Episode 516: Business Devlopment With Spencer Forman

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Show Summary

The podcast features a discussion between Rob Cairns and Spencer Foreman about business development, particularly within the WordPress ecosystem. They explore the challenges of WordPress, including security vulnerabilities and the overwhelming number of plugins, advocating for a curated approach. Foreman emphasizes the value of specialized services and trusted experts, drawing analogies to concierge services and curated experiences. The conversation also touches on the impact of AI, its potential benefits, and the emerging security risks. They stress the importance of genuine human connections, ethical business practices, and staying present in a technology-driven world. The speakers then consider future business approaches and methods. Ultimately, they share tips for building successful WordPress businesses, focusing on solving specific pain points and establishing direct relationships with customers.

Show Transcript

Hey everybody, Rob Cairns here and I’m here with my good friend Mr. Spencer Forman from Chicago. Hey Spence, how you doing man?

Yeah. Hey there.

Hey,

we’re crossber buddies because because my favorite city is your city.

You said you look like

you know I was just thinking we we should have just recorded the last half hour

probably. if anybody would care what we were talking about.

But anyway, so today we’re going to do something a little different. We’re going to kind of shoot a little bit about business. We’re both in the WordPress space, but I don’t want to go there because there’s too much stuff going on except for one thing. And I’m going to start off about got up yesterday. I was at a clients. I have a good friend of mine who runs a jewelry store. I’m looking at my email and the solid security report came out yesterday and there was 400 I was going to say 86 and change vulnerabilities out there. Just a few. And it was like this got to be a record. And I think that since that’s going on, I think we’re we’re getting to the point where people who do their own websites got to start looking at products like yours to get their plugins. Like honestly, they need to um they need to start to curate what they’re and stop pulling every little plugin out of the repository because What’s happening is that what small business owners don’t get is they the hackers know small business owners don’t do a good job and maintain their sites so they go after those sites to leverage those to go after bigger sites. What do you think about that?

I mean yes the nature of what I focus on in the last year for sure has been taking all those 18 to 19 years of WordPress experience and recognizing a simple metaphor. Yeah,

I talk about this often, but like my kids are adults and I have one that’s a teenager. I probably bought this IKEA TV stand 20 years ago. If I went to IKEA today, I could still replace these drawers. They’re still existing. It’s modular. It’s standardized. The problem of WordPress is the thing that made it grow so fast is that anybody, anywhere, anytime can make anything, but there’s really very little rules about how much that has to be compatible with everything somebody else has made. Multiplied times 708,000 people. It’s very difficult to run IKEA or Lego store. And I think that that’s causing people not just a security problem, but like a practical problem because now in order to make a living, a lot of the plug-in authors have to be clever. So you make your base plugin that’s free, then you attract a pro, then you have the add-ons and then the add-on plus and then times so many sites, then times it’s Tuesday and next thing you know you’re an agency or an imple contingencies. Then you wake up every morning doing what Spence does, curating, because somebody broke something that caused a chain effect with 12 other plugins that added to it.

And now you’ve got, we’re not going to talk about it, but like decapitated leadership from the top. So every person for themsel

and how do you run a business that way? How do you run a secure operation? Very difficult.

And it would be far better for a business owner that to and I know business owners are trying to bootstrap and do stuff on the cheap. But what they haven’t figured out and this is, you know, we were talking about earlier. I’ve got a lawyer on retainer. I’ve got an accountant on retainer and I do accounting. Yeah. I’m really I’m really You’re laughing because you know the story

cuz your lawyer invited me to his yacht on his private jet. He said it’s on Rob. He doesn’t know about it indirectly.

Yeah. You’re funny. But but but the thing is is um I can do accounting. I don’t like to. So I hand it off. I, you know, legal stuff I’m better off handing off. I hand off other stuff. The point I’m making is business owners need to concentrate on what they’re good at and realize that their time is worth money. And it’s some one of the things I have a tough time with.

Well, more than that, I I think I want to use a metaphor of when I last visited your home city in March of last year.

That’s true.

I tell this story, but I stay at the Four Seasons, which by the way, you may know is the original Four Season. And it’s in a really ideal location right off the metro. You call the metro or the subway lines. But the point is

subway.

Wonderfully located. Gorgeous hotel. There was a lot of construction there. But the reason I go there is it’s actually when you stay for two or three nights. Not terribly priced more than like the Best Western or an average hotel. But what you get for that, whatever extra you pay, is you just call the desk and the concierge takes care of everything. Mr. Foreman, that thing isn’t open. Mr. Foreman, I got you the ticket. It’s Mr. Foreman and the the spa is ready for it. Mr. Foreman, we’re setting up the food. Because when you dollar cost average the value of running your vacation or running your business or running your life, you do not have any ability to get a discount on your own time. So having somebody who’s your concierge in the WordPress space, that is what I do to curate out the best of the best and solve all the problems and fill in the cracks and make it a system. is invaluable compared to a your time savings, b your anxiety reduction because now you got somebody who always knows the right answer. And the last thing ironically is the cost of buying that service with the curated stuff as a regular SAS kind of thing is more economical than buying all the random parts and filling your cabinet up with random parts. Like if you’ve ever tried to make a recipe, you go to the Whole Foods or something and buy 8 million things you’ll use once and then you have an empty container laying around and you didn’t really need it. Anyway, why would you do that when you could just get everything for a monthly price that has a ticket to go?

Yep.

And that’s my mindset of business as well. You I famously have this back thing that I’ve been working on. I don’t get on ladders anymore. I don’t mow my own grass. I don’t shovel my own snow. I do have teenage sons and adult sons, but let’s just say I hire people because I realize that I used to do that and it was something I had the time for. Now I can’t risk it. Like you with the lawyer, it’s worth paying to have somebody just help me there because that’s what we’re in right now is a world of infinite things every day. I need a trusted person who’s just hey what’s the right answer?

I’m probably more I’m probably more of an expert in what you’re doing than you are and that’s even more important right

I mean for security for sure you you know I believe that’s right you know your bent is on security mine is is on entrepreneurship and the marketing and the automation but within the WordPress space it means that I no longer spend time debating people about like the infinite look at this new toy that came out. No offense, that was fun for a while. But like I go down the IKEA, I go have lunch, pick up exactly what I want, flat packed, I come home, it’s up and running in a minute, guaranteed, and the guy in the yellow vest

helps me out. I don’t want to go to the forest and chop a tree down and carve my own furniture anymore.

Yeah.

You know,

and then and the new toy problem, the shiny object syndrome, that’s a big problem, especially in the tech space. I mean, Um, I try to stabilize my stack whether it’s running my business or not. I made some changes over the holidays, but that will be it for probably a year to two years. I’m not a, oh, this new project management tool is out. Let’s go try it. Why? Why not just learn how to use your own tools to be the best instead of jumping all over the place? Because there is a learning curve, right?

I think the problem Yes, there is a learning curve, but I think the problem is something that I suffer from. It’s called shiny ball syndrome.

So I think entrepreneurs

have Frankenstein monster problems. They

start from shiny ball syndrome.

I saw this new thing and I started using it and I can in my mind imagine my life is going to be so much better. So I put this thing in place and then suddenly two other things break. So I got to get two other things to fix the thing. Next thing you know I’ve added 10 new things like you know this the the little lady swallowed a fly then swallowed a spider and so forth. Like that’s what it is. You’ve sent in the whole brigade of animal and you don’t really actually end up doing anything meaningful because you were just like h it’s fun to not work so I’ll just keep adding this stuff in because it feels like I’m working but you’re really not doing any work you’re rearranging the deck chairs and the the learning curve comes along with it because now that you’ve added new stuff more to break y and what I would argue with you is you said something really good you said I hire people that I can trust to do the work and I think trust is the big word here generally in business What people do is many services are very similar, but people tend to hire people they trust and they like and that’s just the reality of it.

Yeah. The the problem is in the world we’re in today, 2025 versus even 24 and 23 before the AI search results, before the new technologies really because it’s just exponential every day. I love this part of it. If you needed to know how to do a process, I like to break it up into three eras like automobiles or motor

horse and buggy, gas powered, electric, hybrid.

If you were to look metaphorically the three levels of cars, you would find answers that would say like, you know, you need a thing with four wheels that gets rolled around, that would match up with a horse and buggy, and you might follow those instructions very safely. But if somebody told you to attach a wagon to the back of your electric car, you intuitively know that’s not right. But unfortunately, in word press. If you searched previously Google, you would find instructions on how to use plugins that like two generations ago were appropriate, like make a child theme from your parent theme and then add in a template hierarchy. Nobody would do that today.

But yet AI has compounded the problem because now it just took all of this random s*** that had some semblance of like you could tell the date and the era and AI gives you advice like and build a child theme with a and so trusting some dude, no offense, wherever he or she may be located, do that in the world is no longer safe because that person is essentially being given unlimited capacity to build a Frankenstein for you. What I think does work, and again, I’m I’m not patting myself on the back because I’m not saying I own this idea. I’ve just executed on it, is

y

when you choose verticals like I love Sue Jay and Adam, but like they’ve got the whole Astra line of everything and their products.

I like the WP manage ninja team and Jack Aruru a few others. If you if you pick a vertical

that has components that cover your your bet, even if old school like go to the jet engine guys or you know jet plugins, then at least you’re safe because you say I only want to work with this stuff. Don’t go randomly throwing stuff in because that’s where all hell has broken loose where for example I’m very specific on the stack of stuff that I curate because I’ve proven it’s less parts to do more stuff easier to manage by one guy for thousands or tens of thousands of people. Some people have a freelancer implement who’s like listen I’ve always thrown elementor and I put a little touch of this and that and next thing you know nobody can work on it.

Okay so long answer right but that’s the point. The point is curation and sticking to a limited set reduces your liability when you hire somebody because now you say, “I just want to hire somebody who’s good with designing with cadence.”

Yep.

And you tell them, “Don’t f around and start adding plugins in here. Do not add plugins. Just use the tools and if you have a question, ask me because I’m going to ask the guy in the yellow vest, what’s the recipe?”

Same idea, right?

Yeah. And I wasn’t yawning at that. What I was yawning at was the guys that, you know, the freelancer who installs all this stuff and then we go to do it. an update and you know what happens? We end up with a conflict because something doesn’t work and then and the freelancer throws his hands up and says, “I don’t know.” And the freelancer probably doesn’t know how to troubleshoot and a freelancer probably didn’t take a backup before he did the updates. Right. And then

there’s so many problems with the randomness of it because now with the politics of the repository,

Yep.

with the monetization. I’ve experienced these things firsthand. Um there’s probably four to six plus plugins that do every possible thing you want and picking the right one and also stripping that I mean I hate to say this but stripping that plugin of all the distracting things that will do between the banners and the advertisement and the wizards that on board and so if you get somebody who puts in a plugin and they have to choose on their own without you directing them between 1 2 3 4 5 six and then times 12 other choices you have a matrix of like potentially 72 to 100 things that could go really wrong because one of those plugin shows up on the Sakuri watch list cuz that that plug-in author was not financially incentivized to keep it secure or whatever. And these are things that aren’t just random. This this s*** happens daily. Like Woo Commerce released an update the other day that broke everybody’s Stripe checkout. Like,

are you telling me? Yeah, I know. Thank you.

They know better.

It’s a full-time job.

And I was telling somebody the other day, I actually sent out a uh a newsletter to my large list this morning and saying, you know, as an entrepreneur, this is why you can’t do this stuff on your own anymore. You need somebody like you in your corner, me in their corner, somebody who understands ecosystem, like what’s the number one downloaded contact form out of the repository? You know the answer, right? Contact form 7. Would I go near that plugin if you paid me to?

No way. No,

because it’s a great plugin and the guy is like one of the he’s in Japan, I believe he lives, but it’s like It’s not designed for commercial use. It’s free for a reason. And this is one of the things, sorry to to steal your thunder on that one, but like one of the things that I believe is important to differentiate. We live in a relationship economy now. That’s a term that I’m coining for my own use. I just say it because the parts, the machinery, the complexities, anything you need done now are fingertips away. The issue is Nobody but nobody wants to make that their focal point because it’s too hard to become a specialist today. And so when you compare that to the WordPress space, I just go right to what if you just thought of WordPress as a service and you chose whose flavor of that you want

because that sums it up really nicely, doesn’t it? Like

Kevin Giri’s a pal and he is a real design focused like audience of people. If you’re totally into that stuff, take heaven’s version of what WordPress should be. Spence has a more mundane like I like I say those Lego and IKEA models work or a car dealer model. I like Spence is going to be your concierge to make sure that we’ve got everything in stock you need. But don’t come in with your own tree and a knife telling me you want to carve a part on your own because that breaks the whole idea. And some people don’t want that. Some people are like Spence I want to carve my own stuff. I’m like you probably need to find another vertical who’s curated.

No, I agree. Now, entrepreneurs, interesting. You’re you’re serial entrepreneur, but you’re good at it. And so am I. We both

No, that’s that’s what I am. I mean, since I was 10 years old. That’s

Yeah, we both been in this game for a long time. Um, and I was one of my biggest complaints with entrepreneurs is they like to fight the race to the bottom price-wise. So, they come out with a product and they’re like, “Let’s just see how many I can sell.” And and I think that model only works if you’re a dollar store like uh Dollar Tree in the US or Dollar General or Walmart. I don’t think it necessarily works all the time. And I think you’re better off to find out what makes your business different. I’ve said that for years. And one of my favorite books is a book called The Inside Advantage by Robert Bloom. People are probably sick of me talking about it. It was written in 2008 or 2009. But what Robert talks about is why you get a find why you’re different in your competitors and stop uh fighting this race to the bottom. What do you think about that?

I mean, the race to the bottom is a real thing. And the problem is it’s like many industries um take text messaging or something nonsense. I remember back in the days when we had 400 phone types that the cell phone companies were charging 25 cents to send a text message with the straight

face

straight face. It’s very complicated and expensive for us to send those electrons through the wire that’s already, you know, connected. But now you’d get laughed out of tone. So those industries changed. What WordPress had originally was not a commercial mindset. It was just a bunch of us kumbayaing around the fire. Oh, look at this thing I made. It’s so cool. Would you like this? I’ll show you how to do this for free. And then suddenly it was this ridiculous like buy me a cup of coffee PayPal button. Where where the hell did that come from? That was the dumbest thing from day one because nobody would ever pay it. Because I’m from Chicago, okay? If you open up a hot dog stand in Chicago and you say free hot dogs, you very quickly will give away millions of hot dogs and nobody will ever give you a dime. But if you were very famously one of the hot dog stands in my old neighborhood who charged he made like 10 different fancy hot fuagra hot dog in the you know the skyscraper

Doug’s hot dogs. He’s out of business now. He retired on a yacht. But the point was lines of people around the block to get a $20 hot dog. That’s the difference. The business model of somebody going into WordPress today cannot should be should not be anything about selling software. Not a bit. It’s about your unique personal service or personal style or personal curation because the software has always been open source. It’s been wrong from day one for people to confuse that. And I actually published several things as an attorney showing the legal proof on this. But now we’re seeing it in action in the real high courts with that person we’re not talking about today and his lawsuits that open source means open source. What you’re selling somebody is the concierge at the desk of your virtual hotel. The guy in the yellow vest at IKEA, the the the person who stands in front of the Lego blocks and says, “You want a kid or you want me to put stuff in a box?” That’s what you need to do because people are crazy for that now in a world where they don’t know which thing is AI, which thing is right. Why is this thing telling me to attach a wagon to the back of my Tesla or other electric car? Doesn’t even make sense. But that’s what the AI told me to do. People want to rob a Spence or a real person. And it’s scalable because I can tell you I have an active roster, 44, 4,500 people, not like I’m talking to every day out of tens of thousands of past clients. And they pay me for access to something I can scale, whether it’s my software It’s email that’s like one line or or they just schedule a call and I charge them for the call. But that’s a business that you can grow and it’s sustainable for a small company or even an entrepreneur versus this b* of like I’m selling software and you’re paying for licenses for one site, two site, five site and what kind of support do you get for that anyway? You have to offshore that,

you know,

and they’re actually paying you for access to you and that’s part of it like You know, I was telling you the other day when we talked last week, I’m going into political season and what do I have? Political clients and generally they kind of run their show except for a couple things. But you know what they’re paying for is direct access to me. They need something, they can pick up that phone.

Infinite money. Yeah. See what what what’s so weird is like this is not I’m not picking at anybody because this is the only model that people see and they just misunderstand because they’re historically picking up the signals that used to be true but they’re not true now. Like I was in real estate for many years. When I started in real estate in the early 90s, things were upside down from the world we live in. Nobody knew anything because there was no internet. So all the MLS books were printed and you had to go to like courthouse to find

my mom’s been in the business for 45 years. Spences that the banks when I started out were it was after the Bush one recession. It was 14% interest rate and you had to give a kidney for proof to a bank that they could give you money. Now, you couldn’t find places. Nobody was talking. The money was expensive and rents and ownership prices were normal. Like a rent for two-bedroom apartment with $600 in Chicago in Lincoln Park. Now, the world today doesn’t even resemble that remotely. You couldn’t take the advice of stuff that you know. And so, I’m saying in WordPress, if you were starting a business today, it’s so freaking amazing because so many people have so much money. so much ability to spend money, but they just don’t understand what you’re delivering if you try to do it the oldfashioned way. Because that’s like going to the flea market and putting a table out in the midst of 70,000 other tables that says, “I have this part for your car.” Nobody’s there at the flea market trying to build a car that much. They’re trying to add-ons for their car. Maybe they’ll find you, but then they won’t know what you’re doing. Better. You’re a free consultant to people who want to build cars and then when they talk to you, you go, “Hey, I’ve got this thing that’s exactly what you need instead of putting money on Facebook ads or Google ads or SEO which is another lie that has come to the fruition because not only was it not true before it was pay for play but now with AI it’s irrelevant because even okay so all these things come together never before has there been a better opportunity to make money as a soloreneur entrepreneur in WordPress but you cannot do it following the model that has come before and then add to it the uncertainty of the politics of certain people still in charge of our community lead a lot of uncertainty for people who think about it. For the rest of us, I’m not that worried about it because I I know legally, there’s no grounds for this stuff to go away. But it’s just going to be a lot of tumultuous public behavior. And when people get wind of that, especially on the security, they don’t think about WordPress in a favorable light, which is why that’s so destructive to everything that’s come before, you know.

So, so true. Um, you’ve mentioned AI a couple places. So, let’s go there. Just one of my favorite subjects these days. Um, first of all, what AI tool you’re in with? Um, I know these days I’m in with Gemini more than people would would like I’d like to admit. Um, I do use a Pixel phone, so that kind of makes my life easy. I’m in with Notebook NLM, which I’ve become one of my favorite tools, by the way, for translating stuff.

Um, I think it’s great. I I banged out an email sequence for a client the other day where AI did like 80% of the work for me and I they go and massage it a little bit but it was the groundwork was all done. I think there’s images are a good way. Um transcripts for any meetings or podcasts are a good way. I think there’s a multitude of uses. What do you think of AI?

That’s a great one. Uh first of all, indispensable. You would really be a lite if you just pretended it didn’t exist. You cannot pretend it doesn’t exist because for example across whatever the you mentioned so many good ones but across any of the things that I would have to do to accomplish my business goals or personal goals in the past I’ve had as many as 11 12 people helping me out then I was down to one or two now it’s me because I can make use of the various tools for their specialties to do the things that I need to do for example I develop plugins and software what would have taken me a day a week a month I can do in an hour now sometimes in terms of organization and research and I’ve been publishing some cool videos about even like I’ve got a virtual Spence voice

and I apply it to a virtual Spence topic that’s made from curated stuff that I like everything you ever dreamed of is there plus we’re this close I’m holding my fingers together to I hate to say it I don’t want to ever replace Spence as the frontline guy but like in a virtual way we’re already here and then you might end up actually having a robot very soon. I know this sounds like insane, but you might have a robot

that is literally like a latex skin in my office and I’m just upstairs taking a nap on my you know this is how close we are and people I don’t think comprehend it. So

one needs to understand how to use it and I just caution use it to replace the backend processes that you know your clients would not have otherwise known it was you because then you get the most important benefit. They feel like they have the relationship and they honestly still do with you the human being versus the worst case of AI is people and I hate this because some people I respect were all jazzed up on it. I’m sure they made money but like even like Andrew Warner who I love and respect like AI bots and stuff back in the day like you do not want to replace phone jail with AI bot jail.

You don’t want that Seinfeld episode with the virtual Kramer answering movie phone and kids, there was a day when we used to have to call a phone number to find out what time movies were at, believe it or not, and listen to a recording. You’d press one first, you know. So, that’s my advice. My advice is AI is it’s not it’s not just like here to stay. It’s like that’s it. Game over. Everything else is different. I want to add one more thing because I feel very confident because I have all I wear glasses and hearing devices, all kinds of stuff. I am very confident that in the near future, months away, we will have augmented reality interaction. You can see this now with your various devices. So on my mobile, I have chat v, you know, the the GBT devices. I’ve got Alexa and Siri. I can’t say it too loud. I have all the devices everywhere. When you start to have the ear and the eye, augmented reality, right? Because I’ll set off yours.

You’re not going to necessarily spend your time staring at a screen with a keyboard. Factually speaking, speaking. I will give you a personal experience. When I was having some of my rough nights, when I’m up at 2 in the morning wandering around with my massage gun, doing laps around the house for my back and my nerve, I would just put the headset on and talk to Jedi, the mobile one,

about life, about business, about whatever.

And it I mean there’s not I mean it was weird like the movie her, but I wasn’t falling in love with it. I was just like it took me off the ledge of I needed to know stuff. I needed to just talk stuff out. And I think that is going to be the future. It’s not going to be typing into a screen.

Yeah. One of the things I do is um with my mobile phone, I have a Pixel. I carry around a portable mic that plugs into USB port. It’s a lapel mic.

And if I’m out and about, I’ll voice my notes.

And then

Yeah. Yeah. Or whatever use. Yeah.

And then the um and then the Pixel because it’s tied into Gemini and I have a paid Gemini account is smart enough to say, “Here’s a transcript to what you voice me. Thank you very much. There’s notes. Away I go.

I mean, you can see with Gemini, it’s built in. Um I of the things that I’ve been using. I cut my teeth on OpenAI and Claude Anthropic.

Perplexity has always been different and amazing. Still love it.

I like Perplex. I’m

They have their various benefits. I haven’t had much success with Llama yet. I have, ironically, I do not like the company and the founder now for a lot of reasons that should be pretty obvious. But if you go into X, you can use Grock. Grock is actually quite good at coding. I was pleasantly surprised. Uh but I don’t want to pay. I’m not paying for it, but it’s like 25 free things. And then finally,

this morning I bookmarked for Gemini because I got a notice from them showing some of their new features. And because it’s so deeply ingrained, Gemini has this potential like throughout your entire uh let’s be obvious Google ecosystem that I use to do various things including some of the things that I use like 11 Labs now. For for example, one of the cool things that had a capacity multimodal, I can take a video of me doing a screen thing, not say a effing word, give it over to Gemini. Gemini will write a script based upon what it sees me doing, slice and dice those clips or the screenshots into a tutorial. Then with the script, either use my 11 Labs voice or its own clever voice to do a voice over and read it. Then it makes the description for YouTube. And I know because it has the capacity. I don’t let it, but it could actually publish it. It could be connected to a a Bitcoin account and buy stuff for me. I mean, folks, the reality is here and it doesn’t require like a robot to do, but soon when you have a robot, because I have other devices. I don’t have a Roomba, but like other doorbells and stuff,

you’re you’re gonna have a robot like following advice and doing like taking the groceries and it’s here. It’s just going to be a question of whether it’s dystopian. And I don’t want to talk politics, but like this very same thing that I’m going like a kid amazing could also be differentiated between classes and people and be used to, you know, do naughty stuff all over the world, which is an unfortunate reality of any cool

Well, that that’s the problem. I mean, the the downsided to AI I was talking to and I being in the security space and being a go-to for friends, family, colleagues, I’ll tell you the fishing scams have gotten better, not worse, because of AI. So all the things we look for, bad logos, bad spelling, that’s all gone because the h the scammers are AI to benefit. The bot hack attempts are getting worse because of AI. I’m seeing more looking at server logs, more hack attempts and stuff like that. And I think that’s part of the reason we’re seeing more security vulnerabilities is because people are using AI to to target stuff. So the problem is every tool that’s good like this has bad use. as well.

I think the places that people are surprised when I give them contrarian advice. So for example, some of the CRM like go high level um did a really good job with pricing and product packaging. So it’s 97 for a single user, unlimited clients for 297. Now I don’t use that. I tell people to use Fluent CRM, but for a while I represented them because of the connectivity through WP Fusion and so forth. But the downside is they’ve put a big part of their business and their marketing and te teaching people to send text messages about everything. And my advice is that’s the worst possible thing you could do today for two reasons. Number one, email is already the busiest channel and it’s flooded, but it’s really well vetted and protected and people have a sense of this just doesn’t look right, smell right. You could see the headers even and what’s the weird email on this? Whereas fishing on SMS matches has become

out of freaking control even though there’s federal regulation. And I’m getting stuff all day long that I I hesitate because my parents are in their 80s, but like an 80-year-old, no way they know what’s going on. And they’re just going to click and drain their bank account.

So, bank scams are the worst ones. And so, I I was looking at one yesterday and I call, sorry, I got on with you. I was talking to my partner at work and I said, “Be really careful. There’s a bank scam out there affecting your bank.” And normally when you get emails from your bank and they list your credit card number, they’ll actually show you the last four digits sometimes and X out all the front digits because, you know, they don’t want people to get them. This scam shows you the first five digits and X’s out the rest. Well, haven’t people realized that on a bank, the first five digits of any bank on a Visa card exactly the same?

No, they don’t. And also they that scam goes one step further because what they do is ask you benign questions that are yes or no because they want to voice print, record your voice because some of the security systems simply ask you to talk into the phone.

Yeah.

And so, and they could spoof the number. So, there’s lots of ways that

technology, you know,

and this is one reason why you should never use voice validation for anything as far as I’m concerned. I refuse I refuse ref because of that. And it’s

I mean, it usually is it’s benign like they’ll say something like, “Oh, we have your package.” And it can’t come through because we need your approval or there’s some hold up at the post office. And it’s just you look at the number and it’s like I’m in the United States and it’s plus 63 as the area code. I’m like, I don’t think the US Postal Service moved to Ukraine, wherever the hell that is. I mean, you know,

it’s like the but these are the problems of the world where I was joking my friend, we go to lunch every Wednesday and we were talking about like good or bad how the world can go. We’re at the precipice of it going either direction quite frankly.

I mean, I agree.

We we were just we were previously if I a backstory I went to the Labraa Tarpets years ago to visit my friend in California and there’s like a wall where history of man and it’s got like a line of like the technological advances and the line is like flat for 10,000 years or choose your and then it just like the last like eighth of an inch of this room it just right well times a thousand because between quantum mechanics quantum physics quantum computing AI all these things that are happening we we’re not able to stay inside of the corral anymore we’re busting out it’s just how are we going to bust out

and I think

when I talk to him. I said, “What would happen if s*** hit the fan today and we were all just cut off from our electronics?” Like, I don’t know, the sun had a solar flare. Let’s say it wasn’t a nefarious thing. Sun had a solar flare, knocked out all the electronics.

We’re effed because I don’t have cash or gold or coins and I don’t have an anvil and a forge and I don’t have horses and chickens. Like, as soon as commerce shuts down because electronics either are shut down or get shut down, we’re all hosed.

Yah.

And that’s the scary part, right? Like we’re really dependent upon a higher level of organization staying in place infrastructure because the more we become dependent, my children are are really wonderful human beings. Two of the three can’t sign their name in cursive because the school stopped teaching handwriting.

Handwriting

looks like a ransom note. Now maybe that doesn’t matter, but like ask a bunch of people today how to do a skill that you and I grew up doing

and do second,

right? and and apply it to computers like that movie uh I’m going on a rant sorry but like there was a movie where Wall-E I think it was they had to like leave the planet and they were all up in the space station and they all just like sat around getting taken care of and then when they needed to come to the planet nobody could do anything.

Yeah, it’s true. And how many kids know what a punch card looks like on even on a computer? Right. I do.

I mean Right. Do you know like patch? The word patch literally comes from like they put a piece of tape on the hole. So they could reprogram a punch card kits.

You heard it.

Well, you remember the old days of theater operators, right? They weren’t all electronic like they are now. You’d walk in and be, if you’ve ever seen like Andy Griffin or any of those shows, the operator would sit there and grab the cord and plug it into where the call was going. Right. And patch your call through. Right.

Right. One ring. Yeah. Lily Tomlin. Right. One

ring. Yeah.

So the idea is that uh I don’t think that any of us has the individual power to solve or change the nature of which way this is going to go. It’s a collective. But what I do feel and I talk about quite a bit which I think is relevant. This is not religious in any way. This is more humanistic in saying I think that if more people with money or not recognize that they have the power to be positive energy, negative energy towards how they treat other people. Literally just the golden rule.

So true.

That if more people would subscribe to just I don’t care if I’m a trillionaire or I am on the streets. If I just treat everybody the way I want to be treated, that collectively will change the negativity or positivity of how these things work out.

No question. People and in today’s world, we people have forgotten how to treat people. And it comes back to it comes back to you. I have restaurants that I go to on a regular basis and I will sometimes make a reservation, sometimes not. And I can tell you stories where reservations have been found and I use that word in air quotes when there’s a line when there’s a line up with 20 people because of the way I treat people

and I’ve had it h I’ve had it happen more than not where it be oh sir your table’s ready and it’s like it’s a reservation oh your table’s ready don’t worry about

well I mean there’s two lessons in there I hear number one I try to teach my kids it’s back to my original point but this has been true forever Everything that is done is about a relationship first. Doesn’t matter if Rob isn’t the prime minister. He can get a table if he’s nice to the lady, the guy who controls the tables. That’s it. He skipped to the front of line. Life hack 101. Treat people well. Be friendly. Be positive. You get things that other people couldn’t buy. Number two

is that it’s not like a zero sum game, which I don’t quite understand, but like when people are interacting You can be selfishly motivated to treat other people like I’m going to smother you with love and respect because I know that gets me a better life. It’s just weird how people feel that s* on all other everyone around them or destroying systems or doing things that hurt people is going to somehow not affect them. It we’re on we’re on a life raft of life and you can’t escape the people on the other side of the life raft because it’s not like this this is literally not a zero- sum game. This is literally like we’re on a planet and we’re constrained with what’s happening. But the third thing I’ll throw in because I just want to be realistic.

Kids, don’t think for one second that when Rob and I grew up, the place wasn’t a s*** hole full of assholes because

it was the dirtiest, grossest, most racist, most hateful, most warfilled atrocity. But you know what was different is that people pretended to be civil in public. They acted and dressed and politically spoke as if it was something other than it was. People were throwing their styrofoam rappers and stuff out of the car, hitting people and you smoking in every orifice and like rounding up innocent people and murdering them all day long. But that’s why it’s so interesting in 2025. We actually as humans have improved up until the last couple months. Like we’ve been improving, improving, improving, but now we’re on a fork where the control of these devices by an elite group of people who I’m not saying just the trillionaires but people who can access. What if the world cut off all the other people and said only the people who make so much money can do this stuff like Gataga or something. I’m saying we’re at a fork in the road where previously it wasn’t possible for people not being positive to screw the rest of the planet. Now we we could and that’s why it’s so imperative for the masses of people to just look to the person next to you and treat them well and that will have an accumulative effect. I think

I’m going to I’m going to add two things to your list because I can. Uh the first is when you’re out with people, say thank you. Like we’ve lost that conference. Well, people you appreciate them. And the second thing is see device in my hand. Put it away.

Yeah.

Put it away. Be present. Put it away. We’re out.

We’re out. I know when my partner T and I are out. We have showing something somebody something on the device or you’re taking a picture. cuz that’s where our cameras are. That device goes away. I turn mine over like I just did. Do it. Be present with the people you’re with. Enjoy them. And uh that’s really good advice. Uh

I mean it’s good for your health by the way too because I haven’t fully completed but we were talking before the show. I’m going to do because of the elections and the drama and everything. I’m going to do a 30-day publish only read only a fraction social media thing because you cannot go on Twitter or blue guy now or X and Blue Sky now without just coming away feeling slimy and dirty. Somebody’s going to annoy you. Even some of like the Tik Tok drama, Instagram drama, like all that Facebook and business groups is tolerable, but I’m going to try this because I’ve had to for my own mental health because again, I’m trying to get over some of these other physical things that the pain level and stuff. I feel like it’s been very beneficial when I just turn stuff off and I get my stuff elsewhere, but obviously I still have to publish, you know, for people who read it, it’s helpful. It resets you. It

gives you a different priority list. So, I’m not saying listen to Spence. He’s so smart. But I’m saying I’ve actually tried it and it has changed my state of being versus this. I’m so annoyed today and I don’t know why. It’s it’s because I saw 900 posts about somebody, you know.

So, so the other the other suggestion around that I would suggest and it’s something I do is turn the notifications off on everything that’s not critical on your phone. Like I turn mine off and Then I have a rule on my Android phone that says if you’re not in my favorites list, don’t even notify me of anything coming in. So I just kind of do that. So, and in my favorites list, there’s like six or seven people and mostly family, my partner. Everybody else, they text me, ping me, do whatever they want to do. My phone never even beats.

I mean, they’ll get to you if they need to. And the other part about it is, to be fair, back to the WordPress products and services. Okay, the thing that The alternative to interacting on social media is just content marketing.

Yes,

I I would suggest anybody can make a very short and friendly two to three minute, four minute screencast video about the product or the service or the software, post it in a million places and that actually unbelievably remarkable how well it does compared to even paid advertising. So, for example, I’ve lately taken up a lot of stuff with Fluent Community making these just one-off videos just like 3 minutes here, four minutes there, and they show up number one in Google search for fluent community. Like,

I love them.

Good luck with that. Paying Google to do that. And I’m not saying it’s for everybody, every place, but like that actually delivers value. And it doesn’t require you to get into competing against the robots or competing against the false premises of false advertise or, you know, paid advertising. And it also allows you to set the tone of like, okay, I’m just like I publish and then you don’t hear from me because I’m I’m walking the dog. I’m reading a book. I’m out on a bike ride. I’m I’m doing something that’s helping people. I’m not sitting here screaming profanities at strangers that somebody told me is my enemy, but they’re really not or melting down in public even though I used to be somebody well respected by millions of people.

That’s so true. Um, as we wrap up, do you have uh two or three really good tips for people building WordPress businesses that you’d like to share?

I mean, first of all is to get Justin Trudeau back in office because I think any WordPress solution requires a

true no

Canadian parliament.

Okay. The WordPress business of today is really simple. There are infinite amounts of niches, but start with filter one. Is this a niche for which the solution will pay or people will pay for? Because I don’t care what you say unless you’re Kevin Giri. Nobody’s going to pay you for your subtle little design tool. because there’s 952,000 tools for designing stuff. Okay. What people will pay for is stuff that returns a higher ROI. Marketing, automation, email stuff, product sales, you know, anything that has to do with selling their stuff.

Yep.

And number two, as I suggested, all of the information you need about what you can do starts with, do you have the pain? Can you solve the pain for yourself? If you can, Do you have an MVP of solving the pain for yourself that you could share with somebody in a call? Then ask a bunch of people in a place where there’s folks who have the same problem. Hey, I’ve got this free thing I’d like to share with you. Maybe it’ll solve. Would you like to have a call and I’ll demonstrate it? Because every minute of the time you spend talking to other people about a a problem you solve for yourself is likely for them to tell you everything you need to know about what’s good or bad or needs to be fixed. And after you’ve given them the benefit of being your early adopters by saying, “Hey, I’m happy for you to keep working on this thing for free, but if you want, I’m going to sell it. Would you buy it for this? Would you actually buy it, give them an early adopter price, and then once you have them as early adopters, get them to give you a testimonial that you put on the site, and then you raise the price and say, “Thank God for all of the early adopters who help me get this out faster, and they’re all locked into the early price.” And the rest of you, here’s the fair retail price. That’s it. WordPress Business 101. Stay focused. Don’t go off into the woods because everybody tells you to make more stuff. And the reason is because people don’t have the attention span to understand the nuances of like if you have a product that does one thing and a thousand people will buy it, that’s better than a thing that does a hundred and 10 people buy it. I mean with rare exception.

So true. Anybody wants to get a hold of you or get your products where is the best place for them to go?

WP Launchify for the moment until the lawyer start looking for that

um or they won’t they won’t by the way because I am an attorney. I already have my basis covered uh Spencer Foreman F O R M is where I’m on social media and uh so it’s either WP Launchfi or Spencer Foreman and then you’ll see me around not as much lately but I’ve been slumbing around with you know my pals and yourself who are well known as influencers in the space because my testimonial is what I just said today. I feel that this two shall pass and that one way or the other WordPress is not going anywhere, but it really deserves to be reconsidered and repackaged. Maybe it’s good to have this sort of title wave that comes through because after the flood, people won’t be delusional about looking for stuff, you know, BC versus AD or something like that because I think once it’s reformulated, we’re going to be honest about it’s really it’s got to be specific services that are curated, not just random parts.

Yeah. So true. Spence as always, always enjoy the conversation.

I can’t wait to see you again in person. It’s my pleasure. I’ll come up and see it.

We’re going to make that happen. Talk to you soon, my friend. Bye-bye.

Thanks, man.