Episode 435 LaunchKit and WordPress With Spencer Forman

Hey everybody, Rob Cairns here and today with me as my guest, Mr. Spencer Foreman, how are you today, Spencer?

It’s always good. To see you again, Rob, it’s like, how long was it since our last time? Maybe it’s been over a year and. 1/2 I think maybe.

No, I think it’s been closer to a year, but we chat X is a wonderful thing. LinkedIn is a wonderful thing. You know where to.

Goes goes fast, goes fast.

Find me right. We need to get you back up here for another hockey visit when we can, actually.

Yeah.

The commiserate in front of a hockey game.

I you know what I think that’s right. Cause I came in last year, March I was in Toronto, I think we spoke just after that so.

Yeah, we did. Did you just for curiosity, not the before we get the podcast for fun. Did you get to the Hockey Hall of Fame while you were here?

Oh my God, of course. We spent the whole day there and hung out with the Stanley Cup. We went in the vaults. We did. We did the the shooting score, the broadcast booth. I mean everything we could do in Toronto, we did and that’s the city that I don’t mind going to again and again.

You are. You are always welcome, my friend. There’s there’s lots to do here and not enough time. So summer is craziness and.

For sure.

So today, that’s how we get together. It’s been a while since we’ve talked on a on a podcast, so I thought it was time to have you back. You’re doing some cool things with launch kit. We got some cool ideologies. We’re just talking about before we went to air. And let’s kind of dive into the first one. I want to dive into with you and I know you and I see die die is. Let’s start. Let’s stop selling WordPress as the solution for one to fix. So it’s a little different if you’re a plug and shop a theme shop, then you gotta sell WordPress because that’s what you do. It’s a little different. If you do a lot of what I do and my business is security because you gotta sell WordPress As for security but. Developers and designers need to Start Stop selling it as a solution. How come I’m what?

The metaphor I would use, which I agree their premise, but I’m going to clarify it even further. The metaphor would be stop selling parts, start selling solutions, stop trying to pretend that you’re not a human being, start selling your humanity and selling your concierge services. The world is filled with infinite. Phrase of technological solutions. Every day there’s a new one, some AI, some human created. The thing that is going to differentiate you as a human being as an individual and allow you to compete unfairly against the megalithic corporations or even those companies in WordPress that have gotten so much strength, power, money, capital that they’re acting without forethought of human beings is to remember that your customer. As a person who needs help, and if you act like a friend, like a human being to that person. They will respond to you in a way that they will not respond to that company that treats them with disrespect and has the seven step step cancellation process or the I don’t know who you are or I changed the price on you even though I promised I wouldn’t. All of those things are your advantage. But you have to start with the idea that you are literally like my favorite hotel. The original Four Seasons in Toronto, you’re the concierge in the bottom of the hotel. Who’s there to make the journey of a visitor from Chicago or otherwise as comfortable as possible. And at the end of the day. Even though the concierge is in a relatively expensive priced hotel, the cost of the trip is far less to the visitor because everything goes well and perfectly versus if they had to do all the work and the stress and all the things that go on normally, applying that to the clients and customers and you will find a one to one correlation they are willing. Able excited. Thrilled to find a human being to be their guide, their concierge in the world of solutions that might actually be built with WordPress, and I’ll add one step to that further, which is my business focus has shifted towards instead. Of focusing on describing, talking about hurts is that I give everybody an IKEA or a Lego store experience for them as an implementer or an agency so that I can act as your concierge between the incredibly unbelievably complex array of politics and money. And complexity and breakages that keep happening in the WordPress core and all the plugins so everybody can win in that world. And I’ve had good luck with enlisting. A whole array of people from end users up through implementers, through large agencies, through enterprise customers, because they understand everybody else, including Marc Benioff, is selling a platform. Why is WordPress still a flea market of parts?

Yeah. And I think that’s one of our disservices. And the other thing I think in the WordPress and in disservice, frankly, is everybody’s fighting everything on price right now. So it’s it’s this race to the the bottom game and it drives me nuts and there’s.

Oh.

A really good. Book out there called the inside advantage by Robert Boom. You don’t know if you’ve heard me talk about before, but what Robert talks about was written in 2007, 2008, more relevant today than ever before. Big Red cover and what Robert talks about is make yourself different and stand out and don’t fight the business world up price.

Yeah, like Seth Godin’s purple cow from 20 years ago. Same idea. You know, you’re driving along the highway here around Chicago. Dairyland of Wisconsin. Black and white, black and white, brown, black and white. Black. And white, brown, purple cow. Screeched to a halt. You notice it well, in a world of infinite people who you can’t discern from a large company or an AI. If you get a human being who’s in, who’s fallible and talks about their personal life and their problems and their issues. But they promise to be that expert you need for the thing you’re trying to achieve. You are willing to go to bat with that person no matter what, and that’s true about your lawyer, your doctor, your dentist, your babysitter for your kids, the camp counselor. Why is it any different in technology? It isn’t. And that’s what’s wrong with this end stage capitalism combined with technology is that we’ve got all of the tools in the world and some people have forgotten. What it is that they’re originally designed for to help human beings help other human beings?

And they don’t get that. And they don’t realize, you know, I know if I’ve ever shared this with you. But before I ran a marketing agency, I was the one of the project leaders and leads for a call Center for one of the biggest hospitals in Toronto and biggest hospitals in Ontario. We had a trauma center. We had more trauma patients than anybody in the greater trauma area, and I used to say to my staff, hey, guys, you’re here. That not for yourselves. You’re here to help the clients that need help. Help. The and don’t get involved in the politics, don’t get involved in the numbers cause, you know, call centers. It’s always easy to measure people based on how many calls they take, how many days. I said just provide you good quality of work every day and make the clients happy. That’s what they’re calling you for and they’re having a bad day. 9 out of 10 times. Before they call you in that environment anyway, so you gotta recognize that before you get on the phone.

Yeah, I think that the the problem is that.

Thank you.

I mean, there’s part of the problem is due to the structure of larger companies who gain enough power, capital and leverage. The other is just from. The founders mindset when I was on earlier today with our friend Kathy’s aunt, we were talking about an example of the I think it’s the CEO or the founder of Arizona iced tea, which are those large metal cans of tea that you find in. The gas stations I.

Will have them.

It’s a dollar. They come in a million flavors. And somebody was interviewing him. The clip went viral. Unlike McDonald’s, where my son and I had four breakfast sandwiches like it used to be, like 4 egg mcmuffins for two for $5.00. So it’s $10. It’s $28.00. Yeah. And the Arizona ICE T CEO was asked.

Yes.

Why are you keeping the price at $0.99? It’s even point painted on the can, he says. We’ve succeeded. We’ve made enough money. Why? We don’t need to hurt the very. People that benefit from our low priced product that they enjoy and the problem seems to be that many people who either are embedded into a C-Suite position or grow a company, they lose track of when is enough. Enough. When is it that the people on one side of the life raft of humanity, even in a capitalistic society? Are willing to look at the starving people on the other half with a knife in their hand and hoard all. The. Food. Yeah, because the gap between those two worlds is never in my lifetime been so great as it is today, where there’s. No logic at all about why a company that does $100 million in WordPress. Should be trying to crush their customers with seven stage cancellation policies or why a company that makes $250 million should charge $150.00 a month for hosting a site that another great company can do. To 30, it’s just unconscionable and I’m not here to give moral judgment. I’m saying the remedy is like Robin Hood or Marie Antoinette. We’re in a world of open source software. The software cannot be kept. So if somebody comes along and delivers this in a different method, and I intend to be, at least for my part, doing that. Everybody up and down the chain can equally benefit from creating stuff. I want to end with one thing, cause you’ve given me the leeway. Think of what Hanna has done.

Yes.

To the world of design tools, $12.00 a month that is equivalent to everything Adobe ever sold. Everything back or immediate, like every great tool you can imagine for $12.00 and Melanie Perkins and her husband came up with something that not only made them a billion dollar company, but made an entire ecosystem. Like at Etsy of people who make Canva templates and so. Forth, yeah.

And then, interestingly enough, and who goes and buys camera? Adobe. So why don’t?

They’re never gonna. They they didn’t buy it. Wait. Hold on. They they did not buy. That did they no.

I’ve always felt. Yeah. Yeah, and.

When did that occur? No.

Long time ago and certainly.

No, no, no, no. I don’t think that’s true. Hold on. We we need to do a look.

Up Ohh, go ahead. Go ahead.

Because that would be. That would be shocking to my consciousness. Yeah. Yeah. No, Adobe did not buy Canva. They acquired Affinity, a creative software suite. Similar. Yeah. You. You scared me because I trust your judgment. But that would be.

Oh.

Like such a such a direct opposite, everything Melanie Perkins stands for that. Yeah. So you scared me a little bit.

Yes.

Ah, hey.

Hanna acquired a visualization company called Affinity. Which is similar to Adobe’s program, so it’s I think it’s the other.

Yeah, they bought Infinity. Yeah.

Way around.

It’s the other way around.

Yeah, but, but by the way, this is a good example. You and I being in the space, I spend a good majority of every day cause I. Mother. I get 2. 1000 different little things I have to check out every day across plugins and software and services and business, and I think that’s a good example of the nature of how I’m like the concierge in the bottom of The Four Seasons Hotel for many of my clients, even if they’re not using the software they’re like, hey, Spence, what do I do? How do I do it?

English.

You know what? I mean like you with secured it.

I get. I get that all the time. Even what products have been in the tech space for over 40 years and constantly or 35 years and constantly people come to me and say what do I do? How do I buy it? What should I do? What do you think? It’s very common in this space, and I agree with it and you, you almost become as an entrepreneur, a little bit of a help desk if you’re in this space, not. A little bit, a lot of help.

Desk can I pause on that point because I want to suggest something that’s so crazy, but as a an example of the the new business model that we’re discussing here.

In this space. Sure.

Look.

There was a term going around for a while that now is sort of like, uh, satirical or maybe a little negative. But like Doctor Google, right, yes, so. Somebody doesn’t know something they’re supposed to. In the past, Google it and find out. Well, now we have AI, which is much more accurate, but the point is. I’d say over half of my paying recurring revenue customers from 47 to $97. For a month, we’ll send me a question that I call a doctor Google question. Yeah, but you know how many of those it takes for me to satisfy their feeling that they got value out of paying me $97. A. Month one. Yeah. One doctor Google question. That’s like at the tip of my tongue. Right and.

Yeah.

That’s what people I think miss is like you. You think somehow you’ve gotta design 50 page websites and creative. No, you have to be the person like Spence came to Toronto for a weekend with his son. Wants to go to a game, get good seats, have a good meal at the at the steak joint around the corner. The I need one person to give me one good reservation to make the whole trip worthwhile. Yeah, and and now come back and stay at that hotel at a premium again and again. And I think that’s the part that people miss. But that’s the humanity part that you and I, being the same age, it turns out like that was what businesses were built on. When we’re 10 years old, you know. And I started my first one like that. So I think we just get lost in the technology thinking that’s the business it’s not, that’s just the way to get to the. Relationship.

Yeah. And I and you just said the key and I was gonna go there and you beat me to it. Relationship businesses are all based on relationships and you know, you hear people talk out there and they’ll say put your favoring somebody. No, I have a relationship with that person. I have a relationship with this person. One of the reasons I want you back on the podcast is. You and I have a relationship that we’ve built up over a long time. I mean, you know, relationships are everything and people are missing out on that and they treat them as disposable and it just drives me insane.

Yeah, but I think that comes from Kathy brought this up and I I really appreciated it because I think she really tapped into it a lot of the problems of people today are not that they’re not good beings human. This, let’s say, spiritual beings. Like I say, having human existence, it’s that they have a fear based mindset or they are compensating for something that all of us have unfortunately gone through at some point in our life, from childhood to adulthood, and they have not resolved those issues. And I think that there’s a lot of that in humanity where there’s people who are really good people, but they were exposed to something that traumatized. Them and they now act out of fear or anxiety which causes them to forget the things that many people who are not suffering from that same experience don’t have, and some of the examples I gave today, I won’t name the names. It’s obvious who I’m speaking about. Some of those people. Clearly do not need to win every single thing. They’ve already won the game of life and money in WordPress and otherwise, but they continue to do the way they’re doing it, because somehow or another they’re compensating for something that happened to them in their childhood or growing up, and I understand and I have empathy for it. But.

But.

I don’t think that the rest of us in, in, in humanity as a whole on this planet are going to advance to. The next level. Of end stage capitalism without rethinking hoarding everything on one side to the expense of the other, because even Marie Antoinette speaks about revolution in France has been going on forever. But like in those days. In the 12th century, it was like as soon as the masses get hungry enough and annoyed enough, it only takes one little comment to set off a a really bad revolution. And let me give an example. In the federal level, we recently had Speaking of Adobe. Adobe made themselves into the villains because they decided to take their online product and change the terms of service in a way that was just cagey enough to set the federal government out to start, you know, litigating or investigating them or whatever it may be, and a fair warning cause I am an attorney to those in the WordPress space. Who I’ve spoken to personally. Otherwise, you’re next. If you get big enough and cocky enough because WordPress is running half of the Internet and it’s really shocking to me to think that some people think that they’re immune from behavior that Adobe itself has gotten subject to, you know, being under the investigation for.

And what I would say to you, you know, you talk about how people have stuff in their past and. How much you and I’ve talked to pastor about this, but I’m a big mental health guy. And one of the things I’ve recognized in my life and in my business and the way I do things is, yes, it’s people things that happened as a kid that affect how you proceed today and there’s a really good book out there not to turn this into a mental health podcast. But I count this book over the book all over the place. Called on your past. Change your future by. And only in the book is exactly what it says it is, recognize what’s happened, and then figure out how to change the trajectory in life, which is a really good idea. So.

Yeah. And then applies to physical pain as well. You and I share a lot of. Age appropriate health challenges, yes. And and I think that it’s a good idea because I’m a I’m a stoic, have been for some time. I used to say and I continue to recommend, Imagine life.

We do.

As the thing where and you wake up in the morning. It’s almost assured that somebody something is going to take a dump in your coffee now if you condition your mind to accept that, that’s the likelihood and you build up some resiliency and capacity, as Doctor Miguel would say about your back, then you will not be disappointed. In fact, you’ll be thrilled if the day turns out to be just a ho hum. Average day and nobody does do that. But if it does occur that they take the dump in your coffee, you will be ready and willing to accept it. And some of the extensions of that Doctor Sarno and otherwise have been about like you get such a. A mindset about pain that eventually, when the cause of the pain disappears, your brain is still telling you you’re constantly in pain. So I feel the power of the mind, the spirit have as much to do with success in life and happiness and business as the actual physical things that are going on. One last thing on that, which is to say. Having had the hero’s journey, and I I like to suggest, I’m like trimesters like Jane Fonda talked about her third trimester when it came to being on Julie Louis Dreyfuss’s podcast the first trimester. I had infinite success, very few problems made millions of dollars through Sherlock or accident, and then I went into my 30s to 60, which I’m at the end of that middle one. And life kicked me in the cajones in a good way. But like I really experienced the part of the behind the music. You know, when things go but the third trimester. Is to me, gonna be my win along the way. I learned it took a long time. I was no more, no less happy on any stage of the journey. Because I was lucky enough to have always been curious and interested in various things, but my friends and colleagues found that they had tied their happiness to external things, their job, their position, their marriage, their whatever. And if you can’t control it, you can’t be happy. And so being happy with whatever you’re working on this moment, digging in the garden, working on some software, helping your kid just hanging out in nature, that is enough to make you happy. Regardless, if you’re worth $0.00 or $100 million. And yes, it’s nice to have toys. I had lots of toys when I had tons of money, but without the toys I have not found any less happiness. In fact, sometimes it’s inverted when you get older, cause the toys become a burden themselves. You.

Oh yeah. I I’m. I’m so not the techno toy guy. People always look at me and say you must have like the latest and greatest. And I actually said to people, no, I don’t. I tend to buy what they need, not what I want, not what I want. And then I take that money and I spend it on other things that are more important. So I’m I’m there. I don’t. I don’t even do that. Let’s dive into you. Just released a new version. No one. Which is absolutely awesome. This past week it’s been a big week for you. First of all, what problems does lunch kit solve for the entrepreneur and? The business owner.

I mean launch KIT in a nutshell is the culmination of 20 years in WordPress where I’ve been teaching, showing, sharing for free and otherwise people how to succeed financially with WordPress, but specifically. It’s like everything that you would need to launch and grow, market or monetize a WordPress site in one spot metaphor instead of going to the flea market on a random Sunday and finding any number of different people in booths and parts and buying stuff and trying to put them together, whether it be cooking. Recipes or cars? Imagine you went to the IKEA or the Lego store or the Mercedes dealership. You are going to get a fully baked set of things that work together. Somebody in a colored vest to answer any question and you can walk out of the store with a full. Mummy of meatballs. Totally happy that you spent the day with your kids. Go home and assemble it yourself by snapping it together and you can do that with one transaction with one trusted intermediary, because the parts in this case are open source software. Once people get past the absolute delusion and fairy tale that people in the WordPress plugin space and theme space have been selling software. Once they get over that because that’s the fact the law, the actual, the service and support was actually all that was always being sold. And if you have it delivered into one place like the experience of Legos and IKEA, you you understand immediately what the difference is. An implementer and agency owner can have using. Canvas example have an incredible amount of leverage and power to use Canva for $12.00 a month and then make infinite amounts of things that they can resell, share, giveaway, contribute inside of Canva, and an outside. Imagine the same thing with WordPress launch kits. Current plugin is essentially a suit. Of about 80 plus plugins, it’s constantly evolving that are all the pro or free plugins they are compiled together in a delivery vehicle that is free to install from the WordPress repository or otherwise. So any hosting it runs on and in 3 minutes you also have a set of free tools that streamline and fix all of the things that WordPress. Core has been breaking about using WordPress. Like the difficulty of what individual plugins try to do when you turn them on or how you get hijacked into these dark corners where one plug-in needs to be turned on and off to do another one, and so on and so forth. By streamlining it, you get the same joyous experience white label for yourself and it’s unlimited use so. One of the models that is important to me is that everybody makes money up and down the chain. If you are an agency, an implementer, an end user, you could get one launch kit to go or one launch kit hosted with the support built in. Have a concierge always on the ready with e-mail and you can turn on any number of plugins. Or you can turn on any ready baked package solutions where it’s a combination of things like ready to eat and in doing so. So you can sell them to your. Science. But there’s no limit and there’s no licenses required. It’s just a a simple metaphor. And the neat thing about it is it really is the same thing I’ve been doing for 20 years, but I was able. To bake out. All of the manual processes that I’ve been previously doing, concierge style. And the idea here is that from a revenue sharing standpoint, the same way that I was just describing how these other companies have created this gargantuan ecosystem, I mean, think about how many Lego related things there are that are outside of Legos or even IKEA fans, but especially Kemba. So the idea to me is the new WordPress.

Haven’t.

That closes the gap in the life raft that used to be us sitting in the middle together is you live by the sword, die by the sword. All of the software is for everyone. If you make it for WordPress, that’s it. If somebody repackages it in a way that Redmond ratish does, what people can do with it? And by the way, this includes the people who love to make stuff, but they can’t get any headway because they’re unlike the old days. I’m just a single Curious George developer who wants to make a cool thing. How do I market against a company that’s got $100 million and is doing Black Hat SEO and has, you know, crushed the directory in a way that I’ll never get listed? How do I get any traction whatsoever? Well, there’s a new vehicle in town. And it’s based upon some models that are very interesting, like the Hunt Brothers, Pizza Model, Hunt brothers. Pizza figured out that there’s like 50,000 gas stations in the US and the gas station owners needed a new revenue model. So they give them essentially a very small pizza. Cooking system that makes delicious pizza in chunks and they give them the equipment for free and they basically say sell the pizzas 100% your own profit, but you have to buy the pizza from us and the the gas station owners are making money hand over foot because somebody comes in and in 5 minutes while their car is filling up, they get a delicious. Pizza to go at a premium price that is a great value. That is exactly the same kind of model that’s available through this launch kit versus. Ohh. I’m gonna try to make a plug in in the the big company, you know. You know who is gonna come in. And like crush me by either copying, cloning and so forth, and what’s neat about that is that opens back up the innovation model like we said with, you know, Etsy templates for Canva. There’s people making a quarter $1,000,000 making templates that are nothing more than just a convenient solution based upon the tool that everybody loves. For their customers.

Yeah. What’s the difference between your new release and what was in it before? What’s changed?

The original model we were two two difficulties existed, and by the way, this is like I suggested, this is a 20 year in the making thing, so if you go back to my history in WordPress. I have things like video membership kit that were released back in 2007. Mm-hmm. And the thing was we had to pack a lot of balsa wood into a box with, like, you know, slow set glue and things. So the difference is #1. The tools that are available to us are now fully complete so that WordPress by itself with two exceptions can be a whole solution in a box. We still do outside gateways for money like Stripe or PayPal. Whatever, it doesn’t matter goes through. Commerce. #2 is that there’s always going to be a need for an SMTP service because of the deliverability on that and SMS you can’t just do that yourself. Everything else from the the transactional engine, the learning management system, the marketing automation, the sales funnels, the the e-commerce, the booking, every other feature anybody else needs is available. And what I’ve been able to achieve is to curate all the nuances between these individual very high quality plugins, having their desire to be a. Platform by themselves, neutering them. And putting them together in a way without changing the plugins so that somebody understands this is how these parts come together as a complete solution. For example, if you go to the Lego store, of course you can buy Lego bricks, but you could buy the the Lego death star from Star Wars or a truck and it’s like they put it in a kit with instructions. And now it’s not hard to imagine it versus like, imagine building the Death Star, buying the block. Individually, and I think when you deliver that at a price that’s unbeatable $47 a month for everything $97.00 a month hosted with support, and then you show them that you’re available for hands on as well if they need to get over the hump. I go from people who are a stranger calling, saying where has this been forever to paying hands on prices as well? They’re like, this is so easy. I want you to just get me over the hump tomorrow and within one hour 2 hours we can move them farther forward than they’ve done in a month or a year because. There’s one other thing, Rob. WordPress changes so fast and the plugins change so fast that the the problem is that the documentation and the the blog posts that talk about all of the parts.

Oh yeah.

Is not possible for a mere mortal to reconcile. So in one day you can look for how to build blankety blank with this plugin, and there might be five or six generations of instructions, none of which tell you the right answer. They just tell you historically, and then you try to do the same thing with eight or ten other plugins now. Of an array of parts with different instruction sets that don’t say this is today. The way this works, yes, and that is the problem, because if you go to IKEA, sometimes they retire a piece of furniture like I had a kids bed that I bought. I wanted to get another one for my other kid. It was gone, but at least I understood that. It wasn’t like they were talking about 5 different ways to assemble a bed that no longer really works as a bed anymore, but that happens all the time in WordPress, so we smooth out that process by being a concierge of information. As well as the singular source of truth, a lot of times, like I said, people find a value just to say I’m really lazy and I’m busy. Tell me how to do this and I go here’s the link da da.

There’s nothing wrong. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that, though. There’s an old theory of business. If you don’t want to do it, find somebody to do it for you. So, like, what’s wrong with that dude?

I mean. I don’t get on a ladder anymore. I don’t mow my own grass anymore. I don’t shovel anymore. If I can avoid it. It’s not that I can. Aunt. It’s that I recognize the value to me of having somebody do that, especially with my bad back, is infinitely better than trying to take that risk and the time or the physical safety. In this case, if somebody really did the math and I said, and here’s one other value proposition, by the way. All these other companies that are SAS, they do this normally. This is the norm. Yeah. The difference with WordPress, which makes it an advantage over even the better CRM’s like a high level or something is. Own control, no matter what for yourself, your client, since these are all built on WordPress in a box, only two externalities which are anybody can turn on and off, you can make it share it, sell it, own it, copy it, clone it. The second our relationship begins, everything is yours on your hosting. For hosting, it makes no difference. It’s agnostic, there’s no games. And one thing that about that that really troubles me, which is why I feel that I’m doing. Some of the bigger companies that have really been founded by brilliant, smart people, personal friends like WP engine. OK, I don’t think any of those people are less than ideal human beings, but they decided like with a CF Pro, that they’re going to change the the nature of that plug in, that it no longer functions if you don’t put a key in. And I think that’s fundamental.

Ohh yeah.

The A mistake a violation like the Adobe violation of of what? That was bound. And it’s based upon either greed or a corporate decision that does not live in the world of what the software really is licensed for. So imagine you had built a business on one of these platforms. And Elon Musk or somebody gets mad at you, turns you off, you’re out of business. This happens every day the week to a lot of companies. If you’re on a social. Network or something? Yeah, but what if you were in Word? Press where the promise was you owned it. You controlled it, and then one of the plug-in authors decides to. I’m gonna break the rules, especially cause I’m big enough not to be subject to scrutiny on this. And now all of a sudden you or your client is locked out of your stuff. That would be unconscionable.

That’s kind. That’s kind of ironic when one of the selling points that people in WordPress again why you shouldn’t sell the solution, sell the results is well if you go to a host of website WordPress, you own your own stuff and the the way these plugins are going, that’s not necessarily true anymore.

That’s the promise. The the part that bothers me, which again I don’t think this is me, but I am. I I will admit there’s one part of my position in the world that allows me to be the outspoken kid in the Emperor’s new clothes story or the Robin. Hood.

Yeah.

Is the nature of me and my origin story, and that I’m beholden to no one because I am not going to. There’s nobody that has anything on me for speaking the truth. And since I have a legal background, I’m speaking on the law and the facts that are what they. Are is that I think those who have made these choices know they have gone too far, but they’re seeing how far they can go and sometimes with male intent. Sometimes with this negligence either way. Somebody has to be the kid in the Emperor’s new clothes story or the Robin Hood and say this is not open source. This is not what it was supposed to be. The plug-in codes are open for everybody and you don’t have to break their code, by the way, because there’s plenty of people who can just use the plugins, but there needs to be someone who curates out that naughtiness. Because it is disturbing a lot of people who are my customers and who in general say like. I’m completely freaked out. My entire business was one day taken away because of this warning. That’s so strongly worded. Like the the van is coming to take my children because I didn’t put the license key in on a piece of software that was supposed to have been mine. And I I think that’s not an uncommon concern today.

So so true have to ask you is cadence still your page builder choir?

Yes. Now that’s an interesting alternative conversation, which is a Kathy and I touched upon this. So Ben Rittner and Hannah sister have done an amazing job of maintaining what I want to say is the entrepreneurial mindset and the concern for the customer. It’s very personal, even though it’s scaled out to be very quite large. There’s a lot of demands. Do it on them to increase the features and this and that, and then everybody’s a, you know, like a cook who’s being told to cook the grilled cheese this way. That way they have to make choices. But. The theme space in particular, but also their add-ons have maintained, thankfully, and so is most of the stuff from liquid web. A A democratized mindset, there have been no shenanigans and no attempts to breach the fundamental nature of open source. The naughty things are the ones I described that are not happening at. So what I love about Cadence is that if you, let’s say you had to choose a foundational set of stuff. Unfortunately, even though I love Gutenberg now, the core of Gutenberg is just missing all of the necessary good blocks and parts. But I am 100% fundamentally.

I agree.

Against everything about full site editing and that it represents, it’s taken the metaphor 3 steps past Nirvana, so there are certain people in our community and I will not name them here. We all know who they are, who are like full site editing for the win and I’m like full site. Editing out the door. Don’t talk to me about it, because I’m gonna stop. At cadence. And at that level everything is beautiful. Nevertheless, here’s the beauty of even lunch kit. I had questions today. Spence. Is it possible I can have other things that I can add into or you can add to give me an lunch kit and? My answer is this, yes, but. If you were The Four Seasons and you asked me to get tickets to the Leafs game and I can get them for you and you say, is it OK if I smuggle a a chimpanzee in my bag into the stadium, I go. Yes, but don’t call me about it. So if you wanna put elementar on top of cadence or you wanna switch your block build or whatever, God bless you. Don’t ask me to answer those support questions, because when you do, I’ll say that’s 300 an hour to go back to my Frankenstein repair service. And why? Like when you go to IKEA? Nobody says can I bring a piece of wood in here and carve? A. Chair. Yeah. Do you just pick what’s there? That’s the whole point of it, isn’t it? Right. So.

1. I I agree with you and I think I’ve told you this, but if I haven’t, it’s worth repeating. The reason I started on Cadence was I watched a video you did ohh about 3 1/2 years ago.

You know, I mean, it’s really hard to get sold on it, by the way. I was still hanging.

And. Yeah. And you were and you were talking about how in when Gutenberg, before we went to FSC was the way to go. And I watched your video and I I’m trying to remember which one it was, but it doesn’t matter. I must have watched the video five times and said that’s it. I’m.

It was probably.

And then.

About launch flows, because launch flows, we wanna make simplicity with launch flows, which sorry to interrupt it up. But like launch flows came from now Palm you know Adam Presser and Sujay Power creating hard flows and they wanted to hijack the Commerce Checkout and make all these custom templates. And I was like.

Yes.

Yes.

Fundamentally, saying that’s not a good idea and we didn’t see eye to eye, so I went off and built launch flows and I said. But I’m just looking for a simple way that everybody can have the same stuff and cadence came along at the right time. I actually approached the guys who were making something else. I can’t remember. I think it was Brick City or Block C, but I asked them about that and they didn’t get on board, but Ben and Cadence were like high 5. This is we’re on board with what you want to do here. And that’s why it ended up being a great.

Match to say yeah and it was. And I have to tell you, I haven’t built.

Hi.

A site with the traditional page builder since that day. Spent and it’s just been a journey and I’m all in. I know there’s several other people that are all in. I think Ben and Hannah have done some amazing stuff. Kathy knows that realm because she worked with him for a long, long time. I can say that very publicly and she knows they’re behind it so.

Yeah.

Yeah, some, some, some of.

The best ideas they’ve had, by the way, is when they do those. They did like the two day event.

Yeah.

And it’s called amplify, I think, right? So Hayden?

Yeah.

And what happened? Was a lot of people who were in the tangible related products like learn, dash and so forth. They have the same problem, which is what I have fixed. Who? Those who? Follow my methodology. If you take a plug in, like learn dash, if you take. A plug in. Like a a old plugin you don’t need anymore like a membership plug-in. Name your pick. Even even my pals like the Colemans have paid memberships pro. There are all these things that tried to be frameworks at a time when we need it like it’s got everything under the kitchen sink, the sales and transaction and and all these things which, if you really thought about it, woo commerce is the plug in. For that. The point is that that when you really think about how many engines you need in a car. How many wheels? How many steering wheels break? You need usually one feature of each thing, and by curating those things out, you can eliminate complexity. And that’s where. These like cadence amplify open up this floodgates of new customers who said first of all, I thought it was so amazingly simple to just copy and paste the checkout flow pattern and just paste it in and it worked. But they said I didn’t realize how simple commerce would be to use until you showed me because I’ve been trying all these cockamamie solutions to get around the limits of learned. Russia’s sales engine, because it’s not even a comparative. They’re like a fraction of what they can do and will come. And these are things that are not obvious to the mere. Mortal. And nor should they be like if I went to Toronto and I was in town. I hope the concierge would know there’s a parade that’s going to take the one hour drive to the airport and turn it into three hours, which that’s a whole conversation by itself. But that’s what a concierge does.

Yeah.

Yeah, I I agree with you 100%. How do your people buy your product and pay the 49 or go to the support? Is your split like 5050 right now, do you? Have any clue? Can you?

No. So there’s three. The Corp, I mean. The array of things that WP Launchy is really simple, OK? Launch kit to go first of all. I should start with today, today in Positor is launch Kit, the plugin for free to download and has those really valuable smooth out WordPress tools that even if you don’t use any of the software bundle from me. Make your WordPress experience as it should be and that along with the education and the other free stuff is worth joining the community. I want to make sure that everybody understands there’s value even at free. The 2nd is if you just are an implementer or an agency owner and you just need the software because you already know what to do but you don’t want to spend $4000 or more. Year on licenses and all these 25 subscriptions and you want to have somebody who will stand behind the system of parts instead of what happens. I have 20 parts and one of the parts is breaking, but they’re all telling me it’s the other person’s parts. Ohh yeah, that in and of itself for $47 a month. Use it unlimited number of clients. White label is a crazy intelligent value when you see the thing installing stuff which if I could demonstrate in eight seconds you can have a full suite of plugins. Updated, installed, managed in a way that WordPress refuses to do that to me was a win cause it scratched a huge itch of mine so you could be up and running on a brand new host of any kind. In under 3 minutes, incredible #4. If you go up a level and you say Spence, I just want you to host this and be responsible for my clients because you’re hosting through a partnership with rocket or whatever $10 a month comes out of my $97.00 cost. That’s like equivalent to 150 a month on WP engine, but without the hassles of the cashing. Why wouldn’t I just allow you to act like a normal platform? Because I always own it. I can always move it. And the first site is 97, but if I put my clients I can have them pay $60.00 get paid a Commission from you of $20 and mark it up for my own services. Yeah. So you can make money up and down the chain. But that’s essentially what happens. I would say 80% of the people go with. The hosted fully supported version free unlimited e-mail. They add clients onto their for 60 a month and they know at any moment any. Moment. They can take the whole thing and all the software to go and nobody ever leaves, because unlike some of these companies, when you cancel, this is how the cancel goes. Cancel you get your money prorated back, you get a nice letter and bye bye. Take it all to go. That’s it. There’s no I’m not. I’m not playing games. You’re a human being, you.

Yeah. There’s too many companies that play games, as you say. It takes you seven or eight times to cancel, and then they send you an e-mail again saying are you really sure you wanted? To do all that, it’s like, oh, wait.

I mean, you know, rob, like we’re old enough to remember, but in the. Days. When we were young men and before being married and stuff, when you wanted to be in a relationship with people, you had to be good at relationships. It was very Shakespearean. And even today is a very happily, you know, I I I’m divorced. I have adult kids, but I have a very happy relationship and with the girlfriend everything today, those of us who’ve been around long enough understand the value of humanity, treating people with respect. And so when you’re talking to a customer, the best thing in the world is to be the person who says. Like that Jerry Seinfeld episode. I would like to break up with you, Spence. I’m like, ohh. That’s OK. No problem. And like, you’re not upset. I’m like, no, it’s fine. I’ll find somebody. And they’re like taking aback, like, you mean you’re not gonna fight? You’re not gonna keep my money. You’re not gonna make me argue. And as soon as you let them go, all of a sudden you become like the most valuable person. In the world. To them, and they’re like, well, maybe. I made a mistake. Maybe I should stick around.

I’ve done. I’ve done that and and then I’ve gotten to the point where if I’m hosting a site on my server, I’ll say. Here’s the backup. What? You give that to me? Yeah. For for a limited time, here’s the backup and and you tell me before your contract expires. I’m good and people will look at me and say but so and so would have charged me 500 bucks for that. I said I know as long as a you play by the rules and you play nice. I’m OK. It’s when you don’t play nice. Then I have a problem.

I mean. It it works both ways as well because for example. Yeah, even when it comes to the value proposition, I am not against license keys as a metaphor, but in reality, launch kit allows you to sign in to an unlimited number of uses, unlimited clients with your just your launch a file account. Why? I wrote a special endpoint for myself because I found it incomprehensible. That I had to log in to 22 different. Companies to get the key and keep using the key on clients. So like anytime I set up a client site I had to have 22 different keys from 22 different people and 20 and I’m. Like what the? Hell, do you think I’m doing all day long with launch kit? You sign in with the same user thing that’s stored in your browser for 30 days. Until you clear it, any client site you go to, you put in the free Launch Kit plugin, you immediately sign in and choose anything it launches and installs because to me, that’s how the world should work. Like Concierge does not mean making more work for your people. Staying at your hotel, it’s making their vacation amazing. Or the business trip or whatever.

So I have to ask you, since you have an own one solution, how do you what do? You use for support.

So this is the part that’s fascinating in a world of I just read again, Paul Jarvis’s book company of one. He’s got a new updated in 2021, but like this concept is I started as a solopreneur as a kid and I had lots of businesses at the height of my WordPress experience. I had a company with one other guy.

Yes.

We had a couple million users at first Web designer, this guy Dinah Travaris. He had maybe like 12 or 15 freelancers working for us and it was not bad, but it just didn’t turn out when I did one WDTV, I had 12 people working for me from my own audience, I realized. That I can automate the delivery of personal service by focusing 100% on the things that matter. So go back to this metaphor of you have IKEA and Spence curated all of the inventory of stuff in the IKEA kit and wrote the documentation with or without help. If somebody sticks to what’s in the kit, I know your answer before you ask the question. If I have a partnership with rocket.net, which I give to you out of my profit margin of $97.00, it’s cause I selfishly know that every single client hosted has the exact same setup. There’s all the variability baked out of it now.

Yes.

I have had. A few clients and this is the trick so. Kids, listen up here. I’ve had a couple of clients who found the space between the $97.00 unlimited e-mail questions and the hands on support, so it WP launch fight if if you ask me to do something or be involved in a zoom call, I love it. It’s 300 an hour, 1250 for this 25105 thousand, but if you want to go at it. With the 97 base, you just have to ask e-mail questions. This one client started writing these encyclopedia Britannica question and they said to her I’m gonna do two things. First of all, I’m gonna give you free hands on support because you were clever enough to figure out the loophole. Second of all, as I’m going to clarify for people, you get one question a day.

Yeah, it’s good.

Unless I say otherwise, and if you ask me something that is beyond the scope of what like? Is what’s wrong with the system? How do I do? I’m gonna answer you with here’s your answer, but you really need to schedule paid call and people respect that. Like if you were in the concierge conversation at The Four Seasons and you said I need you to fly to LA for me and pick up some stuff they’d be like, I don’t think that’s included in the concierge service. I could tell you how to do it, and I think people respond when you give them an honest answer, but I also try to reward people I used to do a clever thing called giving a pony, so if somebody finds something I did wrong, I love to know about it. Whenever that happens, I publicly praise the person for finding Spence was wrong. Admit what was wrong. I fix it and then I give them a big gift of a pony. And it was a way of saying I want to always be transparent and human so that people can understand that I’m approachable. Cause how else am I gonna improve the products or? The services.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Do you keep track of support? Do you use an internal WordPress support system or do you go to?

The system is actually ironically simple because I’m a company of one now. I mean, I still have people that work for me. Remotely and stuff but. I used my help Adobe launch file as my central e-mail. All roads point to that, but what happens is it’s the best tool of all because it’s always with me. I’m Inbox Zero and I do have a CRM, fluent CRM, which is what is part of the kit part. For automated things like when you buy from me, the fluent serum does it, but if you have a question, I actually prefer it just comes in regular. Because I could just go Bing. Bing Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. And Gmail, Google Apps mail filters all the spam out. Now if you have two 3-4 people, you need a ticketing system, in which case you use something like fluent ticketing or you use one of those other apps that I’ve used in the past, but the actual use of e-mail is remarkably nimble and it doesn’t require me to do tickets. Now. I also want to say. Some of our. You know, partners and stuff that have a team of 100 people, they can’t obviously do. That, I mean, you can’t have 100 people sharing one e-mail, but that’s not my problem. I mean, at the moment it can scale to a very high number. And over time, as this being the starting point of I, I think something much larger, I am imagining that there will come a time when there will scale out, but I also want to point you to a guy who used to be in Canada. He was in Vancouver, Marcus friend, who started plenty of fish. One computer grew it to like $100 million it was. Bought out by the the dating site match.com and he he famously.

That’s good. Thank you.

Yeah.

Focused all his energy, which I love to do as well. And how can he eliminate as many unnecessary things as possible? Yeah. To grow a company. That one dude with one server in his apartment in Vancouver can run, and that’s what I’m trying to do here. So so far so good.

Yeah, and and answering e-mail gives you a personal touch too, which most people miss. So though kind of the way I I ride with my clients with support is have two options. They can e-mail me directly which have no problem or I do have a support portal. I should say I’m running the awesome support plugin, the paid version of WordPress so they can go there and open. Ticket. I would bet you 3/4 of my clients would rather just e-mail me, which means I typically will cut and paste it into the support portal because I like to keep track of the requests for historical reasons to say OK, did we see something? Did we not? But I don’t force it cause I think where a lot of agencies make a mistake is. They force stuff like that on the client and and really at the end of the day, all the client or the customer wants to get the work. Done and I can and.

What a pain. Worse, yes.

The yeah, exactly. And I think forcing stuff on the client is a big mistake cause that’s a sure way to **** them. Yeah.

I mean, if you go to WP launch fire again, this cannot be for all companies, but for me it works and it could work for company of up to 12 cuz I’ve proven this. There’s you click on contact and it in Plainview as my picture. You notice my e-mail in Plainview. My phone number business in Plainview people have texted me called me File Man. I don’t care because The thing is as you just said, I make it as easy as possible for you to know I’m a real person.

Yeah it does.

Totally accessible now. Yeah, this was 4th of July weekend here in the. It’s and I had people who reached out to me. But you know what I can do? I can just say on e-mail while I was having a beer like, hey, I’m not working today. Talk to you tomorrow. They’re like, oh, sorry, I forgot. It’s 4th of July. Yeah. How much better is that then? I submitted a ticket with the number and it disappears for 30 days. And like, nobody knows what the Hell’s. Happening. Those are the people you know you serve.

Yeah. And then you? Yeah, it’s about being proactive and it was 4th of July, you know, on Monday was July the 1st and Canada Day, same thing, our national birth. And I had several clients reach out to me from overseas and I did same thing. I sent a quick e-mail back saying I’m sorry I’m off today. Ohh, I’m sure up you know it. It doesn’t take much. Communication is 9/10 of the law and bearing it behind the ticketing system. If you wanna use one, that’s fine, but don’t bury your communication behind it and hide behind it actually say to these people you know, this is just communicate with them. That’s all they want. They don’t unless the site’s down or something major is going on, they they usually complain, right? So.

Yeah. I think at the end of the day and and then I have to say goodbye. I’m gonna help my son. We’re still moving in. We’re gonna go pick up some last limp gear from the old house. Is that what I aim to do? And if I put my flag in the sand cause I said this a year ago and it’s turned out to be true. I didn’t expect everything was gonna work out. As it has. But life brings those changes and I’m very excited when changes come my way. That I have to solve on the fly. I would encourage anybody for free to try out and try to launch kit. Come learn more.

Yep.

It’s free for certain features. There will be a completely free three month way of doing it. Here’s how stupid simple it is. It’s old school, the free, completely free is you get the plug in and then if you sign up for rocket, they’ll pay me a Commission instead of you paying me $47 a month. If you stay for three months so you can pay rocket. $90.00 and get $150.00 of value but you get it for the whole year or whatever it is. Or you can just do it the traditional way and you have a a full money back guarantee. Whichever way you do it. I can almost guarantee that nobody will cancel because we’ve tested it now across the last six months on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of users, and it just is exactly what I show in those videos. It is a way of having WordPress as a business owner and experiencer that opens the door to all of these things that would otherwise be so complex. And I feel like this is just the day one. But so there will be more from me on that. But otherwise, I just I’m I’m very grateful for you allowing me to share that with you today.

And I really. Appreciate if somebody wants to get a hold of you to talk about the product. How’s the best way?

Spencer help@wplauncher5.com or just go to wplauncherfi.com and all my socials are Spencer Foreman. You know, it’s Forman so Twitter and YouTube and well, YouTube. This is WP launch, but Facebook LinkedIn our spend. Performant.

Yeah. And if you want to learn more, make sure you check out Spencer’s Friday office hours, which he publishes quite frequently and shows on.

Yeah, that’s it. You can get it on the YouTube channel, WP Launcher Fi or you could go right to the lunch kit at wplaunchkit.com is where it’s on for the day that it’s on. But most of this stuff is on spencerforman.com. I have what’s called latest content and everything leads together. I’ve tried to keep everything Marie Kondo, right. I’ll be launched by Spencer Foreman. Those two sites will get you Everything Everywhere so you don’t get lost.

Thank you very much. Spencer, you have a wonderful day and we need to have this chat again. So appreciate you.

Rob, I love catching up with you. I hope to talk to you again soon