WPCoffeeTalk: Robby McCullough

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Speaker 0 00:00:00 Welcome to WP Coffee Talk with your podcast barista Michelle Frechette. Special thanks to our sponsors, WS form, WP Explorer, learn dash and Century hosting.
Speaker 1 00:00:14 Welcome to WP Coffee Talk. I’m Michelle Frechette, your podcast barista, serving up the WordPress stories from around the world. And today my guest is Robbie McCullough, who is the co-founder of P Builder. Hey Robbie, how you doing?
Speaker 2 00:00:26 Hey Michelle, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 00:00:28 Yeah, thanks for being here. It’s so good to have you and not just because you’re our, you know, latest, greatest, uh, sponsor either, but thank you for that also, <laugh>. We’re really happy. Our pleasure.
Speaker 2 00:00:38 Our pleasure. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:00:40 But, uh, and you and I had talked about having you on the show long before that, so just, uh, for, for the record for any, but I can be bought. I’m just kidding. It’s <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:00:49 <laugh>. It wasn’t, it wasn’t an intentional bribe <laugh>. No,
Speaker 1 00:00:52 It
Speaker 2 00:00:53 Worked out that way. That’s great.
Speaker 1 00:00:54 It worked out well either way. But, um, no, I’m just really super happy to have you on the show. And it’s funny because, um, and we’re gonna talk about Beaver Builder a little bit later, but I have beavers in the area and I, every time I go out, I should say every time I go out, several times that I’ve gone out in my cameras, but able to actually take pictures of beavers in the wild, and if not beavers, then at least the structures that they have created in the area. Mostly lodges, but some dams as well. And, uh, it just, you know, when I was spending some time with you and your team, uh, at Word Camp Phoenix, I was thinking about like, what does it mean to be a beaver building things? Right. And a lot of people get mad at beavers cuz they take down the trees and things like that, but it’s a natural part of deforestation.
Speaker 1 00:01:38 It’s supposed to happen that way. And the structures that they build are pretty freaking phenomenal. So, you know, we’re gonna go into that a little bit later, but I, I sent you a picture I’m gonna talk about a little bit later too, and then we can share that online. But super exciting stuff and I’m so happy to hear have you here, but rather than me introduce you and all the great things that you do, I just had a cat jump up here, so that’s why I looked like I jumped. Um, <laugh>, why don’t you te you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Speaker 2 00:02:05 My name’s Robbie McCullough and like you mentioned, I’m one of the co-founders of Beaver Builder. Uh, it’s funny, I’m working out of a co-working space and I’ve been doing this for the last couple months. Uh, but otherwise cats jumping up on the desk is a regular occurrence at the, at my house where I work before.
Speaker 1 00:02:24 That’s awesome. Um, so I ask everybody to bring a mug and to have something in it. So show us your mug and tell us what you’ve got in your mug today.
Speaker 2 00:02:33 All right. I’m excited to, to show off my mug. So this is my mug. Uh, I’ve got my tie dye beaver sticker there. Um, I’m currently drinking coffee. Uh, I was actually thinking about grabbing a beer cuz it’s kind of later in the afternoon, about 3:00 PM here, so it seemed like appropriate beer time. Uh, but I was going to, so I’m working out of this co-working space and they have a beer, uh, draft. And when I first signed up here, I was like, oh, I’m gonna get my money’s worth just drinking beer, like off of the free beer draft. But it’s been several months now and I’ve honestly never even tried it. It just hasn’t happened. <laugh>. Um, so I was like, okay, today’s the day I’m finally gonna get a beer. And I went to go pour it and the keg was empty and it like, and I, I I’m wearing the like, remnants of it, but
Speaker 1 00:03:19 <laugh>, um, you smell like the three o’clock when you get home at 3:00 AM after you put out in the dive. Yeah, exactly
Speaker 2 00:03:24 Right. Yeah. <laugh>, I hope I don’t get pulled over <laugh>. So for better or
Speaker 1 00:03:29 Clothes <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:03:31 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For better or for worse, um, doing coffee instead of beer. And how do you take your coffee? Uh, my favorite. Ooh, with cream? Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:03:39 No sugar. I’m a cream of sugar
Speaker 2 00:03:41 Now. No sugar. Okay. Yeah. No, no sugar. Um, just cream.
Speaker 1 00:03:46 And your mug looks a lot like my laptop covered in stickers.
Speaker 2 00:03:50 So my favorite thing about this mug is it has a little Easter egg and I set this up when our company went remote and we started doing a lot of video calls. So let me take a quick sip and I’ll try and show you.
Speaker 1 00:04:00 Okay. Aha. <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:04:03 I got
Speaker 1 00:04:04 The, uh, I saw it.
Speaker 2 00:04:05 Blood press sticker on the bottom, on
Speaker 1 00:04:07 The bottom. It’s the perfect size too. That’s awesome. It does it.
Speaker 2 00:04:10 I love it. It’s perfectly on there.
Speaker 1 00:04:11 Well, I have a new mug. I have often showed the same mugs over and over. Um, but as several people may be aware, I was recently a finalist, um, in Rochester, New York for a Remarkable Woman of the year. Sadly, I did not become the most remarkable woman of the year, but I was one of four and as my, one of my, I should say consolation prize, they had gift bags for us from the radio, the news station. So this is my Rochester first.com channel eight, um, mug. And I might have Honey Bourbon in my mug instead of coffee <laugh>. But it is after 6:00 PM here. And if I drink coffee now, I will be awake till tomorrow morning, <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:04:52 So, no, no judgment. That’s fantastic. Congratulations. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:04:56 Well thank, thank you. It’s kinda exciting. Remarkable
Speaker 2 00:04:59 Status.
Speaker 1 00:05:00 Fun to show a new mug off. Always. So tell us, how did you get started in WordPress?
Speaker 2 00:05:06 I got started in WordPress over a decade ago now. Um, when I was learning about web design, um, I, I started doing websites when I was really young, like as a child. I started getting into web design and um, and then when I was in my kind of late teens sort of that age where you were like looking for a job and like trying to make some money, uh, I got back into it and this was kind of like the Google ADSD Sense era. And I was trying to build some websites and put ADSD sense on ’em. And <laugh>, you know, I was learning about s e o uh, and one website I built was a Guitar Tablature website. So I see you have some guitars back there you probably familiar
Speaker 1 00:05:46 With,
Speaker 2 00:05:47 With the like, um, musical notation that most people learn to play guitar with is mm-hmm. <affirmative> based on like numbers and dashes and it tells you which finger to put on which string. Yeah. And I built a website where I scraped all of the existing guitar Taber websites and I scraped up all their songs and then I made a web font that made the, the design a little bit cleaner and a little clearer to read.
Speaker 1 00:06:11 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>
Speaker 2 00:06:13 And I threw AdSense ads up there and I used WordPress to blog about the site and my process of building it and kind of trying to develop a community around it.
Speaker 1 00:06:22 That’s really cool. Um,
Speaker 2 00:06:24 It was a really fun project and it was, it was, you know, at the time like it, it got decent organic traffic from Google cause it had all these long tail and there was like hundreds of thousands of songs. Um, but unfortunately this is like, just after I turned 18, I got this very threatening, um, official letter from the M P A A. This is like back in the Napster days too. So they were, they were like a big deal back then. They still are. But, um, basically threatening to, to sue me, um, <laugh> out of existence if I didn’t take the site down cuz it was all copyrighted music.
Speaker 1 00:06:59 Oh yeah. Which
Speaker 2 00:07:00 Was really kind of devastating at the time. Cause I put all this work into it, but
Speaker 1 00:07:04 Very, very sad for a teenager for sure. <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:07:06 Yeah. Yeah. Makes for a good, a good story Now, I guess <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:07:10 I mean, if I recall correctly, Napster was also founded by a teenager and that person was also just as disappointed, but it all came crashing down. So
Speaker 2 00:07:17 I think you’re right. Yeah. I think they might have had a little bit better of a, a career outcome. Didn’t, wasn’t that Sean apart. Can he go on to do Facebook or, or become an advisor for
Speaker 1 00:07:26 Facebook? Uh, I don’t even know. I just know that he probably walked away with pockets full of money <laugh>. Sure, sure. Well I love that.
Speaker 2 00:07:33 That’s so, yeah. Now, now streaming is like the go-to, right? They were, they were ahead of their time.
Speaker 1 00:07:39 I mean, sadly I still have books full of CDs, <laugh>, but, um, slowly moving those onto digital material that I can listen to through my AirPods. But yeah, it’s too funny. Cool. Too funny. Uh, so that’s great. I love how you went from like building websites to now having one of the premier page builders and themes out there, so that’s pretty cool. Um, before we get to talking about Beaver Builder though, let me ask you just a couple more questions. Cuz as everybody knows, I ask the same secret set of questions to everybody. When you think about what we do as this cat is like literally driving me crazy right now, uh, <laugh> this is, this is why I usually do not record from home and I do record from the office, but today’s a home day. Um, when you think about us as web builders, uh, whether, you know, dev developers, designers, everybody in between, what do you think is a step that we skip sometimes or we don’t focus enough attention on when we’re building websites that would make websites better?
Speaker 2 00:08:44 I think that content is king. Uh, that it reminds me of a question we get often or that we hear often in the kind of in the page builder ecosystem. And a lot of people are really concerned about, um, SEO and performance and, you know, we hear people ask regularly, like, if I use the page builder, is that gonna impact my, my seo? You know? Right. Or if, if I’m like, um, and, and like ultimately that’s a performance question. Like if I build my website in a way where it’s gonna be a little bit less performant than doing it this way, is that, you know, how much of an impact is that gonna have? And you know, what we say and what we’ve found is that if you have good content that’s, um, shareable or valuable or based on experience, that that’s gonna trump everything else. And, um, yeah, I think like it’s, it’s really easy to kind of focus on those like very like micro optimizations when you’re building a site or getting mm-hmm. <affirmative> getting into the rabbit hole of like, which theme and which font, what should my Lion height be? And you know, all these like nitty gritty Yeah. Typography settings, which I love to do and admittedly like get into that rabbit hole myself. But, you know, I think it’s kinda
Speaker 1 00:09:53 Fun sometimes
Speaker 2 00:09:55 It’s a blast. Oh yeah, absolutely. Like going through all the different themes and on my personal blog that like no one really ever sees, it’s very small. Like I’ll just do it on the live site. I’ll be like, oh, I wonder what 2023 looks like and <laugh> activate it and check it out, but
Speaker 1 00:10:10 Exactly. Um, and then shortly thereafter returned to Beaver Builder. Right? <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:10:14 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1 00:10:16 Exactly. Um, I, and I think that’s, I think that that’s true, right? So I remember I was building a couple of websites back in the day before WordPress, um, as part of my MBA program before WordPress. And like, one of the things we were taught back then was whatever your keywords are, put them in white text on a white background. <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:10:39 Oh yeah. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:10:40 Right? I think this might even have been like just when Google was starting and it was still about Yahoo as the king of, you know, search engines and, um, ask Js was still around and all of those kinds of things, but Sure. Yeah. Um, I don’t do that anymore. In case anybody’s wondering, you can search the entire WP Coffee Talk website and there is no white text on a white background. So just so we’re all, so we’re all on the same page. It is
Speaker 2 00:11:02 F frowned upon these days. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:11:05 Very much so. I think not just for,
Speaker 2 00:11:06 For being manipulative, but also it’s not accessible
Speaker 1 00:11:10 <laugh>. Exactly. I have a lot of friends at Yost and they would probably disown me if that’s the way <laugh> I was doing business. <laugh>, when you think back to your time over WordPress, what’s something that you wish you had learned earlier in your WordPress journey that sure would’ve made life easier?
Speaker 2 00:11:30 You know, I think when we were building Beaver Builder early on, one of the things we tried to do was use WordPress for everything. Mm. Um, like for example, we had, um, community forums that we were using BB Press for, and we were doing our supports, um, like customer support through those forums. Um, and, you know, for our e-commerce system, we were using WooCommerce and for, um, you know, all these different things that might have been better off using like a dedicated platform. We tried to just kind of hack it together. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like literally hack it together using WordPress. You know, like our affiliate program we’re using, uh, affiliate wp and to this day we still are using WordPress for a lot of things, but in hindsight, uh, we joke around sometimes about how our WordPress install. Like it’s, it has all these building blocks and pieces that we’ve built up and hacked together over the years that it’s kind of got like a house of cards feeling to it.
Speaker 2 00:12:26 Or like a Jenga game where, you know, like when we have to do updates or make changes, it’s just like, I feel like if you pull the wrong block, it’s all gonna <laugh> and knock on wood, uh, it’s never crumbled yet, but it, it’s always a little’s. Good. That’s good. A little scary. So in, you know, if we were gonna go do it all over again, we might have pulled some of those pieces out to be their own dedicated either, you know, SAS platforms or run separate word press installs instead of trying to build it all on one.
Speaker 1 00:12:50 I can’t remember who I was talking to recently, but I, we were talking about the fact that WordPress is great, but it isn’t necessarily the solution to everything, but how it’s that old adage that if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Right. So it’s like, I can do that with WordPress, but sometimes you have to ask yourself a question, but should you, right. Like I’m the biggest WordPress, um, you know, uh, uh, evangelist out there, but everything doesn’t have to be WordPress to be useful in our ecosystem. So Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s valuable. Um, information for sure
Speaker 2 00:13:26 Struggle between, um, time and, and money too. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, because, you know, WordPress has, and most, you know, all the plug-ins and the plug-in repo for the most part, there’s a free option or a way to do mm-hmm. <affirmative> just about anything for free. But a lot of times you’re sacrificing time in order to get it set up and maintain it. The
Speaker 1 00:13:43 Challenge is when you’re starting out and you’re bootstrapping, that’s the way you kind of have to go. Unless you’ve just got, you know, mom and dad paying bills, or you’ve got angel investors, or you just happen to have deep pockets of your own. Mm-hmm. You know, you’re looking for ways to bootstrap through. And so yes. Coming up ways to un engineer that as you have the ability to do different things, um, becomes a, a huge endeavor for sure.
Speaker 2 00:14:05 Totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:14:08 So you and I recently met, um, face-to-face at not the for the first time, of course, but at, at Word Camp Phoenix. Um, I know you’ve been to Word Camp US and you’ve been to other Word camps and other WordPress events. As you think back overall of the different events that you’ve attended, is there like a moment, um, a talk a person, an event that happened where it was like that Aha Angel sang kind of moment that really made a difference for you? Um, and if so, what was it?
Speaker 2 00:14:36 There’s been many of them. I think throughout the years. Uh, I’ve been been, I, I really got, I really found that I enjoyed, um, doing Word camps early on in our kind of beaver builder journey. And, uh, kind of doubled down on those over the years and, and really enjoy, enjoyed being a part of the community. I think one, one <laugh> one, I won’t, I won’t mention who, but I remember one time one of the first word camps I ever attended, and I went with my, my business partners. But there was a figure in the WordPress space, um, who was very well known, who was a, a fantastic blogger and developer, and we kind of held him up on a, on a pedestal. Like whenever we saw his name, we’d go, oh, this guy. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, he’s <laugh>, you know, he seemed like, you know, uh, like superhuman.
Speaker 2 00:15:25 And so we went to his talk at Word Camp and it was, it was a good talk. It was very interesting. But you could tell that his forte was not public speaking and that he was more of a developer and a writer. And we kind of walked away from it being like, wow, like this person that we, you know, thought was, was superhuman is is human after all <laugh>. Um, so that, yeah, I guess that was like a, I remember that being a pivotal moment of like, kind of meeting your, meeting your WordPress heroes, so to speak, <laugh> and, and, um, it, you know, kind of just how, how, how different it is experiencing people and their mm-hmm. <affirmative> personas and their, you know, brands if you will, online versus face-to-face. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:16:09 No, that’s very true. Um, for sure. And I think sometimes people have expectations of like, um, like celebrity, but realistically every single person at WordPress from Matt Mullenweg to the teenager who just started their first blog today, we’re all just people. Right. So, yeah, totally. But it is, it is easy to try to like put or not to try to, it is easy to visualize people, um, as being superhuman in the ways that they do things. And, and it’s, it’s not bad, it’s not a bad thing to realize people’s humanity. I think. That’s great. I like that. So let’s talk a little bit about Beaver Builder. What year did y’all found Beaver Builder?
Speaker 2 00:16:48 We founded started in 2014, uh, in April, 2014 actually. So this month is our birthday month. We’re celebrating our, our ninth birthday.
Speaker 1 00:16:58 Very nice. Happy birthday Beaver Builder.
Speaker 2 00:17:00 Yeah, thanks. I’ll send it on to the rest of the team. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:17:04 There you go. For sure. You all have built, um, a product that really works for a lot of people. Um, you’re not the only page builder theme in, in the ecosystem of course, but you’re one of the earlier ones that has had some really good longevity. And I think part of that is because you continue to innovate and grow, right? So you have, you didn’t just like, there it is, do with what you will then, and then people outgrow it. Cuz of course we know that WordPress has changed the last, in the last nine years as well. Um, there were no block builders <laugh> nine years ago when things first started out. And so to have, uh, you know, the Gutenberg project and then, um, the block editor and things has certainly changed things a lot. But to get back to that picture idea, I was think, cuz I was, you know, thinking a lot about, uh, beaver Builder and about beavers and all of this thing since I talked to you, uh, last month, I think that was two and a half weeks ago, maybe <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:17:56 It’s not even that long ago. Yeah. Not that long ago. I know. Crazy. Right? So I sent you a picture, I think I sent you the picture. I had to, um, that’s in the WordPress, uh, directory photo directory of a beaver dam. Right? I think I showed it to you anyway. And so there’s a beaver dam up in, uh, uh, I’m forgetting up there, lake Placid in uh, Saranac Lake. So up there there is a lake you can, I took a like train ride this Adirondack Mountain train ride. It’s a sightseeing thing. Doesn’t exist anymore, unfortunately cuz it was a great train ride. But at the end of it, before, right before you pull into Saranac Lake from Lake Placid, you drive by or pull by this big looks like a pond. Right? And they pointed out that the beavers have damned the creek that that’s there to build into, to build this pond.
Speaker 1 00:18:52 And even though it doesn’t look what I would like big, I mean I live by Lake Ontario, by no means is it Lake Ontario standards. But they did say over the speaker, like, and if anybody were to remove that dam, the entire town of Saranac Lake would be flooded and it would be a national disaster. Right. And I thought, holy cow. So a couple things came to mind with that was beavers are amazing at design. They’re like natural born architects because they’re not drawn up plans and going, oh, I think we need another like, log over there, Larry. Right? Like, it’s like <laugh>. They just know what they’re doing and they absolutely affect the entire ecology of the area. Um, in a good way, cuz that’s what they’re supposed to do. The other picture, which I just sent to you, which I took on Sunday, was a beaver lodge, which is what the beavers live in.
Speaker 1 00:19:43 And I know you know about beavers, but just in case anybody else doesn’t, beavers actually access their lodge under the water. So they swim down under the water and then up they climb up into this beaver lodge, which looks like a hay ba a hay bale kind of floating in the water. And what I love about beaver lodges is that they become these condos for wildlife, right? So like I’ve seen both, uh, Canada geese and swans nest on top of a beaver lodge. The beavers don’t care cuz they’re not using the top, they’re using the underneath. And I’ve also, the picture I sent you, there was a, a painted turtle, which they’ve just recently emerged from the mud from the wintertime cuz they hibernate was at the bottom, like kind of semi climbed up the side of this beaver lodge and was sunning itself in the sun, in the afternoon sun.
Speaker 1 00:20:31 And I thought beavers also do that, right? So they don’t just like build these dams that are absolutely architecturally sound, but they create these, um, like condom condos for themselves. They sleep in the basement and they let the birds have the penthouse. I mean, it’s a pretty, pretty sweet thing. And it’s really amazing. And I could see why you named the, the, the, I can’t, there again, I can see why you named a beaver builder because of the way that it’s like instinctive and sound. But why don’t you tell me if I have anywhere near right on what I just guessed or if it was like, Hey, beavers are cute. Let’s name it that <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:21:11 <laugh>. I’m tr yeah, I’m flashing back to, to ninth grade biology or, uh, or not biology, but uh, science clasp, like I said, sy biology relationship, right? Where Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. <laugh>, um, yes. It’s side, no, I used to live near a reservoir and we had beavers in the reservoir, but they were really rare, um, to see. And a lot of people didn’t know they existed, myself included. Um, but I remember, um, going out on the lake on a paddleboard and seeing the trees that have been chewed down and, and thinking, gosh, that looks like a, like a, looks like a beaver. And then seeing like some of the dams they’d built and some of the lodges. And I remember I was out on the paddleboard one day and I got too close to one of their lodges that I think, and they do this, this move when they get threatened where they slap their tail, like they’ll surface and slap their tail against the water mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And I saw one of ’em do that, and I almost fell off the board because I <laugh> like, I think it was the first time seeing a beaver in the wild
Speaker 1 00:22:10 Startle A Huh?
Speaker 2 00:22:12 <laugh> It did. Yeah. But it was also like this, at the time, this was, we had a beaver builder, like, so it was like a, you know, it was like a sign. I was like, oh my gosh, it’s <laugh> amazing. It’s a beaver right here. Um, yeah, so, so, okay. So the name story was we, when we launched Beaver Builder, it was actually called something else. Our, um, we got a web design agency called Fast Line Media, and we started working on Beaver Builder as a, you know, kind of internal or side project. Um, and when we launched it, we called it the Fast Line Page builder, but then one of our early customers, uh, was a marketing guy and he wrote us, he said that, you know, we, he loved our software, but he thought our branding was silly. It didn’t make any sense. He’s like, what does Fast Line mean? Like, you guys, he basically said you guys needed a better name. So we started doing an exhaustive, kind of like, brainstorming search session that lasted a couple weeks where we were like writing things out on a whiteboard mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And like, you know, we’d have this like great name idea and then we’d go and try and find the domain and it, it was already taken and it was like that back and forth and back and forth. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:23:14 And we were, um, thinking about like animals that build things that was kind of like the thought train we were in, or mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, and we were thinking like bees and beavers and we were like Beaver Builder, I think, you know, one of us said it in the office and we all just started laughing and we’re like, no, that’s like, that’s silly <laugh>. I’d be like, you know, that’d be too, too silly to try and like, name the company Beaver Builder. Um, but then it was so sticky, like we kept thinking about it and laughing about it. Yeah. Like the next day we kind of saw it on the whiteboard and we were just like, gosh, it’s really good
Speaker 1 00:23:47 <laugh>. Um, and then the domain was free and you were like, yes, it’s meant to be, right.
Speaker 2 00:23:51 Yeah. We were able to get, we got WP Beaver Builder and eventually we got Beaver Builder um, dot com. Um, and we, so at the time we were also, we worked with a logo designer and we sent him an email and said, Hey, we, like, we’re thinking about rebranding the software product we made. We’ve got this name idea. We were wondering if you could, you know, do some logos for us. And he sent back the, I don’t have it on my hat on, oh, it’s, it’s on my cup here, the Beaver caricature. Um, he sent a logo back that had this guy with the, the Beaver Builder, um, you know, text as part of the logo. Mm-hmm. And we just mm-hmm. We fell in love with the caricature. It was just so cute. Um, they really knocked it out of the park. Uh, and that’s when we were like, okay, let’s do it. We’re going with, we’re going with Beaver Builder <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:24:36 I love it. I love it. And now you guys are not only, um, creating a product that people can use, but you’re also supporting the WordPress community by sponsoring events, sponsoring podcasts, um, sponsoring, uh, word camps and things like that. So, you know, from me, as part of the community, thank you for all that you do for the WordPress community. It’s great to have you guys be such active members of, uh, of all that we do.
Speaker 2 00:25:02 Oh, I appreciate that. Yeah. It feels good. Um, obviously it’s, you know, we get some, some, it’s hard to quantify, but some business return from it too. But, um, being able to kind of participate in the, in the community and, you know, we, we believe in the Word Press mission and, um, it, it just has always felt like a fit the people and the, the vibe we get here and the idea of Yeah. You know, open source and democratizing publishing and getting to, to share your code and build off of what other people are building. Um, it all speaks, uh, speaks to kind of what we want to be doing with our, with our lives professionally and personally. It’s,
Speaker 1 00:25:38 Yeah, it’s, it’s good. And having met your team in Phoenix, I’ll say you’ve got a great group of people too. Like just the best team. They’re awesome.
Speaker 2 00:25:47 Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we we’re really lucky. Um, we feel really lucky. That was, that was fun too. We, so we just got to hang out in Phoenix. Our, our sponsor areas were right next to each others mm-hmm. <affirmative> and we decided to bring out, um, I think we had nine people total, A couple of, uh, like friends and family and, and significant others came, but nine Beavers, <laugh>, <laugh>, um, all together, which is something we haven’t done as a company before. We, we usually do, you know, little meetups or we do, you know, our Zoom chats or this or that, but mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, getting everyone in person in one spot was, was really special and a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 00:26:22 Yeah. It was really, it was good. It was cool to be next to you guys cuz Yeah. I was there with a page builder also. And even though people could look at us and go, oh, they’re competitors like <laugh>, I don’t know about you, but like, I never see it that way. Like, people are gonna find the product that’s right for them, whether it’s yours, mine, or somebody else’s. Um, it’s just really cool to be there to support, to educate, to share the opportunity that you have. But it’s not like, oh gosh, ours is so much better. Don’t go to their table. I mean, I didn’t hear that from you guys. You didn’t hear from us. Like, it’s just not the way, that’s not the WordPress way. And so, um, we absolutely can all exist together even at tables side by side, which actually was super fun. <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:27:04 Agreed. Agreed on everything. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:27:06 <laugh>. So fun. So what’s in the future for a buil for a Beaver builder? Like you said, you’ve nine years in, um, what’s coming down the line that you wanna talk about?
Speaker 2 00:27:16 Well, we are continuing to, to build out features. Um, we actually just got some, um, really valuable, valuable user feedback from, we have a Facebook group, the Beaver Builders Group, but mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, like currently we’re working on a big release where we’re updating our responsive, um, the, the responsive builder within Beaver Builder. Um, and it’s, it’s always been like a, it’s always been like a tricky thing to get right. Um, like when you’re building a website right? And you wanna see what it looks like on like an iPad size screen or a phone size screen mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, Chrome dev tools is what a lot of people use. Right. Uh, cuz they do that really, really well. Um, and we tried to recreate that, but it was like never quite pixel perfect. There was always just some little like, um, little kinda like nuances that wouldn’t quite translate when you were looking at it in Beaver Builder mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:28:05 <affirmative>. Uh, but we figured out a way to use an eye frame, um, in our latest release that’s coming out really soon that makes it a lot closer to, to Pixel Perfect. Or what you would be able to experience using Chrome dev tools and then Oh, cool. Then we’re, yeah. Yeah, it was like, it was like a little bit of a breakthrough, um, from like the dev side when they kind of figured out that we could do it this way and, and started doing some like, proofs of concept and, um, everyone was really excited to see that it was like possible and it worked.
Speaker 1 00:28:32 Oh, that’s great. Um,
Speaker 2 00:28:33 Yeah, then we’ve been doing some experiments with like global styling and global colors. So, uh, page builders, you know, beaver Builder and, and most all the others operate on like a page by page basis. Um, but a lot of times, like kind of similar to how you would use c s s if you were developing a page with code, you wanna be able to say like, okay, my main color is this color, my accent colors are this color, um, similar with styles, you know, like, I want this font size and all the headings and you can do that with c s s and you can write C Ss and use that within your page builder or Beaver Builder. Uh, but we’re, we’re experimenting with ways to do that, um, in like a no code, uh, way.
Speaker 1 00:29:10 Oh, nice.
Speaker 2 00:29:11 And then, uh, yeah, yeah. Another big thing we just started, uh, we just launched, we have another product called Assistant Pro, which is a cloud platform for storing page designs. And it works with, um, not just Beaver Builder, it’s all the other page builders and Gutenberg. But if you’re designing, using a page builder, you can upload your designs to assistant and then you can really easily use them on different WordPress installs. Or if you’re doing like development and staging, you can mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, work on your staging site and push it it up to the cloud and pull it down on your live site.
Speaker 1 00:29:44 Ooh, that sounds like a cool tool.
Speaker 2 00:29:47 It was like, that in particular was always a, a pain in the neck for me because I would build out pages on our staging site and then we would use the word press, uh, XML import export tool and we’d like export an XML file and then import it. Um, and it was just a mess cuz it would, it would, uh, like just that process was a pain in the butt. And then when you had the XML import on your live site, all of the image URLs and like sometimes links would, uh, if it were internal links, they wouldn’t update to the new domains you had like go back through and like mm-hmm. <affirmative> assistant pros made that process like a lot more just seamless and simple.
Speaker 1 00:30:25 I love that because I’ve had that experience before where I had to go through and update all of my links and look for my image links because those didn’t work. The images were in the library, but they didn’t wanna connect because the title was the D or the, the URL for them was different. So
Speaker 2 00:30:41 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s really cool. I, I remember once making the mistake, I was working on a local site and I forgot to update the image links cuz when I was looking at the live site, they were still loading off of my local server, but everyone else who was accessing the site from the web wasn’t seeing it
Speaker 1 00:30:57 <laugh>. And you’re like, I don’t get it. I can see them like I’ve actually Yeah, yeah, I’ve done that too. It’s like, oh, they’re referencing another website or, and that’s one of the things, you know, we talk about like being able to incorporate the WordPress photo directory into websites and people have the in the instinct sometimes to just include it by u r url, but if somebody removes their photo from the photo directory that U R L breaks and then you don’t have that image anymore, which is
Speaker 2 00:31:23 Oh, sure.
Speaker 1 00:31:24 You know, you gotta be careful about those kinds of things. Sure.
Speaker 2 00:31:26 Classic internet problem, right? When you go through an old like forum post and it’s got like the mm-hmm. Ger or, you know, image bucket or like all of those like Yeah. You know, dozens of image hosting websites that have come and gone over the years.
Speaker 1 00:31:38 Yeah. And that little picture that tells you wa wa and that’s not here anymore. <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 2 00:31:43 Exactly.
Speaker 1 00:31:44 <laugh>. It’s not a fun thing, especially if you have built a site for a customer and they’re reporting to you that things aren’t working the right way. Um, and I think that a lot of seasoned designers and developers don’t do those kinds of things anymore, but people st starting out still are looking for ways to reduce the load on the site and so they’re not uploading images and things like that. So Totally Not necessarily best practice though. <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:32:08 Yeah. Going back to that like, you know, like, you know, ramen hacker kind of late high school kind of early college mentality where you’re just trying to save a buck everywhere you can, like, you know Yeah. Hosted on, hosted on the image hosting site and let them use up the bandwidth like Right.
Speaker 1 00:32:23 Until that image no longer exists. <laugh> and then Yeah. <laugh>. Exactly. Yeah. Not fun. Um, well lemme move into the rapid fire questions. Uh, I always say I’ll ask them rapidly, you take as much time as you’d like to answer them. Um Oh good. Okay. Okay. So you don’t have to be real quick. You can think about it for a second. Um, but if you say quiet too long, people will think that we stopped the show. So don’t take too long to think about this. <laugh>, what are two or three must have plugins that you would recommend to somebody building their own website?
Speaker 2 00:32:55 Okay. A Kismet, I think is one of the, like, first ones I install on any site that’s gonna have a comment section or, you know, user generated content, which is kind of bittersweet. We had, uh, a blog with comments and then a maybe year or two ago we decided to turn off comments. It was kind of like the trend. Um, I think there was some SEO benefits to doing that. And so we did that and then we decided recently to turn them back on because we were feeling like, um, we used to do like a lot of our, you know, interacting with our users and people reading our blog on like various social networks, particularly like Facebook groups was a big one for us mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, but there’s been just some changes to like the Facebook algorithm or, you know, Twitter’s been kind of like a up and down roller coaster and yes. We’re like, maybe we should like, own our own discussions again and try and move some of that conversation back to the blog. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we re-enabled comments and it’s just been like a barrage of spam comments every day and I was like, oh, this is why. That’s the annoying
Speaker 1 00:33:56 Way we get this.
Speaker 2 00:33:58 Uh, so a kismet or some sort of like, you know, spam blocking, I know there’s a few other options mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, we started using HCAP instead of recapture, so recapture is Google’s capture plugin. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, but we were doing some like performance tuning on our site and found that recapture was loading in a web font and HCAP was an option that was like kind of a more open source data friendly mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, like, you know, not, not giving all your data over to Google. Right. Um, we really liked that. So that’s kind of in the same vein. And merick is a, it’s a SaaS platform, but it’s also a plugin. But if you’re doing anything with WooCommerce and e-commerce mm-hmm. <affirmative> highly recommend checking out merick. Uh, what they do is they pull all of your stores data off of your WordPress install.
Speaker 2 00:34:47 Kind of going back to this idea of like, you don’t have to have everything on WordPress mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, we we’re running a WooCommerce uh, install and there’d be times when we try and search for like an order number or a customer and our website would just start like grinding cuz it was like going through this, you know, huge database and, um, what me does is it pulls all that data off into a separate SaaS. I think they’re using Laravel or something like that mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but they have really like lightning fast, uh, search capability. And then they also give you sales metrics on, you know, if you’re doing subscriptions, it’ll show you your recurring revenue and your churn. And they do some really cool stuff and it’s all like lightning fast.
Speaker 1 00:35:27 Oh, that’s nice. For sure. Yeah. Very good. Cool. And you’ve list is some that nobody’s ever said before on the show, which I like. It’s not all the same three all the time, so that’s great. So that gives people something else else to look into for sure. At any point in your WordPress journey when you started out, or even as late as last week, have you had a mentor whether it was official or unofficial? And if you did, and you can tell us who was it?
Speaker 2 00:35:51 Yeah, totally. Uh, Chris Lema is the first name that comes to mind. He was one of the early Beaver Builder, uh, evangelists, if you will. And he, he’s, he’s, I think well, um, don’t need to get too deep on what he, he used to be very, very involved in a daily blogger talking about businesses in the word press space. Like, that was his niche and his thing and he owned it mm-hmm. <affirmative> and he still does that, but I think he’s, he’s kind of moved away from that a little bit. Um, but he, we were like super excited when he started using BeaverBuilder and we were like regular readers of his blog and he reached out to us and invited us to a conference that he was hosting in Cabo called Cabo Press. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, you know, we were looking at the ticket price and, and you know, this was like, we were still a really small company and we were like, we cannot, you know, spend x thousands of dollars to go fly to Cabo for a week and stay.
Speaker 2 00:36:50 It said at this really nice, you know, five star all inclusive resort. And we’re like, this is ridiculous. Like, we can’t, this isn’t like valuable. But he sent us an email and he was like, you guys, I really think you could benefit from doing this. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and he was, he was totally right because the people he brought in to speak and the discussions that we had there with other business owners, um, we learned so much about like, what we were supposed to be doing and the kind of best practices for running a software and a SAS business and Nice and WordPress. So I am, uh, yeah, very grateful to him. Um, Saed Bulky was another, actually a host at Cabo Press that we met, but he’s also been, um, a really helpful kind of mentor and advisor and someone who, uh, you know, we, we try to try to clone what he’s doing, um, as often as we can because he’s, he’s got some, you know, um, some really cool products in the space and he’s always, you know, innovating and coming up with cool ways for at least me on like the marketing side.
Speaker 2 00:37:46 I’m always like checking out his websites and being like, okay, what’s he doing? How’s, how, how are his articles always ranking number one in Google <laugh> and like, how come I’m always seeing his products everywhere,
Speaker 1 00:37:55 <laugh>. Yeah, exactly. He’s got a lot of good products too. For sure. Um, totally. And he’s got like the number one WordPress log, right? W p beginner. So it’s easy to see how, how that has helped for sure. Um, great, great, uh, business acumen, I will say, for sure.
Speaker 2 00:38:12 Totally. Totally.
Speaker 1 00:38:14 So other than Chris and Syed now, cause I don’t wanna keep naming the same people, but who is someone that you admire in the WordPress community and why?
Speaker 2 00:38:25 You know, I just met, uh, someone named Leslie Sim, um, and she is the co-founder of Newsletter Glue. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and we met at, we’re Camp Asia and we met over, it was like a, it was a, just like a, a beer meetup, um, that was hosted by FIUs Vva from FIUs, invited everyone out to go have some beers and we were chatting, um, you know, we just happened to kind of find ourselves in like a small circle chatting. Um, and I was familiar with Newsletter Glue, like I knew the name, but I didn’t know exactly like what it was. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I went back, uh, like that night in the hotel and I was like, new, you know, went and, you know, plugged the website in and I was like, yeah, what is that? And then, uh, I was looking at her landing page and I was looking at all like her marketing copy.
Speaker 2 00:39:08 And again, I’m like, you know, kind of like copywriting, marketing geek. Um, so, and I was just like, wow, like this is, this is, um, it’s really, it was like really solid. Just like everything was like, okay, I wanna buy this. I don’t even know if I need it, but it’s like, I like it. I wanna buy it. I feel like I trust this company. Um, and that was notable. And then Quin Dentally, um, I don’t wanna like dox her, but, so I was traveling, uh, we were all in Bangkok together then I was traveling through her home country on my way home. And so I linked up, um, I asked if she or we were talking about getting together and so we went and had lunch and I got to kind of pick her brain a little bit about, about copywriting and marketing and, um, yeah. Yeah. Just was like very impressed with her thoughts. She had a lot of like original ideas and a, and a really cool story.
Speaker 1 00:39:53 She’s brilliant. And, um, just a little plug for newsletter glue. We used it on the underrepresented in tech, uh, dot com website and it’s, it is just a brilliant product. <laugh>, it’s amazing. Yeah. I think that Awesome. That’s a so a sound person to admire in the community for sure. What’s something that you’d like to learn in WordPress but that you haven’t tackled yet?
Speaker 2 00:40:16 Let’s see, to learn in WordPress but haven’t tackled yet. I feel like there’s a lot, it’s hard to come up with just one. I have been, I used to write a lot more code and do a lot more development work, but then mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, as we, when, so we, we had a web design agency where we all kind of like took in projects and owned them from start to finish and built websites for people. And then when we started working on Beaver Builder, we were all kind of like, you know, we’re, do like doing a little bit of work on the code, but then doing a little bit of work on support and a little bit of work on like our website and trying to do a little blogging. And, um, eventually we all sort of decided to kind of divide and conquer and I took over more of the marketing activities.
Speaker 2 00:41:07 But, um, I always like, wish I was writing more code, uh mm-hmm. <affirmative> and I feel, or I feel like that like I’m way rusty and out of the loop of modern development. Um, like I haven’t really played with React all that much and you know, there’s like some of the, uh, like deployment tools that are available now and just the workflows like static, I mean, I guess it’s not even WordPress, but like static site generators and some of that stuff. Um, I, I see what’s happening like across the, you know, over the fence and I’m like, oh, I would like, that looks so cool <laugh>, I’d love to like play with that. Or I wish I knew it, I wish I knew what they were talking about. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:41:42 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. So I’m not a developer, but I understand wanting to understand it and grow with it. Um, I do like to say, you know, you see the guitars, you, you commented on that was my first step towards becoming a developer is just having guitars on the wall because every developer I swear, has guitars in the background. Of course, I
Speaker 2 00:42:02 Joke’s so funny.
Speaker 1 00:42:04 <laugh> was like, can I be my, my
Speaker 2 00:42:05 Business partner Justin? Yeah. Our, our kind of, um, lead developer, uh, actually played in a punk rock band. Oh, cool, cool. And so he played in the punk rock band, Justin. Uh, and then my other partner, other co-founder Billy used to manage one of the clubs that was in town, so that’s how they met. Um Okay. Which is a fun story <laugh>, but yeah, they, he, they both actually have guitars up in their office.
Speaker 1 00:42:30 Yep. You see it a lot in press <laugh>. Exactly. There’s something that kind of just goes together, but, um, I’m not sure exactly how to describe it, but it definitely fits for sure. What is one of the biggest WordPress mistakes you’ve ever made and what did you learn from it?
Speaker 2 00:42:50 Okay, when I was working on our website, I thought I was working on the staging site and I don’t remember why I was, do I think I was importing and export? It might have been like importing or exporting pages like I was talking about earlier. Like I’d done designs that I needed to import a new page or I’d like, um, but what <laugh> um, what I did was I went to our pages screen on and the WordPress admin panel and I hit that, you know, check like select all button and like moved ’em all to the trash and then deleted ’em. And I was, I think I was gonna like re-import those pages cuz I was, you know, like messing around with something. Uh, but long story short, uh, or long story long, uh, I was on the live site, our live site, and I thought I was on a staging site and I deleted all of our pages and I had that moment of like, the blood, you know, like drains out of your face and you get a little like sweaty and like shaky with that, like adrenaline anxiety.
Speaker 2 00:43:49 And I was like, yeah, oh my God, what have I done? And I so make matters worse, it was Sunday and then it was also Mother’s Day <laugh>. I know. And I, I, like, I sent a message to Justin and I was like, Justin and I screwed up. Like, and he, he was at his daughter’s softball game. I think we, we, we actually just told this story or like talking about it recently. He’s like, oh yeah, I remember when you did that. Like, I was, you know, at, at my daughter’s softball game and I was like, uh, <laugh>, I can’t, I’m on the phone. Like, there’s not a whole lot I can do right now. Um, but we hit up, I hit up, uh, page Lee. So we host our site on page Lee and I hit them up and, um, yeah, they, they, they managed to like pull a backup and get our, like, get our site back up and running within, you know, a, a few minutes, maybe 10 or 15 minutes. Um, and I, so I feel eternally kind of like, uh, guilty for <laugh> to all their mothers, you know, who aren’t getting to spend time with their brilliant children who rescued me. But after that, what we did was we made, uh, a c s s change on our staging site so that like the admin panel bar that, you know, normally gets like black. I think by default that black bar is like a very bright red. So you can always have like a visual indicator of when you’re working on staging or not
Speaker 1 00:44:59 <laugh>, and probably little do you know, but you’re the only one that sees the red one. Everybody else is, knows what they’re doing right now. <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:45:05 Yeah. Right. Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:45:08 I’m kidding. But yeah, I’ve changed the colors of websites, um, the interface before so that I can remember which site I’m in if I’ve got three or four open at the same time, you know, but yeah, for sure. That’s, that would be scary. I’ve, I’ve worked websites before in the past and luckily had, uh, something I could read a play quickly, but otherwise it’s like very scary
Speaker 2 00:45:29 For sure. That’s Yeah, it’s a horrible, it’s like that feeling is so, so familiar and it, it happens and you know, like it’s the same feel when you like reach down. Like for me, like if I feel for my wallet in my back pocket and the wallet’s not there on a mountain about, or like, you know Yeah. You like, you just realize you’ve made like a, a tragic mistake or something’s gone horribly wrong, but
Speaker 1 00:45:49 Like, if you’ve turned one the wrong way down a one way road, that same kind of like panic. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 00:45:55 Yeah. It’s such a natural anxiety response that <laugh> it,
Speaker 1 00:45:59 It’s serious.
Speaker 2 00:46:00 It doesn’t feel great, <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:46:01 No, no. At least he was able to recover it and, and things moved on as, as they should. But yeah, all
Speaker 2 00:46:07 Swell that ends well. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:46:08 <laugh>, those few moments are scary for sure. Well, let’s talk about the opposite of that. What’s your proudest WordPress moment? <laugh>?
Speaker 2 00:46:15 Okay. Proudest WordPress moment. Well, you know, I had a really fun one just recently. Um, it Word Camp Beach. I think we, we like briefly bumped into each other at Word Camp Asia. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, but I was, uh, I, so I invited my mom to come out to Word Camp Asia. We had, um, some family business to attend to in Thailand, and we’d been kind of waiting for a good reason to go out there. And when Word Camp Asia got announced that it was gonna be in Bangkok, I was like, oh, let’s, like, you know, let’s do that. So my mom came out with me nice, uh, to Word Camp Bangkok, which was, which was fun. And, uh, one of the guys from WP M u Dev, I’ll give them a plug. Uh, Tim had an extra ticket and I was like, oh, you have an extra ticket.
Speaker 2 00:47:01 Like, my mom’s gonna be in town. She was gonna come like on the last night. Um, and I was like, if you have an extra, like I’d love to bring her in and, you know, sh maybe she can go sit in a session or go get some swag from the sponsor booth and, and do the after party. And we did all that. Like he, she was able to get a ticket. Um, and it was just really fun getting to, to show her, um, I’d actually taken her to another word camp, uh, in Chicago, but it was a lot smaller, kind of more of like a regional camp and mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, we had like a really fun time doing that together. That’s awesome. Getting to introduce her to my colleagues and her getting kind of see what, what I do and Yeah. And experience. Like we were saying, the word camp community is kind of special and, and I think she got a, a good, a good taste of what that meant, that meant by, it’s,
Speaker 1 00:47:47 It’s hard for non WordPress family members to understand what that says and, and, and why it feels to other people. Like we’re in a cult because we’re constantly talking, eating, breathing, <laugh> the ecosystem of the community, right. Like some of my best friends are word pressers. Um, and then when we do get to introduce people and or give them a glimpse, it’s exciting for sure, especially if they get it and she doesn’t have to understand how to develop and build a website to just get why it’s important to you. And that’s, I can see why that would’ve been a really great moment.
Speaker 2 00:48:16 Yeah. Yeah. There’s so many, like brilliant and kind people I think are the kind of two common traits and, and so many people that have such an interesting story as to, you know, why they’re in WordPress or life experiences that led them to WordPress and getting to, you know, talk to some people and, and, and experience that for herself was really special.
Speaker 1 00:48:36 Yeah. Will you be at Word Camp Europe?
Speaker 2 00:48:39 You know, unfortunately, no. I have a conflict, um, if I’m honest It’s a music festival, <laugh> Ooh, fun. That I, uh, I go to every year. And there was one year, actually, well, it, it was 2019. I skipped all my summer music festivals to go to, I guess it was Word Camp Europe. I think it was Berlin that year, I want to say. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I think Berlin. But I remember like telling myself like, oh, there will always be, you know, another music festival. Like, I’m gonna skip ’em this year and I’m gonna go travel in Europe. And of course this is like first world problems. Like, oh, I’d have to go travel in Europe, <laugh>. But then, but then 2020 happened and, uh, like there weren’t music festivals again for two or three years, and I was, several years I was kicking myself. I was like, oh man, I, you know, they’re actually like, I was like, I’ll just go next year. But then there wasn’t a next year and there wasn’t a next year. So,
Speaker 1 00:49:29 I mean, to be fair, there wasn’t a word Camp Europe the next year or the next year either. So Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:49:33 <laugh> true. Okay. That’s, yeah. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:49:35 That makes you feel any better. Uh, my daughter’s actually traveling with me this summer to, um, Athens, so. Oh, that’s exciting. People who are at Word Camp Europe will get to meet my daughter.
Speaker 2 00:49:46 Oh, cool. Oh, I wish I could be
Speaker 1 00:49:48 There. Thank you. I’m looking forward to having that same experience with her that you had with your mom, where she’s like, okay, I get it now. Like, I get it. You can stop talking about WordPress. I get it. You know, <laugh> <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:49:58 Oh, have fun. That’ll be great.
Speaker 1 00:50:00 Thanks. Yeah. If you weren’t working in web WebTech, WordPress, anything to do with that? What’s another career that you might like to attempt?
Speaker 2 00:50:09 Y you know, all my career choices were not the best <laugh>, like, in terms of, uh, like chances of success. Um, like I also played a lot of music and guitar when I was growing up and had the mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like, you know, the Rockstar Dream or like doing, you know, playing music professionally. Um, I dabbled in like, video games and, and like, you know, this is around the time, like, like when Twitch was coming out and I was like, oh, I gave you a professional video game, or a, or a streamer, you know, or it’s like, I, I had like aspirations,
Speaker 1 00:50:42 Pew pie, <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:50:44 Yeah. Right. To, it’s winning the lottery, right? Like I’ll just, you know, I’ll just do this thing and, and maybe <laugh>, maybe I’ll get extremely lucky and if not, I’ll just be broke. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:50:53 There you
Speaker 2 00:50:53 Go. <laugh>. Um, but yeah, I guess in, in, in more recent times, um, I’ve always enjoyed photography and taking a camera around as, uh, as a hobby. But, um, I have have had the thought of like, um, it, it would be a fun, like, retirement plan to do, like food photography or travel photography. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> again, this is another like, very like, competitive and difficult, you know, any like kind of art for the most part. It’s really hard to make a living off of, but mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, that would probably be one I would be curious to explore at this point in my life.
Speaker 1 00:51:28 I’d follow your blog if you did <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:51:31 Thank you <laugh>. Appreciate that.
Speaker 1 00:51:33 Of course. What’s something on your bucket list?
Speaker 2 00:51:37 Bucket list?
Speaker 2 00:51:39 You know, that’s a good question. I, I would love to tr travel more. Um, there’s a few places, like I, I got to do some traveling around Asia. I got to do some traveling around Europe. Um, I would love to travel around Africa. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, I would love to go to Cuba and I would love to go to Antarctica. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, I’ve like, I’ve done a lot of the kind of easier ones, but now some of the more like advanced, uh, places are, are the ones that are like, oh, that would be kind of, that’d be kind of fun to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:52:14 Well I’ve never had anybody on the show from Antarctica, so if you do make it down there, we do, we do a rematch here so that I can say that I’ve had somebody on the show from all seven continents, cuz right now I’m only hitting six <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:52:27 <laugh>. That’s, that reminds me. Um, Matt Mullenweg did a podcast with Tim Ferris from Antarctica. I think they were there, they might have been there for an eclipse, but they were traveling together and it was a really fun, it was, it was an interesting episode, but it was even more interesting cuz they were in Antarctica and talking about, you know, the extreme weather and wind. And then I think they recorded it, uh, but then they weren’t able to upload it for several weeks, uh, until they got on. Yeah, that’s
Speaker 1 00:52:53 What I’ve heard.
Speaker 2 00:52:54 Stable internet connection.
Speaker 1 00:52:56 Yeah. The wifi is not down there.
Speaker 2 00:52:58 Things you’d have to do, like, you could like email me questions and I can record them maybe, or something like that. <laugh>, although I’ll have to get their,
Speaker 1 00:53:05 There are people, um, on the station down there in TikTok who are like uploading TikTok videos, but of course 30 to 60 seconds at a time, so it’s a lot less <laugh>, um, you know, to have to upload, but, um, but it can be done. Right. So, so maybe zip Yeah, maybe
Speaker 2 00:53:20 Starlink graves a thing now. Message.
Speaker 1 00:53:22 We’ll do zip message and you can just answer all the questions, <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:53:25 Oh, that’d be fun. Yeah. Some bucket list for sure. That’s <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:53:29 Very cool. My bucket list isn’t travel as much as it is. I would love to give a Ted talk.
Speaker 2 00:53:35 Oh, cool.
Speaker 1 00:53:35 Like that is my, that’s my ultimate goal is to give a TED Talk. I’ve done a lot of other things in my life that I’ve had on my list. I didn’t know that circumnavigating the Globe was on my list until I realized I did that coming back, like going to Asia and back. I actually went one way and came back the other. I’m like, huh. How cool. I added it to the list just to check it off, you know? But <laugh>, but giving a Ted talk is definitely at the top of my list.
Speaker 2 00:53:56 Nice. Nice. Well, I would love to, I would watch the YouTube video or I think, I don’t, I, I’d been a while since I’ve looked this up. I remember that Ted Talks were ex like, really expensive to attend. Right. It was like, I dunno if that’s changed or if there’s like regionals, but I
Speaker 1 00:54:10 Have no idea.
Speaker 2 00:54:12 Yeah. Uh, if I could attend, that would be awesome. Maybe that’s a bucket list for me, those two <laugh>. I’m not, I don’t love public speaking, so, so speaking at one is not <laugh> something I’m interested in, but I’d love to attend and if you, if you talk, I’d love to attend your talk. That’d be a good one. Well,
Speaker 1 00:54:27 Thank you. I’ll, I’ll, uh, if I ever do, I’ll share the details with you and maybe we’ll meet up for coffee there. <laugh> Perfect. Or bourbon, I dunno. Something <laugh>. Yeah. Show us or tell us about a hidden talent that you have that the WordPress community might not be aware of.
Speaker 2 00:54:43 I have, I got obsessed with Disc Golf. Um, it was actually about a year ago to the day. Uh, and so talent is probably not the right word if I’m honest, because it’s been more of like a <laugh> a struggle or a, you know, like training process. But, um, that’s been my kind of go-to hobby for the last year and I’ve been putting a lot of time trying to bring my scores down <laugh> and, uh, throw that little disc just a little bit further or, you know, get, get a little bit more shape out of it or like, you know, make that putt from 15 feet.
Speaker 1 00:55:19 There are a lot of disc golfers in WordPress.
Speaker 2 00:55:22 I, you know, it’s one of those things like, you know, you hear like a word that you’ve never heard before and then all of a sudden you start hearing it everywhere. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, I’ve had that experience with Disc Golf because I was always, it was always something I, you know, I knew what it was. I knew people played it, but then when I started doing it myself, I had the similar experience of like, wow, there’s a lot of people that like, people get obsessed with it too. Similar to how I think I might have <laugh> Borderline gotten a little obsessed with it. So you’ll, you’ll like meet another disc golf junkie and the next thing you know, you’re like an hour in talking about, you know, like different, different disk angles and Oh God, the different disks themselves and the different different
Speaker 1 00:55:59 Companies and
Speaker 2 00:56:00 The collections, et cetera.
Speaker 1 00:56:02 I love it. I love this. So it’s a, it’s it’s own subculture, but it’s also a WordPress sub subculture. The disk golfers. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:56:08 <laugh>. Yeah. We should,
Speaker 1 00:56:09 We should sub wp disk golf.com and people can sign up for a tournament at every Word camp. Oh, that’d
Speaker 2 00:56:14 Be fun. We used to, yeah. Make fun of like not make fun of, but the joke at Cabo Press was if you just put press after your hobby, you could write it off your taxes, you know, so there’s a snowboard press and cigar press and Cabo Press. We should do a
Speaker 1 00:56:28 And golf press.
Speaker 2 00:56:29 Golf press and there you go. Yeah. We can all <laugh> go play, put it on the company card.
Speaker 1 00:56:34 Mine would be Lego Press, but I think I might run into a, um, a copyright infringement if I had Lego Press <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:56:42 What do they say? I think like, not fake it till you make it, but uh, don’t ask for, uh, permission. Uh, you know, ask for or don’t ask for them
Speaker 1 00:56:49 To wait for the cease desist letter. <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:56:52 Yeah, yeah, exactly. <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:56:54 Maybe just brick press. I dunno. We’ll see. <laugh> that
Speaker 2 00:56:57 Could work. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 00:56:59 Yeah, for sure. So is there anything I haven’t asked you about that you’d love to share with us? Anything going on for Beaver Builder for you personally? WordPress in general.
Speaker 2 00:57:11 Well, I believe I’m going to go to, I don’t, I don’t think the dates have been announced yet, but I’m planning to go to Word Camp Seattle, uh, and I’m planning to go to Word Camp us this year. So if any of your listeners are attending either of those, love to link up and actually for Word Camp Us, it’s gonna be on my birthday weekend. Ooh. Ooh. Um, I’m gonna be celebrating, uh, or I don’t think it’s on a weekend. I think it might be a weekday, but my birthday is one of the days of Word camp us so I’m gonna do
Speaker 1 00:57:40 A, we’ll have to celebrate
Speaker 2 00:57:41 Word Camp, birthday, uh, celebration. Yeah. So I love, it’ll be there. Come find me and <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:57:47 Absolutely.
Speaker 2 00:57:48 Cupcakes or something. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:57:49 <laugh>. I’ll bring your birthday hat. <laugh>. How do people find you on socials? Um, where do you like to, what social channel do you use the most and what is your handle there so people can follow up with you if they have questions?
Speaker 2 00:58:01 Yeah. Despite the, you know, rollercoaster I was talking about earlier, I’ve been doing a lot of Twitter recently. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, I’m on all the big ones. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. I haven’t, I haven’t actually gotten on, like, I, I’ve dabbled with Mastodon and Nostra and some of the, these like decentralized social networks mm-hmm. <affirmative> that are becoming popular. Um, part
Speaker 1 00:58:20 Of the Metaverse.
Speaker 2 00:58:21 Yeah. Yeah. I guess I’m not, <laugh> not even that familiar, but yeah, that sounds right. I know I’ve heard that term before.
Speaker 1 00:58:27 <laugh>. I’m just throwing the term out, like I know what I’m talking about. So <laugh> just agree with me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:58:33 Yep, exactly. <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:58:36 <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:58:37 Um, yeah, we’re, we’re WP Oh, sorry, I was gonna go ahead do my Beaver builder plug. Is it wp beaver builder.com on the web assistant.pro. And then I’m Robbie McCullough on all the socials.
Speaker 1 00:58:49 Fantastic. Yes. And I know we follow each other, so, um, I love your tag this afternoon and I was like, oh man, am I gonna make coffee or am I gonna just drink the bourbon? And obviously I went for the bourbon, so
Speaker 2 00:58:59 You inspired me to do the beer, but then it, uh, yeah, it was, I was excited.
Speaker 1 00:59:03 I’m sorry, beer
Speaker 2 00:59:04 And well, it’s, I mean, there’s worse things for me. Not like, you know, to be not drinking and <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:59:09 Well have, have a birthday. We’ll have a birthday drink. Yeah, we’ll have a birthday drink for you in, uh, in Maryland at Nationals. Uh, but National Harbor. Yeah. Perfect,
Speaker 2 00:59:20 Perfect plan. Yeah, just, just one though. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:59:23 <laugh>. You know what? Some, you know, do you know what my trick is? Well, it’s not a trick. Um, I like to stay sober at events, but I do love, and I’m not, I’m not a T toddler, but at Word Camp us last year, which were you there at last year? Yeah. No. And everybody,
Speaker 2 00:59:37 No, I’m sorry. I was in San Diego, but not before San Diego. Yeah. Was right. Yeah. This, I guess that was the last year, calendar year. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:59:44 <laugh> <laugh>. So in San Diego, the, the, the lobby was huge at the hotel and and center and there’s a great big bar there and everybody would be like, what would you like to drink? And I’d be like, I always start with a gin and tonic cuz it’s not a heavy drink, you know, it’s nice and light and and refreshing. And then I switch from that to seltzer with lime cuz it still looks the same. Not that I care, but it’s still refreshing and it tastes very similar. And then I watch everybody else get drunk. <laugh>
Speaker 2 01:00:09 <laugh>. Yeah. I, I can relate. I’ve been doing liquid deaths a lot recently, which I dunno if you’re not familiar, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s, I call it like the, the <laugh>, the boy version of LaCroixs not to, you know, <laugh> not to assign gender stereotypes to different drinks. I hear you. But it’s like a tall can and it’s dark and it’s aggressive and, you know, I think it was started by a, like a rockstar or something like that. But it’s, it’s a nice beer replacement. It looks like a beer. Feels like a beer, but it’s, it’s just bubbly water.
Speaker 1 01:00:39 There you go. <laugh>. I like bubbly water. It works for me. So, <laugh>. Well thank you Robbie, so much for being on the show today. Uh, really looking forward to seeing you at a future Word camp and, uh, you know, doing whatever we do together and hanging out and learning more and, and, uh, learning even more about Beaver Builder as we go. So, uh, for everybody else, we will see you, uh, at the next episode. And in the meantime, be good.