WPCoffeeTalk: Rytis Lauris

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[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to WPCoffeeTalk with your Podcast Barista Michelle Frechette. Special thanks to our sponsors WS Form and Beaver Builder. If you’re interested in joining WPCoffeeTalk as a guest or a sponsor, please visit our site WPCoffeeTalk.com and now on with the show.

Welcome to WPCoffeeTalk. I’m your podcast Barista, Michelle Frechette, serving up the WordPress stories from around the world. And today my guest is Rytis Lauris who is the CEO and co founder of Omnisend. Welcome Rytis. It’s so good to have you here.

[00:00:35] Speaker B: Hey Michelle, thanks for inviting me, great to be here as well.

[00:00:38] Speaker A: It’s my pleasure. So tell everybody a little bit about yourself and what you do.

[00:00:44] Speaker B: So I’m co founder, CEO of Omnisend as you said. So Omnisend is marketing automation platform that helps those who sell online, helps them to communicate with their existing customer base. So basically if you own online store, if it’s like standalone Store, maybe you have a blog and you have some merch selling around that, et cetera. So usually to attract the customer for first time to purchase from you, you lose. So because you pay so much for ads for Facebook, for Google Ads, et cetera, and in order for the customers to become profitable and really to run a business, proper business for you, you have to retain your customers. So basically invite them repeatedly to purchase again and again and again. So that’s what Omnisend does. Basically we help to communicate with those existing customers via email, SMS messages, web push notifications. So someone calls it newsletter, someone calls it automation. And actually it’s all combined in one tool.

[00:01:44] Speaker A: I love automations because they make life so much easier.

[00:01:48] Speaker B: Exactly.

[00:01:48] Speaker A: And when you’re in the business of selling, having some of that automated certainly would take some of the burden away from the work that you do on a daily basis. So I think that’s wonderful.

[00:01:58] Speaker B: That’s what we say for our customers. You set up once and you sleep and we do the job for you.

[00:02:04] Speaker A: When I used to build websites for customers when I was freelancing, I’D say the same thing.

I was working with somebody who was a painter. They painted houses. I’m like, you go paint the house, I will fix your website for you.

[00:02:16] Speaker B: But that’s the best. Always have a professional. So if it’s a person or a tool, a tool which can do the job for you. So agree.

[00:02:25] Speaker A: I also didn’t do my own taxes because it was important to have somebody who knew what they were doing do my taxes. So 100%. I’m behind you on what you do, for sure.

Well, show us what you’re drinking out of today. I always ask people to show us your mug and what you’re drinking. So today you’ve got a nice water bottle.

[00:02:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s a water bottle. It’s like branded. It’s Omnisend written. Not sure if you can see here. It’s branded.

It’s 100% environment friendly, renewable sugar cane. Yeah. So it’s not a plastic.

It’s degradable after some time. So it have not started to degrade while I’m drinking, which is good. Sometimes with those biodegradable items, they just start to degrade too soon. So this is not the case. Really good quality. I love it. I love it.

And it’s water in it, so that’s what I love the most. Just tap water. And in Lithuania, where I’m based, we are very happy to have good quality tap water. So no need even to have water coolers. You just drink from the tap, and that’s nice. That’s what I mainly consume as a drink.

[00:03:42] Speaker A: My biggest pet peeve about things that are biodegradable. I love it. Except for straws. When they give you a paper straw and it tastes like cardboard, and it’s three sips and you’re like, it’s falling apart.

[00:03:59] Speaker B: Probably the best straw, which I tried from those environmentally friendly, are bamboo made from bamboo? I assume they are a bit more expensive than paper ones, so maybe that’s the reason why they’re not that. Because to grow bamboo is basically, you can produce. It’s not as a normal tree that it doesn’t take ages to grow up, so you can really mass produce it. And again, there are no. Those bad feelings about having some paper in your mouth.

[00:04:30] Speaker A: Exactly.

[00:04:31] Speaker B: Bamboo straws are really a great replacement, at least from what I’ve tried. I like those most.

[00:04:40] Speaker A: I will have to try some of those because the paper ones are terrible. I would just rather have no straw than a paper straw.

I’m using a mug I’ve never had on the show before. So this is my Winnie the Pooh.

[00:04:54] Speaker B: Yeah, Winnie Pooh. Nice. Do you love cartoons or fairy tales?

[00:04:59] Speaker A: I don’t, actually. But this is my mother’s mug, and when I bought her home, when she moved out, she left it behind for me. So it’s just a little sentimental. And also, it’s a large mug, so it holds a lot of coffee, which is very important first thing in the morning.

That’s mine.

[00:05:16] Speaker B: Perfect.

[00:05:17] Speaker A: So tell us how did you get started with WordPress?

[00:05:21] Speaker B: So it was kind of like quite long time ago.

I’m not developer by myself. I’m a marketer and business developer manager basically.

But prior to Omniscind I used to run a digital marketing agency. So basically developing as you have, freelancer, I had a small agency like what 1215 people and we were developing websites for our customers, et cetera.

And it was just, I would say quite the beginning of WordPress in general. And WordPress was perceived mainly at that time as a tool for bloggers. So basically initially what we did, we had some kind of our own homegrown content management system but it was not as robust as what WordPress is now. But basically we did a website on that system but if anyone needed like blog edition and to produce a content. So basically we had to our own CMS and WordPress for bloggers. And of course WordPress evolved so much it’s absolutely no brainer now to use WordPress for any cases. And now Omnisent’s website and blogging, the main website, is being run on WordPress.

[00:06:35] Speaker A: Nice.

[00:06:35] Speaker B: Since the very beginning for Omnisend.

[00:06:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it’s important when you’re selling WordPress products especially that you’re using WordPress yourself.

One of my next projects and I’m stalling on a little bit, I’ve been sitting on a web URL for about eight years now, is wpWiki.org. I want to build a WordPress wiki so that other people can contribute, it isn’t know, run by automaticians, et cetera. And somebody said to me, well, why would you build it on WordPress? It’s not easy to do a wiki on WordPress. I’m like because you can’t have a WordPress wiki and not have it be on WordPress.

That’s just counterintuitive altogether. So we’ll make it work, we’ll figure.

[00:07:21] Speaker B: It out, but it has to serve a purpose. So that’s very good example. And we have very similar citation in some cases as Amnesty’s marketing automation. And basically we send emails but we are built for those who sell online mainly. And once we send our communication to some of our customers we sometimes use ourselves but sometimes not. Let’s say we use intercom which is like the tool somewhere in between support and then communication with your existing customers platform.

There are some questions. Come on guys. So you do emails but you use another tool to send the email. So why is it so just because the tool is built for SaaS businesses as we are, and we are built for online stores and the use case is a little bit different. So as in this case, there is no WordPress wiki. So you have to use something else and that’s the only option.

[00:08:14] Speaker A: I would say we’ll figure it out for sure, but I could just see it coming under attack. Michelle did a WordPress site that’s not on WordPress, so we’ll see. It’s still in the very early stages.

[00:08:28] Speaker B: Tell me when you developed, I will.

[00:08:32] Speaker A: Share it with you once it is for sure. It’ll be open for everybody to contribute to because that’s what a wiki is. So yeah, you’ll be able to add omniscend to it, for example, which will be good.

When you look at websites and you look at a lot of ecommerce sites for sure. What is something that you think that we as web builders don’t focus enough attention on that actually would make the website better for the end user.

[00:08:56] Speaker B: So in general, I would say still user experience is the most important. And of course kind of like loading speeds and all the more technical things.

But still as developers and owners of websites or online stores, yes, I look mainly at online stores, but a lot of websites as well. So maybe just always to question yourself, can you avoid extra click, can you avoid extra page, et cetera. So in the navigation, just each website has the main purpose and each website has like one main purpose, I would say, and then two free secondary purposes. And basically the entire structure of a website has to lead very organically any visitor into the purpose you have. Because all the websites, they are businesses, even if it’s not business still, maybe it’s non governmental organization, but still this organization has to have a purpose, and they do have a purpose. So either attract more volunteers or maybe donations or maybe whom to help with, et cetera. So identifying that one purpose, I think it’s what would help really to think through the entire user interface and customer interactions and visitors interactions, et cetera. So I think it’s just a question. Maybe sometimes while building websites there are too much purposes or maybe not named the purpose by itself at all. So I need a website. Okay, so having a website is a kind of good thing by itself, which I would not agree 100%. I think like having a website shells serve some purpose, which I always think one main is enough and two free at most. Secondary is what naming before designing, before building. And then it’s all the content comes, pictures, call to action buttons, et cetera. It all follows. So I think that is the most important. And sometimes I still miss in website both owners and developers starting from the purpose of a website. I agree it could be very beautiful, but so hard to navigate.

[00:11:22] Speaker A: Exactly. Or even to know what you’re supposed to do when you get there, like, oh that’s pretty, but what am I doing here? I don’t know.

[00:11:29] Speaker B: Nice moving objects, nice video, I watched it. Am I done or not?

[00:11:35] Speaker A: Exactly.

That’s a really good point for sure. What is something that you wish you had known earlier in your WordPress journey that would have made life a lot easier had you known it earlier?

[00:11:48] Speaker B: So that’s a good question. So maybe not about WordPress as a content management system, but maybe WordPress as an ecosystem it’s different. And again, for me as CEO of Omnisend is really like understanding and navigating and WordPress, so it has this beauty of open source and it’s totally different to other ecosystems on which a lot of people build online stores.

To be honest, for a while I had this maybe assumption that those are very similar just because you can launch your online store, et cetera. There are developers, there are agencies, freelancers who help end customers and users to build websites, either just basic websites or online stores, et cetera. But in general by origin, by mentality of the people who are within the ecosystem, within the WordPress ecosystem, it’s completely different in comparison to, let’s say other ecosystems that are here. And I like it. It’s way more open, it’s way more, I would say willing to help and less this cut pro competition and just more cooperative and more willing to help. I would say that’s one of the things which I misperceived in the past.

[00:13:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I don’t think you’re alone in that. I think a lot of us come to realize the power of the community and the ecosystem after we’ve already started to really build something and then like, Wow, I wish I’d known this sooner. So yeah, you’re definitely not alone in that for sure.

What are some of your favorite word camp or meetup talks or experiences? Maybe something that was a pivotal or inspirational moment for you.

[00:13:48] Speaker B: So in general at Word camps I would say like contributors Day, it’s what I like a lot. So speeches are nice, like presentations are nice and then booths are nice and then of course meeting people is always very nice, but like contributors day. And then you choose the topic, you are interested and then you can change topics. So I think it’s kind of more open and really you can find more about the ecosystem by itself about the challenges where you can really contribute to that. And of course, as I’m more in marketing, in business development, so I choose either marketing topics or events topics, organizing events, et cetera, et cetera. So those topics. So probably kind of this is what I like the most about work camps, contributors Day. And yeah, so some of those, of course, workshops are very practical where you can help with translation just right on the spot.

But yeah, those that I attend, I find them very useful.

[00:14:55] Speaker A: I was afraid to attend the contributor days for the longest time before I was really part of the community because I didn’t know code and I wasn’t a coder. And so I thought, you’re going to contribute to WordPress, it must all be about code. And then I remember going to my first contributor Day, which was Wordcamp us. Gosh, I don’t remember what year it was, but it was in Nashville and I was like, oh my gosh, this is fun. And you get all these great conversations with people and my stress level went from here like boom, down to, and I had so much fun. And now whenever I can, I go and I attend a contributor day. And I used to do the marketing teams, but now I do the photos team and help people learn how to upload photos to the photo directory, which is a lot of fun.

[00:15:39] Speaker B: Perfect. Nice. Yeah, I completely agree with that. First thing that maybe not good. Yeah, I’m not a coder myself and really, maybe I’m new, so can I really contribute? But apparently yes, you can absolutely be a great part of Contributors Day.

[00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah, and the great conversations around the tables too. So it’s more than that. It’s also getting to know people and having those networking experiences for sure. So tell us a little bit more about Omnisend and how long have you been around? How do you help ecommerce provide solutions for them? Give us a little bit more in depth than your introduction earlier.

[00:16:23] Speaker B: Okay. For sure.

We’re getting close to ten years in the market. So that was a spin off from a digital marketing agency where we built on WordPress websites back in the days. And it took us like a few years to really understand how to create value for our customers and where the core value is. And around a couple of years, so we launched the MVP product, like the MVP version of a product, and we saw initial traction, but no one was willing to pay for us, to be honest. And that was quite a challenging situation that we see that while we give away something for free, customers are willing to use, but they are not willing to pay, but again, we learned that maybe that was just about where the core values are and how customers think about and that you should not innovate too much.

And as we were innovating about the niche we are serving and with pricing model as well. So basically, once we launched Omniscend, there were generic email marketing services.

Mailchimp was dominating the market, which is still very big player. But our main assumption was that for those who sell online, they have way more data about their customers because the entire customer journey actually happens online. So you have all the breadcrumbs based on what you can help automate marketing, and by automating marketing, you can reduce the number of marketing messages you have to send for your customers and increase the relevance of the content. So basically that’s the initial assumption to which we stick up until today. So basically, those who sell online, they track customers data. And of course, if customers are willing to exchange, if they allow to use cookies, if they’ll subscribe for their communication, et cetera, it’s very important not to spam but to use it consciously with regards to regulation and best practices. But yeah, basically. So that’s what did not change since the very inception of Omnisend. And so it was email.

Initially we started working with micro to small businesses. Now we serve all the, from the very beginner to one man show perfectly fine and we try to keep the learning curve very flat. So for anyone who just maybe launched online store who maybe is not a marketing professional, et cetera, there are a lot of pre built best practices for communication, for marketing. So basically you don’t have to know when to send. So there are a lot of segments pre built, there are a lot of templates pre built for you. You don’t have to be a designer, it’s all design you can bring from a big gallery. You should not be a data analyst to understand when to send, et cetera. So it’s all those best practices I prebuilt in order to start using Omnisend just out of the box. And of course, once the business grow, if you’re already a bit larger business, et cetera. So we serve all the way to the large enterprise. Enterprise is not our target customer. So that’s kind of like what kind of businesses we serve and what we do is basically we help to communicate with in customers and what is very important. So we help automate mainly.

And what I really love seeing that more and more market in general, our customers are automating. And let’s say last year we generated around one third of revenue for our customers from automated messages and they encountered only 2.6% of all the traffic of messages. So it’s really to what we already talked a little bit at the very beginning. So it’s a great thing that you set up once and then you can forget for a while and then Omnisend does the job for you. So basically that’s what we help our customers to do, to communicate with their customers. With less intrusive marketing. We admit that all the advertising could be a little bit intrusive sometimes.

Yeah, but that’s what we see, especially if you automate and those main automations are trigger based. So if we identify that Michelle is looking for new headphones, so this is what you’re interested in. And if someone advertised you headphones while you are in search of new headphones, you are happy and you’re accepting that advertising. But if someone is basically trying to sell something that you don’t need, so then it annoys you. So this kind of database that automated marketing really helps to be more on spot for the customer.

[00:21:38] Speaker A: I have recently made a purchase. I use a mobility scooter when I’m out and about and I was researching them and I finally made the decision. It’s actually arriving today, this afternoon. And now I’m getting emails about scooters and every ad that is associated that Amazon has their tentacles in. It doesn’t matter. On Facebook, on wherever I am, Google searching, I’m getting served ads for something that I’ve already now purchased. And it’s like, okay, I already made the decision, stop showing me your ads.

[00:22:10] Speaker B: But Mads, Michelle, very good point. Very good point. So to stop once the transaction actually has been made is very important as well because it annoys customers and it costs for businesses like to keep running those ads because for each display, businesses pay. So it doesn’t make any sense and we pay to annoy you.

[00:22:36] Speaker A: And some things are consumables, right? So some things I might need to buy the same type of item next month. So maybe whatever it is, maybe it’s vacuum cleaner bags or it’s pretzels or something. And so getting shown options is a good idea, but when you make a $2,000 purchase, you’re not going to buy another one next month.

[00:22:56] Speaker B: Exactly.

But at the same time even it’s like in your case like mobility scooter. So there is still kind of like some cadence on which people usually buy or you usually buy. So after second purchase, let’s say the company can already identify and say, okay, we see that our customers usually buy once in like two or three years because this is, let’s say, a niche product. So we have our customer base and we can automate after the purchase. We know that only after two or three years we will start reaching out to Michelle, promoting this product. But at the same time, we can run some campaigns which are not directly inviting you to purchase a product, but maybe help you with, I don’t know, how to use it, how to serve, how to maintain it, et cetera.

Especially if, let’s say, we identify that this is a first time buyer, okay, from that company, you could have bought from another company. But still, and again, this is automation where, let’s say, sometimes people ask me, SMS, okay, email, I understand, but what about SMS? SMS, people are not willing to subscribe that much, et cetera. So that’s what I advise. So use SMS as a post purchase experience creation. So of course they will not convert directly. But let’s say if after the purchase, you would send a text message for a customer. So, okay, we have already delivered your purchase. You would send a text message asking, did you receive? Yes, no, please click two buttons. Yes, no. Yes, I received. Are you happy? Could you please leave us a review on general? Are you happy? Was the parcel okay, maybe that was somehow damaged by the delivery company, et cetera. So kind of like very small details which will not convert immediately, but which will create a really great experience. And once the customer is in need of a product for the next time, you will be top of mind.

[00:25:09] Speaker A: Printer Inc. Has got the market cornered on this. You buy a printer, you buy ink, and now every week I get an email saying, you might be out of ink. Now you should probably check that. And I don’t unsubscribe from that because one of these days I’m going to check and be like, I am out of printer ink.

Yes, it does come in handy for sure, especially with those consumables or additional things, right? Like, hey, are you out of paper? Or in the case of something like a scooter or a car, it’s like, hey, we have these great new floor mats, or have you considered these great seat cushions or whatever? So there’s always opportunity to upsell with things as well. So I think it’s great.

It’s a matter of how you set it up and how you’re using it. So you can create a really great product for people and then they can use it properly and those sales are going to go up. So that’s beautiful. I love it. Absolutely let me move into our rapid fire questions. They’re not really rapid fire. I don’t know why I call them that, but I call them that and it sticks. And so that’s what they are now. But you take the time that you need to answer them.

What are two or three must have plugins that you would recommend to somebody building their own website?

[00:26:22] Speaker B: So maybe I would not name, but I think it’s kind of using a builder is a great option. So either you hire a professional if you think that you can do it yourself. So builders is a great addition, I think on WordPress in general that really simplify for people and makes it more do it yourself way of solution, I would say. So maybe not prioritizing any of those, but just builders are great. Second, I would say SEO optimization plugins, they are important mainly just for your website to be findable and it’s kind of embarrassing. Maybe image optimization content, et cetera, varies.

And of course, like marketing plugins, I’m a bit biased here, but I think it’s like any kind of forms, collecting and converting your visitors into subscribers doesn’t matter if you sell online, if you don’t, but like converting your visitors into subscribers, what opens you the next opportunity to engage with your customers in the future? And once you have those contacts, of course you need email marketing tool.

[00:27:40] Speaker A: Of course.

I think that’s a perfect answer. Absolutely.

At any point in your WordPress or business journey, have you had a mentor, whether it was an official mentor or an unofficial mentor? And can you tell us who that was?

[00:27:56] Speaker B: I did not have a mentor, but I love really having this, like occasionally having not occasionally regular, actually having peer to peer conversations. So I have quite many peer to peer conversations scheduled every two months. So basically the founders, the CEOs of companies that are serving maybe similar industry or maybe are at the similar stage of the business, or maybe a bit older than us, maybe have been in our situation like one year, two years ago, et cetera. So I find those kind of self help or two ways mentorship.

Mentorship is like the most effective for me. The reason probably is kind of because we are similar to one another again by an industry, maybe by the stage of a business. So that means that you just learned something. So maybe you are going through some challenges Right now, very similar. And that’s the way you can share experience, because with mentors they are great, but sometimes mentors, they’ve been in your position maybe 20 years ago and things have changed and they have changed, et cetera. And maybe they are not that fresh to give you the best advice which would work now those general advice of course, like wisdom. Yes, you collect wisdom, but more maybe tactical and very practical, that could work now. So that’s what I love a lot.

[00:29:37] Speaker A: Nice. I have a mastermind group of women in WordPress that serves that purpose for me. So I understand that and it’s nice to have that collective conversation where people can build on and say, oh, I thought of that too, or I did that and have that I guess triangulation or whatever if you will, to boost one another up. So yes, I think that’s a great answer.

Who is somebody that you admire in the WordPress community and why?

[00:30:04] Speaker B: So I would not probably name one person.

So generally what mad did by launching WordPress in general, making it open source and helping to serve like what, 40% of Internet. So it’s just incredible. But I think that the power, the true power is a real community and a lot of people who do make their small inputs every day. So that would be my answer. So I admire a lot of developers, companies that work around, et cetera and I think that all of them, they contribute to success of WordPress and success of those businesses that run on WordPress or those businesses that build that serve WordPress customers. So I think that’s the most important.

[00:31:06] Speaker A: It takes a village, right? Isn’t that what they say? It takes everybody to pull it all together. Very good.

What’s something that you’d like to learn in WordPress but that you haven’t tackled yet?

[00:31:21] Speaker B: I still have a dream maybe to be able to code myself, maybe someday.

Same, never enough time for that.

My friends always make jokes about me. Come on, you run like it company of like 200 people. I could not even write a line of code. And I say yes because I’m smart.

[00:31:45] Speaker A: At hiring the right people to do that for me.

[00:31:47] Speaker B: Right, exactly.

[00:31:50] Speaker A: I want to learn to code but then I’m like, but do I need to?

[00:31:57] Speaker B: Because I will not become a good developer. Too old.

[00:32:04] Speaker A: Exactly.

[00:32:06] Speaker B: There are great pros that do their job very well.

[00:32:09] Speaker A: Align yourself with the right people to get the job done. That’s what’s important.

[00:32:14] Speaker B: Exactly.

[00:32:14] Speaker A: What’s the biggest mistake that you’ve made in WordPress and what did you learn from?

[00:32:21] Speaker B: So that’s what they mentioned already. So I think in my agency times prior to Omnisund, I think we kind of like WordPress quite fast, became very universal content management system. But for a while we still stick to some homegrown CMs and still only use WordPress as a niche blog, et cetera, although it was already a powerful tool, which was really widely supported by the community, et cetera, and even when we discontinued our agency operations.

So I would say for some of our customers, having their websites on WordPress would have been easier to find someone to maintain it, et cetera.

[00:33:17] Speaker A: Sure.

[00:33:17] Speaker B: So that would probably be, what’s your proudest WordPress moment?

What is the proudest WordPress moment?

I think it’s still to come.

[00:33:30] Speaker A: Okay.

There’s big things on the horizon for you, maybe.

[00:33:38] Speaker B: So we as a company, as omnicense, we are relatively new to WordPress, so we have plugin already for a few years, but we did not focus too much on Veco systems and as we touched already, maybe because we had some misperceptions about the ecosystem in general, which apparently were not right, which is really great to find it out.

So we are really willing to, as a company and then myself as a founder of that company, so really willing to be present in WordPress ecosystem, really to contribute to that and to serve by what we do directly by helping those who run their businesses on WordPress to run their business better, to earn more, but at the same time really to contribute to the areas where we still see maybe coming just from outside, maybe hearing from insiders that there are areas where contribution would be very appreciated. So just like one of examples, like one of the colleagues have just been accepted in organizing team of work Camp Europe.

Yeah. And we know that he will really help to improve website design of conferences. It’s kind of like one of areas which I hope I will not insult anyone, but I think website designs of Wordcamps could be better a little bit.

WordPress supports, I mean you can build very good looking website, but maybe was never a priority area. So that’s one of the areas we’re willing to contribute as a company video as well, education, we have a lot of experience in this area, et cetera. So we see opportunities where we can be useful and really contribute to the community.

[00:35:40] Speaker A: Well, I look forward to seeing that website this year, then I imagine it’ll be very good.

[00:35:45] Speaker B: Fingers crossed.

[00:35:47] Speaker A: Fingers crossed, that’s right. If you weren’t working in tech and in web, what’s another career that you might like to try?

[00:35:55] Speaker B: So you know, formally I have graduated political science, so that’s what I have my university degree at.

In my early days, being a teenager, I managed myself being a politician.

[00:36:17] Speaker A: Very.

[00:36:17] Speaker B: Good and I kind of even chose this as my professional potential path. But I’m very lucky now that I’m not in politics I’m in business and tech, business and marketing. So I really enjoy being here.

[00:36:32] Speaker A: Maybe it’ll be your retirement career. You never know.

[00:36:36] Speaker B: You never know. Yeah. But now I’m happy and I intend to stay here.

[00:36:41] Speaker A: Good. Okay, good. That’s awesome. It’s nice that you found something you enjoy, for sure, I think. Yes, absolutely. What’s something on your bucket list?

[00:36:53] Speaker B: Um, not sure if I get the question.

[00:36:58] Speaker A: Okay, so a bucket list is something that you want to make sure that you do before you die someday. In English, we have a phrase called kicking the bucket. If you die, you kick the bucket. So your bucket list is things you want to do before you kick the bucket.

[00:37:14] Speaker B: Thank you. I’ve learned something new. I’ve learned, so thank you, Michelle.

[00:37:18] Speaker A: No problem.

Okay.

[00:37:23] Speaker B: It’s kind of like maybe related to the previous question. It’s related to education, and it’s not related to what I’m currently doing, although my social activities are related to education. And I think that current education system is absolutely dated. Globally, we kick teach kids in the way that they were teached hundreds of years ago. But the life has changed and the technology Internet brought completely new horizons and I think disrupted our society. Because this is the first time in human history when young people have to teach something, elders. Because traditionally it was, okay, let’s take a carpenter. Yeah. Just you have some knowledge, you nail it throughout the years, and it all comes with practice. And the only direction is that the elder people, they teach younger people. And of course, young people, you have no practices or you cannot teach anything.

And now we are in very unique, I would say, situation in the humankind’s history when it goes bi directionally.

And my seven years old son, he knows a lot of tech, in some cases even a bit more than I do.

And not talking about my parents, but he knows way more than my parents do.

[00:39:04] Speaker A: Right.

[00:39:05] Speaker B: Although they are very smart people, they are doctors, they are educated people, et cetera. But it’s not in their experience. Yeah, exactly.

That’s outside what I do now, et cetera. But some point, I think that focusing more on disrupting education system, that what is in my bucket list, I love it.

[00:39:32] Speaker A: Most people just say they want to travel to someplace in the world. But I like your aspirations are much higher than just seeing the Great Wall of China, for example. So I think that’s great.

So show us or tell us about a hidden talent or interest that you have that the majority of the WordPress community would not know about.

[00:39:55] Speaker B: I know where I have no talents, like in singing. In singing that’s for sure.

But I love dancing.

I love dancing and in general, and I like spending time in time to time. I love partying. And sometimes I can be a serious person. But I really admire going out with friends, with colleagues, et cetera. Time to time. It’s my way to reboot. Sometimes it really helps me to accumulate some new energy from people, et cetera.

Generally, I left my hobby. I left reading books, including fiction.

[00:40:43] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:40:44] Speaker B: Yeah, not too much into TV or movies, but love books.

[00:40:48] Speaker A: Very good. I love that. Maybe I’ll send you my book if you want and you can read it.

[00:40:52] Speaker B: Perfect. Yeah, reading it.

[00:40:56] Speaker A: You can let me know what you think of it.

If people are interested in connecting with you, how would they do that? How do they find you online?

[00:41:06] Speaker B: Yeah, so myself, I prefer using LinkedIn. So this is my preferred social network and I ditched X recently. I kind of disagree with, I don’t know, policy and what Musk made with this ex Twitter social network. And I think it was way better prior.

Yeah, Facebook. I use messenger, but yeah, basically LinkedIn.

[00:41:35] Speaker A: Linkedin.

[00:41:36] Speaker B: Yeah, LinkedIn. And of course, old school good email. Ritis@Omnisend.com perfect.

[00:41:42] Speaker A: And if they want to learn more about Omnisend, they just go to Omnisend.com for sure.

[00:41:46] Speaker B: Correct. And yeah, outside of just the website, there is a great resource center and we have like academy. So it doesn’t matter if you use Omnisend or no. You can learn about marketing automation, about email, SMS Marketing.

It’s agnostic. It’s all open and it’s all built on WordPress.

[00:42:04] Speaker A: I love that.

If you are listening to this episode and you don’t have your computer in front of you, don’t worry. All you have to do is go to wpcoffeetalk.com, find Rytis’ episode, and all of these links will be in the show notes along with the transcript of today’s episode. So is there anything else that you wanted to say that I failed to ask you about? Anything else we should talk about before we sign off?

[00:42:26] Speaker B: I think no. Yeah, it was a really great, just easy conversation with an old friend. So thank you, Michelle, for that.

[00:42:34] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. Thank you for joining me. I really appreciate you taking the time to tell your story and talk about Omnisend for the WordPress community. So thank you for being here.

[00:42:43] Speaker B: Thanks.

[00:42:44] Speaker A: And everybody else, we’ll see you on the next episode of WPCoffeeTalk. In the meantime, stay happy and we’ll see you all later.