lot of us just don’t know even where to start or we start panicking, etc. What was your process to start building up an audience for this theme?

Nate Wright:
Yeah, well, Google AdWords are about two to four dollars. Click for best WordPress restaurant themes. So the economics just aren’t really there unless you’ve got a large collection of themes. Because themes in particular, they’re a bit like fashion. You could have the best T shirt ever, but not that many people are going to want that T shirt. People want to walk into a store, they want to see 10, 20, 30 T shirts and they want to choose one that they feel fits them. So I tried the sort of Google AdWords thing. That was an abysmal failure.

Nate Wright:
Now three and a half years later, I’m investigating sort of targeted Facebook ads. But the Real lifeline when I was starting out was affiliate marketing. And those are all of those lists, sites that sort of pollute your Google search results whenever you look for WordPress restaurant themes, WordPress lawyer themes, WordPress blogging themes, almost everything that you’ll get there is an affiliate marketer who’s earning commissions on the clips. So in my desperation, I trolled about three or four pages deep in Google search results and desperately reached out to every single one that I could to ask them to list. I had a very generous affiliate program. I still do. If you’re an affiliate, come check out my generous affiliate program that’s on themeofthecrop.com

Lee Matthew Jackson:
affiliates just letting you carry on.

Nate Wright:
Yeah, so that was the sort of early lifeline that was absolutely desperately needed and that’s why it took a month and a half is it took a month or more for even the first site to bother listing me. But it was pretty shortly after they started listing me that I started getting a trickle of sales. The other vital lifeline for me has been my free plugins. So for my restaurant menu, restaurant reservations business profile, which is a kind of SEO plugin and a reviews plugin, each one of those I have a free version that’s on WordPress.org plugin repository and once, I mean it took a while for that to start accumulating, but that’s been a key long term source of inbound traffic for me that I don’t have to pay for or give a commission for or work in some other way for like content marketing and stuff, which is a really time intensive task.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s brilliant. So again, my takeaway from here is you’ve done two things to grow your audience. The first thing is turning the whole affiliate marketing marketing thing on its head because most of us think that we will earn money from affiliate marketing, I.e. touting other people’s products, etc. And that’s always something. I hear people that, you know the get rich quick scheme of become an affiliate marketer, sell, you know, recommend other people stuff and make money. But what you’ve actually done is gone out to people and say, hey, I’ve got a really good product here, could you, if you feel it’s of value, please share it and I’ll give you a healthy commission. So that’s been a great way for you to start building up an audience and I wish I thought of that.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
So totally stealing that. And then the other thing is you’ve added epic free value. You’ve put something, there’s a great audience on WordPress.org on the plugin directory and you’ve added something that’s, there’s obviously something that a lot of people will need that’s available there for free. And I presume then do you like in the plugins, do you then reference the theme or your website so that people that drives traffic then back to you?

Nate Wright:
Yeah, I mean I try not to be obnoxious about it. I mean coming from a developer background, like we’re all sick of the rampant notices and advertisements in free plugins. So just my reservations plugin, it has an add ons link in the menu so you go there and you can look at the add ons. My restaurant menu has a pro link that’ll take you to the page that says about the pro add on. The other two don’t even have. They don’t even have add ons. But I use them for my theme as well. So it’s a way of sort of recycling some of that material that I already need for my themes.

Nate Wright:
But yeah, so I mention it, but in a way it’s a very different kind of audience because affiliate marketing has been successful for themes and it really hasn’t been for plugins. And I think just the market for themes is really huge, but it’s also very, very shallow. A lot of the theme sales I get are from people who, I don’t want to say they don’t know what they’re doing, but they often don’t understand very well what they’re buying and they don’t know they don’t have any prior relationship with me oftentimes. Whereas the people who come in from my plugin, they’ve already used my plugin, they already understand the philosophy behind what I do, which is make things very simple, not too many options, but high developer extensibility. So they usually come in already with a kind of level of trust or they’re familiar with what I do and they understand what they’re buying when they buy it. So it’s a very different kind of customer in that sense. So that’s been like in some ways my most rewarding. Maybe not financially, but definitely personally most rewarding source of inbound traffic.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
And if you don’t mind me asking, then, is your ongoing income then now fully based on the products that you have, which is the theme and obviously the plugin add ons that you have? Or are you still also maintaining a little bit of project work on the site?

Nate Wright:
Yeah, so it covers me about half time now.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Wow, that’s good.

Nate Wright:
50% of my income and. And I fill in the rest with. I actually work for a group in Vancouver as a contractor. Group’s called the Public Knowledge project. It’s not WordPress based, but we build essentially a workflow and publishing tool for academic journal publishing. So it’s still a kind of PHP based platform and I use a lot of the design and user experience stuff that WordPress does. Great. I bring that to the project.

Nate Wright:
But theme of the crop is only really funding me about half time now. And that’s in many ways a function of the fact that I haven’t ever really gone all in on it. I quite like having multiple projects on the go. It keeps me interested, keeps me from avoiding burnout and stuff. And up till now I’ve sort of avoided contracting out for more work. If I had gone all in on this two years ago, I’d have twice as many themes, twice as many add ons and it’d probably be funding me full time now. But I quite enjoy having to mix actually.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s good. And it’s also good to have multiple sources of income anyway. It’s something that entrepreneurs are always recommended to do. Don’t put your eggs all in one basket. Have multiple sources. And when you’re involved in multiple projects, that’s what keeps you sharp. I mean, you mentioned that the other project you’re working on, the company that you contract with, the stuff you’re learning and experiencing in WordPress is also keeping you sharp in the other project because you can use what’s inspired you from WordPress in something that’s not WordPress related, but that’s giving benefit to them and to you yourself as so doing the same thing monotonously day in, day out, it kind of gets boring. So I’m totally with you there on getting involved in, you know, doing multiple projects, et cetera.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Have you any, any plans to kind of spin off any other niches or are you just kind of going with the flow right now and enjoying where you’re at?

Nate Wright:
I mean there’s still even, even at this point I would say I’m probably taking 5% or less of the restaurant market, the potential commercial market for restaurant related projects in WordPress. So there’s plenty of room for expansion that will satisfy my cravings for a long time to come. So I don’t really have any interest in pursuing a different niche at this time. It’s more just about developing key feature sets and some of my plugins, building more themes. Like I said, you can never really have enough because everybody wants their own Little thing with a theme. So, yeah, I don’t foresee moving to another niche. In fact, if I did, I would probably be more likely to do so outside of the WordPress space if I were starting a new business.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, I think what I like from what we’re talking, and if I’ve got the wrong idea, let me know. But I kind of get the impression that what you’re doing is you’re taking your time, you’re doing this as a laborer of love, you’re slowly growing the business, you’re not in any rush to be turning over gazillions of pounds, etc. You’re also enjoying the other project and you’re finding some freedom in being able to do it this way. Would I be right in thinking that?

Nate Wright:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like many coders, you know, I have my own opinions about what’s the right and wrong way to do things. And I really value, I value low maintenance software. So I’m very, very picky about what I add to my product suite and how much maintenance time that’s going to take in the future. And that’s meant that I develop much more slowly than most shops are doing, whether they’re in the theme or plugin space. My feature set has grown out pretty slow. I barely hitting one theme a year or barely hitting sort of 1.5 themes a year. So it’s maybe been excessively slow in the last 12 months.

Nate Wright:
But I’ve kind of learned not to worry too much about that. I’ve got a good customer base that I have really good relationships with. Even though it’s only supporting me half time, that’s enough for me. And that just allows me to have a lot more pride in what I’m doing. I don’t have to just shove something out because I need a sale. So that’s, that’s been a real luxury and something that I’ll cling on to as long as I can. I think if I lost that, I probably wouldn’t have much interest in the business.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, that’s really good. And folks who are listening, you know, listening to Nate, a lot of us do fall into that trap of thinking that we need to keep working for work’s sake and bringing in more and more money and never being satisfied. And what Nate really encourages me about your story, so far as it sounds like, you know, you are actually very happy. You’re taking your time. This is a labor of love. It’s project of passion. It’s earning you enough. I like that word, enough.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
You’re not hungering for more necessarily. I mean I’m not saying you’re not ambitious, obviously you want to grow this, this is your baby, etc. But at the same time as you’re. You don’t sound like you are killing yourself for targets. Targets, targets, targets. You are actually creating a lifestyle for yourself where you’re doing something you love. You’re able to take the time in making it as perfect as you feel it can be and you’re not stressing yourself out with life as it were by trying to chase the always. You know, we’re always told, aren’t we, that we need to sell more or do more or grow this, etc.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
So that’s encouragement. I’m going to take take from that and again I’d reflect that to anyone who’s listening in. If you are feeling that, and I’m speaking from my own experience here of that constant feeling of pressure and always having to do and never hitting that this is enough part of things. Does that make sense? Am I making sense here?

Nate Wright:
Yeah, yeah.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
It’s that this is enough. We are doing enough. We don’t need to kill ourselves to do more. Let’s do this enough well and the company will grow automatically any anyway and that’s only something I’ve learned really in the last year myself.

Nate Wright:
Yeah, and I go back and forth on it. I mean there are times where I’m like, oh, I’ve been working on this theme so long I just need to get it out the door. But you know, I just try and balance that out with times where I’m like, you know, even if I don’t get the steam out the door, I’m still going to make a decent income this month. And you know, I’ve got a whole bunch of customers who are satisfied with what I’m already doing. And I think in a way it started to bring it back to that. The whole niche thing. I think that’s been probably the most valuable thing about focusing on a niche is I don’t feel like I have to capture new audiences all the time. Even if I didn’t do an update for my reservations plugin for a month, when I come back I’m still going to have all those same users who are using it and who are still interested in buying new add ons or things like that.

Nate Wright:
I think that takes the pressure out of it that I might have if I were doing say one off themes because you know that theme might hit and they’d have the market. But then once that Market faded. If I was listed like on ThemeForest or something. Once, once I’m off the front page, the sales dwindle and I’ve got to find a new cash cow all of a sudden. So in some ways, being on a niche or sticking to a niche kind of takes me off that treadmill a little bit.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Brilliant. That’s totally right. The idea of capturing multiple audiences or the stress and the pressure of that, again, is something I think a lot of us can resonate with. I mean, in a past agency, I think we had like three target markets. So trying to reach out to those three different target markets was just exhausting. And we thought we were niching down by having three target markets. We eventually learned that just having one and then kind of niching even further down until it hurt, you know, was. Was more beneficial.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Because I’m thinking of you right now. You are niching right down into restaurant themes and you’re not trying to do. And plugins obviously for, you know, so somebody can run a good restaurant website which has all of the features that someone would expect. You know, that’s. That is super niche down. Because I imagine there is a temptation at times to feel like you need to be reaching a broader restaurant audience and getting yourself in front of pubs. I don’t know, I can, I can just imagine, you know, that sort of temptation. Do I need to be in the local restaurant magazines? Do I need to be in X, Y and Z and reaching a wider audience? No, you’re actually targeting people who build restaurant websites.

Nate Wright:
And even within that, there’s quite a lot of. There’s a. Quite a lot of directions I could go in which I’m not going to do because I know that doing that would significantly raise the maintenance burden. So online ordering is the biggest example. I get requests for all the time and I just, I’m not going to take on board an E commerce platform that I have to maintain and support. And, you know, even if it’s just integrating with WooCommerce, like WooCommerce is a complex beast. E Commerce, period. It’s not Woocommerce’s fault.

Nate Wright:
E commerce is difficult. It doesn’t matter how simple you want to do it, it’s challenging. There are complications around taxing, complications around shipping, complications around everything. Whether or not I’m technically responsible for this piece of code or that piece of code. If I sell somebody a theme that integrates with it, then I’m going to be on the hook for helping them figure out how to use that. There’s Loads of scope for me to go in to even sort of serve branches of the restaurant niche that I’m. That I’m kind of avoiding and sticking to, you know, a fairly small subsection of even that niche.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m really pleased to hear you’re doing that because even though some people might feel that, oh, you just. That could potentially sound like, oh, I don’t care about that. What you’re actually saying is you’re. You’re not getting that burden, but also you’re de. Risking it for the end user because a lot of end users don’t actually need all that other stuff. People think. Well, this is my opinion, but I reckon people think they need online payment systems or they need this and they need that. When, you know, all I want to do is go to the restaurant website, look at the menu, maybe do a reservation, etc.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I don’t need to pay the restaurant online, etc, to get my meal or anything like that. I’m just going to rock up and go and enjoy an amazing meal and be impressed, obviously, with the website that was powered by Theme of the Crop. Well, of course I will. It’s a given, mate. You’re a great designer and I love the fonts you’re using. I was going to ask you about them in a minute, but, you know, you’re de. Risking that for the client themselves, you know, as in, then, you know, if you were to integrate with Woocommerce and Woocommerce make a major change that could break the client’s website anyway. Or if you’re going to integrate with Zapier, then you’re at the mercy, you know, you’re at the mercy of Zapier or Stripe or whoever.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
You know, Zapier integrate like with a gazillion, therefore creating potential risk. So what you’re. I think what you’re saying, you know, is, hey, here is something that works well, that does the basics really, really well of what you need, that we’ve established what you need. It’s rare to see a restaurant that actually does take payments online, I guess, unless you’re a pizza place doing delivery, which I guess is not your target.

Nate Wright:
Yeah, I feel like there has been a move kind of in the last year or two from more restaurants to get income through takeaway and delivery services. So even sort of normal restaurants are starting to do that more. And I think it’s been driven a bit by the. Do you have Deliver? You’ve got Deliveroo down there, right?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Who, sorry?

Nate Wright:
Deliveroo. They’re basically like uber for Food delivery.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Never heard of them.

Nate Wright:
I hate myself for saying Uber for X, but I just did it. But it’s basically, you know, a regular restaurant can take online orders through Deliveroo and Deliveroo has a sort of army of gig employers who. Employees who on motorbikes or bicycles will go and pick it up from the restaurant and deliver it to you.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Really? That is so lazy. I did not know these guys existed. Existed. Deliver. How do you spell that? Deliver.

Nate Wright:
Deliver. And then, ooh, they’re from Australia, I think, because it’s a kangaroo. So it’s Deliveroo and Kangaroo.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’d be disappointed now if a kangaroo didn’t just show up to, to bring me my order. Oh, here you go. Deliveroo.co.uk yeah. And for anyone who’s listening right now, they are also in the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Germany, Hong Kong. Not America though.

Nate Wright:
Oh, really? There must be. There just must be a competitor, at least in like any major city. I imagine people are doing this now, but I think a lot of restaurants kind of want to do it but don’t want all the fees. I mean, whether it’s OpenTable, which is a restaurant reservations service or any of these sort of services, the commissions are really high on these things.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
They also don’t cover my area, so I’m very disappointed. Hey, going back to fonts then, Just a quick question. It’s kind of non theme related here, as in it’s not the theme of this podcast. But what’s that? What are the fonts you’re using for the kind of main heading font on

Nate Wright:
theme of the crop? Yeah, do you mean the logo or the call to action?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
So the actual header ones of your pages. So like on the blog pages, etc.

Nate Wright:
Yeah. So everything.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
You could do an inspect, but anyway,

Nate Wright:
everything is Lora, which is a Google font that’s available, but I fell in love with it when I found it, so. Lord, I’m doing it all in Lora.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
It’s beautiful. Guys, check out themofthecrop.com go to the blog. You’ve got Lora font in there and it’s gorge. Sorry, carry on.

Nate Wright:
That’s all right. I actually fell in love with it, which you might not see in the blog, but it’s got just an incredible bold and italicized. It’s just. It’s lovely.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, you do it in your. At the top where it says build a better restaurant theme. You’ve got the bold italic on better and it just looks gorgeous.

Nate Wright:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, look you, my friend, over at the Mat Report. Oh, sorry. I’ve started reading your blogs now. Now that we’re looking at. I’ve just spotted Matt. Guys, if you’ve not heard of the Matt Report, go check that out. We’ll put a link in the show notes as well. It’s a brilliant podcast that Matt does.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Matt Report. Matt. I can never say his last name. Is it Madeiros?

Nate Wright:
Who knows?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Who knows?

Nate Wright:
Madeiros.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Madeiros, Maderos, Medarios, Doritos, all of the above. Any will do. He answers to Matt, though. So that’s the Matt report. Brilliant WordPress podcast that I’m an avid listener to look at you getting tweeted at all. Right?

Nate Wright:
It’s all about networking.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
It’s all about networking. Well, there’s a question then for you. All right, so, you know, you’re sat at home, so am I. We’re both in our houses now. What is your. And how do you network and how do you connect with peers and potential clients as well?

Nate Wright:
Well, for theme of the Crop, it was, I mean, when I started, sort of when I said, okay, I’m going to make this a thing that I do with them of the crop, I. I really started reaching out on Twitter and I would just follow WordPress people and then, you know, I would just inject every now and then with some comment into somebody else’s conversation. And I mean, you know, I usually,

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I just had an image of you, like, stood in a, you know, in a party, and you’re that guy who kind of stands there smiling on the edge and starts laughing loudly. No, carry on.

Nate Wright:
Yeah, that’s basically what Twitter is great for. I love Twitter’s essentially public model, but you have to deliberately make things private. So it does allow for discussions to go in directions they weren’t initially anticipated and stuff. So I just started interjecting and I think I talked to people a lot. I commented on blogs a lot. And I think over time, at least some people kind of got to. Maybe it was just like, oh, it’s that guy again. But for one reason or another, more and more people got to know, oh, yeah, he does restaurants.

Nate Wright:
And that was quite useful. And then the most value I’ve gotten is from a kind of membership club called post [email protected].

Lee Matthew Jackson:
wow. I only joined last week. Okay, sell it to me.

Nate Wright:
Yeah, well, I mean, it’s just people who are making their living through WordPress typically are more invested. I wasn’t that invested in the WordPress community until I started doing WordPress as a thing. And it just was a great platform to talk to other business owners, talk through ideas, make friendships, and then you have this kind of network of people who know you. So when you reach out to them for help, like, I’m on this podcast today because I reached out to Matt and I said one of my New Year’s resolutions was to do more marketing for Theme of the Crop. And I said, you do podcasts and you know everybody in the podcast space, who should I talk to? And he was the one that put us together, so that stuff really does matter. And the WordPress community is very friendly and open about helping each other out and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, that was. That was actually.

Nate Wright:
I don’t know if I could point it to any real specific revenue of any kind, but in terms of overall kind of awareness and getting sort of who I am within the community, a little bit of awareness there, that’s been invaluable.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I was talking with a friend of mine. It was actually a business partner in another company that I’m part of, and he’s taking over some of the sales roles and that. And one of the things he used to do in his old business was make lots and lots of sales calls, etc. And it’s just demoralizing and depressing.

Nate Wright:
Yeah, that sounds like hell.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, exactly. But it’s also depressing because you’re talking to people that you don’t necessarily like. But I really do think there is power in making friends with peers. You know, this podcast is all about connecting with, you know, peers in the industry. In theory, we could all be competitors. In theory. I mean, me and you aren’t, but, you know, you know, the idea is, is that we all get to know each other, we all learn from each other, etc. And I get most of my business through word of recommendation, you know, socially, online, because of these sorts of communities that I’m a part of.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
You know, it’s actually other. I had a meeting this morning for a big contract which was recommended by a different web developer, you know, who I’ve made friends with online. And, hey, he. Then the business was going to go to him, and he was like, you know what? Lee’s better at this, so you go talk to him instead. So there’s definitely something to be said. So I only just joined post status about two weeks ago, just in, you know, I read the blog, I listen to the podcast, and I was like, you know what? I think I need to go on there. And I’ve done exactly zero connecting with anybody in it so far I paid my $99 and then have done nothing with it. So I hang my head in sh and I’ll get my butt back in the slack group and go and check it out.

Nate Wright:
I mean, it’s a good water cooler. You can waste a lot of time in there too, but it’s a good water cooler to just talk about stuff and, you know, particularly the WP business channel in there. You know, if you’re like, if you’re thinking about trying a new thing out, whether it’s switching up how you do license renewals or considering a move into a niche, you know, there’s loads of people who will jump in and everybody’s got opinions and everybody likes talking through these things together. And I think that’s what’s been really helpful. I don’t always take everybody’s advice, but it’s always really good to know to sort of hear a lot of different ideas about how things ought to go or where opportunities might lie or might not lie and stuff like that.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s good, guys. If I can encourage you, become a part of a community, there’s two communities that I’ll recommend, obviously. Poststatus.com Go check that out. But also our thriving community as well. That’s the WP Innovator Group, which is LeeJacksonDev.com group. And Nate, if you’re not a member, there are some pretty cool cat pictures in there if you want to join the group.

Nate Wright:
Well, that’s all I really need now.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
And again we just say cat pictures for the hell of it. In fact, again, I’m disappointed. I think it’s been two weeks without cat pictures. So, you know, feel free to join, maybe share some that you feel no one’s ever seen before.

Nate Wright:
That might be hard. There’s a lot of cat pictures that have been seen.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
It powers the Internet, I believe. That’s what I’ve been told. Scientifically, it’s proven the Internet is there because of cats. That’s what Tim, whatever his name is, who invented the Internet. He wanted to share a picture of his cat.

Nate Wright:
Of course.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s why he invented the Internet. Mate, you’ve been a legend. It’s been really cool just listening to your story. I love your kind of really refreshing attitude to not being stressed about all this, but, you know, being quite focused in what you’re doing and being very steady about your decisions, sticking to those decisions as well, which is really encouraging, especially like not. Not bowing to pressure to add more features that you don’t feel like you’ll be able to support that ends up doing a disservice to the end user. Anyway, you know, all of this is really refreshing to hear and you’ve inspired me. I 100% sure you’ve inspired other people who are listening as well. Buddy.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
What are the best ways for people to connect with you?

Nate Wright:
Yeah, you can reach out to me on twitteratewr. It’s N A T E W R. Or reach out to me via theme of the crop on Twitter, which is hemethecrop on Facebook, facebook.com themeofthecrop and of course themeofthecrop.com I got a contact form, as you might expect. But yeah, I’m always happy to just chat about restaurant stuff, even if I maybe not the right person or don’t have the right products for you. It’s always good to hear what people’s needs are and learn how the industry’s evolving and stuff.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
So feel free and put you on the spot. Best restaurant in the world.

Nate Wright:
I’ll go with one. That’s just a sort of five minute walk from me. The gardener’s cottage in Edinburgh. It’s a tiny little thing. There’s really. I don’t know, maybe. I don’t know, it’s very, very small. I’d say there’s room for maybe 20 people in there and just a tiny little galley kitchen and it’s just this tiny little cottage.

Nate Wright:
They grow a lot of their own sort of herbs and stuff.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.

Nate Wright:
But the food, it’s. It’s just, it’s like a set menu each time you go. It’s not cheap, but. Best food I’ve ever had that’s gonna go in the show every time I’ve

Lee Matthew Jackson:
been the gardenerscottage co Edinburgh.

Nate Wright:
Is that it?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, co I believe I’m looking at it. Looks like Edinburgh to me. The Royal Terrace, Edinburgh.

Nate Wright:
Yeah. Just like a, just like a Tumblr blog, right, or something like that. Yeah, it looks like. Yeah. I feel like I need to sell them a restaurant website.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I think you do. I think. Well, you know what, just enjoy the food. Don’t bother.

Nate Wright:
Enjoy the food way in advance so

Lee Matthew Jackson:
they know what they’re doing. They’ve got it nailed.

Nate Wright:
Yeah.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m actually getting hungry now. Yeah, we’ve got on this. I’ve got a slow cooker on the go right now. I made a stew last night and it’s been on now for a few hours and it just smells amazing. It’s driving me insane. There’s another hour and a half to go before I’m allowed to eat any, so.

Nate Wright:
Well, you work from home, right?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Exactly.

Nate Wright:
You can take off whenever.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, yeah. Well, that’s true. Well, I’ve got one more podcast to do now with the guy who does webinars. Well, that’s gonna be interesting. But what I have been doing is I’ve been walking past the pot just before this podcast. In fact, I just sneakily took a very small bowl of the stew out. So working from home sometimes is not good for your health. But I think I put on like two stone when I started the business.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
It’s ridiculous and now I’m trying to fight it off. It’s really hard.

Nate Wright:
Yeah, yeah.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
All right. Anyway, I’m going to keep you forever. Here, mate. Thank you so much. You’re a legend.

Nate Wright:
Thanks for having me.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
You take care of.

Nate Wright:
See ya.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
And that wraps up episode number 62 next week. That’s number 63 for those who can’t count, which is probably none of you. And I apologize if you can’t. That was really harsh of me. Anyway, next week we have got David Abraham from DeMeo and he’s talking about his journey from a web developer to creating a SaaS product. It’s quite a new SaaS product, but their kind of launch process is fascinating. How they’ve garnered attention, how they’ve incorporated people into the narrative of their own kind of build and launch. It’s a fascinating episode that’ll be live next Monday.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Have a freaking awesome week and don’t forget, you know, head on over to the Facebook group. There are cat pictures to post. You know, I’ve actually hinted now for what was this? Three episodes and nobody’s posted cat picture. So I am wondering who gets this far in the podcast? If you get this far, go to the Facebook group, leejacksondev.com group and tell me you got this far and you will win a prize of my adulation and all of that good stuff. Well, this was a terrible outro, but I’m going to leave this in because this sounded fun. Take care. Have a great week.