Matt Report

On today's episode Corey and Sam interview Brian Casel about his passion for productized services and how you can launch a SaaS product quickly. They discuss Brian's newest product, Ops Calendar and how that naturally evolved from Audience Ops. Listen to the episode Guest: Brian Casel started out in 2011 with a plugin called Restaurant Engine, a hosted website design service for the hospitality industry. He grew it until 2015 when it was sold. Now he is the owner of Audience Ops, a productized done -for-you service which he started in 2015. In 2017, Brian launched Ops Calendar, a software tool that enables content marketers and agencies to plan a content calendar, schedule social media, and track traffic and conversions from content. Brian's role today consists of strategy for growth, product design, marketing, and customer development. What you will learn in today's episode:

• Audience Ops is a Content Marketing Company focused on productized services for Software and B2B clients. (6:40)
• Ops Calendar is a SaaS product that naturally grew and is complementary to Audience Ops. (7:20)
• Ops Calendar is a content calendar with smart features built into it. (ex: Social Media scheduling) (7:34)
• The Audience Ops service will continue in addition to the SaaS product. (9:02)
• The full-service product of Audience Ops will still exist where the research and writing of content is done for you. (9:13)
• There is a package called Audience Ops Express that provides all the tools except the writing. (9:43)
• Audience Ops Express will launch with Content Calendar but it is a spin on the current service. (10:52)
• Audience Ops was built around processes, not writing content. (28:29)
• The content calendar came from day to day work of producing podcasts. (29:30)
• You do not need to use WordPress to use the Ops Calendar. It is a standalone tool. (36:04)

Challenges and Opportunities of the SaaS Product:

• Ops Calendar was pre sold to a beta customers group to pitch the idea. (11:02)
• Prepaid customers of Ops Calendar receive a lifetime discount. (14:43)
• Public pricing is offered when the SaaS product is delivered. (15:18)
• There is a side plugin business that is being created from custom tools used by Audience Ops. (17:10)
• Audience Ops solutions are created from customers pain points that are reported around content marketing. (18:00)
• Brian is a big fan of productized services because they can be launched quickly. (20:15)
• You can charge for the product right away because it is offered as a service. (21:20)
• Pick an audience that you can relate to. Make sure that audience is easy to reach online or attend the conferences that you attend. (25:05)
• Continue to solve problems for the businesses that you serve. (27:34)

WordPress Features:

• Ops Calendar will be able to post to your WordPress site. (33:56)
• You install the WordPress plugin and connect it to your Ops Calendar account. (34:11)
• A user can save the permalink in WordPress.
• The composition of the post is still created in WordPress.
• If you create the notes in Ops Calendar, it will automatically post to WordPress. (35:30)
• A tracking code is put on your site from Ops Calendar. (36:32)
• The WordPress plugin is not going to work unless you are using Audience Ops. (37:34)

Lessons Learned:

• Do not be overanxious and move too fast when launching a SaaS product. (38:40)
• Always remember that there is time ahead of you in the grand scheme of things. The product does not have to be perfect for launch. (39:16)
• When pr

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I sat down with the founder of Flywheel. I did my usual routine of background checks, blog post readings, and Twitter stream scanning. I knew going into the interview that he did A LOT. I was most interested in how he launched all of these "valley-like" startups from the midwest. But when I got to know Dusty's story is the hard work he put into all of his efforts. Simple and down to earth efforts of building something great. Ship it, talk to customers, polish it, rinse and repeat. All of this in the super competitive WordPress hosting space. I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did!

Interview with Dusty Davidson

The WordPress website hosting industry is a crowded space. However, Dusty Davidson and his team are positioning Flywheel as a software company providing managed WordPress website hosting for designers. That has been a very important approach to the companies success thus far. Make a beautiful product for people that instill the same values with their own work. WordPress is already a passionate space -- appealing to designers is just icing on the cake! Takeaway messages from Matt's conversation with Dusty:

• To validate your business idea, chat directly with the people who have expressed inbound interest in your service. Don't avoid calling just because it will take an extended period of time.
• Do the things that do not scale to understand the customer's pain points.
• Stay focused on what you do best, your customer and your product to build your business.
• Large markets have room for many participants that are differentiating themselves and capturing passionate users.
• Respect for your competition breeds innovation which benefits the end user.

Listening options

Itunes:subscribe to MattReport Stitcher:subscribe to MattReport [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/158138640" params="color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]

Watching options Times Correspond to Video

0:30 Why another WP Managed host 5:15 How do you build a 10X better host 9:00 What was it like to get your 1st 100 clients? 11:30 How did you reach out to the 1st dozen designers? 13:30 How are you marketing to designers/developers so they will refer clients? 16:00 What is the current roadblock to your growth? 21:00 Advice to plugin developers for pricing to properly account for support? 24:00 Wish for plugin developers to do 26:00 Has Flywheel recently automated some processes? How to roll out features 28:00 Did you have a backup plan/MVP/Pivot point? 32:00 What next for Flywheel 33:30 What else do you do

Get in Touch with Dusty

@DustyD

Resources Mentioned

Heroku CPanel Flywheel Big Omaha Silicon Prairie News Garrett Moon interview on MattReport Boomerang Featured image source

I don’t like to play favorites, but this has been one of the best interviews so far.

Cory Miller has built a massively successful WordPress business over at ithemes. In my eyes, he is the quintessential entrepreneur. He embodies talent, drive, and the desire to succeed.

If you want to learn how to get your business to the million dollar mark, strap in and get your notebook ready!

Cory Miller on building a multi million dollar business

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Every day is a new challenge

If you’re an entrepreneur or looking to grow your business — this is an amazing interview.

I’m not just talking WordPress either.

Cory is giving us advice that will work in life and in business. That’s what makes him successful. He’s seeing past clean code, optimized frameworks, dollars and cents. He’s speaking to us on a real human level. Chris Brogan would be proud.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Passion is something that every single person on the team should have. The hardest part of this roller coaster ride of building a business is building that team. It’s not easy and it’s going to take it’s tolls – but the reward is amazing.

Skills can be taught, but the drive to get someone to be successful for the organization is what needs to be found. There are no rock stars, everyone is in it together.

What do you think about Cory’s story? I would love to hear your comments below.

Now liv...

On today’s episode, we’re talking to James Law. James talks about how to prepare your product for SaasS (Software as a Service). He is an accomplished developer who built Ninja forms in 2011 with his business partner Kevin Stover even though there were many form builders in that space. Guests : James Laws from Ninja forms is interviewed by Corey Maass and Sam Brodie. James honestly shares his experience in the forms builder space and where he sees the move to SaaS in his future. What you will learn from this episode:

• A business model and marketing strategy did not exist for Ninja Forms. (4:38)
• Ninja Forms was launched even though there were a lot of successful form builders in the space. (4:50)
• Ninja Forms was originally a premium plugin with a lifetime subscription. The lifetime subscription was honored although it was not a successful model for the creators. (5:18)
• In 2011 a light version of Ninja Forms was available with a pro upgrade offer. This was done to get a presence on the Wordpress.org website. (6:24)
• Most users that use Ninja forms do not use everything that is sold with the plugin. This gave the owners the idea to segment the options and sell it through the EDD (Easy Digital Downloads) plugin. (7:33)
• James reached out the Wordpress development community to offer partnerships with add-ons. (8:57)
• Pippin (from Pippin Plugins) built the Mailchimp add-on after reviewing the code base and signed on with the Ninja Forms partners. (9:15)
• The ecosystem for splitting the profits was set up using the Trello system. (10:25)

Marketing a Move to SaaS:

• Struggles that people say exist in a saturated market may be a false standard. A saturated market proves that there is a viable market. (11:45)
• You need to look at plugins to service anyone. The plugin becomes a connector to the service. (22:18)
• Ninja Forms is looking to take a two-prong approach for SaaS. If you are using the plugin in the WordPress space (it will function the same) and there will be a fully hosted SaaS version providing just the features that you need. (17:32)
• Build your product so that you can easily pivot. (35:15)
• Keep an eye out in your space and make sure you are watching what solutions are growing. (30:17)
• Be passionate about making the leap into the next space.

Unique qualities of SaaS:

• Higher end hosting companies are starting to partner with businesses that sell and market software products. (13:56)
• The platform limits who you can sell to when you are concentrating just on WordPress. (15:33)
• You need to have a strong hosting partner that knows DevOps and server scalability well. (24:15)
• In a SaaS environment, you can control the interface that the client works with. (16:33)
• Branding becomes very important to get visibility in the forms space outside of WordPress. (26:30)
• The code needs to be written to exist outside of the WordPress space in order to expand the business. (32:40)
• The Ninja Forms partners are doing research with calls to other businesses to see if they can start with a wrap around business. (33:30)

EPISODE RESOURCES Ninja Forms Corey Maass Kanban Sam Brodie Offsprout Follow James: James Laws Ninja Forms Ninja Forms on WordPress

The main goal of my gap season is to introduce new ideas, conversations, and concepts from around the WordPress community. Today, I'm proud to have had the opportunity to share this episode with Morten Rand-Hendriksen, Senior Staff Instructor at LinkedIn Learning and Lynda.com. The show If you don't follow Morten, you probably should follow him on Twitter. Like, right now, I'll wait... See, I've followed him for a while, exchanging an occasional tweet here and there, but we never had a "real" conversation before. When I thought about introducing new views to the show, he was the first person that came to mind. I wanted someone with a strong opinion, who would give us a new angle to think about -- not just another tool or tactic. When I say, he delivered on this promise, is an understatement. I could have titled this episode: "How to 10x your closing rates" or "Land $50k projects like a fighter pilot" but that, that would be doing the content an injustice. What we have in this episode is like finding that loose strand in your favorite sweater, and when you pull it, the whole thing becomes unraveled. That single thread of fabric that is the link to the entire garment. Understanding how another person views your ideas, your work, is the key to anything. The key to a healthy relationship, the key to landing a project, the key to getting your voice heard in a political movement -- anything. It's such an oversight, for most of us. Why doesn't the client like our design, or, why don't they understand how to use WordPress -- it's right there! If you've found yourself thinking that, or have a tough time getting your message across, this is the episode for you. The links

• Morten on Twitter
• Morten on Lynda
• Morten on LinkedIn