Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:12 Okay. So welcome back to the open source rep podcast. Uh, I'm excited to chat to my guest today. Uh, I'm speaking to somebody all the way from the other side of the, of the globe. So in is welcome. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 00:00:24 Hi, well, um, I, I kind of had a, an accident yesterday. <laugh> so, um, my week's going a bit different than, um, than I would've expected yesterday morning, but, uh, otherwise I'm, I'm doing all right. <laugh> that's good. You
Speaker 1 00:00:40 That's good to hear. So I'd like to give you the opportunity to introduce yourself to my listeners. So just give me a very brief info who you are, what you do and where are you from in the world?
Speaker 2 00:00:50 All right. Um, well, my name is Enes I'm from the Netherlands and, um, I have been working in the work press environment for about 12 years is, um, I'm mainly like I started out as a web developer doing websites for customers and then kind of migrated into, uh, customer service, cuz I've figured I'm very good at translating between the technical world and the not to technical. Um, and um, yeah, after six years working at ultimate I've now started my own consultancy very, very recently.
Speaker 1 00:01:27 Awesome. Awesome. Well, we'll definitely, we'll definitely get that into a second. Um, mm-hmm <affirmative> the next question I always like to ask my guests is I'm I'm very much a coffee person. In fact, I've got a coffee brewing over there that I'm probably gonna pour just now. <laugh> um, so what is, what is your chosen drink to get you get you started and get you going in the day?
Speaker 2 00:01:42 Oh, definitely also coffee, like, uh, coffee with a lot of sugar coffee with a lot of sugar.
Speaker 1 00:01:49 Yeah. OK. Are you, are you, do you consider yourself a coffee snob or is it just any coffee that's available?
Speaker 2 00:01:55 Any coffee? I'm <laugh> I'm not picky as long as it's sugar.
Speaker 1 00:01:59 Okay, awesome. Awesome. Cool. So, um, you mentioned WordPress, you mentioned automat, uh, I'm going to assume that you have quite a, a long and interesting open source history. Uh mm-hmm <affirmative> you mentioned that you were building, uh, websites for clients. So in, in that environment, was that working for a company? Was it working for yourself? Sort of what was that experience like?
Speaker 2 00:02:20 So, no, I've I started out as a freelancer. Um, uh, I became, uh, a mother when I was 22, um, at like the height of the financial crisis and, um, uh, well, I mean the crisis in 2012, we've had multiple by now <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:02:39 <laugh>. Um, but I, I hadn't gone to university or I didn't finish. So as a single mother of 22, without a degree, nobody was gonna hire me. And, um, I figured, you know what, I'm just gonna do things by myself. Um, took about three months to teach myself PHP and then kind of stumbled on work press as a, as a, a great platform, both for myself as a developer, cuz it, it had so many prebuilt things already and for my customers to to understand how to work with something. Um, and it meant I didn't have to maintain the, the source itself as much. Um, yeah. And then I, I fell in love with the community and the open source nature of the platform and um, I've, I've never left. <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:03:31 Awesome. Do you, do you remember, you probably do remember roughly what, what year this, you said, uh, 2012 were thereabouts. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's perfect. Cool. Um, and so do you remember, do you remember what your first sort of contribution was to the open source community? Um, was it something to do with code? Was it support? Was it community related? Do you remember what that experience was like?
Speaker 2 00:03:52 Oh yeah, that was definitely support. Yeah. I, um, uh, when I migrated from development work into support work, I started helping out in the, the org forums and that kind of migrated myself into, uh, the actual support team. So I was a moderator for a bit and um, that led to me being invited to the, um, the community summit in Philadelphia. Okay. And that really kickstarted my, my career as such. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:04:24 Okay. Awesome. Um, I'm gonna kind of swerve off topic a little bit if you don't mind, because I wanna chat to you about your accent. Um, <laugh> I I've, I've interviewed a couple of Dutch friends of mine and, and you don't have a typical Dutch accent. Um, oh, so if you don't mind me asking your English is no, English is very, very good, but it sounds very, very British. Um <laugh> does that come from like an experience in your life or, and if you don't feel like answering this, we can cut it. <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:04:50 I've been dating someone from the UK for about a year and a half and my accent really depend on who I've been talking to. Okay. So I'm, I'm a chameleon in that S but uh, if I, if I talk to you for, uh, a longer time, I will start sounding south African.
Speaker 1 00:05:08 Okay.
Speaker 2 00:05:08 And talking to someone from the us, I'll start sounding American, like instantly. Okay. And I can't, I can't help it. It's something that I, I, I cannot switch on or off. Wow. And now that I'm, I'm really focused on it. I'm really aware <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:05:25 Well, I'll mention this now, if you wanna cut this afterwards, we can do, but I just thought it was really interesting because, because I, I, in, in preparation for these podcasts, I always go and, and research my guests and get to know them a bit, bit, bit better. Sometimes it's easy because like, with yourself, I've communicated with you online, you know, we've had some interactions, sometimes it's a bit more difficult. It's somebody I've never interacted with. Um, and the first thing that I do is I go and look for folks on, on, you know, um, either WordPress TV or anywhere where they've spoken. Um, yeah. And I was like, wow, where does ins come from? She doesn't sound like she comes from the Netherlands. No. Um, so now I understand, so, so that's, that's really interesting, but that's really interesting. I find that, I find that super interesting.
Speaker 2 00:06:04 Well, the thing is languages have always been kind of my thing. I speak six or seven different languages. So I, it doesn't cost me anything, not, not any effort to switch between. Um, but that also yeah. Kind of influences what I sound like. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:06:27 <laugh> that's no, I, I think it's super interesting.
Speaker 2 00:06:31 I think it also kind of, um, explains how I got into, um, customer and kind of the role that I'm in now is languages and how we communicate with each other is something that is kind of inborn with me. I, I didn't have to go to school for it. I didn't have to. I mean, obviously I've, I've learned up on it by now, but it, it's not something that I've had to teach myself how to do. Mm. Um, the main thing I've had to do is how to teach others to do the same thing. Um, but yeah, I, I definitely think those two are, are connected.
Speaker 1 00:07:09 Awesome. Awesome. So I kind of, I'm kind of gonna go, I I've got my questions that I have here, but, you know, given that I know your story and, and where I want to get in the next 10 minutes or so, I'd like to spend a little bit of time chatting about your, your time at automatic. So before we get there, though, um, I'd like to, I'd like to ask you about that switch when you went from being a developer to working in support. So the first question I have there is, was that something that you sought out or was it something that was a requirement for where you were at that point in time?
Speaker 2 00:07:40 Um, so to answer that, I, I kind of need to look back at my development work mm-hmm <affirmative> cause I focused on small, um, female business owners. Okay. So, uh, individuals or, you know, having a small, small business. Um, and one of the things that I got as feedback from each and every one of them was pretty much every time was that they felt for the first time that someone would sit down with them and explain things in a way that did not make them feel like, um, <affirmative> they were incompetent. Right.
Speaker 2 00:08:24 Or that they, um, uh didn't know what they, they were talking about. They felt respected, they felt heard, they felt like they could ask me questions. Mm. Um, and that made me think, okay, if I can do that with these individuals, maybe I can do that on a, on a bigger scale. Okay. Um, and then I came across, um, someone from the workplace environment looking for a support person on a freelance basis. And I went, do you know what I've got the technical knowhow. Right. I know how to talk to people, let me just try this. And that went really well. Mm
Speaker 1 00:09:02 Mm. You're almost, you're almost in a sense, a bit of a unicorn there because as a developer myself, I, I enjoy support, but I know most developers wanna stay as far away from people as they possibly can. Uh, yeah. It's one of the reasons that most developers get into programming and, and get into building software because they wanna deal with ones and zeros. They don't wanna deal with humans and, and, and emotion and, and questions and all of that. Yeah. Um, so do, do you think, and you mentioned this earlier, but do, do you think it was just your inherent nature as a human being that, that brought you to that point? Do you think it was the love of languages? Do you think there was something else that, because you mentioned you were a developer, you taught yourself PHP, so you definitely had those technical skills.
Speaker 1 00:09:44 And the reason I'm asking this question is a little bit biased because in myself, I'm now not a developer anymore. I'm a writer mm-hmm <affirmative>, but I was always a writer. I was never amazing at it, but I was always writing things and I was blogging and writing stories, writing jokes and whatever, and development, similarly to yourself development was just a way to earn income, but I enjoyed it and I enjoyed the problem solving or whatever, but I, it was never really what I thought I would see myself doing for the rest of time. So do you think you've always had this, this ability, natural ability to, as you say, break it down and, and not, not speak down to people, but help them figure out what they're doing?
Speaker 2 00:10:21 Yeah, I think so. I mean, my first job was in retail, so my first ever work experience was helping people out. And then I went into working behind a, the bar as, you know, kind of pouring drinks and listening to people talk, <laugh> the
Speaker 1 00:10:42 Oldest version of therapy
Speaker 2 00:10:44 <laugh>. Uh, so I think all of the work experience I've got up until this point has always been in the same kind of maybe in different fields, but always along this same lines. And I've always been very good at it. And when I went into the web development industry, I know I, I noticed that this is an area that in particular, where you have so many individual developers, you know, that they're really good at creating something by themselves and earning good money with that, and then get super overwhelmed with the other aspect of, of that business. Um, and it was kind of a niche that I noticed and, and kind of naturally stepped into as, Hey, do you know what I, I, I can't actually close that bridge for a lot of people. Hmm. Um, and, um, yeah, that's, that's going really well. Awesome.
Speaker 1 00:11:41 Awesome. So, so let's talk about that transition. So, so let's talk about how you went from, you know, doing that first thing, doing support, um, you know, for those listen to this podcast, if you haven't heard of automatic, what rock have you been living under, but it is, you know, one of the biggest companies to do with WordPress at the moment. So let's talk about that journey. How did that happen? How did you end up there? Uh, did you go straight into support on.org.com WooCommerce? How did, how did that all come about?
Speaker 2 00:12:10 So, I, I was a freelance customer support agent before I joined automatic. And, um, <laugh>, I, I knew of automatic obviously. Uh, and then at some point, um, I, I can't quite remember how I land it on their work with us page for the first time. Um, but I ended up visiting that page so often that the little box of <laugh>, we notice that you've been here quite often. Why don't you apply? Start, started popping up, which that's
Speaker 1 00:12:42 A very clever box.
Speaker 2 00:12:44 I think it's the most brilliant thing anyone has ever done in hiring. Um, but yeah, that really, that really got me thinking. And then I went to the community summit in Philadelphia, and obviously there were a number of mathematicians present. And at some point someone said, why haven't you applied yet? And I went, what, what you mean? I mean, I'm not, I'm not <laugh>. Um, uh, and I kind of got grabbed by the Scruff and put in front of a computer and said, you go and apply now because yeah, you should come and, and work with us. Um, and then I sent in my application completely failed to attach my resume, um, and then thought that there goes my chance. I'm never gonna get hired now. Um, but it, you know, I did a follow up email with, oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to attach my resume, but, you know ha ha. Um, and, um, and they got back to me and said, no, actually we, we would really like to talk to you. Um, did my, a trial, which was about six weeks of absolute terror, um, of, of potentially, you know, not landing the job. Um, and then I got hired straight into WooCom and, um, I stayed with WooCommerce for six years.
Speaker 1 00:14:12 Okay. And, and what year was that that you joined? Um, what Atlantic?
Speaker 2 00:14:17 Very good question. Six years ago.
Speaker 1 00:14:19 Six years ago. Okay. So it was after the acquisition, of course. Yes, of course, because you joined automatic do <laugh>. Um, OK. OK, cool. Sorry, I I'm just trying to,
Speaker 2 00:14:29 I was one of the first hires after the acquisition.
Speaker 1 00:14:33 Okay. Okay. The reason I asked that is because being a Capetian, I have quite a few friends who obviously, you know, to I'm friends of folks like Hugh and ya and Mattie and those people. So it's always interesting to know kind of where all that fits in. Um, mm-hmm <affirmative> so what was that like going from, you know, being a freelancer, um, to now working for a company, but which is well known for, for sort of pioneering distributed work, was there a major switch? Was it more difficult, less difficult? Um, what was that like?
Speaker 2 00:15:02 No, I mean, it wasn't different in the sense that, um, the way automatic worked back then was very similar to being a freelancer mm-hmm <affirmative>. So we could set our own hours and kind of determine when we started working. Uh, we didn't have a set schedule as such, so that's changed over the past couple of years, but that was, um, definitely the case back when I was, um, hired <affirmative>. Um, the only big difference I would say was my expectation of the work. Um, so I thought, cuz I'd been working with WooCom for a while with my customers and that, you know, I explained to my customers how WooCom works and um, and then I got put into the payments team and I just went, what is this? <laugh> I know nothing. I know nothing at all. Right. Um, so yeah, that was a bit of an adjustment, but in terms of how I worked in, in the, the kind of expectation of quality, wasn't very different from, from what I was already doing.
Speaker 1 00:16:20 Okay. Okay. Awesome. Um, so then, then let's move, let's move ahead six years, you know, let's move ahead to the reason why we're here today. Um, and let's talk about your new venture before we get into that though. I do have what might be a difficult question. It might not. What was the reason for deciding to leave?
Speaker 2 00:16:40 So I, I mentioned just now that, um, when I started working at automatic, we had a lot more freedom. Mm-hmm <affirmative> freedom might not be the right word to use. We had a lot more flexibility that's maybe by it. So we had a lot more flexibility back when I was hired. Um, and as automatic has grown, more people have joined the team and there was a higher need of, you know, scheduling and having a very fixed, you need to work within this timeframe and <affirmative>, and you can set that time frame yourself, but then it, after it's been set, it becomes, um, not so flexible.
Speaker 1 00:17:26 Okay.
Speaker 2 00:17:27 Um, and I had, um, burnout last year and um, yeah, I, I kind of came to a point where I was like, you know what? I'd like to go back to that feeling of if I've not slept well. Mm. If I've had, cuz I have three kids, sometimes they wake up during the night or you know, they, they get sick or whatever,
Speaker 1 00:17:51 Whatever. Yeah. <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:17:53 Well, they
Speaker 1 00:17:54 Need a drink of water two 50 in the morning.
Speaker 2 00:17:56 <laugh> um, whatever it is, um, I would like to be able to tell myself, you know what, I'm gonna take a quiet morning. I'm gonna take the kids to school and then do some dental. I exercise, take a shower and then start my work day rather than, oh my God, I need to fit everything into this timeframe that I didn't know was gonna happen two weeks ago. Um, and I, I don't wanna speak ill of automatic at all because I understand, um, the need for those processes to change. They just no longer fit how I want it to work. Um, so I decided to go back to freelancing. Cool.
Speaker 1 00:18:42 Yeah, I've got, I've got one last question there for you if you don't mind. Um, and this is specific to that, that sort of scheduling and timeframe. Um, and if you don't know the answer, that's cool. But I'm just curious to know, do you think that's because you were in the Ru commerce team, um, and specifically that's more of a sort of focusing on enterprise and business and all of that. Do you think that if you were still or maybe doing support in the.org team, it might have been more flexible or okay.
Speaker 2 00:19:09 No, no. There's no, the is no difference in that. Okay. Um, if anything, the.com team gets the, the big changes first. Okay. And then we'll use follows after. Okay. Okay. So, no, I don't know.
Speaker 1 00:19:23 Fair enough. It's just interesting to me because, um, everybody that I've spoken to that has recently left, so folks like Tammy, uh, folks like, um, they've all said the same thing, love the company, uh, you know, don't wanna speak, you love the company, but the changes that have come in due to the size of the company, the structure that is not coming in, just wasn't fitting in for them. Um, and so I almost wanna use this as a, as a, as a way to say to folks, you know, um, when you, when you, when you think about automatic now, I mean, I've, I've been following automatic since the acquisition, because that's roughly, when I got involved in, in, in WordPress, you know, mm-hmm, <affirmative> 2015, when that happened, there were maybe 200 people. Now they're 10 times that, you know, there's almost no way that they can carry on as, as if they were a 200 person company. <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:20:07 No, absolutely. And that's why I, I said, I, I understand the need for those things to change. Mm. Um,
Speaker 1 00:20:13 This is not for you <laugh> but
Speaker 2 00:20:16 Well, you do have to remember that we got, well, I say we there's, there's a number of us. We got hired at a time where there, there was, it was like working as a freelancer. Mm. And, um, that if you get hired with the expert of the workload today, if I got hired today, and I knew that the, the, how should I put that, that how that job is constructed now, I, I wouldn't mind because I know what I'm going into, but I got hired, um, with promises of, you know, that flexibility and that
Speaker 1 00:21:00 Such your own schedule
Speaker 2 00:21:02 Set your own schedule. And now it's, you need to have a very, a rigorous, um, inflexible schedule. You have to work weekends, you have to do a number of things that really weren't present when we got hired. And that just doesn't work for me anymore. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:21:22 So,
Speaker 2 00:21:22 Absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:21:23 Yeah. No, absolutely. And, and, and that's the great thing about, about the WordPress space, if you will, and, and maybe open source in general is when those things don't work out, then you can go back to, as you're doing now, you know, what, what you wanted to do. So let's, let's talk about that. Um, yes, I'm super excited about this. I'll give you a little bit of backstory about myself. When I got into the WordPress space. Um, I started with the idea of, I was gonna build websites for people. I'm, I'm a PHP. I should never have tried to build websites for people, cuz I have a terrible eye for design <laugh>, but I can solve problems and I can write code and purely by accident because I was doing sort of, um, I wouldn't say support, but it was, it was this thing called DVY fixer.
Speaker 1 00:22:02 So it was this company called elegant, not themes, elegant marketplace that built plugs and themes for the divvy theme. And Andrew was, was one of the guys behind it. And he came up with a, this idea called DVY fixer, where if he had a technical problem that you just couldn't figure out, you could hire one of us for a fix rate and we would solve it and fix it from whatever else. And in the course of that, um, my first plugin ideas came about. Um, and so I actually built my first plugins and I started selling them and started building up a bit of a business. And then I hit that exact point that you mentioned earlier, um, that point where I'm now trying to, to improve my plugins, but I'm also trying to provide my customer support and I'm failing miserably at both. Um oh yeah. And if quality and support had existed back then you would've gotten a mail mail from me going help. <laugh> so give me, give a pitch, give me the quick, you know, what is it that you're doing, how you're doing it and all of that. Tell me all about it. I'm super excited.
Speaker 2 00:22:55 So it's, it's twofold really? Um, I start, so the, the, my consultancy is about three weeks old at this point. So I it's very, very young <laugh> he is, uh, I started out go, you know what? I've been focusing on quality of interactions for a number of years. Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, I've been the go to person for, um, how do we determine what quality looks like? You know, how do you determine whether or not an interaction with a customer is okay, mm-hmm <affirmative> or if it's really good and how do we replicate the really good onto other, uh, interactions. Um, and I'm able to do that. I'm able to analyze that I'm able to, to, you know, provide training and, and, um, advice and all that based on that analysis. Um, so I wanted to go into doing that as a consultancy, but then I figured there are still a lot of developers who need that help have that.
Speaker 2 00:24:06 You know, the you'll know this, you come to a point where you're like, I have a number of, of customers who are sending in tickets. I, I can still maintain that, but I'm noticing there's a drain on my time to actually develop. Mm. Um, so do you know what, I'm just gonna scale down what I'm gonna do in support a little bit. I'm gonna set expectations on that and then et cetera, et cetera, but that doesn't really help. And then you get more and more customers and your time to develop just evaporate kind of into thinner. Um, and I was like, you know what, I, I, I kind of need projects cause I starting out, um, let me just put the call out on Twitter and say, if you need any kind of help in that area, hit me up because I can help out. And I've got 12 years of experience. So, you know, I, I can ramp up really, really quickly. And then my inbox X exploded. <laugh> nice. Yeah. Um, yeah, I, I got so many inquiries in the space of two days that that's great. I went to, I need, I need more people. I need to actually hire or work with other freelance customer support people. Okay. Um, in order to, to fulfill those needs. So I'm not just a consult a consultancy anymore. I'm actually a WordPress customer support agency now.
Speaker 1 00:25:37 Wow. That's amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:25:39 That's amazing. Yeah. It's really, really cool. I didn't expect it <laugh> and I did really plan for it, but yeah, here we are. Well,
Speaker 1 00:25:46 I think it goes to show that, and we've, we've seen this, you know, time and time again, there's so much going on in the WordPress business space right now. There's so many companies that are getting to that point. There's so many freelancers that are getting to that point. Um, there are so many folks. I mean, the company that I work for, we recently acquired quite, quite popular plugin. And the reason, one of the reasons that the develop was, was putting it up to be acquired was that he didn't want to build a team. He wanted to remain a solo developer. Um, and he realized that the plugin had reached a point where if he, if he didn't give it over to a team to manage, it would die, slow death. Now, if something like this existed, maybe he would've been able to do, you know, like you and get you involved and maybe he would be able to carry on. Um, so my next question to you then is, is your, is, are you focusing and, and this maybe gets back to what you mentioned earlier about where you were a freelancer, you focused on that niche, um, of building websites for business women. Are you focusing on a specific niche now or are you kind of keeping it open and seeing where the niche is?
Speaker 2 00:26:53 Um, so the actual support, uh, so going in, looking at the support tickets, um, and then building a workflow around it, that's very WordPress focused. I'm not gonna go for a very specific niche within WordPress. Okay. Um, basically just whoever comes along, we can help out. Um, my consultancy is, is broader than that. It, it, um, <affirmative>, well, it's helpful for a lot of different businesses that, that have a support team and not just within the WordPress, um, environment, cuz you don't have a lot of businesses that have a very big work, uh, support team within the WordPress ecosystem. Mm-hmm <affirmative> I think the market would be a bit too small <affirmative> if I would focus on, on WordPress, um, with the, the consultancy. So the agency WordPress that's specific the consultancy, um, as broad as I can cast my net pretty much <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:27:58 Okay. So, so when you say the agency, let's, let's talk about those two entities at the moment for a second. So when you say the, see you're talking about you are a company that, that businesses can hire and, and you will then have support technicians that will manage their support. So
Speaker 2 00:28:14 Yes.
Speaker 1 00:28:15 Okay, cool. Yeah. So tell me what, what, what is that like? How does that work? So I'm a, let's say I'm a developer, let's say I've built a plugin. Um, and it's, it's gaining traction. I I've, I, I built it on the side nights and weekends. I've managed to get to a point where I'm not able to leave my day job and focus on this because it's earning enough money. But now as you say that that support ticket ratio is getting higher, the development's affecting, um, mm-hmm <affirmative> I reach out to you. What does, what does that experience look and feel like?
Speaker 2 00:28:43 Well, I mean, we're gonna have a conversation, first of all, uh, about what your process looks like at the moment, cuz it's not just, I'm not just offering, um, oh, let me just reply to your support tickets. The goal is to get your company to a point where if, if that is what you're looking to do eventually is to get you to a point where can hire someone for your company and already have the support workflow in place. So we'll have the <inaudible> documentation, we'll have the platform that your, your support runs on, um, fixed to, to a T um, you know, there's Preds and, and macros and, and analysis data, but whatever it is. Um, so we're first gonna have a conversation about what are your goals for the future? Um, what do you want to achieve? Well, obviously it's I wanting a hit in Bo zero that <laugh>, um, but, um, there's more to it than just answer my tickets please. Mm. Um, and I think that's where a lot of people get really overwhelmed is they know that they have a need to hire someone. They have no idea how to facilitate that. I don't expect companies to stick with me forever. Okay. Um, I mean, they, they, they can, they absolutely can if they, if that makes them feel comfortable, but the end goal really is to set them up for growth. Mm-hmm
Speaker 1 00:30:14 So, so, so in your mind, success is a, is, is a successful relationship is when the customer comes to you and says, I'm good. Now I don't need you anymore. Everything's set up everything's in place. Yes. And thank you very much. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:30:28 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. If they, if they come to me and say, do you know what I've, um, I've found someone who is a really good fit for my company. Um, and with the support workflows that you've set up, they can just go to work. And, and I don't have to think about this. Yeah. That's definitely what success looks like.
Speaker 1 00:30:48 Awesome. You you'll pardon the, the, uh, poor analogy here, but you're almost the way I'm seeing this as NA you're almost like a support therapist. Like a therapist goal is for their client to even go, I don't need you anymore. I'm good. I've done with whatever mental anguish or anxiety or whatever I've been dealing with and I don't need you. And you're almost gonna be fulfilling that role, but in a you're welcome to have it. I, I really don't mind. Um, but that's, that's a, that's an interesting way of, of thinking about it and looking at it, but, uh, cool. Um, so, so here again, so now I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm not trying to throw you some curve balls, but I'm thinking like a developer, uh, I'm thinking like myself, I want to hire you, but I'm gonna, I'm struggling with that whole, well, I'm earning enough money from this plug-in development to pay my bills. I need to do something about the support, but that means I'm gonna have to spend more money, but I dunno how to kind of get over that point. So, so how do I, how do I figure out that problem?
Speaker 2 00:31:44 So one of the things that, um, is rampant within the WordPress industry as a whole, I think is that line of thinking mm-hmm <affirmative> is I don't wanna spend money on a theme. I don't wanna spend money on getting a, a, a software that's gonna help me fix this problem. <affirmative>. But if you look at it from a business perspective mm. Spending money to save up time, so you can ma make or earn more money is gonna do you more good than trying to model your way through and, and failing in, in both directions. Mm. Um, so yes, it's gonna us your money. I, and I get that, that maybe hurts a little bit, but if it resolves your problem, if it resolves, um, you not having any time to actually put updates out there, um, and if it grows your, uh, customer base, because good customer support is also sales, right? It's not just answering tickets, it's actually maintaining your user base and making sure that you have people thinking your praises to the rest of the, the community. Um, it's gonna bring you more income. Good customer support is not just the cost based service. It will actually generate revenue. Um, so I don't see that as a problem. I see that as a mindset thing we can talk about
Speaker 1 00:33:20 <laugh> absolutely. I think you've, I think you've just given me a title for this podcast. Good customer support also means sales. Um, yeah, I think that's so important. And I think in my opinion, at least knowing you, knowing your journey, having followed you on Twitter for as long as I have now, that to me is what you bring to this versus other customer support sees who, who don't, you know, who don't do that analysis, who don't do that? Um, what you mentioned earlier, what defines a quality support interaction? Um, you know, how do we know that this was, this was a good interaction for the customer and turns them into a brand ambassador and makes them exactly shout out your names, other people versus just a support interaction. Um, you know, I've dealt with many interactions where, where I can tell this is just a support interaction.
Speaker 1 00:34:07 This person, this person is not trying to. And I, and I don't wanna say blow me over, cuz it shouldn't be about blowing me over, but they're not trying to turn it into a quality interaction. It's just a response with a link to a doc that I've probably already read, um, and all of those kind of things. And I think that's what you into this, the situation is that, that analysis, that understanding, um, you know, that, and what I like about it as well is, as you mentioned earlier, that sort of, um, the understanding of the languages and the translating of things into different ways of saying things and doing things, I think that's, I think that's so super important. Um,
Speaker 2 00:34:38 I think it, it, it comes down to understanding that your user base consists of humans, right? So one of my mantra is that I'm, I'm trying to get everyone who touches support to get on is you address emotion first and the problem second. Okay. Because if you in emotion first, you say, do you know what I recognize you as being human? And I want to take care of you first and then the bit that makes me money. So if I'm gonna address how you are feeling and how you are, um, experiencing my business first and then go into problem solving, um, it, it doesn't take a lot for me to build that relationship with you. It, as long as I make you feel human first and then address your problem, I'm gonna have a customer that regardless of how that, um, conversation goes, if I have to tell you, no, you can't have a refund or, uh, know the plugin or the theme or whatever service I'm selling, doesn't do that, or will not including that feature. It doesn't matter because I've already established that. I care about you as a person. Mm I've already established that what you are saying to me matters more than what I'm selling.
Speaker 1 00:36:02 Right. Right.
Speaker 2 00:36:04 And that is an understanding that the majority of support teams are lacking. Mm.
Speaker 1 00:36:11 Do, do you think, do you think that the reason that happens is the sort of focus are number of closed tickets? Do you think that creates that environment? Or do you think it's a general just misunderstanding of how support should work?
Speaker 2 00:36:25 Um, yeah. I do think it's, uh, down to how many ticket can close, but I think the underlying issue beneath that is, um, businesses as a, a whole not understanding what customer support is to their business.
Speaker 1 00:36:41 Right.
Speaker 2 00:36:43 So we come back to, um, customer support, being very important to your sales process. Um, rather than just something that makes you bleed money,
Speaker 1 00:36:54 Right?
Speaker 2 00:36:56 So a lot of businesses approach customer them a support as we need to have an entity that can interact with our user base, but doesn't recognize that it's a way to build a bridge between customers and the company. So it's it, the viewpoint is only outwards and not inwards.
Speaker 1 00:37:16 Right, right. That I think, I think that is probably the, the most important thing we should have asked you this question earlier. Um, but yeah, that, that's something that I've definitely seen and experienced. You know, when I remember when I was working at Casto in the early days, myself and Craig were doing support, um, and then, and then we added developer and that developer uping support, and then we added other people and we added customer support folks. And you could definitely tell, so the way things worked was when we had customer support folks, the customer support folks would sort of deal with first line support. And then when it got to the point where this was a bit more of a technical problem, and it needs to come to a developer, then it would get passed onto to one of the devs. And you could definitely see when the person was just being dealt like another ticket versus when they were being dealt as a human being. And they were actually being sort of, as you say, treated as a reason for sales, not as just another number. Um,
Speaker 2 00:38:11 Yeah. And I think what a lot of companies, um, uh, fail to see as well is that, um, these are trainable skills. You can, you can train people very accurately to, to, um, emphasize the, the human part. Mm. Um, whereas a lot of companies look at, you know, do you have technical troubleshooting skills? Do you understand the software that you're working with? Do you, can you follow internal processes, et cetera? And they, um, kind of fail to grasp the, the bit of quality that you need. So the bit of, you know, how, how do you actually communicate and how can you restructure your approach, um, sound more human in your, in your, in the way that you talk to people. It's absolutely trainable. It's just that not a lot of people recognize it, or even look at that as, as a, a data point to analyze.
Speaker 1 00:39:15 <affirmative>, you know, it's funny, you mentioned that, but I think that there's a lot that developers themselves can learn from this experience and this process. Um, when I first started freelancing through the codeable platform, um, codeable was very good at trying to teach us to interact with customers better and have meaningful experiences and that kind of thing. Um, and you could always tell if you join, if you joined a public workroom, you could always tell when the developer had interacted with a customer in such a way that they felt like another human being versus just another project, because you could see the customer, uh, sort of direct cuz in the codeable workroom, you have no way of adding somebody, but you could see them directly name the person that gave them a good interaction and almost ignore those that were just throwing them with, you know, things that didn't necessarily tie into the thing that you could see.
Speaker 1 00:40:03 They didn't understand, they weren't interacting with them in a good way. Um, so, so that's, that's super interesting. Um, so for the last 10 minutes, I normally switch over to what I call the hacking short form questions. Um, <affirmative> right. You, you, you are probably still a developer in some way, but you aren't a fulltime developer anymore. So I kind of don't wanna go down that path with you. Um, what I, what I would like to do is I'd like to ask you, if you don't mind, what does the day in your life look like? Like what does a Workday look like to you right now, as you're, as you're trying to build up this business,
Speaker 2 00:40:41 My day consists of a lot of meetings at the moment.
Speaker 5 00:40:44 <laugh> um,
Speaker 2 00:40:47 No, I have a influx of, of inquiries at the beginning. Um, and I'm kind of working through talking to people and, and kind of ramping up on new projects coming in and, um, uh, writing a lot for my own blog. Okay. Um, I'm also writing a, a book actually, which might be very interesting. Um, it will be, uh, customer support for WordPress developers. Ah, so it be an entire book just dedicated to, how do you do WordPress org support? Why should you be doing support, um, communication, best practices, um, tools that you can use, et cetera, et cetera. So, um, yeah, I'm hoping that that's gonna be a resource for pretty much any developer looking to still do that, support themselves, Uhhuh <affirmative> to really get a grasp on what should it look like. And, um, yeah, so I'm working on that. Cool. Um, and, um, starting to, to do some actual project work, so some actual diving into, uh, support queues and, and kind of trying to manage the freelancers that I'm working with. So, cool.
Speaker 1 00:42:08 Interesting. So that actually leads, that actually leads nicely onto one of my short form questions, but what, what do you using to kind of manage all of this? It sounds like you've got lots of different things going on. Are there any kind of productivity tools that you'd like to use to manage all of this? Or do you have your own system that you figured out?
Speaker 2 00:42:24 I mean, it it's gonna be no surprise to anyone. When I say slack
Speaker 1 00:42:29 <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:42:31 Slack is where the majority of, of my stuff happens. Uh, email, obviously. Um, and my favorite two software tools are Todoist and toggle. Okay. So Todoist for just cuz I'm ADHD as all hell. Um, I need, I need <laugh> I need a todo list. Sure. I can check off, um, and categorize and, and everything and then toggle to, um, to track time. I believe toggle is, I'm not sure if it's open source, but it's free to use if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1 00:43:07 There is yeah, there is a free, I I've been using toggle since as long as I've been tracking time as a freelancer. It's an amazing piece of software. Yeah. It's an amazing in pieces of software. Um, yeah, I'm similar. I, I, I start my day now, now that I'm not developing full-time anymore. I have multiple different projects that I'm working across. So I, I end every day by making sure my list for tomorrow is ready in rock to rock and roll <laugh>. Um, and then I come in first thing in the morning and go through my inbox because working with a remote team, I've got loads of folks based in the us. So first thing, my morning, I go through my inbox and add more things to that list and then sort it out for the day. And then off I go, I'm exactly the same I have to, um, I have to have a list and then fortunately I've used toggle for as long as I can remember the company that I work for also uses toggle. So that was great. Um, that's cool. I hate, I hate it when I have to work for a company and this has happened where I'm working for a company and they use a different piece of software to track time. Um, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, I'm, I'm so bad that I still track it in, so, and they just copy that over onto whatever they're using. <laugh>
Speaker 6 00:44:04 Cool.
Speaker 2 00:44:04 Just have a C3 export feature. Isn't it?
Speaker 1 00:44:07 It probably does. I probably should have done that. I was probably just too easy to go and look <laugh>. Um, cool. So you're doing so many things now at the moment, are you currently learning anything new? Is there anything that you, that you're adding to Youree of skills?
Speaker 2 00:44:23 Yeah, I, I dabble with, uh, larva. Okay. Because, um, I wanted to build something for myself and it's a nice way to kind of keep up with new stuff and PHP and you know, it still requires a bit of practice. So
Speaker 1 00:44:41 Cool. So have you got a specific project in mind or are you just building something random?
Speaker 2 00:44:46 Yeah, I'm just, I'm not gonna share my project before. It's I'm ready to show. <laugh> cool.
Speaker 1 00:44:53 That's
Speaker 2 00:44:53 Fine. But yeah, I'm working on you for,
Speaker 1 00:44:56 Okay, awesome. Awesome. So this is the question I always ask folks at the end of every interview. Um, if you could go back and this, this one may or may not be controversial for you, I don't know, but if you could go back to an 18 year old version of yourself, what one piece of not, or advice would you give to yourself regarding your career and why?
Speaker 2 00:45:19 I would say stop comparing yourself to people who have the, um, the ticket on the wall, the university degree, because as long as you just work hard, there's really nothing that you can't do. Uh, if you don't have that degree within the work press world, if you, I mean, I, I took three months to learn PHP and then was able to step out of, uh, government assistance, um, and, uh, earn my own paycheck. So, you know, it really doesn't take very long for you to be able to actually start making some good money and you don't need to go to school. <laugh> I struggle with the, the concept of, yeah, but I'm not good enough because I've not gone to school and I've not learned all of these things and I've not. Uh, but in the end, the things that I, I already had and the things that I was able to learn were just an internet connection and a computer were, uh, more than enough. So yeah,
Speaker 1 00:46:32 Absolutely. Yeah. That, that's so true. I, I know folks and will use automatic as an example. And you know, I have friends who work in automatic. I know folks who work at automatic and who have, you know, it degrees and BSC degrees. And I know folks that work at automatic in the same type of area who taught themselves from the word go, um, and you know, the degree does help. It helps in the early days, and it helps the standard concepts, but lately you can pick those up. There are books, you know, there's, there's that, that, um, that green CS degree book, that every time I read it, I get to the section on, on big notation and my brain iodes um, <laugh> but, but there's, there's enough out there for you to get those concepts, you know, you can do the Harvard CS, 50 online, there's all the stuff going on.
Speaker 1 00:47:13 Yeah. Um, yeah, that's, that's a big one. That's, that's super, that's super huge. Um, awesome. You know, it's been, it's been wonderful chatting to you. I could do this all over again. I might beg you six months to a year from now and we'll do like a follow up and see how it's going and, and all of that kind of thing. Yes. Um, you know, maybe when the world's not imploding <laugh>, but, uh, yeah, it was, it was great chatting to you. If folks wanna find you online, uh, what is the best way to get hold of you and find you,
Speaker 2 00:47:39 Uh, Twitter will be the, the best place. Um, uh, my personal Instagram is mother of code and then there's, uh, quality in CS, which is, um, the, the consultancy, um, page where I ramble about customer support a little bit more.
Speaker 1 00:47:58 <laugh> cool. And you're happy and you're happy for people to DMU if, if they're, if they wanna get on sec,
Speaker 2 00:48:03 Always, always. Yep. Awesome.
Speaker 1 00:48:04 Definitely. Well, uh, yes, it's been, it's been lovely saying to you, it's been, it's been and getting to know you. Um, I hope sometime in the future, we'll be able to meet up in person and, and have a nice cup of coffee or whatever. Um, I, I probably, I, I don't know yet if I'll be, we'll be going to Porto this year, things are kind of up in the air. Um, but yeah, it'll be great to meet you. Are you ready? Okay.
Speaker 2 00:48:25 Work word camp. Netherlands is gonna be held in a zoo. You, so if you wanna go to a very cool work camp where I will definitely be attending then yeah, that would be the one. Cool.
Speaker 1 00:48:38 Sounds good. Sounds good. Otherwise, have a great day and I'll chat you soon
Speaker 2 00:48:44 Having me.
