What is Building in Public and Why You Should Consider it for your Next WordPress Product

[00:00:00] Matt Cromwell: Hey everyone. Welcome. This is WP Product Talk, and uh, every week we are talking about what it means to be a product owner in WordPress. Uh, pains and gains and strategies, marketing, development, all kinds of stuff. And typically I'm here with Katie, Keith as well. Uh, right now she's on vacation, so I decided to switch things up a bit and do it a bit differently, and I'm bringing on some.

[00:01:09] I'm bringing on two guests. Um, haven't ever had two guests before, um, but uh, so we'll see how it goes. Um, they're decent guys, honestly. Um, we're gonna be talking today about the whole idea of build in public. So without any further ado, welcome to, um. Devin Walker and Justin Ferriman. Hey. Hey Matt. Hey.

[00:01:33] Thanks for being here, gang. Appreciate it.

[00:01:37] It's

[00:01:38] yeah. Justin, how you doing? Doing great. It's hard not to be with the sun shining in California. Nice. Yeah. Devin's in California too. Devin, how you doing? I'm doing well. Yeah. It's beautiful day. Cool, cool. Well, real quick, let's do some introductions. Justin, tell the world a little bit about yourself.

[00:01:56] Justin Ferriman: Sure. Um, probably, uh, if anybody's come across my name, it's been in relation to LearnDash. I started LearnDash the, uh, LMS plugin. Back in 2013 was when the launch was and ran that for eight plus years before the acquisition from Liquid Web. Um, stayed on board a little bit to help with transition and now I am starting up gap scout, which is kind of how I got into this building public movement.

[00:02:22] And uh, I'm excited to talk about that, uh, today.

[00:02:25] Matt Cromwell: Awesome. Awesome. Thanks for being here, Devin. Tell the world.

[00:02:30] Devin Walker: Sure. Yeah. Uh, well, back in 2010, got introduced to WordPress, started getting dangerous with code over the last, or over the next couple years after that. Ran into you at a, a meetup and, uh, eventually established a relationship from there.

[00:02:48] A good one. And then, uh. Then we started GiveWP in 20 14, 15 ish. And then, uh, we were also acquired, um, by Liquid Web two in 2021. And, um, have been on since then. And um, and since then we've expanded past GiveWP in or taken care of a couple other brands too, while still, um, taking care of GiveWP. So it's been good times,

[00:03:16] Matt Cromwell: absolutely.

[00:03:17] Cool. Um, today, like I said, we're gonna be talking about the whole concept of build in public, what it is and why somebody should do it. Uh, what we typically kick off with is, um, going around the horn and saying, why is this relevant for WordPress product owners? Um, why do you think, um, uh, anyone should care about it at all?

[00:03:35] Or is it crazy, whatever. So, uh, let's start off with Devin. Devin, what do you think about build in public and, um, why should anybody care about this?

[00:03:46] Devin Walker: I think it's, uh, it's kind of a new concept to me. I was, um, you know, not prior to, I guess two years ago really wasn't too much on my radar, but then as I.

[00:03:59] Been seen it more and more. Um, it's something that really interest me to garner an audience and build an audience ahead of time and to really launch, um, with your best foot forward. Um, it's, you know, we're in the digital space here, but it makes sense also in the physical, if you're build an open a restaurant, you kind of want to prime the pump before that.

[00:04:21] And, uh, and when you're building software, it's a very, very similar concept. So. Um, I also like the idea of soliciting feedback and getting real community, uh, feedback on the products you're building so you know you're building it. Right. You know, as much as we think we have the right idea in our heads and we're going in the right direction, it's always good to, uh, to receive some guardrails from your target market, right?

[00:04:49] Yeah. Yeah. And I think, uh. Building in public, rebranding in public, rebuilding in public. Like that's why we're, we're doing the same thing. So to me, uh, it's a new journey, but I'm excited to go down it.

[00:05:02] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely. Nice one. Yeah. Just, uh, to back up just a little bit, if folks aren't familiar, building in public is really just like a strategy that where you.

[00:05:11] Building a product and it's not available for the world quite yet, but you're like giving these previews and these hints all along the way. Um, you might so show screenshots. You might just be talking about things that you're learning as you're building it out. Uh, whether those are business insights or.

[00:05:27] Development insights, marketing insights, uh, website stuff, uh, any and all of that is fair game. Um, and, uh, Devin and I have done it both with a little bit, uh, with GiveWP and also right now we're working on it with, uh, a rebrand. Uh, we we're, uh, just announced this week, uh, rebranding iThemes to SolidWP.

[00:05:47] So, uh, if you haven't seen that, go check that out. And, uh, brought Justin along because he's done quite a bit of build in public as well. Um, uh, including with a new product he's working on called Cap Scout.

[00:05:58] Mm-hmm.

[00:05:59] So, uh, tell us a little bit about why, uh, folks should care about build in Public or why you care about Build in Public.

[00:06:06] Justin Ferriman: Yeah. I'm similar to Devin. Um, I didn't really lean into Build in Public until Gap Scout. Um, if I did in the past with Learn to actually those more, uh, accidental, in fact when starting LearnDash was probably more traditional, keeping the cards close to the chest and, and trying to, uh.

[00:06:22] Matt Cromwell: Yeah,

[00:06:23] Justin Ferriman: keep the, um, the insider secrets to myself and for fear of it being taken advantage of.

[00:06:28] Mm-hmm. I think the world has changed a lot, um, with regards to that. Mm-hmm. Um, so with Gab Scout, it's taken me outta my comfort zone a little bit, but why I think it's important is a lot of what Devin spoke about and building an audience or getting people interested before your product's even ready.

[00:06:46] That's something I've always talked about with, with LearnDash, with people that were selling courses, for example. That you need to build an audience and start marketing at the same time. And that's what I did with LearnDash. I mean, I blogged and built an audience for 10 months before launching it, and then that was a, a good, um, launchpad for, for the product.

[00:07:05] With, with gout, I'm really sharing my thoughts, insecurities, uh, things that come up along the way because it helps people relate to. The product or me on like a more human level. I think that's what people are looking for today, is they want to know the products that they are interested in. So tying that to WordPress, there's a lot of noise in WordPress now with new products.

[00:07:28] And it takes more, and I think you guys can attest to this, it takes more than just putting it up on the repo and then hoping people will install it. One way to do that, and part of the marketing arsenal should be build in public because you can create those connections with your prospective audience.

[00:07:44] You can get actionable feedback for your roadmap, even before you launch, which is super valuable as you pointed out. And, uh, overall, it just, it gives you that visibility, that traction, um, and that network. Before you even launch and, and that's a huge part of any successful business is, or the relationships you form.

[00:08:03] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I got a couple tips too on this one. Uh, but if you're watching right now on YouTube in particular, um, use that chat. Uh, we'd love to hear your questions. For Justin, Devin, or myself, we will answer them live on the show. So, uh, or if you're on Twitter, um, use the hashtag WP product talk.

[00:08:24] Um, and I'll be paying attention to that as well. Um, yeah, I mean, I totally resonate with that. I mean, Justin, uh, has, uh, been over to our office in, uh, San Diego and me and Devin and Justin, uh, chatting together and talking about support and product and business and marketing. Some of those conversations for me were like super pivotal.

[00:08:44] And really important. Um, and I love the whole idea of kind of taking those kind of really key insights and, and pushing them publicly in one form or another. Um, I think that that just has tons of value for other folks out there. Um, and when people really see that kind of like high level. Insight coming from, uh, product builders, um, they automatically start trusting that product, even if they don't even care what the product does.

[00:09:11] So I, I just feel like it does a really great job of putting the best foot forward, um, uh, before it gets out the door. And the term, I, I mean, I don't want to be all hipster here. Like I was building in public before it was cool or whatever, but like a term that I used for forever was prime the pump. I love to prime the pump.

[00:09:29] I love to get stuff out there in advance, um, and get people excited before day one. Um, and I think it's a great strategy for 'cause 'cause I mean, the worst thing when you're an entrepreneur and you're building something is be like, all right, world, here it is. And it's like, wah three sales. Um, like if you can get it out the door and it's like gangbusters, um, it just makes you wanna build more, it makes you wanna do more, makes you wanna market more.

[00:09:52] Um, and so doing that in advance means that day one, uh, is a big success. Um, I mean, it's not, it's not a certainty, but, um, I think it's, it definitely helps. Um, uh, Justin, one thing I wanted to circle back on real quick on what you were saying. Is, I really wanna hear a little bit of, um, your conversion to build in public.

[00:10:14] Uh, you said that it really wasn't your style for LearnDash, but you, you are doing it with, um, with gout in particular. And I want to hear kind of a little bit of why, like what convinced you that this was a good idea for gap scout?

[00:10:30] Justin Ferriman: Yeah, good question. Um, a few things or a few reasons I suppose. One is just I never did it.

[00:10:35] So as I was looking at getting into software again, which was a long decision, um, process for me whether I wanted to jump on that horse again and I, when I decided I did, I needed to find a way to get motivated to do it a little bit different, um, to make it interesting to me. Uh, at the same time I had also been watching the build and Plug public movement and how it's been gaining steam, and I'm a, I'm an entrepreneur at heart.

[00:11:03] It's a great marketing avenue. Uh, I've found that in doing it, I formed connections. I've gotten more people signing up for the release of Gap Scout, which is as, as of now is not quite there, but getting really, really close. And so those things were incredibly motivating. Also, two other reasons, it I wanted to challenge myself to do something a little bit.

[00:11:24] Outta my comfort zone. I'm a very private person, and when I was running LearnDash, I was very competitive. I'm still competitive, but I would keep, like I said, the cards close to the chest. I didn't wanna let anybody in on my thinking, and that was probably limiting in some ways. Um, so I wanted to challenge myself to be a little bit more open, a little more vulnerable, and in doing so.

[00:11:48] Um, you know, may maybe learn something new in, in this process that, you know, I've done software before. If I can do it different, I'll probably learn something different too.

[00:11:58] Matt Cromwell: Nice. I like it. Cool, cool. Well let's jump into, uh, story time. Um, essentially we wanna talk about some of our personal experiences here.

[00:12:09] Um, and, uh, go around the circle here. Devin and I have, I mean, kind of like the same experiences, like let's be real different perspectives, but different perspectives. Yeah, exactly. Um, but um, we're gonna split it up a little bit. So Devin, I would love if you would kick us off with, uh, a little bit of what we're doing with.

[00:12:28] The I themes solid wp. Now this one's a little different, um, because we're actually calling this rebrand in public. This isn't a brand new product. Um, we're kind of doing a, doing it in a new way. We're rebranding in public, and we just announced it this week. Um, but, uh, Devin, tell us a little bit about, um, like your experience so far in doing this rebrand and public experience.

[00:12:50] Devin Walker: Yeah, sure. Yeah, I just started writing. A blog post on my site last night just to sort of towing it from my perspective and, um, got really late really quick, but I got it up to like a thousand words. So it's all still kind of word, uh, gumbo in my head right now, but I'll try to make sense of it. So you might have to help me out here, Matt, since we've been on the same journey.

[00:13:14] Um, but yeah, I think where it starts is where we were presented Matt and I, with opportunity to, um. To take over. I themes really like we, we were sat down virtually and um, Hey guys, how do you think about a good opportunity? So Justin kind of like you, where you're like, you know, I don't know if I want to get back in software.

[00:13:38] I'm like, oh man, this is a big challenge. Like just eye themes on its own. Um. Do we really want to do this? Do do we have the energy to do it? And, um, you know, I talked to, to Matt about it and talked to my girlfriend about it and, um, eventually, you know, we decided this was a good idea, but we knew like we had to do something about this brand.

[00:14:01] Like, it's not like I, yeah, go take over I themes and go chill for the next couple years. Um, its not our style. Go, no go Do, go take over Ithe and really figure out. Where the future of this brand is, where is it going for the next 10 years? Mm-hmm. Um, because right now, um, it's feeling a little, uh, dated, right?

[00:14:25] And not only just with the name, but with some of the styles and designs, some of the products that is offering even the code base. I mean, it's a large project. It's very, um. There's been lots and lots of developers on, on all the products. Um, moving this thing is not like moving a, a cruise ship. It's like moving a, uh, uh, a small speedboat, uh, or sorry, opposite way around.

[00:14:51] It's like moving a cruise ship. There's a lot at stake and it takes a long time and a lot of planning. Yeah. Um, and so eventually, um, we decided to do it. I thought. Uh, I had to reach deep inside and find that core, um, enthusiasm. But this is really what I enjoy. It's like my passion building products, um, taking something where, uh, there's a good core and finding a new future for it.

[00:15:19] And when we looked at I themes, um, they do three or four things very well. Um, they do security really well. There's a million active installs on that. Free security plugin. Mm-hmm. Excellent security offering for WordPress. Um, they do backups well. So backup buddy one's one of the oldest backup plugins, and then maintenance, uh, site maintenance and management through, uh, sync, which is a competitor to WP Engine Remote, wp, these types of tools, it's a, it's a Laravel SaaS backend with the plugin connector, and.

[00:15:54] I mean, frankly, they all work pretty well and they work pretty well together. So there's like an integration with them. So if you're using Sync, you can view your backups and security across your networks of sites in there. And uh, and finally they do training. So training, like learning, getting your skills up.

[00:16:12] More, more on the medium to beginner level of WordPress rather than the advanced like developer pac. Um, but all these to us seemed very core and very foundational to what. Yeah. Almost every WordPress site or audience member needs.

[00:16:29] Matt Cromwell: Yep.

[00:16:29] Devin Walker: Um, so really thinking about the proper name for that took us quite some time.

[00:16:35] Yeah. Um, Matt, what were some of the names you came up with? I, I didn't come up with very, I wanna hear these. I want to hear these. I was really fighting for one. I think it was like, I'm trying to remember right now. Uh, there was one that was, okay. I think it was Essentials, WP Essentials that was like, nobody knows how to.

[00:16:53] Spell essential. It's like the hardest words

[00:16:57] Matt Cromwell: get hung up on the spelling. Oh, man. Um, and then Foundation, WP was like, there was like a, a, a theme out there that had that and uh, it felt just a little too long and things like

[00:17:09] Devin Walker: that. Mm-hmm. Um, there's a couple other good ones that we had, um, but we wanted it to sound really premium.

[00:17:16] Yeah. Um, to, to really, yeah. We, we wanted to fight for the domain too, so we had to buy the one we chose on, but ultimately we settled on, um, solid. Wp I have a much better explanation about the journey, the, the, on the blog post. Um, but Matt, we have to get that list of names. It's somewhere in drive. It's pretty hilarious.

[00:17:36] Somewhere.

[00:17:37] Matt Cromwell: There's several, several good ones. Yeah. Or you. Good in terms of like not good.

[00:17:42] Devin Walker: And we also discussed quite a bit, you know what's a, there were several scenarios rather than just rebranding the whole Yeah, the whole darn thing. We talked about rebranding individual products themselves. We talked about spinning off individual products, like security stands so well in its own, why can't it just go be its own brand?

[00:17:58] Why does it need, and, and so can backups and so can. The sink. But then what happens to, um, ithe itself? Is it just an empty shell sitting around doing training? Do we then have to go build up SEO on three different new domains? Exactly. I mean, ithe.com has quite a bit of, uh, traffic coming in. I think if you Google what is WordPress, it's like.

[00:18:21] Is number one, the number one hit. So that's a lot of qualified traffic we do not wanna lose. So that was one of those big reasons why we didn't, um, I'm losing my path on this story a little bit, Matt. So you might have to

[00:18:35] Matt Cromwell: rebrand in public. Rebrand in public. Uh, yeah, there's, that's a thing with this one is there's so many moving parts and so many pieces to it that,

[00:18:43] Justin Ferriman: uh.

[00:18:43] Matt Cromwell: Well,

[00:18:44] Justin Ferriman: what's really cool is like I could see a good example of this is when you do transfer over the domain and you want to bring over all that link juice and all those articles. Mm-hmm. From documenting that. For the public, you know, like this. Because I think a lot of people do that. And I remember when I was doing it in the past, I'd always look for other people that had done it or articles about how to do it right or you know, the concerns and then how things were resolved.

[00:19:07] You know, that's one example of how you could do this rebrand in public.

[00:19:10] Matt Cromwell: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:11] Exactly. I mean, that's many ways, part of what I was thinking to, for even just the website, like slowly pushing different pieces over there. Um, in order to not just do one big giant flip of the switch, which Google would not really love that, you know, so it's, uh, I was

[00:19:29] Devin Walker: thinking about that last night too, Matt.

[00:19:31] That's a interesting topic. We should chat more about like. Why can't we start turning the website on and slow rolling the move over, right, exactly. Yeah. Or like safety gloves while we're doing it.

[00:19:43] Matt Cromwell: Exactly. Yeah. Because I mean any, all along the way, we gotta monitor results and see how it goes. So. Um, yeah.

[00:19:51] Cool. So anybody who's checking out, um, this rebrand in public, we're at, um, we're, we're still at iThemes. You can check us [email protected]. You can check it out on the, the Twitter handle I themes. Uh, but you're gonna see that slowly be evolving into solid wp and of course, the solid WP website is up and running, and you can join the journey over there, not before.

[00:20:12] Devin Walker: Say it again. Small website

[00:20:14] Matt Cromwell: landing page. Yeah, right now. Right now. A little landing page website for now. Um, Justin, I want to hear about your experience to date with, um, gap Scout and doing Build in Public. I've been following it very closely. I really love your tweets. Um, think you're doing a great job there and I'm learning stuff every time, but, um, how has it been, um, what do you enjoy?

[00:20:35] What do you, uh, kind of get freaked out about?

[00:20:39] Justin Ferriman: Uh, freaked out about a lot. Um. No, it's, so the Gap Scout project started August, 2022, so last year. Um, just a little background on why Gap Scout. When I was running LearnDash, one of the things I always did was look at my competitors, both in WordPress and outside of WordPress, in the LMS space, at the reviews on sites like G two Capterra, Trustpilot, things like that.

[00:21:02] I would filter by their one stars, kind of see where they were dropping the ball, filter by their five stars. You know, see where people, a lot of times people would say, oh, we switched over from LearnDash and be like, oh, okay, why? I'd wanna understand why they did. And all in all, just get a better perspective of the market by looking at who I considered to be the immediate competition in the space and.

[00:21:24] I was thinking about, um, what I wanted to do next, and there was, I was thinking maybe consulting, um, maybe doing something outside of software all altogether. And ultimately I landed on going back to software, not because so much, I love software, but I love the creative process. I love marketing. Competing is a big, uh, part of the draw for me, and I know the software space.

[00:21:46] So it just felt like the perfect, uh, playing field for, for me to express that. As I was thinking about ideas, that one, uh, I wish I could say it was, you know, some well thought out thing, but I just was thinking about how I was running LearnDash. I remember doing that. And I was like, you know, that'd be cool if I could automate that process in some way, maybe using ai.

[00:22:06] And I know all we hear about is chat, JPT and AI today, but like in August, 2022, it wasn't yet like this huge, huge talked about thing. Um, certainly AI is important and around, and it's been, um, just growing, uh, in popularity. But, uh, the, the whole, um, the whole point of. We take the car. Yeah, I'm in the middle of an interview.

[00:22:32] Sorry. I had my parents visiting and my dad just walked in. Classic. Oh my gosh. So love it. Ah, that's a good one. Anyway, so, um, I was thinking about how I can automate this and I figured the best, you know, the best way I could do it was with ai. Started learning about ai, realized I didn't really know anything, um, coming from, from the e-learning space.

[00:22:55] And so I, that at that time, I was, again, how do I gain traction? Maybe I can document like things that I'm learning about AI or, or building a business again as a way to hopefully get some interest in the product. And I'm marketing Gap Scout the same way that I started LearnDash and that it's content marketing, starting with a blog, then a YouTube channel, um, pretty, pretty soon here.

[00:23:18] Um, once, uh. Once some of the, the videos are done, but the, the idea of doing build in public was to, like I mentioned earlier, be a little bit more vulnerable in the process. Share the things that are like a positive and a negative. I, I think like on Twitter and, and places like that, all we hear is like this, you know, tech bro hype about everything.

[00:23:38] And I was trying to maybe cut through that noise and just be a little bit more human. Um, not everything has to be a, a big promo. So, um, it also in an indirect way, held me accountable because I kind of committed to this, and then like, you start documenting your journey and so you feel like, you know, whether people care or not.

[00:23:55] You feel like, oh, I gotta, I gotta make sure I'm still putting out updates. I gotta keep moving forward with this project. One of the challenges I face with it. Is that a lot of build in public comes from folks that are developers and I'm not a developer, I don't code. And I can see the benefit for a developer because they're constantly in the weeds.

[00:24:14] They come out, you know, above the trees, share their journey and then dive back into it. And that helps keep them accountable. You know, the ball moving forward. For me as somebody that is more of a visionary in putting a team together and working with project managers and and developers, um, it's a little different.

[00:24:31] My updates tend to be more business level updates, not so much in the weeds coding updates. Um, I could speak a little bit to that stuff, but like I'm by no means an expert. And so I've been trying to see, you know, where that fits in this build in public, um, movement or build in public marketing channel.

[00:24:50] And there isn't a lot coming so much from just business owners. It's more from the, you know, solo entrepreneurship. Coder who's building something, you know, something bootstrapped and trying to get, um, trying to get some momentum that way. Mm-hmm. Um, so it's been a fun journey for me. I get frustrated sometimes 'cause I want to share like more about what's going on, but like, at the same time I'm like, I don't wanna put out stuff just to put out stuff.

[00:25:13] Um, because sometimes there is no movement. As you guys know, in business, sometimes like a week or two go by and you're kind of in the same place. And that, that I've found in a weird way has caused me a little bit of stress. 'cause I'm like, I gotta keep things moving. I need to keep things going. Um, so I can be sharing about what's happening so people don't lose interest.

[00:25:31] Yeah. So that's something that I'm trying to balance as well. I feel like it will get more, um, frequent once, um, you know, the YouTube channel's up, I'm sharing videos and, and like kind of case studies and like things that we're encountering. And then once the product is out, it kind of shifts, right? It's not so much this is what's coming, but you have the product and you are talking about maybe feature sets that are coming, but like how your team is managing influxes of, of traffic.

[00:25:58] For example, if your product gets shared somewhere, um, you know, things that are more. Just letting people in on the journey kind of behind the door as a flying the wall.

[00:26:08] Matt Cromwell: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:08] Justin Ferriman: I will say one thing, I don't, one thing I won't do, which is I don't think there's a right or wrong way to build in public, but I'm not really comfortable in like sharing revenue data.

[00:26:19] I know a lot of people do do that, and that's fine. Mm-hmm.

[00:26:22] Matt Cromwell: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:22] Justin Ferriman: Um, my point of bringing this up is that if you're thinking about building public, don't feel like that's stuff that you have to do. You can. You can share as much as you're comfortable with in the process.

[00:26:33] Devin Walker: Yeah, that's a really good point.

[00:26:34] Like we were never really too comfortable with that back in the day and still not like no Pippin level, like yearly updates where we're like transparency. Yeah. Yeah. Here is like every financial metric under the, under the sun. Um, but I really liked what you said also about the perspective you're bringing.

[00:26:53] I think it's really, um. Good to bring that perspective from the business level because that's what a lot of times the folks that you're targeting, uh, for your application are thinking about. Also, they're not thinking about it from the development side unless you're building a tool for developers. I think it's still cool to do that and showcase screens and show moving images of, um, you know, new UIs that are yet to come out, but still circling back to that business.

[00:27:21] Um. Core is important. We should, I think that's what Matt brings, and I bring the other side, like development product side. Mm-hmm. Um, which gets me really excited. Absolutely.

[00:27:32] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, that's good stuff. Um, my story time, I'm gonna talk a little bit more about GiveWP stuff and a couple other things. I'm gonna, I, I wanna focus a little bit on some of the tactics that we've done, uh, for folks.

[00:27:45] Um, I'll actually back into it. Um. Recent, my recent experience of, uh, build in Public that I've been watching is not ours, but, um, uh, we had Aaron Edwards on the show a few weeks ago. Um, he is from WPMU Dev and he's building out a product called Doc Spot. Um, and I've been watching that and it's, uh, it's super cool what he's doing.

[00:28:08] Um, and he's, um, like as soon as I got my hands on it, um, I, well. That's part of the big thing is he's building in public. And I was like, that's exactly something that I need. And he's given revenue numbers too, right? Exactly. He's po He's like, here's the MRR right now. Um, and his, he went from zero to like 10,000 really quickly.

[00:28:28] Uh, but he said also said that there's been a lot of churn because it's a lot of folks who are kicking tires and stuff. Um, but um, as soon as he put it out there, I bought it in like five minutes because I was like. I, I know this was coming. I've been waiting for it. I was like, I was like the test case of what we're talking about right here.

[00:28:47] Um, and then I had no way to know this, but like, um, except for the fact that he's building in public. He got like crazy popular in Japan for some reason, and all of a sudden he was through the roof. Um, and he was sharing about that and how he had to scale up his, um, his, uh, his infrastructure in order to handle all of that.

[00:29:05] And, uh, that was really interesting. So, and I just saw it earlier today. I, there's one feature I've been waiting for desperately is the, is like a, a snippet to in, uh, embed the chat bot on the front end of your website. He launched it today. I'm gonna go test it out right away, like. Just the way that he's building in public is just making me use the product and buy the product and get in right away.

[00:29:26] So all of that stuff's been really useful. Um. On the gift WP side, there's two big stories I think that we did, um, that I've done several times. Um, I think one, um, actually our very, very, very first one, um, uh, was honestly recurring donations. In some ways. We did this a little bit like a build in public. It wasn't like a bunch on Twitter and whatnot, but it was basically talking to our customers all the time.

[00:29:51] Our customers desperately wanted recurring donations. They were like. Outside our doors with like torches and picket knives.

[00:29:58] Devin Walker: We totally misunderstood the market when we came out. How important that was. Yeah. And if we did brand in public or build in public,

[00:30:06] Matt Cromwell: yeah,

[00:30:06] Devin Walker: we would've understood that quite better.

[00:30:08] Yeah.

[00:30:09] Matt Cromwell: Not a lot earlier, but once we finally got it out the door, I mean, a along the way, I just kept emailing folks and telling folks in support tickets and like reaching out to people on online and saying like, we're building it. It's coming together really well. Just keeping folks updated. When we launched it, it was the biggest sales day we ever had.

[00:30:30] Um, at that time by like probably 10 x probably. Wow. Um, it, and it, it definitely was a huge benefit. Like folks knew it was coming and were ready to buy as soon as it was available, and that was a big deal. Um, another one just a couple years ago, we really wanted to build a, um, integration with Salesforce.

[00:30:49] And the truth is we were not Salesforce users. And, um, there's a lot of ways that you can use Salesforce. There's like hundreds of ways you can use Salesforce, and we just felt like in order to really do this right, we needed to hear from folks. Um, we need to talk to folks about it. And I think that this is another build in public aspect.

[00:31:09] Um. Is just reaching out to people and talking to them about what you're building and asking them questions and bringing in the feedback. Um, and so what we did, uh, and I do this as often as I can, is, um, what, what we call a town hall. So we promote a big, uh, town hall that's coming up and we ask all of our customers to come.

[00:31:29] And we're, we're saying we're gonna showcase, uh, our beginnings of, uh, our Salesforce integration. What we got was we got a whole bunch of agencies because, uh, agencies, uh, were really motivated to serve their clients with this integration essentially. Um, and they all were doing, uh, kind of like manual, uh, give Salesforce integrations in their own way.

[00:31:53] Um, and so we got to get direct feedback from them on what they needed in order for this add-on or this integration to be successful. Um, and that just got applied straight into development so that we knew that we were addressing their needs right away. And again, right out of the gate, we get it out there and folks were buying it up right away.

[00:32:11] Um, so I really like that the town hall, um, aspect of building public. Um, another one, um, actually I'm gonna. Bring this up. Uh, Faheem is here, uh, on YouTube and that, uh, this is essentially what I'm, I'm answering these questions right now. Some of the best practices. Um, another one, um, that we're doing right now on the give side is we are building out, uh, essentially, um, a brand new visual form builder.

[00:32:38] Um. And, um, it's really like a, a revamp, uh, uh, of our whole way that we build forms and GiveWP and, uh, from the beginning I was like, we need to be telling folks about this far in advance because it's gonna be a big update. It's gonna change things a ton. Um, and so we want folks to. To give us input and to tell us more, uh, about what they want and what and, and how they like it in general.

[00:33:04] Right. So we did, uh, now two different big town halls, um, on that specifically. And we're advertising it a lot. We have a landing page that tells people all about it, and now we're just about to launch where people can actually download a beta version of it and test it out themselves. Um, and built into the beta version is a little, uh.

[00:33:24] Uh, feedback, uh, chat thing. Uh, and so as soon as they, they click on that, they're able to just tell us exactly what they think about, uh, their experience with the product. Um, and we're telling them like, don't use this publicly. Like, don't actually, you know, raise funds with this right now. It's just for beta purposes.

[00:33:42] Uh, and it's just to give us feedback. Um, and, uh, I. I think to date that's really been very effective. We hear people talking about it, people ask about it. Um, people are looking forward to it. I'm really expecting that once the da, the zip is available that, um, that, uh, we're gonna get a lot of folks, uh, testing it out and giving us feedback.

[00:34:00] The, the real estimate there is how much feedback do we get and how actionable will it. So, um, that kind of a rapid fire Faheem, I hope I am answered your question. That's a, a few of them. The town hall one is a big one for me. Talking about it in public, doing public, uh, pages on it. Um, I think the way that Justin's been doing it is like a lot of insights on Twitter.

[00:34:21] Um, Justin, would you say that that's like your primary is like, uh, going to Twitter or do you have other like channels or mediums that you go to for this?

[00:34:29] Justin Ferriman: Yeah, right now it's just Twitter. Um, I think the build in public hashtag is actually fairly popular. Um, people really monitor it, I've found. So from a marketing standpoint, I, I kind of enjoy doing that.

[00:34:40] I do have plans to expand it out, uh, probably in a YouTube format as well, and then kind of cross sharing that on Twitter, maybe blog posts or what have you. Um, right now, um, do we have some videos planned for the actual software? So I want to build up the channel and I may include that piece. The other best practice I would say is it's up to you on how much you want to one share.

[00:35:03] Um, whatever you decide to share is gonna be worthwhile, but also who you send that to. So like, I have an email list, but I'm not sending these build in public, um, items to, to my email list. Yeah. 'cause I think I'm pretty confident the, the questions back are gonna be like, when is this gonna be ready? When can we have it?

[00:35:21] Yeah. Building in public, I can tell you. I don't know, um, that we keep running into some, some roadblocks, uh, definitely this quarter. Um, but in terms of specific dates, which is what I would think people look for, I don't have that. So, yeah. Um, that's why I haven't, but you know, I think that's something I'm gonna explore as well once I get into more regular cadence of emailing people.

[00:35:42] So, um, choose an avenue that works for you. Um, try to, you know, you don't have to do it like everybody else does. I. Really try to avoid the whole, like humble bragging. Sometimes I reread what I put out. I'm like, God dang, that sounds a little like I'm pumping my own chest. Mm-hmm. But, um, if I do, if something is like that, I try to at least include some sort of insight or something that I'm excited about or feel like worked really well.

[00:36:05] Um, and then try not to make it all negative either. You know, I have a balance. You don't want to be putting out building in public, oh, this happened, that happened, this happened. I'm frustrated, like all the time. Yeah.

[00:36:13] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:36:14] Justin Ferriman: I will say I was frustrated with something and I did put out a build in public and it kind of built me up a little bit.

[00:36:20] People were messaging like, ah, don't worry about it, you'll get through it.

[00:36:23] Matt Cromwell: And

[00:36:24] Justin Ferriman: uh, that was, that was kind of cool 'cause there was that human aspect. It wasn't about marketing or making money, it was just kind of sharing a frustration and seeing the support from, you know, whoever was on Twitter, whether it was followers or somebody stumbling across the building, public hashtag, um, felt good.

[00:36:39] So that's another byproduct from it.

[00:36:41] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. I think, uh, another important one that you kind of touched on is just being really regular in one form or another, whether it's it's Twitter or doing blogs, or, um, Devin and I are gonna be doing some videos, um, for the solid rebrand. Um, like whatever it is that you're doing, um, try to do it regularly.

[00:37:02] I think it holds your feet to the fire, um, in terms of like making sure that you're. Continuing to move in the right direction. Um, and, um, like nobody cares about building public if you're not actually building in public. So you gotta, you gotta get the content out there for people to pay attention to, so, yeah.

[00:37:19] Yeah,

[00:37:20] Devin Walker: yeah. I think building anything, uh, every single day, you have so many decisions to make about which foot you put forward. Mm-hmm. Uh, what do you punt down the timeline? Yeah. And that's just cannon fodder for good content to put out there.

[00:37:37] Matt Cromwell: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:37] Devin Walker: Um, some of it's gonna be really good. Some of it's gonna be maybe negative.

[00:37:41] You're gonna have to balance that out yourself and some stuff you want to keep close to your chest and others that just want, you want to get out there.

[00:37:49] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:37:50] Devin Walker: So I think it's good to be objective and balanced, but you know, you still gotta give it some marketing and kind of h it up. Yeah. All negative in talking about all the hurdles you're having to jump through.

[00:38:02] It's maybe not the best, uh, story to tell the whole time.

[00:38:06] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, for sure. Cool. We got about seven minutes for our last segment. Um, would love to hear your best advice for new plug and shop owners who might be considering, uh, build in public in one form or another. So think about back when you were just kicking off LearnDash or just kicking off.

[00:38:26] GiveWP think of that, um, person and, um. Give them your best advice. Devin, you wanna, you wanna kick us off? What is your best advice for these new folks?

[00:38:37] Devin Walker: I would say there's plenty of opportunity to be had still, um, even more so, um, in some regards than, um. A couple years ago, um, just I would say pick a good niche that you're passionate about.

[00:38:53] If you're not interested in that personally at all, then it's probably not a good idea. Mm-hmm. If you, if you think SEO is a great business to get into, but you do not like SEO, you're not gonna succeed. 'cause that's what you're gonna be doing every single day for the next five years. Who knows? Mm-hmm. Um, so something you're passionate about is very, very important.

[00:39:14] Um, both Matt and I have been very passionate about helping people, nonprofits, and fundraising in general. That's why it's worked out so well for us. Um, you know, if we were spinning widgets all day, I don't think we'd be here today. Um, so if I had to pick one thing, I think that would be it. Mm-hmm. Um, the other would be to, um, probably plan your product and stack accordingly for the future.

[00:39:43] Mm-hmm. Um. While still making room for moving fast and, um, being aware that you're gonna create some technical debt that you have to take care of later. 'cause you can get stuff done really quick by throwing some spit and gum on it and then taking care of it later versus taking three months and, and building that.

[00:40:08] The right way. Mm-hmm. Quote the right way. Mm-hmm. Which is a really ever right way. So I would just say cut corners where you can and just be very conscious of those corners and you might have to go back down. That's why give three point ohs here. Exactly. All the corners we cut seven years ago, we're fixing a lot of them now.

[00:40:27] Exactly. Um.

[00:40:29] Matt Cromwell: So, yeah, that's my advice. Nice. I like it. No, for sure. I mean, the, the point about, uh, passion I think is really important. It's really fundamental. I think a lot of people just, uh, kind of take that for granted sometimes. Like, oh, I'm building something. Of course I love it. Uh, do you really, like, are you gonna love it if you're working on it every day for five years?

[00:40:46] I don't know. Um, and without passion, like what, what do you got? So, uh, Justin, what is your best advice? What do you got?

[00:40:56] Justin Ferriman: Well, I think today the WordPress market, um, for plugins for example, is so crowded. That's not to say there's not opportunity, but it's different. When I started LearnDash, I wasn't even looking at WordPress competitors 'cause there were none.

[00:41:10] Mm-hmm. I was looking at other LMSs using the strategy I had mentioned before, going to review sites, seeing what people hated, and thinking, wow, WordPress would be great at resolving this with my own flare with with LearnDash. I think I put out a, a tweet, and maybe it was last week. There was like, like today there's more than like 20 plus LMS plugins out there.

[00:41:31] Hmm. So what does this mean? If you are trying to be a developer or have a product in any one of these, you know, e-commerce, uh, you know, online learning membership or what have you, you need to look at the solutions that are out there and you need to find the gap, the pain points that people have and try to fill and compete in that gap.

[00:41:51] I remember when LearnDash was coming out in 2012, nobody was talking about WordPress. LMS is, and then Woo Themes at the time was like the biggest name. Mm-hmm. And they were coming out with a LMS theme, or they called it something else. Um, but it was essentially gonna compete with LearnDash before LearnDash was even launched.

[00:42:09] And I remember seeing the news, I was like, oh no. And then they switched it to a plugin and I was like, oh, is this even worth it anymore? We, they released in January and then one week later I kind of rushed the release of LearnDash. Even though my product had been in the making for long before theirs.

[00:42:26] They just had the marketing team, they had the bigger, uh, resources, money team, developers, all this good stuff. So I figured, you know, where can I beat them? And I focused heavily. In online courses and the course experience for the student, which nobody else was doing. Hmm. And so in doing that, I looked at their product line at the time, they had themes, they had a bunch of different plugins.

[00:42:49] I think WooCommerce obviously at the time, and so I might not be able to beat their whole company, but I will beat that division. And that's where I competed in and I positioned the expertise around. So. Translating that to the developer today. Look at the market, find out where their, these products are lacking.

[00:43:09] There's a lot of like copycats, people doing similar things. Zero in, you don't have to have all the same features. You can just zero in on like one to three that that really kill it in that area and you'll have an audience. 'cause a lot of people will purchase a product or get a product because they want one to three features, but they don't want all of it.

[00:43:27] So figure out what those features are and compete in that gap. I think you'll have a lot of success.

[00:43:33] Matt Cromwell: Nice. That's a good one. Appreciate that. Oh, I mean, trying to figure out, I, the WordPress space definitely has gotten, um, different and it definitely isn't this thing anymore where if you build it, they will come.

[00:43:45] Um, so that's really good advice. I appreciate that. Um, I think where I'm at with, um, like if you're brand new and you're starting to kick off, um, a new product and you're thinking about building public in one way or another. Uh, the first thing I would do is, um, like, examine your network. Like do you have an audience already, uh, in one form or another?

[00:44:08] Um, and, uh, 'cause build in public is, uh, I, I like, I like what Justin was saying earlier. It holds your feet to the fire in terms of, like, you, you, you gotta put stuff out there. Uh, it's a way to keep yourself accountable. Um, you know, you are being vulnerable. Um, there a lot, there's all these things. It can be a little bit challenging, a little bit, um, on the, on the emotions.

[00:44:30] Um, uh, and, uh, if you don't have an audience, like none of it matters. Like you're just like speaking out into the wind. Um, so I think building public is really great and important, um, but you gotta have somebody to. To do it in, in public with. So, um, maybe if your audience isn't so large quite yet, focus first on getting more, like what Justin said earlier too, is that he started with blogging.

[00:44:54] And the blogging is what brought people in, uh, initially. Uh, build up that audience. Get 'em up and, and prime. Maybe you're gonna spend time, uh, like maybe six months or so, uh, or more, uh, just building up your audience until finally you can start building in public. Um, it's definitely not something you could just come out with like zero Twitter followers and start building in public with, so, um, I'd focus on that for sure.

[00:45:19] Um. Cool. Well, we are, are at the, the hour and, uh, I think we covered all the bases, guys. I really appreciate it. This is bringing me back to our old days in the San Diego office together. Yeah, it's been fun. It's fun. Yeah, absolutely. So everyone, thanks so much. Next week, actually. Um, I hate, you know, I, I brought, I'm gonna bring Devin on again.

[00:45:41] This is crazy. Devin's gonna be here next week and we're gonna talk about why you might. Uh, want to refactor your plugin. If you have a big product that's been out there for a long time in one way or another, um, you've probably thought about refactoring and is it even worth it? Should you do it? Is it stupid?

[00:45:58] Like, are you gonna break all your customers? Like, what's gonna happen there? So, I. We're gonna bring Devin on and we're bringing on another guest. Ninja Forms did this. So Kevin Stover is gonna join us, um, and we're gonna talk about their giant refactor, which I have heard a lot about that one, uh, long time ago.

[00:46:15] And, uh, it's some good, good stuff to talk about for sure. So join us next week. Um, if you are looking for ways to find out about what we're doing all the time, this is where we're at, youtube.com at WP Product Talk. And um, have a good week everyone. Thanks everyone for being here.