WordPress Content Creator and Agency Life with Mark Szymanski

In this LMScast episode, Chris Badgett welcomes Mark Szymanski, co-founder of MJSTV, to discuss various aspects of content creation, agency work, and the WordPress community.

Mark has a strong interest in exploring new markets and emphasizes the value of sharing personal stories through engaging content. Through his business, he aims to help people navigate the complexities of digital marketing and communicate successfully in the ever-evolving world of the internet.

Additionally, Mark discusses how page builders, such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, and others, have made it easier for non-developers to quickly create websites. However, he also highlights how these tools can become somewhat ‘tribal,’ with strong loyalties forming among users of different platforms.

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Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program, I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMS cast. I’m joined by a special guest. His name is Mark Szymanski. You can find him at MJSTV. com. Mark and I just met in person at WordCamp U. S. I came across Mark in many places just on social media and videos and through Matt Medeiros and stuff. We’re going to talk about content, we’re going to talk about agency, we’re going to talk about WordPress, we’re going to talk about page builders.

But first, welcome to the show, Mark.

Mark Szymanski: Chris, it is an absolute pleasure. It was a pleasure to meet you in person. Been following your stuff for a while too, man. Love what you’re doing. I cannot thank you enough for having me on the show here.

Chris Badgett: Yeah, you bet. It’s fun to chat. It’s this, a thing happens here in in WordPress land and digital entrepreneurship land. Specifically around WordPress is you come across like other content creators and we’re a niche within content.

There’s a lot of channels and podcasts and things that get it. A lot more views that are more mainstream. But this kind of niche world we live in of building sites for clients. Building solutions, helping people build websites, particularly with WordPress. It’s a niche. So whenever I see another content creator come on the scene and you’ve been on the scene for a while, I’m like, I gotta get that guy on the podcast.

So I’m glad you’re here. Hell yeah. When did you fall in love with creating content?

Mark Szymanski: Oh, man. I would say I’ve been creating YouTube videos for a while. I’ve had a little bit of a, I would say like a past life. Like when we, just as an example, when we bought our house here, I was like renovating some of it and I was just like documenting it.

I think one of the biggest things was I found. Most people have heard like Gary Vaynerchuk when he was like really big. He’s still obviously a popular guy, but it was just about documenting, putting things on social media. Just building your personal brand. I can’t, I have all this written down somewhere. But I feel like it was probably in 2016 or so, or maybe while I was building the agency, like 2018. I was just like, I just want to document this even just for myself.

If nobody watches anything, I just want to document it. So I started doing some of that, and then I started getting involved in WordPress in 2018, building the agency. And very quickly I was like I’m learning things very rapidly, and I know there’s other people out there that could potentially benefit from that.

So I did a little bit of like tutorial content probably in 20 20, 2021, 22. But I was still like just working and trying to build websites for clients. And then just over a year ago, I would say is when I discovered the WordPress community, which is a whole thing in and of itself. Like you could use WordPress for your entire life and never really jump into that realm.

But I decided to, and I don’t regret it. And I was, that’s when I started specifically making content with guys like Matt. And like whether it was technical news oriented, business oriented. I’ve just continued to try to find my way there. And yeah, I guess it’s that’s the, been the trajectory to this point.

Chris Badgett: What kind of content do you like to consume? Great question.

Mark Szymanski: I feel, I don’t know if anybody else has gone through this, but I’ve gone, I’ve noticeable, if I look back at my, I have a big Excel spreadsheet of all, like the big events that have happened in my life that I can remember that I feel like were pivotal or just like in general, if I go back through there, there are actual periods of time.

Like I consume an unbelievable amount of content on a specific topic, right? And I think I’m not, I’m definitely not unique in this fact, but I don’t hear too many people talk about it that often. So I remember I can’t remember the order, but I remember I was in college and I was like, okay I really want to like, know more about like money.

Like maybe it was around the time I had my first job. So I wanted to, I went super deep into like finance content. Dave Ramsey, Graham Stephan, like all these big, YouTubers, right? And it’s funny, and you know this, Chris, because you know how these algorithms like suck you in as soon as you get into one thing.

It’s you’re going to see videos forever until you get into another, hobby or topic. So finance was a big one. That was probably a couple of your stint. I feel like you go from not knowing anything to knowing like 75, 85 percent of it in if you really go hard, you can go like pretty quickly, maybe six months to a year.

And then you know way more than the average person, but then you got to get burnt down. You’re like, I’m tired of listening to this. So it was finance was one of those. Business, general business stuff was one of those more recently it’s been golf it’s just crazy. And then as soon as, it’s like now I don’t see really much any finance stuff, but I get the golf stuff.

Obviously WordPress has been a huge part of that for the past year or two. But yeah, those are my big ones right now. I would say right now it’s, that last year it’s been heavy on WordPress and the golf thing. Yeah. Golf is a lifelong game, similar to WordPress, maybe.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. Yeah. I can definitely relate to the binging on niche interest content for a period. Could be months, could be years. And a funny thing happens. Like I remember before I, stepped out of my shell when I was just building some websites for clients and trying to figure out how to build an online business, I would listen to Matt Medeiros podcast, The Matt Report.

And there was a handful of other WordPress podcasts, and I just binged all that stuff. And then ultimately I got into the whole world and stepped into the community and started creating content myself. So it’s fun to, uh, listen to somebody and then all of a sudden, now you’re talking to them.

Now you’re shaking their hand.

Mark Szymanski: Exactly.

Chris Badgett: It’s wild. It’s so surreal.

Mark Szymanski: Yeah, I was like, we were talking before we went on guys like WP crafter and like Paul Charlton, WP, like WP. That’s I was, I’m 28 now. It’s I think back, I was just looking at this seven years ago, I was like just 21, like still in college.

I’m like thinking about like websites and WordPress and stuff. And I’m watching their videos back then. Then I go to WordCamp and it’s cool. It’s so cool in this community where you can just go to an event like that and you just start meeting the people that you’ve been.

Watching and all that stuff for so long. And it’s, it is absolutely surreal.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. It’s like finding your niche. If the niche is focused or small enough, even though WordPress is big in terms of usage, the people that are really, I think Matt Medeiros used to call it small C, big C community, like the ones that are really on the inside.

It’s small if you think about it so you can run into those people. What do you feel like your niche is in WordPress? If you had to pick one thing, what would it be? Or you’re more in exploration phase?

Mark Szymanski: Yeah, I think it’s so big that I feel like I’m still exploring and I actually had some good chats with people at WordCamp US and I think that, I feel like there’s a there’s two ways you can do it.

You can try to find your own niche, or you can just put stuff out there and see if people create one for you, so to speak. And, I feel with that, the latter option there, I feel like people have pretty much, almost, pretty much, pinned me as the guy that like is asking questions and is trying to explore.

Cause I’m like new here, but I also love making content. I’m like, just always like like curious and everything. And some people express that to me, Jamie Marsden being one of them, just saying Hey, just lean into the exploring thing. You know what I mean? Like just go in and just try to explore stuff and be curious.

And people love that because they’re You’re documenting your journey. They’re, they’re learning alongside you. And I just, I think that comes really naturally to me. So I would say that’s probably my main niche right now. The other, the only other things I would say are like, I really do love like process and operation stuff.

Because I think that there’s a lot of people out there that I feel like I’m a very organized individual for the most part. And I think that’s one of the reasons I’m entrepreneurial. So I think that there is definitely a place for that as well. Like I used Exactly. Yeah.

Systems like setting. I love the setup phase. I love the idea of setting up new businesses, business ideas for people or, like the technical pieces of getting everything all your ducks in a row from I’m not a lawyer, but the legal standpoint the financial standpoint, the marketing standpoint.

I’ve often thought about I could probably productize that somehow. But yeah, I would say that exploring and then like building those pieces are some of the things that I’ve thought of, over my time doing it.

Chris Badgett: A framework for that is you can be the role model or the guru, but you can also be the researcher and both of those stories are cool.

Like you might be the role model and okay, these are the systems for this type of business or whatever. And then the researcher just, It’s fun to, go explore with Indiana Jones as they search for whatever. I will say one of the interesting things I’ve seen on YouTube, particularly our views don’t, our videos don’t get a ton of views, but the videos that have been most successful are when we do like a use case video, which involves tools made by lots of different companies, usually.

As a product company, I’m often like really focused on Lifter LMS. But if I actually think about the person watching YouTube and somebody says, I want to build a website like you did me with WordPress. It’s not just a lift or pitch video. I’m bringing in these other like affiliate partner management things like Siren and, some web hosting considerations and email marketing CRM.

You build like an actual business like Udemy, which Udemy has 240 million in funding or something like that. And you could do it for a thousand bucks with WordPress. Like it’s, those videos get the most views. We had a similar thing with. That one got 5, 000 views. The how to build Netflix with WordPress got 9, 000 views.

So if you’re not married to one company or brand, I think that’s some of the most, at least in terms of reach you can get, but individual product tutorials are also cool too. You can go a million different directions.

Mark Szymanski: Yeah, there’s a lot of avenues. If you’re trying to make content, which is like where I’m at now played the agency game.

It’s good. I love the clients that I’ve had. But I think that I’m more suited for we’re talking about offline. That’s I think we’re really more where I’m going. And I think, yeah there’s a weird thing and I’ll be completely transparent, like I’ve always wanted to be like, okay, I have an agency and I have these tools set this is my stack.

I only want to talk about these tools and stuff like that. And while that does make sense. And I feel like it’s like admirable to do that. It’s not super scalable. It’s also like a little I feel like it’s definitely, it would be limiting myself because there are just because I don’t use a tool.

Or I didn’t use a tool. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth looking at. You know what I mean? Like it’s, what I’ve learned is it’s not really that binary. I tried to simplify because I was running something and I don’t want to have 16 different stacks that I have to manage. But at the same time, like if people are, if you have like agency owners or DIYers or whatever, like looking at your content, you should probably tell them there’s some options out there too.

That’s the beauty of WordPress. So I’m always mixed on that, and your point on the type of engaging content, that’s 100 percent true, like we’re like a big community, so to speak, like WordPress is big, but it’s, there’s like a phenomenon where the people that actually care about this stuff is like smaller, and the people that like are researching and know where to look and know who like the sources are and everything like that is like small.

Okay. So trying to reel them in as a content creator is, it can be difficult at times, but those types of things are great. Like I love the idea of rebuilding, like a Netflix or whatever, because it shows the power of what we can do in WordPress. Because sometimes I think people don’t get far enough into WordPress to understand how powerful it is.

So it’s a lot there.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. Let’s talk about page builders. So like I came in before page builders and I’m not a developer. I can’t write a single line of code. So that’s why I partner with developers and have team and stuff. But So for me, in the early days of WordPress, it was really hard to make a great looking site.

You couldn’t even do columns without writing code and stuff like that. And and then for me, I was at a time when I discovered Beaver Builder. And We started using beaver builder internally and making some tutorials with it and stuff like that, cause it made it possible for non developers to build great looking sites.

Elementor came on the scene and then, but I was already all in beaver builder and a lot of people use Elementor and lately we’ve gone to a more of the full site native editing approach that we still very much appreciate. Page builders and their different takes on how to do things. But I have noticed like page builders get tribal every, lots of companies and brands do, but, um, there’s a lot of friction in WordPress between page builders, classic editor, native, the new full site editing Gutenberg thing.

You’ve got newer builders on the scene bricks, oxygen, etches getting ready to come. Like, how do you, what’s your view on page builders and how do you think about it?

Mark Szymanski: Yeah. So I think there’s a couple of things like the first bit of it is I came in. As Elementor had already existed, but I want to say maybe it was like at a million or 2 million less than definitely less than 5 million like installs when I came in.

So I came in and paint the picture. I come into WordPress and I’m like, okay, how do I work this thing? And then I see themes and then I install one of the, one of the themes that were on. I can’t even remember what it was at this point, but it was just, I was looking at the pictures, cause, Oh, what do I want? I don’t mind. And I’m looking at the homepages and stuff and I install one, a free one from the repo and I’m like, okay, cool. And then I’m like, oh wait, I can, I can’t like move anything around. I can’t like, affect anything. I have to just like basically replace text, replace pictures.

What if I want like something? What if I’m looking at like a website that I like on the internet, like a Tesla website or something at the time, how can I build that in this theme? I’m not, I didn’t realize I had to become a developer. And then I found like an Elementor and I was like, Oh, wait a second.

This is way better of an experience. I wasn’t even a designer. Like I’m not a designer. I just want the freedom to do whatever. So I find Elementor, I realized what that is and how you can build in the templating system and all that sort of stuff. I’m like, okay, this is fantastic. So I use that from like 2018 to 20.

About a year ago, like 2023 or whatever. Great product and everything like that. But now that I’m looking back on it, as I like switched more to bricks, and I would say that’s my main page builder, I want to get closer to core and I’m on the advisory board for etch. So there’s like a lot, there’s still, there’s a lot happening.

We’re not nearly at the end of the cycle of all that, but it’s interesting to look back. It’s interesting to look back from a product perspective, because this isn’t, I don’t think this is unique to WordPress page builders, but it’s like the people that innovated the Elementors, the Beaver Builders, I wasn’t here for all of them, right?

Like WP bakeries, like they innovated. But now you have a Bricks, or an Oxygen, or a Breakdance, or whatever, that we’re able to just be like, Okay, we can learn, we can go so much further so much quicker because we learned from all like the, any mistakes that like an Elementor would have made or whatever.

And I just feel like that’s really interesting to see it all. Now it’s a little unfortunate that it gets a little tribal at times. I wish that in an ideal world, software wouldn’t divide us like that. But I also think it’s like human nature. Like people really enjoy the things that they use.

And that are honestly, and for a lot of these people, like a bricks, for instance, is literally driving their livelihood. Like it’s, so you can you gotta understand that okay there’s a reason that they’re so like passionate about it. But, it’s I don’t know.

I don’t know how we change that or anything, but I think that the page building space has been quite interesting for the last seven or so years. And I’m really interested to see how Core continues to evolve because I do think that if we can do things, I’ve always said if the core of WordPress could for some way, you wave a magic wand and it could do all those things.

I think a lot of people would go there because they’re not just using page builders for no reason. They’re using page builders because it’s easy to do the things they want to do. So I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball, but it’s always an, it’s always a fun topic. The whole idea of page builders and just WordPress in general regarding that.

Chris Badgett: You, you made a good point like Earlier you said like training around your agency stack So when you get comfortable with your tools or your form plugin or whatever Page builder you use it’s just you just get used to it But you’re you like to explore and stuff too, which is great I think having a percentage of your time where you’re just testing and trying things is a you got to stay sharp It’s really easy to get stuck in this world and Not evolve in the sense that you have to evolve, but there’s innovation happening everywhere yeah, Florida a little bit

Mark Szymanski: Yeah, it’s tough when you got to be careful how complacent you get I feel like in that and And one quick Like example of what you said there is I never, right away when I was in the agency, like maybe some of the listeners can empathize with it.

As soon as I got into the agency life, like really, and I was like actually trying to build websites for multiple clients, all that sort of stuff. Immediately, depending on who you’re talking to, you’re going to get requests to do like really intricate stuff. Like when I say intricate, I know people that don’t use like dynamic data and that’s fine.

They don’t have clients that don’t need to use that or what, like they don’t use custom post types. They don’t use any of that. But the first project that I had, I didn’t know how to do any of that, and it, and I look back on it now, I’m like, that would have been, that’s a perfect example some sort of website with articles, white papers announcements just a bunch of those things, right?

And I look back and I’m like, wow, I really enjoyed trying to figure that out, even though I had no idea what the hell I was doing at the time, and I was trying to just use taxonomies and all this crazy stuff. But I look and I’m like, that was the thing that I was naturally driven to do. I was naturally driven to see like where WordPress could go, like how much I could do with it, like with dynamic data and conditions and all the sort of like logic and everything.

And. There’s a model that a lot of agencies have where they just want to pump out like the same, like quick brochure websites for a few thousand bucks, 5, 000 bucks, whatever. And I am like, by all means they should do that if they want to do that. But I just never spoke to me. So I was always in this spot where like I wanted to do agency stuff, but I want to do really complex stuff.

And it’s very hard to do complex stuff by yourself at scale and for the amount of money that you need to do, you need to, Be paid in order to do those things. So I was finding myself just wanting to do complex things, but at the same time, like just, it just didn’t, the calculation and the way I had it set up just didn’t all work.

Like I didn’t think I could scale it super long term. So I’ve pivoted slightly because this is like a new. Place that I could be in where I could constantly explore, provide value and potentially do like website builds as well. But I really just like building my own stuff.

Really, and that’s an end educating people along the way.

Chris Badgett: So that’s fun that that kind of happened to me. I was just naturally decent at marketing and sales. I get a project and they’re like, can you do this? I’m like, I can figure that out. And then I’d go try to find a tool if I couldn’t.

Oh, I think I might need to hire a developer to help me with this. So I do that. Oh, this is beyond my. Capabilities. I need to get some real designers on board here. And next thing I have had a big agency, but it’s, it was fun the whole time. And when you look back on it, it seems wild. Wow, you said yes to a lot of stuff that you had no clear path on how to get there, but you got them there about being resourceful,

Mark Szymanski: 100%. Yep.

Chris Badgett: Definitely. Let’s talk a little bit more about how your like YouTube process, like how do you think about that? Cause I know a lot of people, some of this audience are like course creators and they’re like, I need a YouTube channel. And they need to build process around how to do that, how to commit to it, how to like source topics and things like that.

Tell us about your YouTuber evolution.

Mark Szymanski: Yeah. I was, like I said, I was making YouTube videos for a while. Like just like older stuff that just didn’t have anything to do with WordPress during the, I want to say the COVID lockdown times and all that. Like I was actually like just doing a daily live stream, just like at night, just like at my desk, just going over like my.

daily recap of what I was doing and thinking about some stuff. Nobody was watching at all, but I just really enjoyed that. What do you like about

Chris Badgett: going live?

Mark Szymanski: I have no idea. I think, I like going live. I think I like going live because I, the, there is zero editing. Like I just don’t like, like I hate video.

I don’t hate video editing, but I really dislike it. I’m not a video editor. So I don’t like the idea of taking the time to do it. And I never hired an editor. So I don’t take like the time, the idea of trying to do it. And then edit it. I feel like that’s just tough. The other thing is This is super counterintuitive.

Kind of, I feel so much less pressure when I’m live than when I’m trying to make a prerecorded video, because I’m trying to, I’m in this mindset when I make the prerecorded video, especially if it’s for another channel or for a brand or something like it has to be like good like when good, like almost perfect.

I’m not stuttering. And I just feel like I get in more of a flow, as you can tell here, because I love to talk. I just get in more of a flow when it’s live. And I just, I don’t know, I just have a it’s just, I don’t know, maybe it’s just a skill I have or something like that. But I just, that’s one of the things, is I’m just like, way less pressure.

When I’m just like, yeah, let’s just go live, let’s talk. It’s like you’re talking to somebody. That’s the thing I love about WordCamp US. It’s we watch everybody on YouTube on X or whatever. And then we get to talk to him in person and everybody’s, a lot of people are the exact same. It’s just, you’re just talking to him in real life.

It’s like you’re on a live stream with him. I don’t know. It’s cool. But I think that’s a big part of it. I think there’s some people doing it really well. Yourself included Kevin Geary. Obviously, like I was watching his live streams before I started doing mine. I think the live aspect.

Is really valuable because if you’re trying to build any semblance of an audience or community, they can engage with you one on one. And again, like in a digital age where we don’t get super opportunities to meet up, like altogether, like we did this past week, it’s very vital to build those connections.

And I think the live setting as well is a really good one. It’s a little different than the YouTube comments. You know what I mean? The live chat is a little more synchronous, so that’s a huge thing. As far as like the video content that’s not live, I would say that my, my strategy there is pivoting to a degree trying to go more like affiliate and sponsorship routes while also covering, any sort of like news stuff and things like that.

And educating just in general, but it’s just, if you’re going to play the content game, you have to, you literally have to be cognizant of making money. So without hopefully shilling stuff, there’s a fine line there. So yeah, I would, that’s where, I don’t have a hard and fast answer on the process for the video side necessarily, because I’m still feeling it out.

But yeah, that’s the overall process I would say at this point.

Chris Badgett: What gets you excited about Etch?

Mark Szymanski: So I think the thing that gets me excited about Etch is, one, I met some of the developers this weekend, Andrea and Mateo of Kevin’s team, and I love those guys. And I think the thing that I’m most excited about Etch is, one, I do believe in Kevin and his team.

They’ve done great stuff. They have a track record. And they actually care about moving things forward, regardless of whether you agree with Any of the approaches, I feel like they’re a team that like, they want to do, they want to do better. They want WordPress to continue to succeed. They’re bought in.

They’re not just here for whatever. The bigger thing though, I think about at just more little meta is that I’m actually really excited that it’s not like a page builder, like another page builder, so to speak. And that’s no disrespect to Elementor, Brix, Devi whoever.

That’s not disrespect there. It’s just my thing was when I moved to Brix, I was like, Okay, this is better, in my opinion, for what I was doing than Elementor was. But it’s not really there yet because it’s still like super it’s still like disconnected, proprietary the stuff is in the database rather than flat file, like whatever you want to say, like flat files, like whatever you want to say.

So I’m like, I want to use, like I want to use the core experience because I feel like most of the time the native way is the best way from a Like a cohesive experience, if you had an, if you have an iPhone and you use like a native Apple, like app versus a third party app, it’s probably gonna be better generally.

It just does like a silly, analogy there. So I wanted to use that, but at the same time, like it’s not there as far as everything you can do with the page motor. So what I think, and again, like we’re in the, we’re in the building stage of that right now, the team is building it.

I think. I know what the vision is and the vision is to build a UI and extend the block editor and extend the core piece of it that will, create a better working experience, a better unified development environment, everything like that, but also not lock things away.

The idea would be that you can build with etch and you can just take it away and you’re still good. There are probably some other products that are doing that to an extent. But, I don’t think we’re talking about like custom, we’re talking about custom blocks like core blocks, but they’re not like, we’re not dropping in blocks that you can’t utilize your, if you get rid of it, then those blocks are gone, stuff like that.

And I don’t know every single detail cause I’m not like a hundred percent like the limiting, I have a limiting, limited experience within direct core, which is one of my. My next endeavors here. We’re going to dive in there full throttle. But but yeah, that’s just, those are some of the big reasons I’m excited about it and we’ll just, we’ll see how it goes.

Chris Badgett: What are you excited about or how do you use AI with websites?

Mark Szymanski: So I’ve used chat GPT. I think I have a pretty sure I have a subscription to chat GPT and Claude currently. And I’ve used. The cool thing. Okay. So I made a couple of videos about Claude. So Claude, I love like their artifacts thing where you can type it in and then it’ll give you a big synopsis.

It’ll give you the code. You can see it right there. Sometimes if it’s like a website or whatever, like it’ll even run it. Like if it’s like some HTML or whatever, but what I really love about Claude is you can build like literally plugins with the thing. If you give it the right documentation, you could create like a custom plugin that adds like conditions to like bricks or something or whatever.

So again, a couple of videos were like. When I’m alive on YouTube, reach out to the YouTube API and, make a condition that like dynamically shows or hide hides this section on my website that says, Hey, I’m alive. So something like that, right now it’s tough not to go off on a tangent with the AI thing, but it’s tough because if you’re not like a developer, you have to really have a developer’s touch to make sure that it actually works and like debug and all that sort of stuff.

But it’s normally pretty good, especially if you feed it the right information. So I would say that’s a big thing that I’ve used. That I’ve experimented using AI with for websites, maybe some image generation to the tough part. I feel like we’re in right now and it might level out or might continue to just exponentially go crazy is everything’s moving so fast.

I’m wondering like, Hey, what’s the best, what’s the best model? Is it Claude? Is it GPT? And then they come out with new models and it’s where am I, where am I getting the best information and things like that from? Copywriting, image generation, code generation, there’s just a ton out there.

Then the one other thing, I feel like this is a little bit of a, Less talked about one is like something like 11 labs. Where you can clone your voice and you can clone different things about that. Now that’s, we start to get a little scary, as far as the AI thing goes. But I think that I would really love, cause if you had a community.

Those people like once your knowledge and they watch your YouTube videos and they see this stuff, their stuff, your time, eventually as your community scales, you have, and this, you have less time because you have more people seeking that time. There’d be a really cool thing. I know a couple of people that are already trying to create like AI’s of themselves, like AI knowledge bases.

And you could basically chat, like you could chat with Chris. You could chat with Mark and it’s you’re basically going to get similar answers.

Chris Badgett: All your content.

Mark Szymanski: I would love that. You know who had that first is not exactly this, but like you could search anything from all of Gary Vee’s content, like the Gary Vee search engine.

I don’t know this guy, he like announced it, but a long time ago, but I don’t know how much it ever went, but it’s probably crazier now. Cause it’s way easier. He had it before. Like anybody was talking about this. You could search any word, any phrase, like, where did I hear that? And it would search like all of his Tik TOK is.

Instagram, YouTube or whatever. And it was amazing. I was like, I need that when I have more content, because again, the, this, I know, this too, like we’re, we we run in the same circle of content here. There’s so much good content. That is deep, buried and it’s just how it is.

Like it’s buried in the channel. That’s really good. And people would care about it. How do we resurface that, how do we recycle that? How do we reuse that? And then that all of that coupled with this is I need to leverage this more. I, the problem with the live content is not everyone wants to sit through a two hour thing or they don’t know, right?

That’s an investment that they’re not willing to make. We need to, the clips are like of the utmost magnitude. And there are some really good AI tools that are doing that now. I’m just not leveraging them well enough. Opus clip, I think is one that I’ve tried. I don’t know.

That was a big rant there, but I would say that there’s a lot of these tools that are actually just taking what people were doing manually and just making it easier and the people that leverage them are going to, it’s going to get pretty far ahead because they’re going to have way, way more efficiency built in.

Chris Badgett: And that’s a reason to become a content creator.

Mark Szymanski: Yeah.

Chris Badgett: I joke that I started this podcast around the same time as Tim Farris. So I did 10 years ago and I’ve interviewed a lot of people with a lot of great stuff. A lot of great conversations, but it’s like discovering the old stuff is really hard for the regular user.

And I don’t know, I think 2, 000 videos on our YouTube channel, if you count into lives, there’s a lot of content. A lot of good content

Mark Szymanski: in there. 100%.

Chris Badgett: And then if the AI could mix and match Oh when he was interviewing Mark, he said this about this topic and this other person and this other person and amalgamate that into it’s, yeah it’s going to get really interesting.

It already is, but it’s going to get really interesting, but that’s why it’s important to create original content.

Mark Szymanski: A hundred percent. Yep.

Chris Badgett: Awesome. I wanted to ask you for the agencies out there from your agency experience. I know you’re doubling down on content, but what was working for you in terms of a niche, like what types of sites like e commerce, WooCommerce sites, main street businesses, membership sites, like what, what was, what were some of your favorite agency projects that paid well and the client was really happy with?

Mark Szymanski: Yeah, so I the one I would say I go a couple different ways here. I would say the one that I fell into was more of like complex sites, so to speak. The biggest like one of the biggest projects that I did was like, I did a website for a like a wealth advising firm, basically.

Kind of like a redesign, rebuild, and stuff like that. And then they were like, okay we want to take, All of our knowledge is a really meta thing that happened here that we want to take all of our knowledge that we have and we’ve built in our firm and we want to create a another website, another brand that teaches and educate other wealth advisors.

So I’m like, all right, that sounds pretty cool. So it was like a, it was like, and this was years ago, a few years ago at this time. And it was like, okay, we’re going to create a website. That’s going to be obviously members only marketing side on the front, but obviously like the actual website is members only.

It’s subscription based. Everything that you do on a day to day basis, Chris, I’m sure like a learning management platform. Like they actually initially pitched it as we were like looking and researching other things they were looking at some other ones and it was using like a, like almost like a buddy boss type platform where there’s a lot of like social pieces too.

Cause you know, this is again, a couple of years ago at this point, maybe you go with a circle or maybe you do like a lifter element. It was just, it was like, There’s so many, there’s so many options, right? So what do you do? What, what features do you want? Not one. Cause that’s huge, right?

If you don’t want the social stuff, then maybe you don’t put all that overhead in there, right? You already have to have subscriptions, memberships, the e commerce piece, the actual courses just custom posts and stuff like that. Cause there was a podcast involved and it’s just it’s a lot of stuff.

It’s like literally just take all the buzzwords and just throw it in. And I loved building that. Like I loved the challenge. But the problem is that I ran into maybe the agency owners won’t run into this. The problem is if you don’t, if you, it was one of those projects where I had not done stuff like that to the nth degree yet.

And when you’re in that spot, you don’t know how much to charge. And you don’t know how much of, you don’t know how much of a pain in the ass that’s going to be to figure all that out. That is a real hurdle. So always charge more, but it’s difficult. It’s a double, double edged sword. It’s hard to say more and then not get it because it did teach me a hell of a lot.

And I know all that now, but once you have one or two reps, then you start to feel it. So I don’t know if that was exactly an answer, but that would be the niche that I found myself in was those more complex ones. What I did also have though was more, and I would actually recommend people try to more go this way is.

more repeatable things that still potentially scratch that itch for you. And I found like the best, probably the best client project that I’ve had was one of my more recent ones where it was like a small to medium sized business in a, in a industry that, makes money. Yeah.

Meaning like a, like nothing like, Oh, your buddy has a an idea for a apparel store. Spin them up a terrible idea. Like just tell them to go to Shopify or something. That’s probably blasphemous, but just, yeah, be careful. Just tread lightly there. What I’m saying is like something in like a tried and true thing.

Like lawyers, obviously people have different ideas about whether you should build sites how that industry goes, but like lawyers or like maybe doctors or like oil and gas like engineering, like those types of things, those big ones like that, where that is a, is an industry where like it, in order to succeed there, you have to be making money.

Like if they’ve been in business for 50 years, 10, 15, 20, like this company I was dealing with, like 50 years, like they’re established. You know what I mean? And they’re probably technologically

Chris Badgett: behind, right?

Mark Szymanski: Exactly. Exactly. They’re established and they need you. And they have some money.

Now, I’m not saying I’m not saying charge them an arm and a leg, go create don’t like gouge them, but I’m saying like, if you want to sell like websites or more, I feel like if I was going to redo everything, I’d probably focus on those types of people and we could talk about how you get those types of people.

Cause there’s a million ways for that too. But I’m saying like, those are the ones I would really look out for because the startup game is tough. The the new age businesses are tough, even younger businesses, younger people are tough just because. Like they’re either starting out or they, the whole WordPress thing could be like confusing to be like, it’s just, those are the ones that I feel like are really good because they, it just, I just feel like they fit extremely well and they normally have the money to pay and they’re normally pretty, pretty chill people.

Depending that’s super generalization there, but if you manage that process well, I think that’s probably been some of my best experiences to be honest.

Chris Badgett: I’m smiling laughing a little bit because Matt Madaris just dropped a comment. I don’t know if you saw it.

I can tell you guys are friends This guy yeah, you’re breaking the flow Matt you’re breaking yeah, come on man

And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Go to LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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