Open Source is Freedom
Kathy and Michelle share stories of connecting with website builders and small business owners who don’t know anything about WordPress, and the interesting insights and discussions that happen when we talk to people outside of the WordPress space. On the continuum of easy almost-built-for-you site builders to hand-coded HTML sites on bare metal servers, WordPress provides the greatest flexibility and extensibility for long term growth. And yet, sometimes getting started fast on a hosted platform is the easiest way for some. But Kathy and Michelle have a sneaking suspicion that eventually, we all end up going for freedom eventually… and that freedom starts with WordPress.
Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Start your week smiling with your friends, Kathy Zant and Michelle Frechette. It’s time to get ready for some weekly motivation
Speaker 1 00:00:07 With WP Motivate. Happy Friday, Kathy.
Speaker 2 00:00:15 Is it Friday?
Speaker 1 00:00:16 Thank God, yes.
Speaker 2 00:00:17 . Why? Okay, so we’re recording the Friday, it’s June 2nd, right after Memorial Day. We had a nice short week. Why you this spend like the longest short week? I like woke up morning. I’m like, it’s not Saturday. It’s not Saturday.
Speaker 1 00:00:34 It’s been ridiculously busy. And I think part of it is that we try to put five days of work into four days, or in my case, 15 days of work into four days. Cuz I was off last week and I’m in Athens next week. So like
Speaker 2 00:00:48 Cram it. Oh,
Speaker 1 00:00:50 Those four days.
Speaker 2 00:00:52 Crazy. It’s been crazy. And I am glad it’s Friday.
Speaker 1 00:00:57 Same. Very much. So I need, and I have a, I have a massage schedule tomorrow, so I, and okay, so first lemme tell you this, and I think this actually leads into the story that you wanted to tell too. So I, as you, as we talked about before, I was nominated as a remarkable woman in my town as a result of that, somebody that graduated with my daughter, but who I used to mentor, uh, reached out to me. It’s been like 10 years, more than 10 years, 13 years reached out to me and, and we’re still friends on Facebook, but we haven’t seen each other in a while. And he’s had a lot going on in his life in the last 10 years, relationship-wise, work-wise, whatever. And he was tentatively reaching back out to see if I was the person he remembered that I was and not nefarious in any kind of way.
Speaker 1 00:01:45 Like he wanted to still believe that I was as kind and gentle as he remembered that I was. And mm-hmm. , I like to think I am . So I invited him over for coffee and we sat and had coffee and made a conversation about his partner who is a massage therapist. And he said, Gavin really wanted to meet you, but I wanted to make sure that you were who I remembered you to be before I introduced you to my partner. And you are. He said, and Gavin wants to know . Gavin asked, so what does she do? And I said, well, she builds websites. I love that. That’s like locally. It’s like, oh, she builds websites. Um, he wondered if you would trade a website for massage therapy. And I was like, heck yeah. I go. And so it turns out that he’s doing in-home massage. So here’s the fun part. I spun up his website in exactly like three hours. Cuz guess what? I used Cadence. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:02:45 I used
Speaker 1 00:02:47 Made it so easy. Um, yeah. I, you know, and you end up, it’s funny cuz you get to the end and it doesn’t look anything like the starter site did, but you have something to build from, which is beautiful. So get Gavin on the go.com if you’re interested. Anyway, he does in-home massage. So I don’t even have to go anywhere. I literally just have to like, have enough space for him to set up that table, you know? Yeah. And he’s a wonderful person. So I have a massage tomorrow. I’m in all of that just to say, I, I have a massage tomorrow in my home and I don’t have to go anywhere before I, I go to Nice
Speaker 2 00:03:16 Europe.
Speaker 1 00:03:17 So, yes, very exciting. And Gavin doesn’t know anything about websites and he doesn’t know anything. But now he has a WordPress website and he has a Cadence WordPress website and it has WS form on it and people can say, I’m interested in getting a massage. And it goes and he gets an email and it does, it works like it’s supposed to, is basically what I’m saying. So it’s an exciting thing.
Speaker 2 00:03:39 Amazing. That’s great. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:03:43 So, and you had a similar, well maybe not exactly similar but tangential experience lately that you told me a little bit about. So tell us about that, cuz that’s a pretty cool experience. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:03:53 Well I’ve actually had a number of experiences like this, but so I, it, it just left such an impression on me. I’m coming home from a trip early in the morning and this Lyft driver picks me. Cuz I was just like, I’m not dealing with the car at the airport. And ever again, I did that for Word Camp Phoenix and like what new airport that I had never traveled from dallas, Fort Worth. And it’s crazy. No thank you . I’m not gonna do that ever again. Lyft for me. So I call the Lyft and this guy picks me up and so I chit chat. So do you drive Lyft full-time? No, I’m just doing this part-time because I just quit my job and I’m starting my business. I’m like, oh, well what do you do? And just, we get into this and it’s like about a 40 minute drive up here to the country.
Speaker 2 00:04:42 Um, and , he’s telling me all about his business. He’s got six healthy six figure following on TikTok, and he drops Nice. He’s an artist. And so he’ll do like live streams where he’s drawing and people just show up. He’ll get like 30 people showing up and while he draws and he just talks to them. And sometimes they’re new people and sometimes they’re, and then he is doing all these local conventions and everything and I’m like, oh, well so are you selling your art online? And he is like, yeah. Oh, how, what did she use to build it? Wick? W w I’m just like, . I’m like, listen, I’m like, so you just quit your job and like, how long ago did you set up the site? And they ask him all these questions of like, what did led you to Wick? Like, I’m like, did you evaluate Squarespace and have you ever heard of Word Pros?
Speaker 2 00:05:29 He’s like, yes, he’s heard of WordPress, but Wicks made it so easy and he saw ads for it. So he decided to go with Wicks. And I’m asking him like, how is he, you know, collecting emails so he can stay in touch with the people that he’s meeting who are buying stuff from him and does he mail to. So I’m asking him all of these questions and he’s telling me about how busy his, his work is and how it’s growing and he’s really thinking it’s gonna turn into something and it’s very niche art. Um mm-hmm. , I can’t find a place where I think it is appropriate for him to switch to WordPress and Cadence. And I just sat there just kind of like, I felt like completely disarmed and I was just, I kind of just surrendered, like how do I be of service to this person?
Speaker 2 00:06:14 Mm-hmm. . And so we talked about emails and we talked about how busy he is and we talked about getting virtual assistants to maybe like help him do some of the tech stuff mm-hmm. and um, I could not find an entree point to get him on WordPress. Yeah. Yet. Yes. I’m finding, well, you know, I’m going there actually. I do, I do, absolutely. But right now it’s, right now there’s just like, it doesn’t make sense for him. He’s got this set up and he really needs to focus on this trajectory of growth right now and to get some of his other, um, business processes in place and it’s all good. And he’s, we’re now friends on, on Instagram and so he shows up all the time and he followed me back so I can message him. It’s like kind of cool. But I, I’m finding more and more people as I kind of do more stuff outside of WordPress.
Speaker 2 00:07:06 I’ve got mastermind groups that I’m going to, I’m taking this, um, just on a whim. I, I signed up for this newsletter cohort thing. Just, I’m like, I just wanna learn from these people cuz they’re completely out of WordPress. It is nothing related to like Cadence, but I wanna see what’s going on. Yeah. And then people are like, what’s WordPress? What like I’m like, I am, maybe I’m so myopic and cuz I’m in the WordPress community, but it’s like there are so many communities outside of WordPress that need to know about WordPress. Yeah. And it’s almost like I wanna go join all of these places and like spread the good news about open source and Yeah. What’s this new website builder I’ve never heard of called show It and why is everybody using it? I’m like, I feel like it’s like this brave new world of not word like 20 years.
Speaker 2 00:07:59 And it’s so funny because as, as he’s telling me his story about his business and how he’s using Wick, I’m sort of half on my phone like ke catching up on Twitter cuz I’d been off at all, all of last week. And everybody’s like, oh, WordPress 20th. And then I’m just like, okay, , I’m paying attention. There’s something going on here. Yeah. So I’m really motivated to talk to more people outside of WordPress mm-hmm. who have online businesses who are growing online businesses and why are they making the decisions that they’re doing. Right. I, I’m in this like discu, it’s not even like I, oh, I have to do this market research because of work stuff. It’s just like, I’m so like intellectually curious of like, what are they doing and why. Yeah. It’s so fascinating to me. Yeah, it is interesting for sure.
Speaker 2 00:08:47 If they don’t have people like us to Yeah. To tell ’em the right way to do it. Gavin had you right. Right. But like Gavin l is very lucky to have found you where you could like guide him into making a decision mm-hmm. where he’s now got a site that if, you know, his hosting provider doesn’t help him, he can move. Right. But with Wicks like my friend Yeah. It’s like, yeah. That the switch is such mm-hmm. a insurmountable task. I don’t know how you would do it. Yeah. But I’m really like, I’m, I don’t know why I’m so like super curious in this other world of why are you choosing other stuff like
Speaker 1 00:09:29 Right. What’s interesting is though, like, so I actually have a chapter in my book about, it’s, it’s not even about this, but it’s about like customers and making sure that you, you’re a good fit with your customer and they’re a good fit for you. I don’t remember what I titled it cuz I’m exhausted but . Anyway, that’s basically what I thought. And I had a phone call once when I, in my freelancing days, where the person who called me and she said, you know, uh, we have a mutual friend Carl who recommended you to build a new website. And I said, no, that’s great. She says, so how much do you charge? I mean, we can’t just give a blanket a number Right. Because I don’t know what you need on your website lady. You know? Right. I said, well it really, it really depends.
Speaker 1 00:10:08 I said, it’s depends on how many pages you need and whether it’s e-commerce or not e-commerce or she said, well if it was just a basic website, like what’s the base figure you would charge? And this was quite a few years ago, so don’t cringe when I tell you the number, but I was like, well for just a very basic website it would be like a thousand dollars. And she says, oh wow. Um, you must be really good at what you do, but it’s not on my budget right now. And I thought that was a very kind way of saying it. Cuz I had an experience later that same day where somebody cursed me out for the same information, . But I said to, I said to her, well, you know, until you’re ready to, until you have the money to invest in working with somebody who can build you a big website, you can always use a Facebook page or you could use a do-it-yourself like a wicker at the time.
Speaker 1 00:10:52 Weebly. Right. And she’s thanked me for my information and, and I said, well, I may be back to you in a year when I’ve got some more money. And I said, that’d be great. And at at the end of that, I thought, what’s interesting is yes, she absolutely could have a WordPress website, but she doesn’t have the money to do it right now. She doesn’t have the know-how to do it right now. And for us in WordPress, it’s like the, if you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Right? Yeah. And so we think that WordPress is the solution for absolutely every single situation. And yes, it could be, but not necessarily for every person who wants to build a business website blog. Absolutely. Go to wordpress.com, you can build it and yes, I know of those of who are listening, you can build a business website through wordpress.com also. I get all of that. But the whole idea is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be WordPress for everybody in every situation from square one because it just doesn’t work up for everybody that way. And like you said Yeah. Like yet Yeah. Yet he’s not on WordPress yet. . Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:11:58 Well there’s like this continuum of like, okay, drag and drop wicks, whatever. I haven’t, I, I haven’t used Wick that much. I tested it like once just to kind of see what it was yet. But I don’t know exactly how easy it is really. But according to some people, it’s like the easiest thing. So it’s easy on someone else’s land versus like a web server bare metal in a, in a data center that, you know, you can go right up to the machine and mm-hmm. it, you know, it’s an actual server. Um, and you are installing everything yourself. You’re like downloading, uh, the mice equal database and you’re doing everything. Yeah. Or so there’s like this continuum and I don’t know, I mean, I’ve been in that place with the server website Sure. Straight H T M L and I, I think every person is on this continuum in someplace, you know, versus, you know, where does it go?
Speaker 2 00:12:56 Like, you know, I’ve got my server, I’ve got a digital Ocean droplet with a few sites on it, and I use Spin Up WP to like manage things, but I still have to s SSH and do Linux updates and stuff because I’m a Tor mm-hmm. , I torture myself. So like that’s over here, . And then you’ve got people over here who’s just dead. Just, I don’t wanna know how the internet works, just like do it for me and I don’t mm-hmm. care and it doesn’t matter. Um, and WordPress can fit in a number of different places on that continuum too. And so I don’t think there’s like a right answer for everyone. Like, everyone needs to be here right in the middle because that doesn’t make sense. Right. Right. Every website is different, every person is different, every organization is different. But I mean, I also remember cases where there was one website, um, God, it was like a re recipe blog and this was, it was taking off and the site was crashing all the time mm-hmm. Because it was on Shared Server and it just wasn’t working. Yeah. It
Speaker 1 00:13:56 Just didn’t have the space. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:13:58 Right. And it just could not handle the traffic that was coming at it. Mm-hmm. and I remember this woman writing about it, it was many years ago, she was writing about how difficult it was and how she had to hire a team to like move it for her and get it to the right kind of hosting environment, but it was on WordPress and so it was easy to just like fix that, right? Mm-hmm. So, I don’t know, I think word, you know, WordPress is so flexible. I think that’s the one thing where it, um, I mean Wick, you’re locked in. Yep. It’s Wick
Speaker 1 00:14:31 . Yep. I, I, there you go. I have worked on a few wics websites over the years. I felt like a trader when I did it, but like, I had a cousin who’s like, Hey, can you help me with this on my website? And I had another organization that was, um, women, a women empowerment thing. And I’m like, Hey, did you need help with your website at all? Cuz? And they’re like, yeah, here’s the login. I was like, ah man, that’s not a WordPress. I was say, but I was able to help them. And cuz it’s simple, it’s easy, but you’re so locked in to design, you’re so locked in Yeah. To their ownership of everything that’s on your site. You own your url, you could port that someplace else, but you literally have to copy paste all of your content elsewhere, at least Right. In my experience. So Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I’m just gonna say, you know, it it, WordPress is better, that’s all. I’m just, I’m gonna go on the record and say WordPress is better, especially with Cadence, right? I mean, right.
Speaker 2 00:15:30 Well, of course Cadence I think is kind of the best of both worlds, but it’s just so interesting to me that there are people who are building, there are people who are building businesses. They don’t even have a website. They’re building businesses on, on Etsy or, um mm-hmm. or YouTube. They’re building stuff on YouTube and they’re, they’re, you know, even doing community and donations and everything Right. On YouTube. So it’s like, I don’t know, it’s just so, so odd to me that nobody, well, I guess it’s the world we’re living in where people are just like platforms. You build on platforms, you don’t Yeah. Need to have your own website and why would you want to have your own website? Because it’s just like something else to take care of. Right.
Speaker 1 00:16:13 didn’t MailChimp try to do websites for a while? I don’t know if that ever took off or not. Like that just popped in my head like, don’t I remember seeing like, Hey, now you could build your website on MailChimp. And I was remember thinking, but, but why would you ? Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:16:29 Yeah. Well now there’s all these like newsletters, like the sub stacks, you know mm-hmm. and things like that. And now Convert Kit is coming out with like the Creator Network type of thing where you can, and I’ve used Convert Kit from as an email sub service provider forever. So I’m like, all right, I’ll bite. Let’s see what this is all about. But you like, send your mailing and you can make it public. And then you have like your little landing page and all your emails show up there. It’s kind of like how Sub works. And I know there’s people who are connecting commerce there and like making money just by their writing on their newsletters mm-hmm. . And it’s, um, it’s fascinating to me. Um, but you know, it’s that platform algorithm lock-in. Once you’re like building a business on someone else’s land, it’s if they change the laws and you’ve built your house in the state of California and taxes are now going up, or um, you know, the, the neighborhood’s going bad, you’re locked in. There’s no freedom of movement. Yeah. And I think that’s like the thing where people just, I don’t know, open source is freedom. Can we just title this episode that ?
Speaker 1 00:17:39 I like it. I think that’s a good, uh, that’s a good title. I mean, you write, you, you, you’re the one who writes the titles in the description. So you can, most of
Speaker 2 00:17:45 The time
Speaker 1 00:17:46 I’m let you go with that for sure.
Speaker 2 00:17:50 Yeah. It’s, I don’t know, freedom is important. I mean, especially like, you know, censorship, you never know who’s gonna be in power and who’s going to Yeah. Lock whatever down. You never know. It can change, you know, it’s one of the things where I would always say, oh well it people who would be like, oh, well I’m glad they’re doing this. And I’d be like, yeah, just wait until it’s the other side of the aisle doing that. Let’s see if you like it then. Yeah. Because you never know. And so retaining as much of the freedom that we can, I think is important in mm-hmm. , how we publish and how we define commerce. How we do commerce.
Speaker 1 00:18:28 Yeah. Absolutely. I love that. I can spin up a website in almost no time. I love that I could take a lot of time to build a website if I want to because of the, basically the content, right? The content is what takes time. Yeah. The ab the the site structure is not necessarily as difficult. I mean, yeah, you can spend a lot of time planning it, um, but you don’t have to. And, but it’s, it’s the content. Especially like, I know people that are like, well I wanna do an e-commerce store and I have like 4,000, um, products to sell. Like, okay, that’s gonna take a little while, but , here’s how you do that. Let me show you how you do that on your own website. Cuz I’m not doing that on your website, but Yeah. Yeah. . Yeah. But I do love another thing, I,
Speaker 2 00:19:11 I love being able to like find a new plugin to play with. Like, ooh, how does this one work? And it’s doing the same thing as this other one I’ve been using, but I wanna see, right. How does this one work and does it do anything different or Yeah. What’s its unique
Speaker 1 00:19:25 Mm-hmm. thing. Mm-hmm. . Yes. I love that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and when you talk about the community, can I bring up a, a project that Marcus Burnett just launched this week? Yes. Did you see it? The WP world. Oh my gosh. It’s amazing. So if you are listening to this and you’re in the word press space, which we assume you are cuz you’re listening to us, go to the wp.world and put yourself on the map. All you have to do, and you can remove yourself if you feel like you need to later. But basically you’re just asked to put in your city and, and uh, where, where in the world you are. So in the United States, we city state of course, but, and, and country. But anywhere in the world you can put a pin on that map and you can go there and see, oh, I think he’s got almost 500 people on there already. Yeah. Where people all over the world are,
Speaker 2 00:20:11 I was looking at it this morning and I’m like, because there’s like almost 12,000 people in the Cadence Group now Facebook group. And I’m like, I want that for cadence. I wanna know where everybody is, who’s using cadence. So yeah, Jesus got me inspired to do something like that. Like if I’ve ever had free time, me with the big ideas, me needing a clone or two and Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:20:34 Same
Speaker 2 00:20:35 For bun too.
Speaker 1 00:20:36 Clone for a bunch of us. Can I have a whole fleet of clones please? .
Speaker 2 00:20:42 Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:20:44 Oh for sure. Definitely though. But it’s a, it’s a cool thing and it just does remind you that, you know, as as small as we are individually, this community is very global and very amazing and there are people very diverse and that there are people probably nearer to you than you think and also people ab absolutely on the other side of the world from you. And we’re all part of this community, which I think is great and yes, we all love WordPress better than Wick, but be kind to your Wick users. They may be tomorrow’s word pressers. .
Speaker 2 00:21:17 They probably will be because I mean, can wa can wick really scale and give you all of the extensibility? It just never will. So eventually for everybody’s gonna end up word WordPress or Yeah. Or writing their own H T M L . I know those people are out there .
Speaker 1 00:21:32 They’re, I did one site that way in college cuz I had to. Um, and ever since then I’m like, Nope, , it’d be a good C M S I That’s not coding anything. . Oh, too funny. Well, Kathy, I will, we don’t have an episode next week because I will be in Europe and I won’t have the time to break. I know, right. Um, I’ll eat some kalamata olives for you next week. and have some Mediterranean
Speaker 2 00:22:01 Sag. Please have saganaki somewhere. Just like the flaming flaming goat cheese. I just Oh, oh my
Speaker 1 00:22:07 Gosh. I’m like, I dunno what that is, but now I want it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:22:09 Oh, you have to have it. Yeah, it’s like an appetizer and they like set it on fire and it’s like, it’s kind of like a melted feta cheese, but it’s got more like fat content in it, so it’s like mm-hmm. super yummy. Yeah. Oh
Speaker 1 00:22:21 My God. I definitely want some,
Speaker 2 00:22:24 I tried to do a Greek feast when I was in Orlando, but something didn’t so I just turned into sort of an Italian thing. I didn’t get the Greek part of it.
Speaker 1 00:22:33 Just no
Speaker 2 00:22:34 Kind of fall through. But yeah, I’m uh, I’m all about the Greek food. I cannot wait to follow along on. I wish I could go, but not this year. I will hopefully come next year, but yeah, I’ll live vicariously through you and everybody else that’s going. I’ll
Speaker 1 00:22:50 Be tweet, I’ll be tweeting so you can Amazing. I may even message you every once in a while and say, Hey, guess what, , check out this thing I just did. .
Speaker 2 00:22:59 Awesome.
Speaker 1 00:22:59 Look, look at these ruins, . And look who I just got to hug that I’ve known for years and never met in person. So all those things, those will all be on Twitter, looking forward to it. So, but we’ll be back the week after. Who knows what we’ll be talking about by then. It’s up to our whim. Some days we don’t even know until we start talking and words start spilling out of our mouths like today. Which is all
Speaker 2 00:23:21 Good.
Speaker 1 00:23:22 Which is all good. All good. Well, if you in this long, we love you. Thank you. You, you, you, I always like to say like whichever one listener is still listening, we love you deeply.
Speaker 2 00:23:37 There’s more than one. There’s a few I’m sure of
Speaker 1 00:23:39 It. Sure. I’m sure there are. And, and we do appreciate that you hang in there every week with us and look forward to seeing you in a few weeks. We’ll see you then. Thanks. Bye.
Speaker 3 00:23:51 This has been WP Motivate with Kathy Zant and Michelle Frechette. To learn more or to sponsor us, go to wp motivate.com.