The Builders

This episode is for freelancers or agencies that would like to hear a perspective from someone that sets up and manages hosting for clients.  OR it's for businesses that would like to extract some thoughts around the importance of choosing a good web host and what the process is around moving to a new server and web host. Whether you're just launching a website or have an existing, growing business, your server is an essential piece to insure your customers can purchase, visitors can access your content or you can generate leads.  You don't ever want to be in the position where you're talking to your developer or hosting company and "this is costing me money" comes out of your mouth. 

In this episode I talk about how to infuse flexibility in your business in that you can handle spikes in your volume without hiring a huge team off the bat.  And why you may not want internal hiring to be your only solution to getting stuff done. What avenues are out there for your business to operate like a cloud computer or server platform where you can scale it up or down depending on the time of the year, amount of business coming in and so on.  A powerful solution that can help you take on more.. but better be prepared for the valleys.

In this episode I'm having a conversation with 2 other web developers.  We start by diving into their backgrounds and journey.  Ryan's been a web developer for over 15 years.  Danielle's been at it for around 9 years.  Both, like myself, focus a lot on WordPress, but we talk about 'what else' we do or will be doing.  We all worked together as a team in a previous company; that's how we met. Some of the topics we cover are related to being a freelancer vs agency, how we define our business, niches, our history with WordPress, what challenges we all face.. which includes that dreaded "Imposter Syndrome" and how we each think about and deal with it.  And cats.. some references to cats. :-)

In this episode I talk about generating ideas and brainstorming.  This something I take very seriously in my own business.  It's a never ending process...  and often ideas simmer for long periods so I can develop them.  When they are ready, they may see the light. I touch on a recent idea that is just now seeing the light of day.  It's something that started to gel around a year ago.  I thought of a name for a product, bought the domain, have thought about the sales page, how I'll market it and who my audience is; I didn't start start developing the product until this past week.

This episode digs into the awesomeness of WooCommerce - a WordPress eCommerce plugin.  I have been using and developing with WooCommerce for years.  It's my go to solution if one of my clients needs to sell products on their website (digital or physical). We have an eCommerce WordPress theme at Hexater called, Furniture Shop.  Hexater.com itself is driven by a cart-less install of WooCommerce (we use Freemius for the cart).  I've built and manage WooCommerce for clients. WooCommerce is great to use out of the box, but you can also customize it to be whatever you want it to be.

If you're an agency that needs to or is trying to hire good web developers or have some other reason you need to find good people to do work for you, this episode is for you. After building multiple teams over the years I've learned some lessons that helps me find good people relatively consistently (knock on wood). I've hired people to help me build niche sites, create content, design and develop. I've worked with creatives and tech'y people to build stuff on the web. There's a process and some key things you need to consider if you are going to have success; considerations depending on who you are seeking and from where. Enjoy!

This episode will take us on a journey into my past.  I reference a thread I participated in on the Warrior Forum back in 2003-04.  When I was active there. We're talking about just getting something launched and not getting caught up in making everything perfect before you take action.  Just launch it!  Too many spend weeks, months or even years because they don't feel confident that they are ready and everything is perfect. When the real answer is to just get something minimal viable together and get it out there.  By the time some people launch 1 product or service they could have tested 10 and found that winner.

This is a conversation with the one and only Doland White. Doland and I met while working at the same company a few years ago.. he was the CEO and I was just one of the web development grunts. ;)  ...but no, we built their WordPress business together and he taught me a lot as I helped build the themes and a team of designers and developers. He's been involved with technology in some shape or form for over 3 decades.  He worked at IBM, 11 years at Novell, Symantec.. and other great companies.  He started as a programmer, made his way into management and beyond.  There is SO MUCH to learn from him! In this episode we dig into the business of building a business.  How to keep things simple in the beginning, how to put things in place so you don't get overwhelmed, growth vs scaling and so much more!

This is a new type of segment for the Builders Crew! I’ve chosen a specific type of page on a website (the Team Page) and we’re going to go through a project from start to finish. This will be great for anyone that has or is planning a team page .. whether that’s your business OR something you are building for someone else. I’m providing some background on the project as a whole and the relationship between us, the agency and client. We’ll look at what decisions and changes were made along the way and what impact they had. As well as how that process looked.

It's a question you've heard or seen a million times if you've spent time in web development communities online.   Should I learn this or what should I learn next? No question is a dumb question of course.. let's start there.  But often I think there doesn't need to be a next.  It's ok to just focus on the basics at certain times or getting better at what's in front of you.   Or just chilling until something comes along that tells you what to learn; that inspires you to take action. The better thing to do often is to simply look inside yourself.  What gets you excited.  What past experience might tell you what is a good direction for you.  In my opinion how much money you can make isn't the right question either; I've a big proponent of following your passion.. doing things that inspire you first.