We Want Your Inspiration! Announcing WPMotivate Stories
Do you have an inspirational story about building a business, getting a job, solving a problem, or anything else related to WordPress? We’re looking for your stories to share on WPMotivate. Listen in this week as Michelle and Kathy describe the project and also talk about their inspirational stories for this week. It all boils down to one thing: WordPress people and our shared values of open source freedom are kind of awesome.
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 Happy Friday. Michelle, how you doing?
Speaker 1 00:00:18 It’s been a week. It has been a week.
Speaker 2 00:00:21 It just been a week. It feels like
Speaker 1 00:00:24 It’s been a month this week,
Speaker 2 00:00:26 . That’s what it feels like. Yeah. It has been a very long week. Like every single day has been like long days. Lots of moving parts, lots of things happening. But it’s all good. We made it to Friday and
Speaker 1 00:00:40 We’ve made it to Friday. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:00:42 What more can you ask for
Speaker 1 00:00:43 ? Exactly. One of the things that I was thinking about a lot, and I actually messaged you last night, and I know you saw what we talked about a little bit already, but I was thinking about how inspiration happens and how, like the things that people say to me, like on on the Underrepresented in tech podcast, Allie and I talk about the fact that saying to somebody, because they’re in a wheelchair, you’re such an inspiration, is like, fuck off. Like nobody wants that. Right? Like saying to me that the things that I do in WordPress are inspiring, I will take that praise all day every day, right? Like, you do, you do so much for the community. It’s inspiring. Fantastic. Wow. You do so much in a wheelchair, not so much. Right? So, but talking about, so when I’m talking about inspiration and how we find inspiration and how we can inspire others, I’m talking about the, you do so much in WordPress, you’re in the inspiration, not the other kind, right?
Speaker 1 00:01:34 So just to kind of put that out there, get that off, like shut us on the right course. And so I was thinking about, and I talked to you about this a couple weeks ago, I think that there, there was a talk I submitted to Word Camp Europe that wasn’t picked up. And that’s, you know, we can’t win ’em all. But it was basically how WordPress not, not only changed my life, it basically saved my life in a lot of ways from, um, just a lot of stuff over the years and how I got started with it and how it pulled me out of a bad marriage and got me into the lot the, you know, the things that I do now and all of that. And I still wanna give that talk. And it’s like, I’m not sure where to give that talk. So then I thought, well, I could just record it. Yeah. Right? Yes. And then put it out there. And if people want to take from it what they will, there have been some things that have happened in my life because of WordPress that still move me to tears because they were so amazing and how amazing the power of this community is. And I wanna share some of those things with people. Not because I want to inspire about the things that I do, but I want to inspire about the things that WordPress has done and this community has done.
Speaker 2 00:02:40 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:02:41 Yeah. And so I was like, where would I put that? Like if I put it on my own blog, blah, blah, blah. Literally as I’m falling asleep last night, I’m having these thoughts. Then I was like, oh, it could go on WP motivate. Like we could have a whole video section of inspirational talks,
Speaker 2 00:02:57 And if they’re on WP speakers, it could be linked over there as well as sort of like a demo reel type of thing. Because a lot of times people are like, okay, well this person looks like they know their stuff, but how good are they on stage? Or how do they speak? You know, what’s their vibe? Yeah. And you could link over to it. So it could be a way for speakers to be able to like show that not only do they know their stuff, whether it’s technical, but they can also inspire and really connect with sort of like that emotional connection with an audience. So I think that could be double plus. Good.
Speaker 1 00:03:32 Exactly. So one of the things I was talking about, I actually left you a message in the middle of the night, which you read in the middle of the night, because that’s how we’re , I falling asleep. But I have to tell Kathy so I don’t forget . And you’re like, Michelle just messaged, I have to read it so I know what she said. Anyway, .
Speaker 2 00:03:50 Yeah. And then I’m like, I gotta write it back in the morning. I can’t do it right now. Please. I just wanna go back to sleep. Why did I look up my phone? .
Speaker 1 00:03:58 Exactly. You’re gonna just gimme the old thumbs up and I would’ve been like, yes, she loves it. Um, sometimes the thumbs up of passive aggressive. I know that’s not the case with you, .
Speaker 2 00:04:07 Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:04:08 It is what I send Is it, it’s what I send it to my mother, like, yeah, okay, Sue, you know, ,
Speaker 2 00:04:15 I’m gonna have to start using that more. Passive aggressive is like my middle name. I was raised like a Catholic, so I didn’t know I could do that.
Speaker 1 00:04:23 I know, right? So, but then I thought, it’s not just gonna be like the Michelle show, right? It’s not gonna be like, we have all these great podcasts. I say great, I think we’re great, all our great podcasts and you could watch it on video, whatever. But also if we house these on our YouTube channel and embedded them in our website, we could have a whole channel of motivational speakers from the WordPress community. So if you’re listening, if you’re one of our 10 listeners, I always say that I don’t know how many we have. I don’t pay attention to the metrics. This podcast is not about metrics. It’s about fun. Um, although I could probably look it up if we need to, but, uh, I want it to be inspirational stuff. I don’t want it to be, you know, how you built your plugin. I don’t want it to be, you know, Hey, this is how you do c ss s Yes.
Speaker 1 00:05:09 Those can be inspiring. Now, I want inspirational, motivational. This is how WordPress kind of, this is what I did in WordPress. This is how WordPress helped me. This is how it moved me forward. Uh, not hero press that per se, but, you know, adjacent your story. What is your story? How can your story help other people move forward in WordPress and understand the power of this community. So if you are listening and you’re interested, we want your video, um, reach out to us. We’ll put something up on the website soon, a little form that you can fill out so that you can, uh, pitch your story to us or tell us where we can get it or whatever. It, it’ll still be yours. It’s your proprietary, whatever. We are not looking to like own your story, but we wanna give you a place to share it and a place
Speaker 2 00:05:58 For other people. We wanna amplify that story. Right? Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:06:00 That
Speaker 2 00:06:01 Was the word. And yeah, and, and the other thing is too, is like, I think your story is important, but like, really, I wanna have like make sure you end with like, some takeaways. Like what, like if you had to do it over again, what, what are the lessons that somebody else like listening to your story can like, run with? Like, I want takeaways. Mm-hmm. .
Speaker 1 00:06:21 Yeah. You could have slides
Speaker 2 00:06:22
Speaker 1 00:06:22 In there. You don’t have to have slides. Like, whatever works for you. But we would like it to be a video, not just an audio, because we want people to be able to engage with you, and then we want you to write up what it’s about so we can put your little writeup about it. We will watch it, we will vet it. You know, we’re, we’re gonna look, we’re, we’re not just gonna blindly post people’s things, but,
Speaker 2 00:06:42 Um, well, I want the inspiration out of it, judge. Like seriously, make sure get something here, .
Speaker 1 00:06:47 That way we can post it and be like, wait till you see what so and so posted. This is like my book. And we even might, we might talk about them on the podcast too. Um, but we do, we wanna amplify your voice. We want to talk about how well the things that you are doing and how the community has impacted you in a positive way. So it has impacted me in a positive way. I’m gonna record my story. I’m gonna put it out there. I’ll probably be the first one on our website. So if you need an idea of how long it should be, I would say no more than 30 minutes. Um, but yeah, we want, we wanna share the motivation. We wanna share your motivation and show how other people can learn from the people, other people in the community. So yeah. Kind
Speaker 2 00:07:29 Of excited. I love it. I love it. I mean, this is like, it’s kind of our vibe, right? Yeah. I mean, you and I have similar values in terms of, of empowering people, getting people to think outside of like where they think their limitations are and realize that there are no limitations. Um, encouraging people to go for it, encouraging people to just see opportunity. And I, we shouldn’t just like hoard that. We should give other people the opportunity to do that too. Exactly. So I love this idea. Yeah, it’s perfect.
Speaker 1 00:08:00 Yeah, I’m excited about it too. So what’s inspired you lately?
Speaker 2 00:08:07 People mm-hmm. . I’m so blessed. Well, first of all, I’m blessed to talk to you every week and likewise to be able. And thank you so much for coming on my channel, doing the whole Elementor thing. Oh, ,
Speaker 1 00:08:19 That was fun.
Speaker 2 00:08:20 It was fun. I’m still like, I’ve done so much on my sun site, like after hours just tweak, tweak, tweak, and it’s almost done. So, um, that little little session was really good for me too. , I have to edit it still. Um, but I am so blessed with people who just, the people in my life who, who encourage me, who gut check me, who critique me, gosh, this is one thing that’s like really important. And it’s something that I didn’t have when I was like, maybe in my twenties, like any kind of creative work of somebody like criticize my writing or criticize something that I did, I’d like feel terrible and I’d get upset about it. And now it’s like, somebody, please, please tell me where I’m wrong. Please tell me where I could do better. And it’s just like, I think it just comes with maturity. So I’ve had people come to me with like, Hey, this could have been done better. And just the ability to just like be able to like always uplevel my game and to be of a higher service that, I mean, that’s my thing. So my ego gets the backseat, but I have so many people around me who are like, who believe in me. Mm-hmm. who encouraged me, who say, you know what you should do. And I’ll be like, you know, I’m going to do that right now. ,
Speaker 1 00:09:39 . I love it. I’ve
Speaker 2 00:09:41 Had so many experiences this past week with people encouraging me to do things that I, limitations I had put on myself that I shouldn’t have. And people who have, that’s one of the reasons why it’s so important to me to do that for others is because people do that for me. So that’s been my inspiration this week, is being surrounded by people who help me do better. So mm-hmm. ,
Speaker 1 00:10:03 I was moderating that for you ’cause you were doing, I was take paying attention to the people and, and you know, that kind of thing. And realize that the Kathy’s aunt fan club is not just me, , there are so many people in your fan club and the people that were making comments about, where’s your tiara? And you were like, oh, you missed it. I wore at the beginning. And Queen Kathy and like, and the people that are like, you’re like, oh wait, where was this? And they’re like, putting the answers in in the chat. Yeah. Like, oh, go to here, here, you’ll find it. You know? Or Can I log in with you? And those kinds of things. It was really fun to watch.
Speaker 2 00:10:40 Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. I, there’s, I’ve just been blessed with this community. But here’s the thing is like, I am taking a huge risk, doing a, doing a move of a site from one theme out of a page builder into Cadence and doing it live and not, you know, I practiced a little bit, but I didn’t practiced a lot. I probably should have practiced a little more , but
Speaker 1 00:11:03 .
Speaker 2 00:11:04 But I’m like taking the risk and putting myself out there and being willing to like fall on my face and be criticized. And I don’t care. , I’m, it’s there to be of service. And I think people, people see that and they’re like, mm-hmm. , they know what the intent behind it is. I’m not trying to show off that I’m the best cadence designer in the world. I’m not guaranteed, but I am someone who’s gonna say, take a risk. Watch me take a risk. I’m gonna try to do this on a almost live site. ,
Speaker 1 00:11:35 We’re just gonna
Speaker 2 00:11:36 Do it. We’re gonna see how it goes. I’m so glad I didn’t do it on the live site. ’cause like 10 minutes before I was like, oh, I’m just gonna put cadence blocks pro beta and cadence blocks, 3.1 beta on here, and I’m gonna show how I can do it with that. And, um, it didn’t go very well. to like back it all out. Like, yeah, I’m not gonna do that live. Not, not gonna do that. So, but you but taking that risk and having people there to support me, it’s, I am so grateful you were there. Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:12:06 It was fun. It was a lot of fun. Thank you for inviting me. That’s awesome. Yeah, I agree. It is people that are inspiring. Um, over at Underrepresented in Tech, we are starting to put together a webinar series, which are, it’s gonna be a series of panel discussions based on different groups, um, subgroups of underrepresentation. So we have six that we’re planning. One is, uh, what it’s like to be a black man in technology. One is what it’s like to be a person with physical disabilities, uh, non-developers, queer people, non-native English speakers, and people under 25. And so, um, I reached out, I’m, I’m doing the two that I’m moderating are black men in tech and non-native English speakers. And I reached out to three gentlemen and within 10 minutes all of them were like, yes, sign me up. And this is where the, the truly inspiring part comes.
Speaker 1 00:13:02 Like, yes. That they were like, yes, let me do it. I forgot to tell them. They still don’t know. They’re getting paid to do it. Like we’ve built into the budget, the sponsorship, a hundred dollars just, just for participating. Yeah. Nice. ’cause we believe in paying people for their time and it’s like they, like, they’re all in without even knowing that they’re gonna, you know, walk away with an honorarium for helping us out. So that’s kind of cool. That’s inspiring for sure. That is very cool. And working with people like Allie Nims and Naisha Green on this project is also inspiring. What amazing women
Speaker 2 00:13:34 Nisha’s so excited about being keynote in the Rochester. I saw
Speaker 1 00:13:38 Her post this morning.
Speaker 2 00:13:39 I was like, you go, that is so awesome.
Speaker 1 00:13:42 I’m excited for her. She’s gonna, and she actually, I always put in the wrong, this is a foldout couch right here. Mm-hmm. . That’s where she’s staying. She’s coming to stay with me. Oh, nice. Yeah. I’m excited. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. But yeah, I think it’s, it’s true. People are the true inspiration. And when people, like, there are people, there’s still some tickets left, I guess for Word Camp us, they opened up another batch. But there are other people who either overbought or can’t go now, and they’re like, just looking to give my ticket away. They’re not even looking to try to sell it or get their money back. They just wanna give it to somebody who can, who it can help. And I’m like, that’s inspirational. Just look tho all those little things just add up. Yeah. To such a, is it a perfect community?
Speaker 1 00:14:22 Nope. it’s not. As a matter of fact, this week I had to, or this was last, I don’t remember this week, I had to write and publish a code of conduct for the post status community because there were some people who were behaving borderline badly. And we didn’t have anything that we could say, look, if you keep it up, we have to throw you out because these are the, this is the code of conduct, right? Yeah. So we put together a code of conduct and a perfect community. I would argue that a perfect community does need codes of conduct. People need to know where the boundaries are in order to operate within a community in a positive, in a positive way.
Speaker 2 00:15:03 Every online community, every social media platform, every, you have to have some kind of, I remember in like the early days of the internet, there was a site called Fray, fray.com, Dara mm-hmm. p I’m gonna pronounce his name wrong. Ek, um, started it and people would go into the fray and share their stories and mm-hmm. , but watching how, how communities start and then evolve. Um, Metafilter another site where I was a, I think I’m like user number five 30 or something. That’s my user id. ’cause I started so early there. But watching, I’ve watched so many online communities start and then evolve and have crises. And if you don’t establish some kind of boundaries
Speaker 1 00:15:54 Yeah. You’ve,
Speaker 2 00:15:54 You’ve gotta have ’em, but
Speaker 1 00:15:56 Absolutely. So yeah. So,
Speaker 2 00:15:58 Hey, I’m gonna word camp. I’m gonna word camp us. I’m gonna be there. I just decided, decided this week. I just decided I can’t wait
Speaker 1 00:16:03 To hug, hug you again,
Speaker 2 00:16:05 . I know. It’ll be so much fun. I’m so excited. It’ll, and then I posted on Facebook that I was going, I’m like, ’cause one person encouraged me, said, you know, just, just go, just go do and just go do this mm-hmm. . And I’m like, I’m not even gonna think about it. I’m just gonna do it. And then I just did it and I posted on Facebook and I just said, one person, it’s your fault, , but Oh my gosh. The community just like, we’re so excited to see you. So, yeah. And I kind of needed that this week, so I got I got that. So That’s
Speaker 1 00:16:35 Awesome.
Speaker 2 00:16:36 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:16:37 I love it. It, it’s, it’s, it’s a good thing to have boundaries. That’s a good thing to have people in this community that just really wanna bolster each other up. And I, I know we’ve been called like a cult before because how do so many people like really build a community like this around software? ’cause it’s not about the software, it’s about the people, you know? And it’s not about praying to a software God. It’s about just coming together and helping and bolstering and working together. And it’s, I always think it’s funny that
Speaker 2 00:17:11 Shared values.
Speaker 1 00:17:12 Absolutely. Right. Yeah. So like, I could sit at a table and right across from me is somebody from another l m s and right next to me is somebody from another page builder, and over there is somebody from another hosting company and we’re all friends and we’re not competing when we’re sitting down to dinner. Right. It’s not about that. Right.
Speaker 2 00:17:29 And people from different cultures, because this is a worldwide system mm-hmm. of open source understanding that you, you should own your content and you should own what you’re building and put it on a platform that you can take anywhere. Um, and that you don’t get like vendor lock-in on things and understanding that that’s the value of WordPress. And so you can have people with different cultures and different, but the, but they all have the same value system of software. Mm-hmm. software is free. And even if you have a premium product or premium add-ons or whatever, the software is still essentially free. Mm-hmm. . But your service and the capabilities and the features that you’re putting into it, that is why people are paying you for the value Yes. That you are putting behind your product and putting into the future development of your product at least. Mm-hmm. That’s kind of my, oh gosh, that feels like a word. Camp talk right there. .
Speaker 1 00:18:26 I love it. And maybe you should record that and put it on our motivational speakers.
Speaker 2 00:18:33 Maybe open source as Yeah. Our values of open source or the values of open source or something like that. Yeah. ’cause I think it’s important for us to remember. ’cause I, I’ve been doing like these interviews like outside of WordPress, um, because I feel like it’s important for us in WordPress to also represent open source and WordPress to people who are like, all right, should I, do I gotta put up a website? Should I use Wix or Squarespace? Which one’s better? And I wanna show up to that conversation and talk about open source, because those are people who are just like, I just wanna get my website up. I don’t wanna have to think about all this. Right. I wanna talk about why they need to think about all of this. And I think it’s something because we have that in this community as a shared value, we forget about it a little bit. Mm-hmm. , because I don’t need to convince you of the benefits of open source. Right. Um, but I think we need to remember that remember that value. Yes. And why, why it’s here.
Speaker 1 00:19:31 Absolutely. And it’s kind of like your nose. I saw something yesterday that said you all like, you know, you are never not, see if your eyes are open, you’re seeing your nose, but your brain has learned to not see your nose. Right. So like, I can see it, it’s right there, but I’m not focused on my nose all the time. Right. So like it’s, but it’s in the middle of my face and everybody else can see it. Right. So that’s why we forget sometimes the core tenets of our, our our shared open source ness and what that means for our community because we just, right. It’s part of us now, but we have to remember that we’re always bringing more people into the community and to be just as excited sharing that with them as we were when we first became part of it ourselves.
Speaker 2 00:20:15 Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1 00:20:18 For sure.
Speaker 2 00:20:18 I gonna talk,
Speaker 1 00:20:20 I think you do write it down quick, this afternoon. She’ll say, wait, what was I talking about? I’m like, I don’t know. Go listen to the episode . Every time, every time. Every
Speaker 2 00:20:31 Like time. That’s why I try to, I try to write up the, the excerpts. I try to do that like right away, right away of like, otherwise it’s like, what? I know it was good. How didn’t I say in the episode? Like, this should be the title.
Speaker 1 00:20:47 What, what’s it? What, what’s that? My biggest problem . Well, and that’s the other thing is we share responsibilities. And I love that. Like, I do all the prep for the, for the audio and the video and I actually post it on the website and get it out on social media. But you do the part that I cringe over having to do. And I’m a writer, but I hate having to go back through an episode or try to remember the key points and write it up afterwards. So I’m so grateful that you are like the writer for our site. happy and I love writing. So it’s, it’s the easy part for me. So it’s awesome. Happy to do it. . Fantastic. We’re in it together. We are. Yeah. Well if you’ve made it this far and you have inspiration to share, we wanna hear it.
Speaker 1 00:21:32 So either tag us on Twitter, dmm us post about it somewhere else. Talk about WP Motivate in a way that maybe will motivate other people. And give us your videos if you have something you wanna say. If you’ve never shared it anywhere before. And if even if you have shared it before, share it with us and let us amplify your voice and put out there who you are. And, uh, you know, maybe it’ll inspire somebody else too. Thank you for being an inspiration to me. Kathy. I appreciate you. Same. Thank you. So I cannot even tell you, you know, you know, we know what you mean to be. Thank you likewise for being there, . We’ll see everybody. I know. I can’t even talk. We’ll see everybody next week. Thank you. Bye bye. This has been WP Motivate with Kathy Zant and Michelle Frechette. To learn more or to sponsor us, go to wp motivate.com.