Most newsletters today are, at their core, a blog with distribution. Delivered through all-in-one tools like Substack or beehiiv. Meanwhile, the not-so-shiny but incredibly powerful tool WordPress has been powering bloggers for over 20 years. And because it’s my world, I’ve always known how to blend the two: The same outcome on a platform you (more…)
The best part of my job? Helping someone make money from something they built.
The best part of my job? Helping someone make money from something they built. Here’s why I know you can do it: My feed has been staggeringly full of posts on layoffs + months spent applying to roles with no reply. The ‘open to work tag’ on faces it should NOT be on. You live in a (more…)
What if your “hard task” is actually 17 easy tasks squished together?
What if your “hard task” is actually 17 easy tasks squished together? (TLDR; this is another of my ‘tiny moment turned to a worldview’ reframes). I’m new to playing the NY Times ‘Pips’ game, so the other day I was talking about it at a volunteering event and someone overheard us. Their comment has been (more…)
On why we’re the perfect pair for what we’re building, and why friction matters more than people admit.
Last week, Jason and I were on a train to New York City for a two-night midweek getaway. The team was cheering us on. I even reported that I wasn’t bringing my laptop (more cheers). Jason did bring his. Because he knows. About an hour into the ride, something came up. On Monday we’d run (more…)
Passwords weren’t built for the way we use the internet today.
They were built for simpler days, when you had a handful of logins to remember. When “security” meant you were intelligent enough not to use the same password everywhere Now you have hundreds of accounts spanning personal, work, banking, entertainment, and business. And have our password habits matured? If they have, it’s probably not enough. (more…)
You know that feeling when you log into your WordPress dashboard…. and wait.
You’re just trying to add an upcoming event or view a sales report or export some order data or change one sentence on a landing page. But the page just hangs, and with it you feel your patience draining. That spare five minutes between meetings to grab some data has eaten up fifteen minutes. And (more…)
Thinking about hiring a business coach? Read this.
We hired a business coach once. During a time when we were completely overwhelmed. I cried almost every day.
The contributing factors?
- We had a great team, but we were still doing too much ourselves.
- Our processes weren’t documented. Worse yet, our vision wasn’t documented.
- We didn’t even know if we wanted to keep doing this. Could one of us get out and the other stay? (If you don’t know me, I’ve run a software product company w/my spouse for 18+ yrs)
All this building pressure meant our marriage was feeling the strain. And at the time, our teen/preteen kids needed us in new ways.
So we reached out to a friend. And that friend suggested we needed help from a coach. A neutral someone with CEO-level experience to guide some big conversations.
Looking back, it was both the biggest waste of money and one of the best decisions we ever made.
Playing pretend isn’t just for kids. As adults, it’s how we make better decisions.
Whenever I think about a big change, a new hire, a puppy, a second house, hell, even before me and Jason had our second kid, I play a game: << If this existed in my life right now, how would it fit? >> Would I have to take the puppy to a friend’s house this (more…)
Building a WordPress site for your membership business is actually really hard.
And I don’t think product companies like mine are as focused on making it easier (as we should be). We preach “endless customization,” because it is the number one thing we hear in customer feedback. Why those chose us. But for a great number of people, that just turns into: “Oooooo. I can fiddle with (more…)
Stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. Most of us don’t know and never will know.
When a kid gets asked that question, 99.999% chance their answer is what they think you want to hear. And if you force someone to repeat something often enough, it might start to feel real. Real enough to pursue. As their “first” career. Ouch. Me? I thought I would own a bakery.Reality: I own a (more…)