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 WPInnovator podcast, the podcast for web designers
Lee Matthew Jackson:
and design agencies exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Hi, and welcome to episode number 49 of the WP Innovator podcast. Yes, that is one episode off 50. Oh, my giddy aunt. And actually, if you count up how many podcasts we’ve done, we’ve. We’ve actually done way more than 50 now, if you count all of the tipisodes. No idea how my voice is still going, but anyway, now in today’s episode, we are talking to Richard Bland. He’s a good buddy of mine. He’s on Facebook, he’s in the Facebook group as well.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So don’t forget to head on over [email protected] group and he’s going to be talking about how he got started in web development and design. It’s a great story, It’s a great journey.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Enjoy.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Hello, this is Lee at the WP
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Innovator Podcast and today I have in the studio Richard Bland. How are you, mate?
Richard Bland:
I’m not doing too bad, thank you.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Not doing too bad. Does that mean you’re not doing too good as well? Or are you fair to middling or do you need a hook?
Richard Bland:
I tell you what, I’ve had a really busy day so far today. I’ve been all over the place and I’ve literally just got back and come straight in, see you.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, that’s really kind.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m glad. I’m glad you rushed home to see us. This is amazing. So, guys, Richard is a buddy of mine. He lives down the road. We actually. I think you’re in the same town as me, aren’t you?
Richard Bland:
I am, yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. And we, like, we’re so antisocial that we’re both sat in our own rooms with our microphones.
Richard Bland:
Yes, yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So me and Richard known each other for about a year on Facebook and we’ve got shared friendships throughout the local networking scene. We both love WordPress, we both develop WordPress websites, but also Richard does one better than me and he does amazing designs as well.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So, mate, do you want to just
Lee Matthew Jackson:
say hi and introduce yourself to the world?
Richard Bland:
I will do, yep. So, hello, everybody. I am Richard Bland and I guess I’m a website consultant first and foremost, but I also do design and obviously builds as well. I specifically specialize in WordPress design and builds. Lee mentioned. So I run a small company here in Wellingborough called Bambra Bland. And. And that name kind of came about because I got married and we decided to actually Keep both of our surnames.
Richard Bland:
So we went hyphenated. So that’s how that came around, generally speaking. Been creating managing websites for. I don’t like to say it that often, but nearly 15 years. I pretty much came into it straight out of school. So it was all HTML and CSS builds back then. But we’ve seen it evolve into what it is today with content management systems, which is why I Now specialize in WordPress.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s awesome. And I believe you guys also have a shared love of Disney as well.
Richard Bland:
We do, yes. Yeah, we just returned back from Disney World over in Florida.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Nice.
Richard Bland:
We’ve got a two year old daughter and, well, let’s just say it’s a very magical place.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It is, isn’t it? You just get to escape.
Richard Bland:
I think so, yeah. Actually, one of the. I’ll give you a very quick story. So one of the best bits about it, and I do recommend this to anybody. Try to go see Mickey Mouse in the Magic Kingdom. He usually sits in his own little room right at the front of the park. He does some amazing things in there. Something that will absolutely blow your mind.
Richard Bland:
And it really did blow my mind because most of the characters you see for us adults, they are just people in costumes. It’s amazing to see. But this one in particular, I’m not gonna give it away. You go see him.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yes, I agree. I won’t give it away either. But it’s more than just a person in a suit. Actually, if you want to have something else to blow your mind in Disney World as well. This is now the Disney podcast. Go over to Monsters in the Tomorrowland area. That is so freaking cool. Did you go in?
Richard Bland:
No, no. We tried to fit it all in in a very short amount of time. So we, we planned every day.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, next time you go, you got to go. So it’s the, it’s the laughing floor in Monsters, Inc. It’s just incredible. It’s like all. It’s a screen, big screen, and the monsters come up on the screen, but they talk to you. They’ve got obviously got people behind the scenes doing the talking, cracking jokes and they get everyone involved in the show and every single show is different. They do it like every 10 minutes and it’s just so freaking funny.
Richard Bland:
I wish you told me that before.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m sorry. But for us adults, obviously, like you said, you know a lot of the things you’re like, yeah, I know how you do that. But then you come into things like that and you’re like, whoa, blown away.
Richard Bland:
The Experience is what I really took away from it. You know, just walking down the streets and just seeing it all.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yes.
Richard Bland:
Walking up to the castle. That is amazing.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I know. The music, all of it, it’s just so cool. See, and that’s that I love Disney so much because I want to try and inject that sort of magic in what we do as well with our business. That’s why we all sing A Small World whenever we work. Actually, that would be really annoying if we did that.
Richard Bland:
I tend to sit in silence.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Tibetan bell music on something like that. Yeah, sounds nice. Sounds like we do that sometimes because we have incense here, but we go totally off topic here. So this is what, this is what we do though. Me and Richard, we just like to chat, shoot the breeze. Yeah, this is good. Everyone listening to the podcast, you are sat with us, you know, with these virtual beers and we’re chilling right now. All right, mate.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So, well, let’s talk about your consultancy then. First of all, when did it start? How did you start it up?
Richard Bland:
Ah, right. Well, there’s a. Basically I actually had a business back in 2008 and I ran that for about three years before I decided to shut it down and go back into full time employment. And, you know, life kind of gets in the way sometimes. So you. You give it a go. Things don’t necessarily go down the direction you were. I was young, I liked earning the money, I liked doing that.
Richard Bland:
But I closed the business. Now I went back into full time employment. So this business in particular has come about in the last couple of years. So this is. I can’t remember the exact date when I launched it, but being older, being a bit more wiser, you know, I’ve. I found it a lot more easier this time. It’s been great. And you know, coming from various agency roles over the years, which is just kind of where my background is, I found myself learning quite a lot about the whole process of designing and building and managing websites in general.
Richard Bland:
So that’s kind of, you know, that kind of enabled me to set this business up and become, as I say, a bit more of a consultancy as opposed to just doing, you know, the individual design or the development side of things.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And which way did you come at websites then? Did you come at websites being someone who started off as a developer, who moved into design, or were you more of a design? I. Learning the code.
Richard Bland:
Well, I kind of did both. I’ve always been in those kind of roles, whatever. I mean, you know, I’ve worked for agencies, I’ve worked for individual graphic design companies. I work for web design companies, but I’ve also worked for the end clients as well themselves, actually, literally working, managing and running their website. So in those kind of roles, you have to be pretty much a little bit of everything. I’ve always been a strong designer, but that’s, that’s always kind of just come naturally to me anyway. Coding, I’ve always just been able to kind of do it, but it was never really a massive interest of mine. It’s not like, you know, you meet some developers and they’re so developers that they could literally live and breathe and just, you know, dream code.
Richard Bland:
I’ve, I was never that big into development, but certainly, you know, designing and being able to actually build websites was a major plus for a lot of my employees. That’s, that’s why I kind of progressed very quickly through the ranks. So, you know. Yeah, I’ve never been able to literally say to people, I’m a designer or I’m a coder, because I’ve never really fitted into any one of those roles is. It’s always been a very fluid kind of thing that I do.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Hmm. It’s like, you need to find a word, don’t you, that kind of incorporates the. Both, I guess, consultants. Good.
Richard Bland:
Yeah, kind of, yeah. I mean, you know, consultancy is more what people are expecting of me these days. Yeah, they expect me to, to be able to do the job, obviously to actually design and build things, but more so just to talk to them, you know, to make them, to educate them, to make them understand what, what it is that they’re actually trying to achieve with a website. So that’s why I kind of, you know, say to people now that I’m more of a, a WordPress website consultant as opposed to a designer or developer.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s, that’s really good. People do want to have conversations because they want, they want to. They love talking about themselves, don’t they? People enjoy talking about themselves and their problems and then you can come in and help them solve those problems. And that’s a really good inning for anyone who’s thinking, how can I generate more business? Well, one of the ways of generating more business with people is just to go and meet them and have conversations. I know for a fact that, Richard, you are a, an avid networker. You’re out there on the scene. We know a lot of the same people like Dee and everyone, because we all network in similar circles, etc.
Richard Bland:
We do, yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s a very funny thing because up until that, you know, when we connected up on Facebook, you know, going back a year or so ago now, I’d always known about you anyway, because I knew that you were just down the road from me. But, you know, up until that point when I sort of set this business up again and said, right, okay, you know, timing is right now, like I say, I know a bit more about business. I know how to. How to structure myself. I never really thought about networking. I never really thought about doing anything like that. But, you know, through this business and then through, like you say, mutual connections, I’ve been introduced into that world and what a world it is.
Richard Bland:
You know, it’s fascinating, exciting, but very rewarding.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Now, I do know as well you do design to print. So I’ve seen your brands. I mean, I saw a picture recently of your logo up on the side of a building, which is freaking amazing.
Richard Bland:
Yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Do you. Are you still. Because, like, if I look at your website now, you don’t talk about branding necessarily. Are you still doing that as well or as part of the website of things?
Richard Bland:
Yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.
Richard Bland:
It’s funny, I actually, I kind of wanted to discuss that a little bit with you when I was thinking about this podcast, because one of the. One of the things I like to try to do is to focus myself on kind of one discipline as opposed to sort of going out there and saying, hey, everybody, I’m Richard. I can do anything, really, because I can’t do everything, but because of those, the variety of roles that I’ve had when I’ve come up through my career, I’ve. I’ve kind of touched upon loads of different disciplines. Yeah. So I can sit down there and quite happily talk to you about search engine optimization, but it’s not something I talk about. It’s not something that I promote as a service. I can happily sit there and do graphic design for print and do brochures and leaflets.
Richard Bland:
But again, it’s not something that I promote simply because although it’s something that my clients then ask of me to do later on down the line, I really did want to just kind of focus myself on one area. So, yeah, the same Jack of all trades, master of none. I kind of wanted to avoid that and actually become a master of a particular discipline. And that’s kind of why I chose WordPress.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, I do love the idea that you want to just focus on one particular piece of expertise and then obviously you can then build out all of those other services as and when you develop the relationship with the client. And that was one of the things we struggled with our message, I think very early on when we launched Lead Jackson Dev, we weren’t really sure, do we say we do everything because we can or do we just say we only do your design to WordPress theme? Does that limit us? And that was always a worry, but we found it really doesn’t limit us. And like we’re only showing the one thing that we do. If you go to our website, obviously we do a podcast and other stuff, but the actual core service we talk about is quite literally just that we’ll convert designs into WordPress and that isn’t even the main part of our business anymore. But that seems to be the way that we get the initial relationship and then it builds up from there and then we end up doing the bigger projects, which are the ones we actually, you know, that are far more financially viable for us anyway, which are the big development projects like backend plugins, et cetera, all sorts of real cool stuff. So. But there. No, that’s great.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I love your website, by the way. I just love the use of images, etc. It’s very nice. Nice icons, guys. If you want to check out what I’m talking about, it’s bambra bland.co.uk and Bambra is spelled B H A M B R A and then bland. But we’ll make sure there’s note in the show. Notes. Sorry, you’re going to say something there, mate?
Richard Bland:
Yeah, no, I was going to say it’s a funny story because I am one of those designer developers who spends a lot of time working on the client projects but haven’t actually quite finished my website.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, I get that.
Richard Bland:
I don’t mind telling people I say
Lee Matthew Jackson:
that all the time. I mean, I personally dislike our website. I just built it in a rush like two years ago and I’ve never finished it. It doesn’t look clean or anything like that. It doesn’t look how I would want it to look. But again, it’s always about just looking after the client and making sure their stuff works and looks gorgeous. And because of the relationships we’ve got people that tend not to care what the site looks like. I mean, we are going through a rebrand ourselves and we’re going to launch a beautiful website in a few months time.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, I know. So, but, you know, until then I’m just making. And. And that’s. I think that’s another life lesson for us all. A lot of people won’t launch, will they? You know, because they think everyone, everything needs to look perfect. So if you go [email protected] you can see that site is definitely not perfect yet. I’ve managed to run a business with it for three years.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So, you know, just. Just launch. There’s some advice for everyone. Just freaking launch. Doesn’t matter where you’re at.
Richard Bland:
Completely second that. I really do. I mean, we are coming from a designer role. Yeah. I do have that whole pixel perfection thing going on and do want to make stuff look absolutely amazing. And just because of that, I’ve sat on that website for nearly two years. Yeah, you know, so yes, everybody, just launch.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Just launch.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, over the last 100 years of
Lee Matthew Jackson:
being a designer, because obviously getting old now, what do you feel has been your biggest challenge?
Richard Bland:
Well, for me, I guess it was trying to figure out where I fit in. And what I mean by that is, again, coming from such a variety of different roles and being able to touch upon all those different disciplines. When I actually started to think about the business and this was, this was the same when I had my first business in 2008, it was always, you know, where do I really fit in? Like, what am I? Am I a designer or am I a developer or do I go out there and do it all? So I actually found that quite a challenge. You know, I, you know, I consult on the best practices of building websites, you know, so I could be classic consultant. But, you know, ultimately I always found that a bit of a challenge. It wasn’t until later on through my career when sort of WordPress started to come about, that I really kind of jumped at that and decided that’s actually what I’m really good at. You know, WordPress gave me that opportunity to sort of hone in all those different disciplines into one kind of product, one kind of service offering. So, you know, when I, when I saw it for what it really was, this is when it first came out, you know, when it was just kind of a blogging platform.
Richard Bland:
But as soon as I kind of grasped that concept that actually, you know, people, we’re going to be able to build websites with this and use it as a content management, I just jumped at it and it all started to kind of click together then. So that was one of my biggest challenges. I was just trying to figure it all out, I guess, from a business point of view. You know, the challenges that you face in any kind of business is sourcing work, you know, pricing yourself competitively, but also fairly for the amount of time and energy that goes into a web project. I mean, we all put a lot of, a lot of energy into our projects and there are, I guess, other people out there that, you know, who can do things cheaper than what you do. So it’s kind of trying to understand that and trying to figure out what your, you know, what you really are worth. That’s been a bit of a big challenge for me as well because, you know, you’re always kind of scared, aren’t you? I don’t know, Lee, do you find
Lee Matthew Jackson:
that I brick it every time I send a quote?
Richard Bland:
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s a really funny situation to be in because the truth is, is that there are people out there that, who, who are willing to pay, you know, for your time because they understand that you’ve got the experience and you’ve got the quality there. But that never stops being a challenge for me. I always get a bit funny when I’m sending out proposals and I’m like, you know, am I overpricing? Am I not? So that’s a challenge. I do struggle because I’m a perfectionist. That’s something that I come across. You know, I like to have spacing on my web pages and balance and I aim for that because that to me is kind of a good sign of quality, a good sign of having the eye for detail. So learning to stop when the client says, that’s great, I like that.
Richard Bland:
That’s my key at that point, that’s my cue to say, okay, I’ve done what he wanted or she wanted and I can stop.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You’ve made the client happy, I guess, when responsive design and about what was it a few years ago now? But you must have had a panic attack because you’ve go from a beautiful desktop PC where you can say, right, I know all of the fixed widths and heights and all of the negative space and then suddenly people are resizing their devices and it’s been squished down and you’re like, oh no, I’ve now got all these new screens to code for.
Richard Bland:
I do remember it quite vividly. I mean, it’s really amazing because obviously been doing this a long time, you know, 15 years doing anything is quite natiful. So I have watched it go from quite literally those really ugly looking websites
Lee Matthew Jackson:
that we used to build using tables.
Richard Bland:
Using tables, that’s right through to the whole using cascading style sheets and styling things and making things look pretty. So you, like you say, going into this whole responsiveness and that was quite a massive change, but it was one that had to happen. We couldn’t keep using Mobile devices and have websites that you had to zoom around on. You know, it didn’t take me long to pick it up, let’s put it that way. I kind of just saw again, saw that for what it was and just jumped at it and went, okay, I need to. I need to learn this. Just did it and did it for my clients, and they were all happy.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So I think one of the things you said earlier about pricing as well, just to pick up on that, I think that is something that a lot of us struggle with. There’s either the imposter syndrome, where we’re worried about, are we actually worth the price we’re putting out there? Well, yes, we usually are. But then there’s the other thing of being scared of what the response might be. I need this. I need this business. Therefore, should I lower the price just a little bit more so that they’ll accept it? But then, you know what? What I tend to do is the minute I get that feeling of panic of should I lower the price, I make myself hit send before I can second thing, you know, second guess myself. And usually I’m always surprised at the response, saying, hey, that’s great. How much extra would it be if we did this? And I’m like, oh, what the hell was I panicking about, you idiot? And I do it every single time.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And I call myself every single time. Like, I was doing a quote with Larissa the other day, and she could see I was, like, pausing. I was like. And I was, like, tweaking numbers. And then I was like, no, no, no, no, no, I’m not going to do this, because obviously the number was starting to go down again. And I knew that that was just my fear. And, yes, the price I was putting across was totally reasonable, and we are going to deliver an amazing job. And, hey, you know, it was approved without me trying to bring the price down.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So I hope that encourages people as well.
Richard Bland:
Yeah, I had something really profound that I was going to say just then as well.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Go for it.
Richard Bland:
But I forgot.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Wow.
Richard Bland:
I did. I was listening to you and I was thinking, yeah, I must say this in a minute, but I actually forgot.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m so sorry. If it comes back to you, just throw it out.
Richard Bland:
Yeah, no, no. It’s kind of like. It’s kind of touching on one of the most valuable lessons that I’ve learned in, which is. Is to. Is to learn when to say no as well, you know, because sometimes when you are in those positions and you’ve got these clients kind of, you know, you’re hesitating because you’re thinking, am I going into high? So you start to. I do exactly the same issue, right? I hover over the send button and then I start tweaking it a little bit more to try and bring the price down, thinking, you know, that’s. That’s what they would expect. You know, through my own experience, I’ve often found that if I’ve lowered the price just to win the project, they end up being probably some of the most difficult clients to work with because they have that expectation already that you’re going to deliver all of this amazing stuff for a lot lower price, or they want you to deliver loads of stuff for no price, you know, and they become a bit of.
Richard Bland:
A. Bit of a fiddly client to work with. I’ve had that in the past and one of the things that I kind of wanted to say to your listeners was, you know, if you start feeling that way about a particular client, you’re thinking, hold on a minute, this is getting a bit too much. And they’re not really understanding what the time and effort goes into it. They might not be the right clients for you. And that’s something I’ve had to learn as well in business, you know, and it’s something that a lot of even business coaches say to me all the time, learn to say no, you know, sometimes go where you got. If you feel as though it’s getting a bit tricky. Not really.
Richard Bland:
You know, it comes down to, I always think it comes down to a bit of respect, you know, respecting you for, like you say, your worth. Basically what we do is, you know, is complicated sometimes and it does take a lot of time, it does take a lot of energy and it takes a lot of creative brain power to actually put together a nice design and then build a website. So, you know, think about that one as well.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So true. And it’s frustrating when you see websites, special offers, a whole website for 20p, you’re like, yes, no, that’s not how it works. That just devalues the service so much. It’s frustrating and that can lead to the fear. And then if you get that sort of client, they’re going to expect so much. I mean, it’s so important. What you say is so right and it’s so important if you’re getting that neglect feeling during the onboarding process, you know, maybe they’re already starting to argue about the quote and stuff like that, then that’s a very early point to say, actually, perhaps this isn’t going to be a good fit. And also, I think I would also just add to what you’ve said as well.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You know, at the end of the day, if you are being absolutely obliterated for a client for say, 1k, let’s just pretend this project hit me Mic. So say this project was £1,000 and you were doing something and they were just pushing and pushing and pushing, then the worst thing that can happen is that you walk away from that one K and go and find a different client and maybe buy some cheaper food that week. Do you know what I mean? Like we are in control of our lives, that the client is not in control of us and that 1k is not in control of us. We can quite simply walk away if that needs to happen. And, you know, there are other ways and means of being able to generate the income or to continue living. Sometimes I think we get. We can put in our mind, can’t we, the absolute fear of losing that client and fear of losing that amount of money that they’re going to pay. Not thinking.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Actually, I could, I could now use the next week instead of running around bleeding for this person who doesn’t appreciate what we’re doing here, I could actually use that whole week to go and generate some money elsewhere. So I hope that’s an encouragement to people listening.
Richard Bland:
Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Because I’ve done that quite a few
Richard Bland:
times now to the listeners. Don’t, you know, don’t take this as a negative, you know, really don’t, don’t think that, you know, by walking away from a client or saying no to kind, that you’re, you know, you’ve done something wrong. Trust me, you haven’t. You know, it’s. That’s one of the biggest things I’ve had to learn in business so far.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. Amen, brother. Amen, brother. So, I mean, I feel like you may have alluded to some of the things that have been kind of game changers in your business for you, but I’ll ask the question anyway. What is like the one main thing then, or idea being a product or an idea or a change in thinking that has been a complete game changer for the way you work?
Richard Bland:
Yeah, I mean, this one gets me thinking all the time and I’ve had people ask me this kind of question before and I don’t know if there is such a thing. I’m going to be really controversial now. I don’t know if there is. I think, I think we can all learn and involve our businesses. We can make our processes more efficient, but things don’t stop changing. You know, myself as a person won’t ever stop changing. My work, my craft, my quality, you know, my understanding of what it is that I do. Won’t ever stop changing.
Richard Bland:
So because of that, I think if you end up sticking to that one thing that you, you found that is currently making your business tick over right now and say, yes, that’s it. That’s the game changer. That’s what I’ve been looking for. And you stop looking. I think that’s when you very quickly find yourself behind the times, you know, so. But that’s just my personal belief, you know, So I can’t sit there and say, okay, Lila, this is the one thing that just changed everything for me. Because there’s this. It’s just a constant evolution.
Richard Bland:
You know, everything moves very fast these days. You know what? I’ve witnessed it with my clients, I’ve witnessed it with their websites. You know, nothing. It doesn’t stop changing. There’s a constant learning. So what I would say is, is, and this is kind of the way I think, you know, never stop learning. Never stop watching what’s happening. Right? So.
Richard Bland:
So pay attention to the trends, both in design and development, because I think that’s quite important to try and keep up. If you’re, if you’re not one of these guys who, or girls who are in a position to lead and be the trendsetter, as they say, then certainly, you know, try to keep up with, with what is going on in terms of design and development in the industry. Obviously, use what works right now, you know, if you have found something that’s working, definitely, absolutely use it. Use it to help your business grow. But what I say is don’t always, just don’t rely on that as being. That’s the one hard, fixed thing. Because tomorrow there’ll be something different, you know, and the next day after that there’ll be something even better. Do you understand? So I can’t sit there and say this is the one thing that’s kind of really changed things for me.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I can argue with you there.
Richard Bland:
Can you?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m going to argue with you.
Richard Bland:
Go on, go on, go on.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
One thing is, is that you’ve realized that you need to keep learning the lessons of life as you go. That’s one thing.
Richard Bland:
Okay. Okay. I guess so, yeah. If you want to figure.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I just, I’m just being pedantic. Don’t worry. No, it’s. It’s really good advice.
Richard Bland:
If you want to pin me down to one thing, I’ll Tell you one thing that’s really helped me just recently. Go for it, right. And this is, I guess you can call this a game changer for me, right, But I found, I say I found, I found it ages ago, but there’s a particular framework that I use to do my builds now called GeneratePress and I think I’ve mentioned it to you before and I think you’ve seen a post that I did.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Made in Canada, I believe, isn’t it?
Richard Bland:
Yes, yes, yeah, Vancouver, I believe he is. There’s a guy called Thomas, Thomas Osborne, I believe. I just call him Tom. But yeah, this is, this is a single guy, sorry, not single, he has a family. There’s one guy, he developed this, I
Lee Matthew Jackson:
was gonna say, are we doing dating for him? If there are any females, edit that one out.
Richard Bland:
He developed this, this particular framework called GeneratePress. Now I call it a framework. It’s not that he actually promotes it as a film theme because that’s kind of what it is. So it’s a theme that you can get hold of, it’s free to download, it’s absolutely amazing, straight out of the box. And then he has a one off fee for some premium bundles of additional kind of add ons that help the framework. So I’ve adopted that now in pretty much most of my builds at this point in time because what I’m seeing around me is like an emergence of these DIY builders, self builders, you know, like the divvies of the world. I know you have your own particular one that you like to use. Divi is one of the popular ones out at the moment.
Richard Bland:
I know a lot of people are loving that. But where GeneratePress is kind of slightly different is that it’s not built to try and cater for everybody, you know, so it’s, it’s still classed as a lightweight theme or framework. So that’s, that’s kind of what I’ve adopted in some of my builds at the moment. So it allows me very quickly to set up a website and then doesn’t really give me a load of other bloaty stuff to have to deal with. It kind of just leaves it then for me to actually go in and do my customization work, which is, which is what I still love to do. So it’s not a blank WordPress boilerplate because I’ve seen those and I’ve worked with those in the past as well. It has got substance to it. You could literally just set it up and there’s a site or a blog and away you go.
Richard Bland:
You Just add your logo in and stuff like that. But for me, I use it as a framework. I purchased the Premium bundle and that gives me a whole load of other options to use for it. And, you know, rapidly puts websites together, which is great.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And this is, this is all because, as well, you’ve kept your eye on the prizes where you’ve been looking out, you’ve been learning about the industry, learning what’s available. And I love the idea of you taking GeneratePress on and this becoming your framework for development because it is a lot of the time, you know, to help people progress in business and to be able to provide value for the client. Sometimes you actually need to use tools that are available. So if we were going to all be coders and say, no, I am going to code everything from scratch every single time, then you’re not only doing yourself a disservice because you’re going to spend hours coding, but also you’re doing the client a disservice as well, because actually GeneratePress is very powerful. The guy behind it has received feedback from, according to this, 16,000 happy customers. So he’s had the feedback and the bug fixing and, you know, the ideas generated from that massive pool of people. So it is not cheating. It is not bad as a coder to be able to use brilliant tools like GeneratePress.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Such a good call, mate. And that’s why I bang on about Beaver Builder all the time, is because, you know, I found a tool that helps me do what I need to do, you know, and gives me that flexibility. Sorry.
Richard Bland:
Absolutely. I mean, you know, there’s no reason why to hide away, you know, away from these kind of services that are available to you and these themes and these frameworks, you know, it’s a good thing to kind of adopt those because it’s. You are future proofing your client as well.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Exactly.
Richard Bland:
You know, these, these are things that are open source, that they’re constantly under development, which is great, you know, and like you say, if you did it the other way, which is to build everything from scratch, you know, you could end up spending six months on a project.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Exactly.
Richard Bland:
The client doesn’t want to spend that kind of money and they certainly don’t want to wait, you know, that long for, for a website these days.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And I mean, I say this from, from experience because I was one of those resistant people for many years, for probably the first 10 years, definitely, you know, resisting using tools. I always thought I had to build it myself. I was a bit of a snob when it came to Stuff like that, you know. But now, you know, I’m totally converted. There are still things I will build from scratch, you know, I won’t use tools for everything. If I need some control I will do some custom code. But in most cases there is a framework or a plugin that’s either well supported or well respected. Then go ahead and use it.
Richard Bland:
I’m smiling because I’m exactly the same. I have resisted for a very long time. I still like to code sections of my website and I do, you know, I do still like to get my hands date. I do create custom page templates for example, you know, I don’t rely on everything. I try to limit the use of, of plugins in some cases because, you know, speed is such an important factor these days.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, that’s so true. Well, we’re talking about WordPress plugins now, which is cool. That’s a perfect segue really, isn’t it? Yeah. Other than GeneratePress, are there any other WordPress plugins you would like to recommend to the community?
Richard Bland:
Well, I guess from a business perspective one of the best plugins or series of plugins that I’ve, I’ve sort of adopted into my whole process at the moment for clients is iThemes. You heard of iHemes? I hope everyone’s heard of.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Isn’t it Corey Miller from my themes who runs that. Yep, that’s right, yeah.
Richard Bland:
Yep, yep.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So I know my WordPress knowledge, man. I know my knowledge.
Richard Bland:
So with their, I specifically use their security and their backup plugins. It’s actually the basis of, of my service level packages that I have for my clients. So that’s one that I really have to give a shout out to because I just think, you know, security and performance is such a hot subject right now. It’s, you know, just because, simply because we’ve gone mobile, you know, everything is, is needing to be very quick now and we need that security. You know, the Internet is a bit of a weird place at the moment and people are trying to do horrible things but you know, generally speaking, one of the kind of almost a bit of a myth that comes around quite a lot is that WordPress is not secure. I don’t believe that. You know, I’ve been working with WordPress pretty much since it came around and touchwood, there you go. I’ve never had a website get hacked.
Richard Bland:
I haven’t. I’ve always had some kind of stuff security plug in there, which is great. But I do know and have seen this happen that you know, the ten plus plugins that most people will use in a WordPress build these days, you know, they, they tend to be the bits that are not so secure. So you know, that’s the world of open source for you. You’ve got to keep your site secure, you’ve got to keep your clients happy and have a recovery plan there. And people like ifemes I think saw that. So you know, the plugins that they’ve developed are absolutely fantastic. And there are some others.
Richard Bland:
Like even before I took on Backup Buddy as my main backup and recovery solution, I was using things like Duplicator.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I love duplicate. Yeah.
Richard Bland:
And I wasn’t even paying for it, you know, I mean the guy’s got a pro version, which is fantastic. But you know what, the free one’s just as good, you know, and it enabled me to just create my own kind of backup solution. So I was doing all that manually, you know, and running that kind of manually with Duplicator for a long time. Some other favorites of mine. What do I use on a regular Ninja Forms? What’s a great plugin? You know, that’s, that’s one that I’ve again I’ve watched that, that come from nowhere basically and has now been adopted by several different big companies because they just developing such an amazing tool, Ninja Forms.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
They went through a major redo, didn’t they, in version three recently?
Richard Bland:
Yeah, which is impressive, which is really impressive. And the add ons, the premium stuff that people are developing, that’s something I’ve witnessed a lot actually recently. The amount of developers who have gone from that single plugin that they were doing on GitHub, you know, and then all of a sudden turning that into a business and booming off of the back of, you know, the premium bolt ons and the integrations that they build off of the back of that. I don’t think any of them started to think that way, you know, when they were first coming up with a plugin. I think they were just thinking, oh, let’s just do a contact form plugin. It’d be great, you know, get a few, few thousand downloads and make a bit of money on advertising. And it just, you know, it just shows you where we’re at in the industry now. You know, where someone like that can just develop a single plugin and it just boom into this, you know, I dare say million pound company.
Richard Bland:
It probably is more than like, well,
Lee Matthew Jackson:
someone like Ihemes would be. I don’t know about Ninja Forms necessarily because they’re still relatively new, but I don’t know because they sell a lot of add ons, don’t they? So it’s like $40 add ons.
Richard Bland:
Let me take you back to GeneratePress. You know, so I literally found that guy on GitHub before he even released it and he’s now over a million downloads. And I think the conversations we had, I would give you the exact numbers but we’re into the tens of thousands of premium subscribers really, you know, purchasing his, his, his bundle.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, I guess based on, based on his 16,000 happy customers if they were all paying $39. That’s if I do the maths in my head because you know, I’m a walking cat. I’m cheating. I’ve just done this on a calculator.
Richard Bland:
Oh good, good.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That would be $639,840 per year just on that alone would be pretty incredible. So if you’re thinking of starting a plugin, go for it.
Richard Bland:
Yeah, let’s seriously do it. You really can seriously, you know, consider that. But what’s amazing about him is he still does all of his 24 hour support himself.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Nice.
Richard Bland:
That’s amazing.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s called Lean.
Richard Bland:
That is, that’s, that’s called Lean and that’s called dedication, you know and that’s another reason why I give him so, you know, such a big up because it’s. His support is second to none.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Brilliant. But we’ll make sure generate press is is in the links as well. Along with ihemes. With ihemes. Rebecca Gill recommended that as well from web savvy marketing recently. Go check out the toolkit. So if you’re an agency listening, they’ve got a great toolkit where they can bundle in. I think it’s up to 50 sites or something like that and for like a grand a year and you get access to pretty much every, every plugin they have and the backup buddy.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And they’ve even got their own e commerce system as well. I’ve never tried it but they’ve got the exchange e commerce system as well. If you wanted something like a breakaway from WooCommerce, etc. So pretty cool.
Richard Bland:
I have been playing with it recently. It’s, it’s pretty impressive.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, well new to the market I guess because Woocommerce is like saturated the place but you know there are still other options. You know, if woocommerce fills you with dread then go check out the one at I themes. There are other options. So. Which is awesome. So mate, you mentioned how important it is to keep connected to Keep reading stuff to keep teaching yourself. What resources do you know? What are your go to resources? The websites you might read or magazines you might buy that you recommend people go check out.
Richard Bland:
There’s been so many over the years, quite literally Chris Coyer, he’s one that’s going to have a mention because he was again I was around at the time and started following literally when he first set up his blog, started posting all these little tutorials. You know, I’ve watched that guy develop into what he is today and now he has codepen. Is it codepen? I want to make sure that’s right.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It is codepen.
Richard Bland:
Yeah. So there’s been so many for me. What I’m finding personally is I’m finding individuals now to follow. I don’t necessarily go too much to, you know, Smashing magazine and places like that anymore. I actually find individuals, both developers, designers, but also business people. So a lot of. Because, I guess because I want to do this right this time, you know, I want to make sure that this business grows. I’m following a lot of entrepreneurial type blogs where there are individuals who are talking about their own experiences, you know, kind of giving back to the community and letting people know and learn from their experience as well.
Richard Bland:
I follow a lot of technology blogs. Anything to do with future, you know, I think we call it futurism. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. So anything about this new world that we’re all seem to be entering and it is changing, you know, the landscape out there is changing, our industry is changing. And that’s something that I actually did want to talk to you listeners about. At least make them aware, you know, we need to pay attention to how our industry is changing and how building websites is changing. You know, we’ve, like I say I’ve been there right at the start when it was just HTML and CSS, I watched jQuery come on the scene and I learned how to, to do all of that. And then I started bolting basic text editors onto websites because people wanted to manage their content.
Richard Bland:
And then we saw the birth of people like WordPress, you know, but I’m seeing it change even more now. You know, we’ve, we’ve started to see like I say, these DIY builders and things like that. They seem to be emerging a lot now. Service services, online services that will handle parts of your website build or your project management and you know, so I kind of follow, follow those kind of, those kind of places as well and try to get, try to follow the people that are actually behind it. They, they do offer a real great insight into how they see our industry changing. And they’re the ones that are the trendsetters, they’re the ones that are changing it, I guess. I used to read like a madman. So I did, I used to pick up books all the time.
Richard Bland:
I kind of went from books, then went on to the online magazines and then that’s recently, I guess just turned into watching videos. You know, places like YouTube is a great source of education if you know what you’re looking for. So I do that. I spend a lot of time just watching videos that often takes place whilst I’m working. So I have two very large ultra wide LG monitors and in one tiny little corner I have YouTube pretty much open all the time. And it’s always something to do with business growth or design and development tutorials or self improvement as a human being, you know, because I think that’s actually something that’s quite important. Important these days is bridging that gap again between technology and you as a person and what you bring to it. You know, what works for me doesn’t necessarily work for everybody in the community.
Richard Bland:
But if I was to say in terms of purely design and development, you’ve got to go out there and search, right? You’ve got to search for the jQuery and the HTML, the CSS archives, you’ve got to, you’ve got to pick through those kind of directories, we call them snippets these days, you know, the like places like Copenhagen, right, You know, do go on there, do have a play around, have dig through it, find these, there are some amazing gems to be found that are hidden away. So search for plugin developers on GitHub. You know, do go there and actually do a search. I was speaking to someone not too long ago and they’re a developer, solely a developer and has his own GitHub account, all this kind of stuff. And I was amazed that he doesn’t Even search through GitHub for other people to work with or to find other people doing bits and pieces of what he’s probably already doing, you know, so, you know, that’s a good bit of advice. Dig deeper into those kind of websites, you know, and again find those individual people because they’re the ones that are changing things. They might not be ready just yet. You know, like I say, I watched, you know, Tom develop, you know, generatepress from, from nothing into launching this amazing thing and the people that are doing these kind of developments on GitHub and other places like Copenhagen they’re the ones that are just on the cusp of doing something quite amazing.
Richard Bland:
If you can get in there and get, get with them at that point, you can learn a hell of a lot, you know. And that’s kind of, that’s kind of where it all started for me. That’s, that’s how I did start. I started from, from digging deep into these kind of directories of, of snippets, as we call them these days.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Love that. Well, guys, check out Codepen IO I think it is this website. Yeah, I live on that. There’s also. I’ll put, I’ll pop another link in there. I can never say it’s like tiampan tight. I don’t know. I’ll put the link.
Richard Bland:
Yes, yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You know what I mean, don’t you? That blue, that blue website. Yeah, the blue one, the blue one. That’s it. It’s full of amazing things like menu slide out menus and amazing sliders and stuff, combination jQuery, CSS, all of that good stuff. So yeah, highly recommend those. I’ll put some links in there. But also, I mean, just to reiterate what Richard was saying as well with regards to things like looking into the future and that, you know, I remember listening to podcasts and they were talking about 3D printing, etc. And now we’re in an era where people can order something online and print it.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
They’re already printing 3D bones, etc. I mean, I know that’s got nothing to do necessarily right now with WordPress, but the idea is always looking to the future, finding out what is the up and coming stuff and getting in there early. So Beaver Builder. I was, I was involved with testing Beaver Builder years ago, one eight years ago. But you know, months ago when it first came out, I was already checking. I didn’t like it at first because it was buggy, it was new, but you know, as it’s grown and evolved, getting involved in those sorts of things. So such cool advice, mate. Mate, you’ve been amazing.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Like you just dropped value left, right and center and given people like Mr. Miyagi moments of throughout. Well, at least for me anyway. I’ve just been sat there like vigorously nodding my head and holding back, wanting to shout alleluia as you were speaking. So I guess to wrap up the show, mate, how can people connect with you? And then we’ll give you a big old high five.
Richard Bland:
Well, can I give you just one last little thing before we do the wrap up?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Why not? Because there’s probably room in people’s brains for one more thing.
Richard Bland:
I hope so, because if not, press
Lee Matthew Jackson:
pause, take a deep breath and then press play.
Richard Bland:
Now there’s one thing that I want to tell people, right? And it’s something I’ve been trying to get out to a lot of people. Find your passion. Seriously, right? This is how, this is how I look at things now. Find your passion, simplify your offering, right? And become a master of it. Find your network of like minded people. Realize that there are people willing to pay for your time, right? And pay what you’re really worth. Don’t be scared to the, to drop those that won’t and set your goals, you know, and never rely on that one thing to become the game changer. That’s, that’s what I wanted to say, right? You know, don’t give up.
Richard Bland:
Even when you get knocked back, then just keep on going, you know, things, things will happen and that, that, that’s, you know, that’s kind of what I wanted to say to people today.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That is so cool. Just the appropriate silence, just to go with that as that sinks in.
Richard Bland:
It’s something I tell, I tell all my clients the same thing at the moment. You know, simplification is a big thing at the moment. Not just from, not just in life, right. And in business. But I can say it for design and development as well. You know, we’re seeing that. Simplify the user experience. We haven’t even touched on user experience today, but.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, that’s for another podcast.
Richard Bland:
I think that’s for another podcast, yeah. But definitely, you know, find your passion and just go with it. You’ve got nothing to lose, seriously. We don’t, we’re surrounded by so much. We could achieve amazing things. But you just gotta, you’ve got to find your passion. You’ve got to become a master of it and you’ll do really well.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So speaking of simplification, what is the simplest way someone can get hold of you to just start, start to build up a relationship with you?
Richard Bland:
Simplest way.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Married, by the way. By the way. I just, you know, like a friendship. Just.
Richard Bland:
Yes, sorry, I am married. Happily. Best way to get in contact with me is to email me, actually. Richardambrabland.co.uk. i mean, you can go to my website, which is fine. I’ve got all the contact details on there. But yeah, you know, I’m not, I’m interested in learning and that means speaking to people, that means experiencing what they’ve experienced, you know, especially in business at the moment. So I do want to hear from designers of themes and plugins and I do want to hear from the community as a whole.
Richard Bland:
You know, I’ll be interested to know, you know, whatever advice and guidance there is for me, you know, and vice versa. I’m happy to give my advice and guidance for free. You can find me on Facebook as well as facebook.uk Bambra Bland and I am on Twitter as well at Brabland. But yeah, that’s my simplest way. Just email me, I’m here and you
Lee Matthew Jackson:
know, you expressed you want to learn from other people, etc. Richard, I’d encourage you. In fact, you already are just double checking. So if you’re listening, if you want to connect with Richard as well, he is on Facebook. He’s part of the WP Innovative Facebook Facebook group as well. And guys, you can find that on leejacksondev.com forward/group that will redirect you. Just click on join and me, Larissa or Karthik or someone will authorize you accessing. It’s private because it’s a private area for us to kind of share problems, issues, whatever it is, or even ask for help and advice.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And Rich is a great part of the community there, so you can meet him in there. But also, you know, everyone can learn from each other in there as well. Mate, thank you so much for your time. I can’t believe that we we’re talking to each other in two separate rooms in Wellingborough. But hey, what the hell, we’ll go for beer soon and have a freaking awesome week, mate.
Richard Bland:
Yep, that’s the world we live in, mate.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Take care.
Richard Bland:
No, thank. Thank you very much, Lisa. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
No worries. Take care.
Richard Bland:
Take care.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Bye bye.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So there you have it, the end of episode number 49. Don’t forget to connect with Richard. He is part of the Facebook group, which is Lee JacksonDev.com group. A great place for us web designers, as web developers, as agency owners and as WordPress geeks to hang out, talk to each other, share information and advice. And remember, it is a secret group on Facebook, which means your clients cannot see what you’re posting, although there are
Lee Matthew Jackson:
some nasty things about them because that’s not really very nice. Although we will give you hugs if you need them.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You know, honest, nice hugs and share
Lee Matthew Jackson:
cat pictures and all that good stuff.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Now, next week it’s gonna be episode 50 and we have a return guest that is Brian Jackson. He has moved over to Kinster, the hosting company, and they are an enterprise level hosting company. So it’s really, really interesting to find out what is going on over there. Essentially what I’ve done is grilled the
Lee Matthew Jackson:
poor guy about everything they do, their
Lee Matthew Jackson:
backups, their services, all the sorts of questions that a web developer or web
Lee Matthew Jackson:
builder would want to know from their host. And the poor old Brian, he managed
Lee Matthew Jackson:
to not to cry. So that’s awesome. So that’ll be episode 50 next week. Thanks for listening. Have an amazing week.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Keep innovating.
