WEBVTT

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If you're one of the roughly ten thousand

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users of PublishPress,

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you'll recognize my guest this week,

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if for no other reason than because it's

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his name that shows up in your inbox

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periodically talking about what new stuff

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his company is putting out.

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PublishPress is a suite of WordPress

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plugins for publishers, content teams,

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and newsrooms.

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But I didn't anticipate that the journey

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that got Steve to where he is started

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as an English teacher in the part of

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rural Georgia where Deliverance was filmed

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on a twenty-seven thousand dollar a year

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salary with a wife, a mortgage,

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and a quiet side hustle in web design

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that started outpacing his day job within

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a few months.

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Unlike some of my previous guests,

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Steve is not the person who grew up

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taking apart computers at age ten.

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He came to all of this sideways,

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and that accidental path gave him a unique

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perspective on open source, on customers,

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on how software actually gets built in the

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real world.

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We talked about Drupal seven and the

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backwards compatibility break that became

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an off ramp for an entire generation of

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CMS users about what it means to build

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for publishers,

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not just the enterprise ones,

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but also the five person local newsroom is

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trying to fill the hole left by a

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shuttered legacy paper.

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And we talked about Steve's method for

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building software, no roadmap,

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no grand vision,

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just reading every single support ticket

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that comes in.

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Without further ado, Steve Burge.

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Welcome to Community & Code,

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the podcast where we talk to the human

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beings behind the commits.

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And today I am here with founder of

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PublishPress, Steve Burge.

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PublishPress is, I believe,

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a WordPress publishing suite of tools for

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publishing stuff on WordPress sites and

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WordPress

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likes to say that it's it democratizes

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publishing and there's a lot of publishers

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that use it so I think that that's

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kind of a pretty cool thing to do

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uh welcome to the show Steve tell us

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about yourself oh thanks Chris um I live

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in Florida um as you can tell from

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my accent I was born and bred on

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the um on the southeast corner of Florida

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um

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Well, I came from England originally,

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and now just a few months ago,

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I've ended up living in the United States

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longer than...

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I lived in England so I'm more American

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I guess than anything else and actually um

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became an American uh about a couple

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months ago took the citizenship test I

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know like uh who the first president was

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who the second president was um how many

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people sit in the House of Representatives

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I had to study for all that stuff

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Wow,

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I don't know that many Americans have had

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to study for most of those things in

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many, many years.

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Yeah,

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I recently had a similar tipping point

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where I believe I've lived,

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I live in Salt Lake City, Utah,

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but I'm originally from the San Francisco

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Bay Area.

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And I believe that, I don't know,

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last year or the year before or something,

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I crossed the border over to,

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I've lived in Utah longer than I've lived

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in California.

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You make you a Utahan?

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Utahan?

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Utahan.

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I don't know how to say that.

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Yeah, Utahan.

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And I've been in,

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maybe lived a somewhat similar life to

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you, I think.

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We got started in the open source world,

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did a lot of Drupal.

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And just because of the way the market

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has been over the last ten years or

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so,

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I've ended up more in the WordPress space.

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But the through line connecting it all has

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been open source.

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Christopher McConkey- awesome yeah so yeah

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let's let's let's just dive into that like

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what what first got you involved in in

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being interested in open source in

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general.

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Christopher McConkey- Oh well.

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I'm not one of those people who you

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hear those stories of someone who had like

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ten years old,

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had like an Atari on the living room

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floor and was taking the computer apart,

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rebuilding it,

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writing their first program at the age of

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eight.

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None of that.

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I think I've had some of those guests.

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Yes.

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I mean,

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you've ended up in the right profession.

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It's naturally for you,

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my path was more accidental.

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I was a teacher for a good number

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of years, middle school, high school,

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until I arrived in the United States and

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got a wife and kids and also realized

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how much they pay teachers in the United

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States.

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At that point,

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I needed to do something else because

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having a wife and kids and a mortgage

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was more than I could afford on my

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teacher's salary.

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Yeah, it's – I mean,

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I think that says more about how the

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United States values or undervalues

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teaching than it says about your

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particular path because I don't think that

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your particular path is unique necessarily

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in seeing that stark – like having that

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stark realization and being like, yeah,

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no, I actually got bills to pay.

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Yeah, we –

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We ended up in a fairly good industry

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for that.

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You work in software,

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you work in hosting in the United States.

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You're going to have a fairly good living.

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But I was in Georgia,

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in the north part of Georgia,

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in the United States, north of Atlanta,

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up in the Appalachian Hills.

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If you've ever seen the movie Deliverance,

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um basically we were where the movie

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deliverance was shot and i believe back

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then this was like two thousand four two

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thousand five the starting pay for a

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teacher was something like twenty seven

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twenty eight thousand dollars a year wow

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um yeah and i i came in with

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several years of teaching experience and

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I took one year of teaching in the

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States and basically started a web design

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business in the evening.

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And it took probably three or four months

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before the evening job of running a small

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web design agency was making more money

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than my day job as a teacher.

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Yeah, I mean, I definitely believe it,

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especially if you're able to get a regular

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stream of clients.

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So in those early days of doing your

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freelancing work,

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of starting a web design company,

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I imagine you were looking at open source

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CMSs and tools like that to provide

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value to make your work easier as a

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developer.

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What sorts of things were you gravitating

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toward and what sorts of sites were you

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building?

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We started with some Joomla sites and some

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Drupal sites for people.

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And

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I was fairly good as a designer,

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but didn't quite have the strong

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background of some of the people we were

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working alongside.

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So I ended up basically taking my teaching

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background and applying it to open source

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and trying to teach people how to use

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it.

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Um, we did videos, we did books,

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we did in-person classes.

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Um, and it's,

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it's hard to think back now to before.

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even things like lynda.com before things

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like that.

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But there was a huge market for getting

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on an airplane and flying to some part

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of the country,

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standing in front of a classroom and

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teaching people how to use Drupal,

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how to use open source.

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Yeah, long before my time at Pantheon,

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that was a thing that DevRel and other

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teams were doing,

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was shipping folks off to have onsites

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with clients.

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One of my early gigs as a WordPress

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developer,

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I was approached by somebody from

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Pluralsight,

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which is an online developer training

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platform.

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very early days of Pearl site where they

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were kind of like just trying to build

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out their,

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their video library and like branch out

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beyond like Microsoft specific stack

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technologies.

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And so they,

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they saw me speak at a word camp

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but their history too,

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like they started out as a company doing

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onsite training for like.net and like

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other sort of like ASP and like Microsoft

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specific things.

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And then they're like, Hey,

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we could like record these things and then

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distribute them and then not have to fly

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people places and that's how like the the

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web platform got built so yeah they're

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definitely like right about that that time

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is is i could yeah i've been around

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long enough to have seen that that path

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yeah the the demand was there particularly

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um

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This is not a knock on Drupal,

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but this is maybe a knock on how

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Drupal was seen in the marketplace was

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that we could sell Drupal training all day

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long, but we can never sell WordPress.

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People are like, oh,

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WordPress is too easy.

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Our staff will get it.

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We don't need to really teach our staff

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WordPress.

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It's all self-explanatory.

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But Drupal, oh, come up here five days,

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teach our team.

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It's really complicated.

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We could sell Drupal training today.

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uh week after week of it for years

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um because it had that reputation in the

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marketplace that it was intimidating and

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needed to be explained clearly to people

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yeah well and there's something to be said

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too of of of that perception that Drupal

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had and also still has in in many

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cases of um

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Like, it's a toolkit, it's complex,

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it can handle, and as such,

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it can handle more complexity in your site

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build.

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So, like,

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the budgets that you expect for a Drupal

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site versus a WordPress site for a long

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time,

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maybe that's a little bit different now

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as, like,

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WordPress has kind of become more

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dominant.

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But for a long time,

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you would expect a significantly higher

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dollar value associated with a Drupal

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build for a site than a WordPress build.

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I mean,

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I remember early days of freelancing,

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like, hey,

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can you build this WordPress site for five

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hundred bucks?

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Well, no,

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I'm not going to build you a site

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for five hundred bucks.

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And also,

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maybe Acquia and specifically,

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and some of the agencies around them did

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a good job of selling into the enterprise.

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I have a clear memory of going to

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one DrupalCon, I want to say maybe,

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two thousand thirteen or so,

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that I'd always gone to DrupalCons and it

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had been

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People look like me or you,

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like you've got a flannel shirt on.

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I've got a t-shirt on.

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People that look like traditional

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developers.

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And I suddenly remember walking into a

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DrupalCon and there were salespeople,

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like slick suits.

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One of the guys said he just moved

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from Adobe,

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didn't know anything about Drupal,

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but he was here to sell Drupal for

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Acquia.

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There was a sudden transformation where

00:11:59.068 --> 00:12:02.631
Some of the Drupal companies were staffing

00:12:02.692 --> 00:12:04.874
up with real salespeople ready to sell

00:12:05.674 --> 00:12:07.116
real enterprise projects.

00:12:07.697 --> 00:12:10.179
And so they were able to get those,

00:12:11.240 --> 00:12:12.621
the big government customers,

00:12:13.020 --> 00:12:13.802
the big enterprise,

00:12:15.524 --> 00:12:18.967
and projects like WordPress were behind at

00:12:18.986 --> 00:12:19.386
that time.

00:12:20.347 --> 00:12:21.448
They didn't have the infrastructure.

00:12:21.488 --> 00:12:24.911
They didn't have the big companies to

00:12:24.952 --> 00:12:26.132
complete the big RFPs.

00:12:27.625 --> 00:12:30.587
So what facilitated your, uh,

00:12:30.707 --> 00:12:32.168
transition away from,

00:12:32.328 --> 00:12:33.929
from Joomla and Drupal into,

00:12:34.049 --> 00:12:34.829
into WordPress?

00:12:34.909 --> 00:12:36.650
Was it, uh,

00:12:36.690 --> 00:12:37.911
was it ease of use or was it

00:12:37.932 --> 00:12:38.472
something else?

00:12:39.472 --> 00:12:40.012
Drupal seven.

00:12:40.674 --> 00:12:41.674
Drupal seven, yes.

00:12:41.813 --> 00:12:42.134
There we go.

00:12:43.834 --> 00:12:45.155
That's it.

00:12:45.194 --> 00:12:46.576
For people that may not know,

00:12:47.116 --> 00:12:49.437
it was an enormous back,

00:12:49.457 --> 00:12:51.636
basically a one hundred percent backwards

00:12:51.697 --> 00:12:58.238
compatibility break and really compelled a

00:12:58.279 --> 00:13:00.360
lot of the companies we were working with

00:13:00.980 --> 00:13:02.600
to take a look outside of Drupal.

00:13:04.160 --> 00:13:06.101
A lot of them were saying, well,

00:13:06.440 --> 00:13:07.861
if we're going to rebuild our entire

00:13:07.881 --> 00:13:08.322
platform,

00:13:09.535 --> 00:13:12.356
this gives us an off ramp to look

00:13:12.376 --> 00:13:14.058
at something else outside of Drupal.

00:13:14.997 --> 00:13:16.018
And a lot of them exited.

00:13:16.298 --> 00:13:21.699
I think I talked with Josh,

00:13:22.660 --> 00:13:23.981
one of the founders of Pantheon,

00:13:24.581 --> 00:13:27.761
and I think he'd done some research at

00:13:27.802 --> 00:13:31.804
some point that more Drupal six sites

00:13:33.065 --> 00:13:35.413
ended up on WordPress than on Drupal

00:13:35.453 --> 00:13:35.733
seven.

00:13:37.720 --> 00:13:40.087
It was just an enormous exit point.

00:13:41.486 --> 00:13:43.127
because of the costs of moving to Drupal

00:13:43.148 --> 00:13:43.387
seven.

00:13:43.788 --> 00:13:44.929
Um, and,

00:13:45.228 --> 00:13:47.230
and then they kind of did the same

00:13:47.270 --> 00:13:48.831
thing between Drupal seven and eight when

00:13:49.071 --> 00:13:50.111
like Drupal eight was,

00:13:50.511 --> 00:13:52.813
was another major refactor, another major,

00:13:52.992 --> 00:13:53.793
uh, shift in,

00:13:53.972 --> 00:13:55.794
in how Drupal was built and it would

00:13:55.813 --> 00:13:58.434
have required another sort of rebuild.

00:13:58.475 --> 00:13:59.535
And again, like you're,

00:13:59.675 --> 00:14:02.156
when you're facing that choice of do I

00:14:02.217 --> 00:14:03.357
rebuild my site again,

00:14:03.857 --> 00:14:04.879
or do I move to something where I

00:14:04.919 --> 00:14:06.198
never have to worry about it?

00:14:06.699 --> 00:14:08.319
A lot of people had jumped ship and

00:14:08.339 --> 00:14:09.001
went to WordPress.

00:14:09.040 --> 00:14:09.241
Yeah.

00:14:09.957 --> 00:14:10.477
Oh, that's true.

00:14:10.496 --> 00:14:10.658
Yeah,

00:14:10.698 --> 00:14:12.299
Drupal H was perhaps an even bigger

00:14:12.318 --> 00:14:13.500
backwards compatibility break.

00:14:13.760 --> 00:14:16.481
That's where they introduced Composer as a

00:14:16.521 --> 00:14:18.644
fundamental part of Drupal core, yep.

00:14:19.544 --> 00:14:21.206
Yeah, and those two back-to-back.

00:14:23.268 --> 00:14:25.269
And so, yeah,

00:14:25.289 --> 00:14:28.592
that was a big change for us.

00:14:29.072 --> 00:14:29.972
And it basically also...

00:14:33.409 --> 00:14:34.069
Made a huge,

00:14:34.230 --> 00:14:36.890
caused a huge business pivot for us

00:14:36.971 --> 00:14:41.572
because a lot of our Drupal customers were

00:14:41.611 --> 00:14:44.212
like government departments who had no

00:14:44.271 --> 00:14:46.293
problem flying us up to Washington DC for

00:14:46.313 --> 00:14:46.653
training,

00:14:47.352 --> 00:14:48.693
but that didn't exist in the WordPress

00:14:48.712 --> 00:14:49.274
space really.

00:14:50.034 --> 00:14:53.374
So we pivoted hard to doing books and

00:14:53.394 --> 00:14:54.155
videos instead.

00:14:54.174 --> 00:14:54.735
Yeah.

00:14:54.975 --> 00:14:55.775
Yeah.

00:14:57.462 --> 00:15:00.284
Yeah, do you, like, from,

00:15:00.625 --> 00:15:02.567
and we'll get into what you're working on

00:15:02.606 --> 00:15:02.866
now,

00:15:02.906 --> 00:15:06.929
but I'm interested in this idea that we've

00:15:06.949 --> 00:15:09.512
hit on a couple times that the basic,

00:15:10.012 --> 00:15:13.856
the theory that WordPress isn't or wasn't

00:15:14.477 --> 00:15:17.379
ready for enterprise or this perception

00:15:17.559 --> 00:15:17.860
that

00:15:18.701 --> 00:15:19.341
that it wasn't.

00:15:19.581 --> 00:15:24.405
And this sort of kind of aligns with

00:15:24.505 --> 00:15:27.048
when I started getting into agency

00:15:27.087 --> 00:15:28.088
WordPress development.

00:15:29.270 --> 00:15:32.852
And that was back in, I don't know,

00:15:33.553 --> 00:15:36.596
probably, I guess, for me.

00:15:37.977 --> 00:15:40.259
My first agency gig was at Web Dev

00:15:40.299 --> 00:15:40.779
Studios,

00:15:40.799 --> 00:15:42.039
and they do a lot of enterprise stuff.

00:15:42.760 --> 00:15:44.202
David Price- Like there is definitely it

00:15:44.241 --> 00:15:46.784
felt like you know the the default

00:15:46.843 --> 00:15:49.766
assumption for an enterprise company was

00:15:49.847 --> 00:15:52.007
not I want to use wordpress we had

00:15:52.048 --> 00:15:53.208
to like sell them on.

00:15:53.228 --> 00:15:55.731
David Price- you're paying a lot of money

00:15:55.790 --> 00:15:57.732
for like adobe experience manager,

00:15:57.972 --> 00:15:59.894
you can do those things in wordpress for

00:16:00.174 --> 00:16:00.694
cheaper,

00:16:00.834 --> 00:16:03.197
you know or like you can or you

00:16:03.217 --> 00:16:05.139
will you want to pay us great will

00:16:05.179 --> 00:16:05.539
build.

00:16:06.447 --> 00:16:09.028
know bespoke things for you like but there

00:16:09.068 --> 00:16:11.269
had to be like there is like you

00:16:11.289 --> 00:16:14.809
had to go into that conversation with like

00:16:15.150 --> 00:16:18.111
a defense prepared you know like a pitch

00:16:18.390 --> 00:16:20.771
to sell the software before you could even

00:16:20.832 --> 00:16:22.393
have the conversation about what the

00:16:22.512 --> 00:16:25.754
agency is going to do the sales process

00:16:25.774 --> 00:16:29.836
was always more difficult yeah yeah and

00:16:29.876 --> 00:16:31.435
that's something i is that something you

00:16:31.535 --> 00:16:33.177
also uh saw at the time

00:16:35.683 --> 00:16:35.963
Yeah,

00:16:38.427 --> 00:16:40.409
we ran into quite a few sort of

00:16:40.549 --> 00:16:43.454
government agencies and large companies

00:16:43.475 --> 00:16:45.156
that were having trouble with Drupal.

00:16:45.778 --> 00:16:46.939
They were having trouble with their

00:16:46.980 --> 00:16:47.501
rollouts.

00:16:49.712 --> 00:16:50.992
quite often I'd sit down with them and

00:16:51.033 --> 00:16:52.553
say, hey, what was the decision process?

00:16:52.592 --> 00:16:54.254
Why did you choose Drupal as opposed to

00:16:54.294 --> 00:16:55.334
Adobe or WordPress?

00:16:56.135 --> 00:16:59.636
And often it would just come down to

00:16:59.656 --> 00:17:00.656
a lack of knowledge often.

00:17:01.977 --> 00:17:03.198
They'd say things like, oh,

00:17:03.519 --> 00:17:05.338
WordPress doesn't have the ability to do

00:17:05.520 --> 00:17:06.740
role management, for example.

00:17:07.680 --> 00:17:07.821
Oh,

00:17:08.201 --> 00:17:10.462
so you can get this plugin over here.

00:17:11.261 --> 00:17:12.783
And that's really an easy problem.

00:17:14.924 --> 00:17:16.265
I guess it led me to realize just

00:17:16.304 --> 00:17:17.885
how many of these RFPs are just...

00:17:19.466 --> 00:17:22.006
One, on almost a random basis,

00:17:24.107 --> 00:17:26.630
whoever is signing off on the RFP or

00:17:26.650 --> 00:17:31.231
making a decision often is really just not

00:17:31.251 --> 00:17:32.953
that well informed on the decision and

00:17:34.453 --> 00:17:35.674
might just make a decision on which

00:17:35.733 --> 00:17:36.954
platform to use based on hunch.

00:17:37.991 --> 00:17:40.151
yeah for sure and i i i read

00:17:40.172 --> 00:17:43.693
a book recently um recoding america that

00:17:44.193 --> 00:17:47.414
specifically talked about um like uh

00:17:47.453 --> 00:17:50.074
digital services in the us uh like the

00:17:50.135 --> 00:17:51.515
formation of the digital services

00:17:51.535 --> 00:17:52.555
department which i don't think exists

00:17:52.576 --> 00:17:55.717
anymore um or has been absorbed into doge

00:17:56.317 --> 00:17:58.818
um but used to exist um for a

00:17:58.877 --> 00:18:00.838
while but like also like like

00:18:01.619 --> 00:18:04.501
what existed before and the way the RFPs

00:18:04.721 --> 00:18:06.962
were written before within government,

00:18:07.023 --> 00:18:08.603
specifically, like, federal government,

00:18:09.784 --> 00:18:12.706
and, like, the legacy systems and, like,

00:18:12.746 --> 00:18:14.166
the level of, like, the requirements,

00:18:14.187 --> 00:18:15.247
and they had to get approval from all

00:18:15.268 --> 00:18:16.387
of these different people, but, like,

00:18:16.988 --> 00:18:18.970
the different departments or the different

00:18:19.010 --> 00:18:20.451
people signing off on things didn't

00:18:20.471 --> 00:18:21.791
necessarily, like,

00:18:22.432 --> 00:18:24.693
have the conversations with everybody

00:18:24.752 --> 00:18:26.634
involved so like there'd be requirements

00:18:26.654 --> 00:18:28.034
in there that didn't make sense or like

00:18:28.074 --> 00:18:29.775
required a whole bunch of extra stuff like

00:18:30.096 --> 00:18:31.457
there was a story in there that was

00:18:31.496 --> 00:18:35.519
talking about um uh gps and like they

00:18:35.539 --> 00:18:38.240
were gonna roll out a big massive update

00:18:38.280 --> 00:18:40.420
to to the gps uh software that gets

00:18:40.660 --> 00:18:43.403
put on satellites right um but

00:18:44.342 --> 00:18:48.626
because of some old loophole or some old

00:18:48.666 --> 00:18:50.647
requirement in some previous dock.

00:18:51.108 --> 00:18:53.911
The only communication method that was

00:18:53.991 --> 00:18:57.074
allowed for the RFP was like XML RPC

00:18:57.533 --> 00:18:59.415
for communicating with the satellites,

00:19:00.455 --> 00:19:02.458
which is I mean, you're laughing,

00:19:02.798 --> 00:19:04.078
you know, like it's old,

00:19:04.138 --> 00:19:06.702
it's slow and like the new stuff was

00:19:06.761 --> 00:19:09.124
better and faster and would facilitate,

00:19:09.364 --> 00:19:09.624
you know,

00:19:09.924 --> 00:19:12.366
more accurate GPS coordinate coordinates

00:19:12.506 --> 00:19:13.267
and it like

00:19:13.551 --> 00:19:14.893
Because of delays,

00:19:14.933 --> 00:19:17.075
because of that particular requirement,

00:19:17.335 --> 00:19:18.516
the new stuff never rolled out,

00:19:18.556 --> 00:19:21.318
and we never got the GPS update that

00:19:21.358 --> 00:19:23.481
went out when the project was actually

00:19:23.501 --> 00:19:26.302
signed off on, and it was still XMLRPC.

00:19:26.864 --> 00:19:29.645
Or not XMLRPC, but it was... No,

00:19:29.665 --> 00:19:30.287
it was SOAP.

00:19:30.366 --> 00:19:31.587
It was SOAP API, I believe.

00:19:32.538 --> 00:19:36.341
So they needed a root and branch reform,

00:19:36.382 --> 00:19:36.822
essentially,

00:19:36.843 --> 00:19:38.905
of the way things were done from the

00:19:39.204 --> 00:19:41.007
technology stack to the way the software

00:19:41.027 --> 00:19:42.568
was purchased to the way it was,

00:19:43.128 --> 00:19:46.112
the RFPs were written, a deep,

00:19:46.152 --> 00:19:47.674
deep transformation was needed.

00:19:48.174 --> 00:19:49.234
Exactly, exactly.

00:19:49.754 --> 00:19:51.876
And there's like all sorts of stories

00:19:51.916 --> 00:19:52.758
about like, you know,

00:19:53.337 --> 00:19:55.460
so many systems within the U.S.

00:19:55.500 --> 00:19:58.722
government are built on these old legacy

00:19:58.762 --> 00:20:01.105
COBOL systems, which run really,

00:20:01.164 --> 00:20:02.766
really well and efficiently because COBOL

00:20:02.786 --> 00:20:04.386
was super efficient and it had to be

00:20:04.426 --> 00:20:05.769
because it was back in the day when

00:20:05.789 --> 00:20:07.089
you didn't have as much memory and

00:20:07.109 --> 00:20:07.369
whatever.

00:20:08.971 --> 00:20:11.713
But now there's like all this impetus to

00:20:11.753 --> 00:20:14.297
like do a refresh or an update,

00:20:14.317 --> 00:20:15.858
but nobody knows how to actually

00:20:15.898 --> 00:20:18.241
fundamentally edit the COBOL systems.

00:20:18.260 --> 00:20:20.282
And also the COBOL systems aren't broken.

00:20:20.783 --> 00:20:23.287
So they just layer upon layer of new

00:20:23.446 --> 00:20:25.328
UI on top of these old systems.

00:20:25.368 --> 00:20:26.089
So like when you,

00:20:26.170 --> 00:20:28.231
whenever you encounter anything

00:20:28.791 --> 00:20:30.773
in like a government system that feels

00:20:31.114 --> 00:20:33.495
inefficient or does a weird thing.

00:20:33.556 --> 00:20:35.657
It's probably because there's like three

00:20:35.697 --> 00:20:37.619
layers deep of like UI that has been

00:20:37.660 --> 00:20:40.321
placed on top of this ancient COBOL system

00:20:40.341 --> 00:20:41.884
that wasn't designed to do the thing that

00:20:41.904 --> 00:20:43.424
you want to do like natively.

00:20:43.484 --> 00:20:45.145
And nobody knows how to actually make the

00:20:45.165 --> 00:20:46.407
COBOL system do that thing.

00:20:48.038 --> 00:20:49.920
I've got to say, with our government work,

00:20:49.940 --> 00:20:51.981
and we did probably at one point it

00:20:52.001 --> 00:20:53.923
was like ninety percent plus government

00:20:53.962 --> 00:20:54.163
work.

00:20:55.164 --> 00:20:57.266
We noticed a real change when Pantheon

00:20:57.326 --> 00:21:00.989
came along and had started to get its

00:21:01.029 --> 00:21:02.329
fingers into some of the government

00:21:02.370 --> 00:21:02.671
business.

00:21:03.171 --> 00:21:07.674
But the development tools that were

00:21:07.714 --> 00:21:09.976
provided made the government agencies

00:21:10.017 --> 00:21:10.917
quite a lot more comfortable.

00:21:12.799 --> 00:21:13.359
We did a lot.

00:21:25.263 --> 00:21:25.644
Oh, sorry,

00:21:25.664 --> 00:21:28.625
the whole thing went blank there.

00:21:28.684 --> 00:21:29.085
I'll start again.

00:21:30.845 --> 00:21:32.285
We did a lot of work with the

00:21:32.345 --> 00:21:33.285
government of Arizona.

00:21:33.885 --> 00:21:35.205
They moved lock, stock,

00:21:35.225 --> 00:21:37.126
and barrel hundreds and hundreds and

00:21:37.165 --> 00:21:38.685
hundreds of sites over to the Pantheon

00:21:38.725 --> 00:21:39.145
platform.

00:21:40.007 --> 00:21:44.206
And you guys had a slick development

00:21:44.226 --> 00:21:48.427
workflow and a standard workflow that made

00:21:48.468 --> 00:21:50.708
them comfortable to basically commit the

00:21:50.748 --> 00:21:52.509
entire future of the Arizona government

00:21:52.568 --> 00:21:53.729
online to

00:21:54.868 --> 00:21:57.930
being on Drupal and being on Pantheon.

00:21:57.970 --> 00:21:58.230
Yeah.

00:21:58.649 --> 00:21:58.829
Yeah.

00:21:58.930 --> 00:22:00.049
Well, and I think that like, I mean,

00:22:00.069 --> 00:22:01.089
that's obviously like,

00:22:01.710 --> 00:22:03.830
that's the sales pitch that Pantheon is

00:22:03.850 --> 00:22:05.010
going to give, right?

00:22:05.030 --> 00:22:07.571
It's like that we build the tools that

00:22:07.612 --> 00:22:09.771
make your development teams happier and

00:22:09.791 --> 00:22:11.551
work faster and all that sort of stuff.

00:22:11.632 --> 00:22:13.673
I mean, I remember again,

00:22:13.752 --> 00:22:16.633
even before I was working here using

00:22:17.513 --> 00:22:19.314
Pantheon as a developer,

00:22:20.094 --> 00:22:22.536
And just the fact that like, again,

00:22:22.817 --> 00:22:25.719
when I first started in agency work was

00:22:25.739 --> 00:22:26.760
a long time ago.

00:22:27.681 --> 00:22:30.103
And at the time, Pantheon, I believe,

00:22:30.143 --> 00:22:31.605
was pretty much the only one that already

00:22:31.645 --> 00:22:33.245
had like a native Git integration.

00:22:34.226 --> 00:22:37.170
So just that, you know,

00:22:37.270 --> 00:22:40.173
as opposed to other providers that we were

00:22:40.272 --> 00:22:40.512
using.

00:22:40.992 --> 00:22:42.954
Like that was made it super easy.

00:22:43.336 --> 00:22:44.777
And then like, you know,

00:22:44.837 --> 00:22:45.617
having multi devs,

00:22:45.637 --> 00:22:47.358
you have the ability to like have a

00:22:47.460 --> 00:22:51.163
whole environment spun off off of a branch

00:22:51.343 --> 00:22:52.825
was like revolutionary,

00:22:52.885 --> 00:22:53.925
like made my life so much.

00:22:53.965 --> 00:22:55.466
And so I would like, I was like,

00:22:55.487 --> 00:22:55.667
why can't,

00:22:56.863 --> 00:22:58.844
can't we just put all of our uh

00:22:58.864 --> 00:23:00.243
all of our projects on this well we

00:23:00.283 --> 00:23:02.384
already have a a contract with so and

00:23:02.424 --> 00:23:03.924
so so we can't do that but i

00:23:03.964 --> 00:23:06.645
agree you know like um and you know

00:23:06.665 --> 00:23:09.046
uh there's that that's there's no it

00:23:09.645 --> 00:23:11.587
shouldn't be terribly surprising that i am

00:23:11.767 --> 00:23:13.426
uh currently a pantheon employee because

00:23:13.466 --> 00:23:15.107
of that experience because that as a

00:23:15.127 --> 00:23:19.029
developer um but moving on to like um

00:23:19.108 --> 00:23:20.068
you know obviously

00:23:20.469 --> 00:23:22.433
You did some agency stuff and you're doing

00:23:22.453 --> 00:23:23.194
some government stuff.

00:23:24.940 --> 00:23:26.623
But you are the founder of this thing

00:23:26.643 --> 00:23:27.444
called Publish Press.

00:23:27.464 --> 00:23:29.490
What is the sort of origin story of

00:23:29.530 --> 00:23:29.731
that?

00:23:31.293 --> 00:23:31.493
Oh, well,

00:23:31.513 --> 00:23:34.716
that came out of a pivot from our

00:23:34.757 --> 00:23:38.118
training work, which was getting quieter.

00:23:40.381 --> 00:23:42.041
You've seen most of the big training

00:23:42.081 --> 00:23:44.624
companies now have kind of gone away.

00:23:46.405 --> 00:23:48.808
Like Linda got sold and it's kind of

00:23:48.828 --> 00:23:50.408
like a little tile in the corner of

00:23:50.888 --> 00:23:51.549
LinkedIn now.

00:23:51.569 --> 00:23:52.590
Yeah.

00:23:53.211 --> 00:23:54.633
I was going to say LinkedIn just swallowed

00:23:54.653 --> 00:23:55.093
everything.

00:23:55.693 --> 00:23:55.973
It did.

00:23:57.256 --> 00:23:58.497
There was Udemy,

00:23:58.917 --> 00:24:01.300
which long past its heyday now,

00:24:02.041 --> 00:24:03.203
it feels like it's going to become one

00:24:03.222 --> 00:24:07.228
of those bending spoon acquisitions and

00:24:07.308 --> 00:24:09.309
kind of left for dead.

00:24:10.010 --> 00:24:12.012
And the whole training market...

00:24:13.953 --> 00:24:14.934
got a lot quieter.

00:24:15.495 --> 00:24:17.719
So we were looking for what was next.

00:24:18.399 --> 00:24:19.962
And we were doing some software

00:24:19.981 --> 00:24:20.883
development at the time,

00:24:21.363 --> 00:24:22.825
started to look at WordPress as an

00:24:22.865 --> 00:24:26.490
opportunity and really started to see a

00:24:26.510 --> 00:24:29.773
lot of gaps in the publishing space in

00:24:29.834 --> 00:24:30.355
WordPress.

00:24:30.914 --> 00:24:31.116
But

00:24:32.644 --> 00:24:35.286
That took a lot of trial and error.

00:24:37.187 --> 00:24:39.829
We were very familiar with the Joomla

00:24:39.849 --> 00:24:43.453
world and the Drupal world and even the

00:24:43.492 --> 00:24:44.614
Magento world as well,

00:24:45.514 --> 00:24:47.235
but less familiar with WordPress.

00:24:48.037 --> 00:24:48.738
And I've got to tell you,

00:24:49.799 --> 00:24:51.399
none of the lessons we learned in those

00:24:51.420 --> 00:24:55.643
other platforms were worth a damn.

00:24:55.703 --> 00:24:58.185
And moving to WordPress,

00:24:58.205 --> 00:25:02.128
I was chatting with someone the other day

00:25:02.168 --> 00:25:03.670
who's moving from WordPress or

00:25:03.690 --> 00:25:05.191
WooCommerce, particularly to Shopify.

00:25:05.672 --> 00:25:06.132
And they're like,

00:25:06.913 --> 00:25:08.814
it's like starting from zero or less than

00:25:08.854 --> 00:25:09.135
zero.

00:25:09.774 --> 00:25:10.495
Like, yeah,

00:25:11.537 --> 00:25:13.999
if you move to a new ecosystem like

00:25:14.039 --> 00:25:14.259
that,

00:25:15.926 --> 00:25:17.788
It might even be helpful not to have

00:25:17.828 --> 00:25:19.427
any of your previous knowledge because it

00:25:19.447 --> 00:25:20.709
ain't going to apply in the new world.

00:25:21.828 --> 00:25:22.010
Yeah.

00:25:22.030 --> 00:25:24.270
Do you think that that is fundamentally

00:25:24.491 --> 00:25:28.031
like a symptom of replatforming or do you

00:25:28.071 --> 00:25:29.853
think that there's something that is

00:25:30.292 --> 00:25:33.753
distinct about WordPress that makes that

00:25:33.815 --> 00:25:35.994
reset more felt?

00:25:41.527 --> 00:25:43.127
The exception might be if you're getting

00:25:43.187 --> 00:25:44.328
in very early.

00:25:45.210 --> 00:25:45.629
For example,

00:25:45.670 --> 00:25:48.452
if you were moving to WordPress in.

00:25:48.531 --> 00:25:49.133
Twenty.

00:25:50.973 --> 00:25:51.815
Two thousand eight,

00:25:51.875 --> 00:25:54.916
maybe when something like Gravity Forms

00:25:54.936 --> 00:25:57.479
was just launching or if you're moving to

00:25:57.519 --> 00:26:00.280
Shopify ten years ago to become a Shopify

00:26:00.300 --> 00:26:00.821
app developer.

00:26:01.810 --> 00:26:04.333
But those markets are mature now.

00:26:04.972 --> 00:26:06.433
So you've got to play within their rules.

00:26:06.493 --> 00:26:11.537
You have to learn the network of people,

00:26:11.636 --> 00:26:12.197
how they move,

00:26:12.218 --> 00:26:13.318
how they interact with each other.

00:26:13.999 --> 00:26:17.981
And just particularly with WordPress,

00:26:18.001 --> 00:26:19.261
incredibly major differences,

00:26:19.301 --> 00:26:20.962
like you're coming from a Drupal ecosystem

00:26:21.002 --> 00:26:23.825
where no one sells any software.

00:26:23.905 --> 00:26:25.145
In fact, it's objectively.

00:26:27.757 --> 00:26:32.672
look down upon to sell code to WordPress,

00:26:32.712 --> 00:26:34.037
where that's the entire business.

00:26:34.512 --> 00:26:34.992
Yeah.

00:26:35.012 --> 00:26:35.414
Well, I mean,

00:26:35.674 --> 00:26:37.435
and that is changing the Drupal space.

00:26:37.475 --> 00:26:39.277
I mean, they're trying to...

00:26:39.656 --> 00:26:42.420
Dries wants to start a marketplace,

00:26:42.460 --> 00:26:43.961
an official Drupal marketplace.

00:26:44.922 --> 00:26:49.185
One of my recent guests is Mike Herschel

00:26:49.205 --> 00:26:50.106
in the Drupal community,

00:26:50.126 --> 00:26:51.708
who is a theme developer who created

00:26:51.768 --> 00:26:55.991
basically a theme shop for Drupal themes,

00:26:56.571 --> 00:26:59.134
for premium Drupal themes.

00:26:59.174 --> 00:27:00.035
So, like, that...

00:27:00.535 --> 00:27:02.035
that is shifting but it's interesting

00:27:02.075 --> 00:27:03.516
having those conversations with people

00:27:03.556 --> 00:27:07.396
like mike uh because it's it they're

00:27:07.436 --> 00:27:10.676
having to figure out how to do from

00:27:10.837 --> 00:27:13.377
scratch in drew it's it's the same thing

00:27:13.397 --> 00:27:15.138
you just said it's like it's it's that

00:27:15.259 --> 00:27:16.739
same sort of like re-platforming thing you

00:27:16.759 --> 00:27:17.838
have to learn everything from scratch

00:27:17.858 --> 00:27:18.959
because they're having to learn from

00:27:19.039 --> 00:27:23.200
scratch how do we do business with code

00:27:23.661 --> 00:27:24.441
for drupal

00:27:25.981 --> 00:27:27.801
when there wasn't like there it's it's

00:27:27.862 --> 00:27:29.601
wild west right so they're trying to like

00:27:29.922 --> 00:27:31.321
like he had to learn read up on

00:27:31.382 --> 00:27:34.143
licenses like and we've been dealing with

00:27:34.183 --> 00:27:35.982
licenses like i mean we've been having the

00:27:36.022 --> 00:27:38.664
licensing conversation since chris pearson

00:27:38.803 --> 00:27:42.944
and uh and thesis like fifteen years ago

00:27:43.045 --> 00:27:45.924
or something like we've we've this is well

00:27:45.964 --> 00:27:48.245
tread territory for for us in the

00:27:48.286 --> 00:27:50.445
wordpress ecosystem um and they're having

00:27:50.465 --> 00:27:52.126
to figure that out from from scratch and

00:27:52.145 --> 00:27:53.726
they're having to figure out like you know

00:27:54.186 --> 00:27:54.386
like

00:27:54.807 --> 00:27:55.166
Yeah,

00:27:55.186 --> 00:27:57.588
he had to make the decision of like,

00:27:57.689 --> 00:28:00.109
how do I license things?

00:28:00.129 --> 00:28:01.010
How do I sell things?

00:28:01.050 --> 00:28:02.511
How do I distribute things?

00:28:02.551 --> 00:28:04.532
And all of that stuff basically has been

00:28:04.972 --> 00:28:08.375
a solved problem in WordPress for a long

00:28:08.414 --> 00:28:08.895
time now.

00:28:08.954 --> 00:28:09.955
Yeah.

00:28:10.116 --> 00:28:10.916
Oh, that's interesting,

00:28:10.956 --> 00:28:13.778
because I remember seeing last week,

00:28:13.818 --> 00:28:16.339
maybe the Dries had read a blog post

00:28:16.420 --> 00:28:19.201
basically saying mea culpa on backwards

00:28:19.241 --> 00:28:19.821
compatibility.

00:28:21.757 --> 00:28:22.758
Which was fair play to him.

00:28:23.318 --> 00:28:24.780
He said, I was wrong.

00:28:26.083 --> 00:28:27.704
Backwards compatibility is more important

00:28:27.724 --> 00:28:28.346
than I thought it was.

00:28:29.106 --> 00:28:30.710
And it sounds like they've done the same

00:28:30.750 --> 00:28:34.194
thing with allowing people to sell access

00:28:34.214 --> 00:28:34.816
to modules too.

00:28:36.637 --> 00:28:39.119
Not modules, not modules.

00:28:40.059 --> 00:28:41.981
What I have heard from the conversations

00:28:42.001 --> 00:28:43.322
that I've had with people in the Drupal

00:28:43.363 --> 00:28:45.523
community is that probably modules won't

00:28:45.564 --> 00:28:47.465
have that same sort of marketplace

00:28:47.546 --> 00:28:48.106
ecosystem.

00:28:48.726 --> 00:28:50.667
But themes, yes.

00:28:51.068 --> 00:28:54.711
And what the official Drupal marketplace

00:28:54.751 --> 00:28:56.972
is going to be focused around is the

00:28:57.052 --> 00:28:58.473
idea of site templates,

00:28:59.555 --> 00:29:00.816
which is basically like...

00:29:02.456 --> 00:29:04.799
almost like like if you think about like

00:29:04.918 --> 00:29:07.781
a linux distribution right like here's

00:29:07.922 --> 00:29:09.583
here's the whole thing and then within

00:29:09.623 --> 00:29:11.805
that you can customize stuff like here is

00:29:11.845 --> 00:29:14.828
a distribution of drupal for a real estate

00:29:14.887 --> 00:29:16.368
site that has everything that you need for

00:29:16.388 --> 00:29:18.191
that real estate site including a theme

00:29:18.231 --> 00:29:21.312
and like some like recipes for like these

00:29:21.393 --> 00:29:22.954
modules are going to be installing for

00:29:22.994 --> 00:29:25.396
this type of content or whatever um but

00:29:25.656 --> 00:29:28.578
so it's it's basically like the

00:29:29.500 --> 00:29:31.220
What I think the Drupal Association is

00:29:31.280 --> 00:29:35.760
trying to get at is lowering the barrier

00:29:35.780 --> 00:29:38.301
to entry because they realize there's this

00:29:38.341 --> 00:29:40.902
history of Drupal sites are expensive and

00:29:40.922 --> 00:29:44.703
that's actually like for a lot of agencies

00:29:44.782 --> 00:29:46.042
and a lot of people that were doing

00:29:46.083 --> 00:29:46.983
business in that space,

00:29:47.003 --> 00:29:47.703
that was a good thing.

00:29:47.743 --> 00:29:50.003
We want our stuff to be expensive because

00:29:50.104 --> 00:29:52.164
we are skilled engineers and we want to

00:29:52.184 --> 00:29:52.545
get paid.

00:29:53.984 --> 00:29:55.385
But for users,

00:29:55.445 --> 00:29:58.386
and especially with the decline of the

00:29:58.446 --> 00:30:00.847
Drupal bar graph of usage of installs,

00:30:03.088 --> 00:30:05.009
they want to lower the barrier to entry

00:30:05.029 --> 00:30:07.190
to make it easier to get an entry

00:30:07.230 --> 00:30:08.151
point into Drupal.

00:30:08.310 --> 00:30:11.452
And the theory is that by creating these,

00:30:12.311 --> 00:30:14.772
making it easy for me to get started

00:30:14.792 --> 00:30:15.993
by saying I want this type of a

00:30:16.013 --> 00:30:16.213
site,

00:30:17.053 --> 00:30:17.334
then

00:30:19.816 --> 00:30:20.915
then I, you know,

00:30:20.975 --> 00:30:22.877
having a marketplace to buy a thing,

00:30:22.917 --> 00:30:24.039
a package that's like, okay,

00:30:24.078 --> 00:30:24.638
here's how you,

00:30:24.799 --> 00:30:26.379
you'll get started in like five minutes

00:30:26.420 --> 00:30:27.381
and then you can just customize the

00:30:27.401 --> 00:30:27.800
content.

00:30:28.362 --> 00:30:30.462
The idea is that that'll make it maybe

00:30:31.424 --> 00:30:32.785
help, help with that,

00:30:33.685 --> 00:30:35.886
with that bar graph and make number go

00:30:35.987 --> 00:30:41.090
up.

00:30:41.131 --> 00:30:42.432
Steve is now considering building

00:30:42.491 --> 00:30:43.633
published press for Drupal now.

00:30:43.653 --> 00:30:45.094
Well,

00:30:45.934 --> 00:30:47.336
if they're not allowed to sell modules,

00:30:47.973 --> 00:30:48.474
That's fair.

00:30:49.016 --> 00:30:49.237
Yeah.

00:30:50.539 --> 00:30:50.700
Yeah.

00:30:50.740 --> 00:30:51.922
My initial feeling of that,

00:30:52.022 --> 00:30:54.667
what you've described there is it's a

00:30:54.708 --> 00:30:55.710
little bit of skepticism.

00:30:56.551 --> 00:30:56.833
I mean...

00:30:58.675 --> 00:31:03.777
I'm keeping an open mind.

00:31:04.177 --> 00:31:07.337
I think that I see the good intention.

00:31:07.458 --> 00:31:08.499
I see the value.

00:31:09.678 --> 00:31:10.598
I don't know how it's going to play

00:31:10.658 --> 00:31:10.979
out.

00:31:11.019 --> 00:31:16.020
Honestly, I've used the new Drupal CMS.

00:31:16.461 --> 00:31:19.122
I've used their new editor thing.

00:31:19.202 --> 00:31:21.722
I've seen demos of things.

00:31:21.761 --> 00:31:22.782
I've used AI.

00:31:22.802 --> 00:31:25.722
They've got a whole AI project that's been

00:31:25.782 --> 00:31:27.904
funded by the Drupal Association.

00:31:28.644 --> 00:31:31.287
And seeing that and how that works inside

00:31:31.327 --> 00:31:33.168
like natively like you can you can

00:31:33.410 --> 00:31:35.050
Basically have a chat bot that you talk

00:31:35.090 --> 00:31:36.752
to and it will do stuff for you

00:31:36.792 --> 00:31:39.076
Like I want a content type that for

00:31:39.096 --> 00:31:40.798
an event and it will build that thing

00:31:40.837 --> 00:31:42.899
for you and that's that's pretty cool so

00:31:42.940 --> 00:31:44.320
like there's a lot of really cool stuff

00:31:44.360 --> 00:31:44.902
happening and

00:31:46.062 --> 00:31:47.364
The question that I always ask is,

00:31:47.404 --> 00:31:48.045
is this enough?

00:31:48.145 --> 00:31:49.425
Is this the thing?

00:31:51.187 --> 00:31:52.088
How are you going to get over that

00:31:52.128 --> 00:31:52.408
hump?

00:31:53.170 --> 00:31:55.091
And I guess that remains to be seen.

00:31:55.172 --> 00:31:59.336
But competition is never a bad thing.

00:32:00.897 --> 00:32:01.238
I don't know.

00:32:01.959 --> 00:32:03.379
Maybe WordPress needs to be knocked down a

00:32:03.420 --> 00:32:03.681
peg.

00:32:04.821 --> 00:32:06.062
Maybe we've gotten a little complacent.

00:32:09.040 --> 00:32:12.324
uh talk about talk about uh what uh

00:32:12.645 --> 00:32:14.767
yeah so how you built uh published press

00:32:14.966 --> 00:32:17.229
and and what like led to the decision

00:32:17.789 --> 00:32:20.693
that um like publishing specifically was

00:32:20.933 --> 00:32:24.195
was uh an area that you felt was

00:32:24.235 --> 00:32:25.837
maybe underrepresented or something that

00:32:25.877 --> 00:32:29.821
had growth potential a lot of what we

00:32:31.974 --> 00:32:34.336
A lot of the first principles we took

00:32:34.395 --> 00:32:36.016
into our WordPress work came from Drupal

00:32:36.056 --> 00:32:36.495
customers.

00:32:37.435 --> 00:32:38.017
They were saying,

00:32:38.597 --> 00:32:40.037
these are the things that are important to

00:32:40.116 --> 00:32:41.237
us at the enterprise level.

00:32:42.197 --> 00:32:43.498
We need good role management.

00:32:43.538 --> 00:32:45.197
We need good permission systems.

00:32:45.878 --> 00:32:46.918
And that was a reason for them to

00:32:46.959 --> 00:32:47.539
choose Drupal.

00:32:48.299 --> 00:32:50.119
And we looked at WordPress and said, hey,

00:32:50.160 --> 00:32:51.879
if these big customers value this,

00:32:52.660 --> 00:32:54.981
they're going to value this in WordPress

00:32:55.001 --> 00:32:55.201
too.

00:32:55.280 --> 00:32:55.360
Yep.

00:32:56.120 --> 00:32:57.821
So we took a lot of those lessons

00:32:57.841 --> 00:33:00.362
on what enterprise companies want and

00:33:00.422 --> 00:33:03.462
tried to build those systems in.

00:33:04.084 --> 00:33:05.683
And it has worked.

00:33:06.104 --> 00:33:07.545
We get a lot of enterprise customers,

00:33:07.565 --> 00:33:09.484
a lot of universities,

00:33:09.504 --> 00:33:15.087
a lot of sort of high profile names

00:33:15.146 --> 00:33:16.106
to put on our banner.

00:33:16.886 --> 00:33:20.689
But a lot of small publishers have found

00:33:20.709 --> 00:33:21.148
us as well.

00:33:21.289 --> 00:33:24.129
Newspapers, startups, and...

00:33:25.947 --> 00:33:27.930
No offense to universities and no offense

00:33:27.990 --> 00:33:29.810
to enterprise customers,

00:33:30.872 --> 00:33:33.314
but it's perhaps those smaller customers

00:33:33.374 --> 00:33:35.715
maybe pay a little bit less that are

00:33:35.756 --> 00:33:38.237
maybe, say, maybe twenty,

00:33:38.258 --> 00:33:40.699
twenty five percent of our business that

00:33:41.500 --> 00:33:42.860
have really been the most interesting to

00:33:42.901 --> 00:33:43.060
me.

00:33:43.662 --> 00:33:46.163
You see like a little five person shop

00:33:46.783 --> 00:33:51.267
in Atlanta or Tampa starting a newspaper

00:33:51.366 --> 00:33:53.769
for their area and really trying to dig

00:33:53.848 --> 00:33:54.148
in and.

00:33:55.250 --> 00:33:57.251
replace all the legacy newspapers that

00:33:57.271 --> 00:33:59.994
have collapsed in their town.

00:34:00.714 --> 00:34:02.958
And it's inspiring.

00:34:03.999 --> 00:34:05.119
It reminds me a little bit of some

00:34:05.139 --> 00:34:07.081
of the startup companies in the WordPress

00:34:07.101 --> 00:34:07.301
space.

00:34:07.321 --> 00:34:08.343
They're like, hey,

00:34:09.344 --> 00:34:10.184
we know we're not going to make

00:34:11.453 --> 00:34:12.273
ten million dollars,

00:34:12.914 --> 00:34:14.155
but we're going to make a living and

00:34:14.174 --> 00:34:15.455
we're going to try and do something good

00:34:15.475 --> 00:34:16.237
and helpful to people.

00:34:18.279 --> 00:34:21.541
I think there's a real kind of similar

00:34:21.601 --> 00:34:24.183
sense of purpose and got to know some

00:34:24.223 --> 00:34:26.085
of these publishers over the years,

00:34:26.125 --> 00:34:28.047
working with them and seeing their success

00:34:29.969 --> 00:34:30.148
and

00:34:31.789 --> 00:34:32.670
They're all on WordPress.

00:34:34.850 --> 00:34:36.831
You're in Utah.

00:34:37.491 --> 00:34:41.633
I'm trying to think if we've come across

00:34:42.953 --> 00:34:47.075
any new newspapers or magazines starting

00:34:47.135 --> 00:34:50.675
up in Utah or in Tampa near us

00:34:50.796 --> 00:34:51.757
or wherever it might be.

00:34:52.752 --> 00:34:57.936
on wordpress wordpress has a market share

00:34:57.956 --> 00:35:02.700
with these companies um and a lot of

00:35:02.720 --> 00:35:03.641
the old newspapers

00:35:04.826 --> 00:35:07.167
have their own legacy cms's but wordpress

00:35:07.208 --> 00:35:10.589
is really dominating in this space um and

00:35:10.629 --> 00:35:14.392
it's a good thing it's cheap um these

00:35:14.792 --> 00:35:16.533
these journalists are paying themselves

00:35:17.334 --> 00:35:20.336
thirty forty thousand dollars a year just

00:35:20.376 --> 00:35:22.518
enough to pay rent and eat some ramen

00:35:23.478 --> 00:35:25.740
um so wordpress is a good fit for

00:35:25.760 --> 00:35:25.859
them

00:35:27.605 --> 00:35:30.687
And do you think that it's really that

00:35:30.748 --> 00:35:33.010
sort of low cost and lower barrier to

00:35:33.089 --> 00:35:36.613
entry that has made WordPress distinct

00:35:36.732 --> 00:35:38.533
within sort of the publishing space?

00:35:40.316 --> 00:35:40.816
It is easy.

00:35:41.757 --> 00:35:42.837
The UI is good.

00:35:43.298 --> 00:35:46.001
I rarely hear any of these customers

00:35:46.040 --> 00:35:47.060
complain about the UI.

00:35:47.682 --> 00:35:49.503
They can log in.

00:35:49.523 --> 00:35:50.504
They're in the block editor.

00:35:50.544 --> 00:35:51.345
They can start writing.

00:35:52.046 --> 00:35:53.566
They get it.

00:35:54.827 --> 00:35:55.528
They're people who are...

00:35:56.401 --> 00:35:58.202
who are used to writing on platforms that

00:35:58.241 --> 00:35:58.702
are similar,

00:36:00.104 --> 00:36:02.526
maybe a lot of these people may have

00:36:02.566 --> 00:36:03.526
worked at, say,

00:36:04.066 --> 00:36:07.629
USA Today or maybe a bigger,

00:36:07.669 --> 00:36:08.850
more brand name newspaper.

00:36:08.890 --> 00:36:10.611
They're used to working in a content

00:36:10.631 --> 00:36:12.153
management system.

00:36:12.593 --> 00:36:13.392
They move to WordPress.

00:36:14.254 --> 00:36:14.774
They're good to go.

00:36:15.955 --> 00:36:16.656
It makes sense to them.

00:36:18.278 --> 00:36:18.499
Yeah,

00:36:18.979 --> 00:36:23.140
did you see like one of a lesson

00:36:23.180 --> 00:36:25.622
that I learned sort of in real time

00:36:25.702 --> 00:36:29.602
as I was presenting at WordCamp Long Beach

00:36:30.102 --> 00:36:30.984
a number of years ago.

00:36:31.263 --> 00:36:34.345
At the time I was working at HumanMaid.

00:36:34.685 --> 00:36:36.926
HumanMaid was a very early adopter of

00:36:37.006 --> 00:36:41.127
building Gutenberg based like

00:36:41.406 --> 00:36:42.247
functionality.

00:36:42.307 --> 00:36:44.368
We were using Gutenberg and implementing

00:36:44.408 --> 00:36:46.348
Gutenberg before it was merged into core.

00:36:47.910 --> 00:36:51.231
And so we were very Gutenberg-yay and

00:36:52.272 --> 00:36:53.091
early adopters.

00:36:53.772 --> 00:36:57.274
And so obviously my talk that got approved

00:36:57.294 --> 00:36:59.334
and I was speaking at WordCamp Long Beach

00:37:00.334 --> 00:37:00.734
was...

00:37:02.508 --> 00:37:05.589
was about like how the block editor is

00:37:05.629 --> 00:37:07.390
going to make everything easier is going

00:37:07.410 --> 00:37:10.131
to revolutionize content editing and what

00:37:10.191 --> 00:37:12.312
i realized as i was giving this talk

00:37:12.553 --> 00:37:14.214
especially during the q a section at the

00:37:14.334 --> 00:37:17.674
end was that there was a lot of

00:37:17.714 --> 00:37:20.136
people there were a lot of people who

00:37:20.736 --> 00:37:20.877
um

00:37:21.997 --> 00:37:27.720
were not just skeptical of the block

00:37:27.781 --> 00:37:32.964
editor, but really, fundamentally,

00:37:33.584 --> 00:37:36.707
it was going to increase the amount of

00:37:36.767 --> 00:37:37.968
work because they had to learn a new

00:37:37.988 --> 00:37:38.327
thing,

00:37:38.607 --> 00:37:40.649
because the classic editor was fine,

00:37:41.890 --> 00:37:45.053
because they were used to it.

00:37:45.212 --> 00:37:45.912
Even at the time,

00:37:45.973 --> 00:37:48.575
I believe there is data about the...

00:37:52.517 --> 00:37:55.819
The bell graph for the learning curve for

00:37:56.501 --> 00:37:58.861
Gutenberg was smaller.

00:37:59.062 --> 00:38:00.644
It was easier to learn Gutenberg than it

00:38:00.664 --> 00:38:02.665
was to learn to do things or similar

00:38:02.705 --> 00:38:03.785
things in the classic editor.

00:38:05.327 --> 00:38:07.928
It was really like the people who had

00:38:08.269 --> 00:38:11.191
been used to the thing that was in

00:38:11.232 --> 00:38:13.834
WordPress and now they're being forced to

00:38:15.216 --> 00:38:16.636
learn a new thing,

00:38:16.676 --> 00:38:18.758
there's a lot of resistance and a lot

00:38:18.798 --> 00:38:20.258
of, like, I didn't ask for this.

00:38:20.298 --> 00:38:24.819
Did you also feel that as you're building

00:38:24.859 --> 00:38:28.100
this plugin or this suite of plugins that

00:38:28.140 --> 00:38:32.142
are ostensibly for publishers in this sort

00:38:32.162 --> 00:38:32.562
of space,

00:38:32.582 --> 00:38:35.323
the same sort of resistance to the block

00:38:35.383 --> 00:38:35.604
editor?

00:38:37.189 --> 00:38:39.953
No, we get, I hear them.

00:38:40.615 --> 00:38:41.836
If I go on social media,

00:38:41.957 --> 00:38:42.437
I hear them.

00:38:43.057 --> 00:38:44.319
In real life, in our work,

00:38:45.060 --> 00:38:47.805
I don't hear them.

00:38:47.845 --> 00:38:50.147
To say something controversial,

00:38:50.988 --> 00:38:53.553
I think those people are like the cobalt

00:38:55.093 --> 00:38:57.816
users of the WordPress space, hey,

00:38:57.955 --> 00:38:59.156
you want to go and keep on using

00:39:00.116 --> 00:39:01.598
technology that's that old?

00:39:02.218 --> 00:39:02.499
Great.

00:39:03.019 --> 00:39:03.379
It runs.

00:39:04.200 --> 00:39:04.600
Like you say,

00:39:05.941 --> 00:39:07.241
half the government still runs on it.

00:39:09.383 --> 00:39:14.966
We still have a Joomla business that has

00:39:16.769 --> 00:39:18.370
well over a thousand customers still.

00:39:19.827 --> 00:39:20.187
People,

00:39:21.127 --> 00:39:22.488
even though Joomla's kind of been

00:39:23.169 --> 00:39:25.950
sidelined from the mainstream of open

00:39:25.990 --> 00:39:28.011
source, still people there to love it.

00:39:28.611 --> 00:39:30.113
If people want to stick on the classic

00:39:30.173 --> 00:39:30.493
editor,

00:39:31.352 --> 00:39:34.334
they can be our COBOL users and let

00:39:34.354 --> 00:39:36.915
the rest of us keep moving ahead.

00:39:37.356 --> 00:39:39.798
But they can stick with the classic editor

00:39:39.818 --> 00:39:40.178
if they want.

00:39:41.979 --> 00:39:45.240
The real normal people using WordPress

00:39:47.504 --> 00:39:48.825
that at least in my experience,

00:39:49.345 --> 00:39:52.727
I'm sure perhaps people doing more

00:39:52.906 --> 00:39:54.928
complicated things with the editor may

00:39:54.968 --> 00:39:56.607
have bigger complaints about it.

00:39:57.388 --> 00:39:59.910
But our publishers who are getting there,

00:40:00.649 --> 00:40:03.011
they have maybe two or three big stories

00:40:03.031 --> 00:40:03.830
to write each week.

00:40:05.832 --> 00:40:07.852
They get on with the block editor and

00:40:08.133 --> 00:40:10.394
they like it and use it and not

00:40:10.414 --> 00:40:11.033
had any complaints.

00:40:12.874 --> 00:40:15.397
Since you work with a lot of publishers

00:40:15.417 --> 00:40:20.680
and specifically newspapers and things of

00:40:20.700 --> 00:40:21.261
that nature,

00:40:21.961 --> 00:40:27.124
I wonder if you have seen effects of

00:40:28.305 --> 00:40:30.526
how the decline of print media has

00:40:30.566 --> 00:40:34.249
affected maybe the adoption of WordPress

00:40:34.289 --> 00:40:36.669
or the adoption of digital tools or just

00:40:37.430 --> 00:40:39.832
what sorts of things you maybe have picked

00:40:39.892 --> 00:40:41.212
up from just being in this space?

00:40:42.903 --> 00:40:43.665
Oh, for sure.

00:40:45.908 --> 00:40:48.531
The vast majority of these journalists

00:40:49.073 --> 00:40:50.274
have had prior careers.

00:40:50.535 --> 00:40:52.397
They've worked at a big brand name

00:40:52.417 --> 00:40:52.919
newspaper.

00:40:55.395 --> 00:40:58.337
maybe the original, say you're in Orlando,

00:40:58.377 --> 00:41:03.281
there was the Orlando Sentinel, Tampa,

00:41:03.361 --> 00:41:06.142
Tampa Bay Times, whichever city you're in,

00:41:06.162 --> 00:41:07.644
there was a leading newspaper,

00:41:07.703 --> 00:41:08.624
often two or three.

00:41:09.385 --> 00:41:11.046
And as those newspapers went away,

00:41:11.747 --> 00:41:14.028
these journalists went and often started

00:41:14.068 --> 00:41:16.709
something for themselves and they would go

00:41:16.810 --> 00:41:17.549
digital only.

00:41:18.069 --> 00:41:20.472
They would not even consider a print

00:41:20.511 --> 00:41:20.832
edition.

00:41:22.673 --> 00:41:22.792
And

00:41:24.455 --> 00:41:25.955
Often they pick one or two social

00:41:25.995 --> 00:41:26.376
channels.

00:41:29.118 --> 00:41:31.519
The teams are not big enough perhaps to

00:41:31.560 --> 00:41:34.241
carry across five or six different

00:41:34.261 --> 00:41:37.424
platforms, but they will pick YouTube.

00:41:39.986 --> 00:41:42.229
There's one big new publisher in

00:41:42.488 --> 00:41:43.008
Mississippi.

00:41:44.850 --> 00:41:46.912
Mississippi Today that does a lot of

00:41:46.932 --> 00:41:47.613
YouTube work.

00:41:48.432 --> 00:41:49.274
We've worked with some...

00:41:52.769 --> 00:41:54.790
some publishers in Texas that use WhatsApp

00:41:54.810 --> 00:41:57.169
a lot because they have a big Hispanic

00:41:57.229 --> 00:42:01.211
audience and WhatsApp use is massive there

00:42:01.251 --> 00:42:05.792
so they have a WhatsApp channel a couple

00:42:05.852 --> 00:42:09.973
on Instagram they will use these digital

00:42:10.013 --> 00:42:13.734
tools to move more quickly than some of

00:42:13.754 --> 00:42:16.475
the big legacy newspapers but

00:42:17.334 --> 00:42:17.894
the heart of it,

00:42:18.236 --> 00:42:20.477
where the original stories and the

00:42:20.517 --> 00:42:23.618
original reporting lives is WordPress.

00:42:24.058 --> 00:42:25.859
Do you see like I see a lot

00:42:25.941 --> 00:42:28.182
of particularly like, you know,

00:42:28.321 --> 00:42:30.363
individual journalists or individual sort

00:42:30.403 --> 00:42:33.104
of content creators that maybe have been

00:42:33.305 --> 00:42:36.006
orphaned by the closure or the downsizing

00:42:36.227 --> 00:42:40.470
of a larger paper or a publication moving

00:42:40.510 --> 00:42:42.171
to platforms like, you know,

00:42:42.470 --> 00:42:43.671
at one point it was medium.

00:42:44.051 --> 00:42:44.991
I think a lot of people are moving

00:42:45.031 --> 00:42:45.852
to Substack.

00:42:46.372 --> 00:42:51.174
And in a lot of ways,

00:42:51.194 --> 00:42:53.374
this fundamentally gets into the argument

00:42:53.435 --> 00:42:55.256
of owning your own content.

00:42:55.276 --> 00:42:56.917
Because if you're using a tool like that,

00:42:56.957 --> 00:42:58.517
like Substack, which is very popular,

00:42:58.557 --> 00:43:00.857
and you can build in subscriptions and

00:43:00.897 --> 00:43:02.077
stuff like that where you get paid for

00:43:02.098 --> 00:43:02.499
your work,

00:43:04.600 --> 00:43:06.781
The downside of that is obviously your

00:43:06.821 --> 00:43:07.903
content lives on Substack.

00:43:07.943 --> 00:43:09.343
Substack could go out of business,

00:43:09.363 --> 00:43:10.365
they could sell your content,

00:43:10.385 --> 00:43:11.124
they could do whatever.

00:43:11.906 --> 00:43:13.006
You don't necessarily own that.

00:43:13.046 --> 00:43:15.448
Do you see that sort of tension or

00:43:15.488 --> 00:43:18.732
that sort of like competition with

00:43:19.633 --> 00:43:21.453
publishing on something that you own,

00:43:21.473 --> 00:43:22.915
like an open source tool like WordPress?

00:43:24.336 --> 00:43:25.377
Yeah,

00:43:25.397 --> 00:43:27.019
the people that go to Substack tend to

00:43:27.039 --> 00:43:28.801
be the one person teams.

00:43:30.343 --> 00:43:33.225
Maybe they start that way and they add

00:43:33.245 --> 00:43:34.245
a couple of support people.

00:43:36.265 --> 00:43:41.068
But it does tend to be the personalities,

00:43:42.048 --> 00:43:47.972
the bloggers who go to Substack.

00:43:48.631 --> 00:43:52.234
We see quite a few newspapers using Ghost,

00:43:53.533 --> 00:43:54.915
another open source platform.

00:43:55.254 --> 00:43:56.095
Yeah.

00:43:57.857 --> 00:43:59.678
People who lean more on the newsletter

00:43:59.738 --> 00:44:02.778
side often go to Beehive.

00:44:04.379 --> 00:44:05.780
So there's definitely some alternatives

00:44:05.879 --> 00:44:06.220
out there.

00:44:08.399 --> 00:44:10.520
But when it comes to actually building a

00:44:10.580 --> 00:44:14.341
brand where you have four, five, six,

00:44:14.401 --> 00:44:16.602
seven, and hopefully in a couple of years,

00:44:16.901 --> 00:44:18.542
ten or twenty people on staff,

00:44:19.202 --> 00:44:20.982
then WordPress is the place people go.

00:44:26.073 --> 00:44:27.975
I see we're getting towards the end.

00:44:28.216 --> 00:44:30.499
I want to at least give some opportunity

00:44:30.539 --> 00:44:33.481
for you to talk about the thing that

00:44:35.743 --> 00:44:38.265
PublishPress is, what it's there for,

00:44:38.325 --> 00:44:41.428
what people would want to use it for.

00:44:42.731 --> 00:44:43.591
I feel like it would

00:44:44.544 --> 00:44:46.785
it would be a disservice if I did

00:44:46.825 --> 00:44:48.386
not give you an opportunity to like,

00:44:48.787 --> 00:44:50.568
at least talk a little bit about the

00:44:50.607 --> 00:44:52.147
thing that, that, that you,

00:44:52.448 --> 00:44:53.028
that you built.

00:44:54.810 --> 00:44:59.553
Oh, well we, I guess, let me,

00:44:59.673 --> 00:45:01.214
let me take ownership of this and say,

00:45:01.533 --> 00:45:05.115
I, as the person that got this started,

00:45:06.216 --> 00:45:08.057
have never really had a,

00:45:09.667 --> 00:45:12.473
a big roadmap.

00:45:13.214 --> 00:45:14.997
Never sat down and said PublishPress is

00:45:15.017 --> 00:45:16.080
going to be this.

00:45:17.243 --> 00:45:20.189
We started with one plugin and just

00:45:20.428 --> 00:45:20.950
listened

00:45:22.622 --> 00:45:25.522
to our customers like crazy.

00:45:26.462 --> 00:45:28.863
And that's probably led to slightly

00:45:29.723 --> 00:45:31.604
haphazard development.

00:45:33.626 --> 00:45:36.086
I know some people have the ability to

00:45:36.866 --> 00:45:40.028
sit down and visualize the awesome product

00:45:40.048 --> 00:45:42.408
they want to build and then just go

00:45:42.448 --> 00:45:43.289
ahead and start building it.

00:45:45.189 --> 00:45:46.149
I don't have that ability.

00:45:48.310 --> 00:45:51.370
We have ten plugins now and I sent

00:45:51.390 --> 00:45:54.011
a newsletter recently saying we're going

00:45:54.031 --> 00:45:56.533
to be about fifteen plugins by the end

00:45:56.593 --> 00:45:57.633
of twenty twenty six.

00:45:58.854 --> 00:46:01.674
And it's always been build feature X.

00:46:02.595 --> 00:46:03.294
Talk to the customers.

00:46:04.236 --> 00:46:06.095
The customers say that's great.

00:46:06.376 --> 00:46:07.616
What we need is now feature Y.

00:46:09.216 --> 00:46:10.957
And we build feature Y.

00:46:12.558 --> 00:46:13.479
Customers come back to us.

00:46:14.345 --> 00:46:15.185
yeah, that's pretty good,

00:46:15.225 --> 00:46:17.566
but I wish Y worked like this and

00:46:17.586 --> 00:46:18.807
maybe how about feature Z?

00:46:19.647 --> 00:46:21.328
It's always been iterative.

00:46:21.968 --> 00:46:25.211
And the focus has been on making WordPress

00:46:25.531 --> 00:46:26.832
a really good publishing platform.

00:46:27.432 --> 00:46:28.693
So a lot of it is just filling

00:46:28.712 --> 00:46:30.874
in the gaps with what's missing.

00:46:30.953 --> 00:46:34.975
Like both of us come from Joomla and

00:46:35.015 --> 00:46:35.857
Drupal backgrounds.

00:46:37.977 --> 00:46:39.939
Both of those content management systems

00:46:39.979 --> 00:46:43.861
by default have a expiry date.

00:46:45.308 --> 00:46:45.808
for content.

00:46:47.430 --> 00:46:49.310
WordPress is the best publishing platform

00:46:49.330 --> 00:46:49.669
in the world,

00:46:50.611 --> 00:46:53.531
but it doesn't have an expiry date.

00:46:53.551 --> 00:46:55.232
So one of our plugins got started that

00:46:55.252 --> 00:46:57.673
way by just providing an expiry date.

00:46:59.314 --> 00:47:04.354
Or WordPress has a revisions feature,

00:47:04.394 --> 00:47:08.296
which allows you to see all of the

00:47:08.316 --> 00:47:09.716
changes that have been made to a

00:47:09.776 --> 00:47:10.698
particular post you're writing,

00:47:11.698 --> 00:47:11.917
but

00:47:13.506 --> 00:47:15.466
It's kind of tucked away in a very

00:47:15.526 --> 00:47:20.189
small corner of the screen and really hard

00:47:20.229 --> 00:47:22.229
to navigate and actually browse through

00:47:22.249 --> 00:47:22.870
all those changes.

00:47:23.269 --> 00:47:24.231
So we have a plugin that makes it

00:47:24.310 --> 00:47:24.551
easier.

00:47:26.091 --> 00:47:27.571
So we try and work with the WordPress

00:47:27.611 --> 00:47:31.794
core and basically fill in gaps as our

00:47:31.854 --> 00:47:33.894
customers find them and tell us where they

00:47:33.935 --> 00:47:34.055
are.

00:47:35.955 --> 00:47:40.357
So WordPress's aim is to democratize

00:47:40.397 --> 00:47:40.798
publishing.

00:47:41.837 --> 00:47:44.339
we kind of try and piggyback on that

00:47:44.780 --> 00:47:47.941
and um the core can't do everything we

00:47:47.961 --> 00:47:50.743
try and fill in all the important gaps

00:47:50.823 --> 00:47:52.245
that the core is missing to help

00:47:52.285 --> 00:47:56.647
publishers yeah i i definitely like one of

00:47:56.687 --> 00:48:01.129
the or the most rewarding times for me

00:48:01.169 --> 00:48:04.772
as a developer have been when i was

00:48:05.093 --> 00:48:08.754
building a specific thing um could call it

00:48:08.794 --> 00:48:10.415
a product but like a particular

00:48:11.015 --> 00:48:12.218
plug in or whatever,

00:48:13.620 --> 00:48:16.886
and really being able to take the feedback

00:48:16.986 --> 00:48:18.789
of the people that were using it and

00:48:19.530 --> 00:48:21.673
use that feedback to iterate on the thing

00:48:21.693 --> 00:48:22.433
that I was building.

00:48:22.513 --> 00:48:24.738
So it may feel haphazard,

00:48:24.758 --> 00:48:25.798
it may look haphazard,

00:48:26.240 --> 00:48:29.222
But, like, I really, like,

00:48:29.341 --> 00:48:32.564
that feels like a good approach even if

00:48:32.604 --> 00:48:33.986
it's not the approach that, like,

00:48:34.406 --> 00:48:37.589
a product manager would approve of, of,

00:48:37.629 --> 00:48:38.689
like, having the whole thing.

00:48:38.709 --> 00:48:40.450
Because a lot of times, like,

00:48:40.970 --> 00:48:43.493
the grand plan, like, is, like,

00:48:43.613 --> 00:48:46.314
what if one thing on that roadmap is

00:48:46.816 --> 00:48:48.136
not something, like, you didn't...

00:48:48.917 --> 00:48:50.539
for that roadmap to be appropriate,

00:48:50.558 --> 00:48:52.501
you'd need to user research all of those

00:48:52.640 --> 00:48:53.241
points, right?

00:48:54.423 --> 00:48:56.203
And by the time you do all the

00:48:56.325 --> 00:48:56.924
user research,

00:48:56.944 --> 00:48:58.546
and then you build all those features in,

00:48:58.586 --> 00:48:59.767
and then you release the thing,

00:49:01.211 --> 00:49:02.892
it's entirely possible that your users

00:49:02.932 --> 00:49:05.294
have moved on to something else uh so

00:49:05.314 --> 00:49:08.256
i i i believe that the the iterative

00:49:08.276 --> 00:49:12.318
approach is is um like i i think

00:49:12.337 --> 00:49:14.578
that's a really good approach so so don't

00:49:14.879 --> 00:49:16.899
don't don't like downplay that i think

00:49:16.919 --> 00:49:18.481
that that's a really valuable part of the

00:49:18.600 --> 00:49:21.602
of the process yeah there are um there's

00:49:21.622 --> 00:49:27.004
a guy uh kevin geary who is a

00:49:27.084 --> 00:49:30.466
a character on wordpress social media and

00:49:32.058 --> 00:49:33.319
He has that ability, I think,

00:49:33.419 --> 00:49:38.361
that he basically fundraised maybe a

00:49:38.421 --> 00:49:39.361
million bucks or so,

00:49:39.662 --> 00:49:40.901
an enormous amount of money,

00:49:41.642 --> 00:49:47.405
to build his Edge site builder platform.

00:49:47.584 --> 00:49:48.785
He basically laid it out,

00:49:48.825 --> 00:49:50.926
this is what we're going to build.

00:49:51.066 --> 00:49:53.307
I do not have that ability at all.

00:49:53.366 --> 00:49:57.747
It's always been step by step and...

00:50:00.216 --> 00:50:03.019
Some days it feels exhausting because I

00:50:03.098 --> 00:50:05.299
read every single customer support ticket

00:50:05.319 --> 00:50:05.700
that comes in.

00:50:07.428 --> 00:50:08.167
Which is exhausting.

00:50:10.189 --> 00:50:13.432
But I think by the time, I mean,

00:50:13.531 --> 00:50:15.392
if we scaled up to Pantheon's size,

00:50:16.993 --> 00:50:17.794
that's not going to happen.

00:50:18.035 --> 00:50:19.294
It's going to break at some point.

00:50:20.656 --> 00:50:22.497
But we're at about a dozen staff members

00:50:22.517 --> 00:50:25.658
and say, ten thousand customers total.

00:50:26.280 --> 00:50:27.439
So it's still feasible.

00:50:28.040 --> 00:50:31.702
And you read every customer support

00:50:31.743 --> 00:50:32.142
ticket,

00:50:32.182 --> 00:50:32.624
you kind of

00:50:36.026 --> 00:50:40.269
through osmosis you kind of understand

00:50:40.290 --> 00:50:43.171
what your customers want yeah you pick up

00:50:43.191 --> 00:50:45.953
on the patterns yep yeah but you would

00:50:45.993 --> 00:50:47.314
never read that in a project management

00:50:47.334 --> 00:50:52.218
book um project management for dummies um

00:50:52.238 --> 00:50:54.821
they'd say that's a terrible way to work

00:50:55.482 --> 00:50:57.243
yeah they probably would but at the same

00:50:57.263 --> 00:50:58.765
time i know product i know product

00:50:58.785 --> 00:50:59.946
managers that like

00:51:01.042 --> 00:51:02.464
feel like they don't talk to customers

00:51:02.484 --> 00:51:04.104
enough and like want to have more of

00:51:04.144 --> 00:51:04.285
that.

00:51:04.305 --> 00:51:06.586
So like there's like, yeah,

00:51:06.707 --> 00:51:07.707
at either end of the spectrum,

00:51:07.747 --> 00:51:08.508
I think you can't win.

00:51:09.589 --> 00:51:09.850
Yeah.

00:51:09.890 --> 00:51:11.030
I mean, once you get to something,

00:51:11.290 --> 00:51:12.691
maybe perhaps a Pantheon size,

00:51:13.691 --> 00:51:15.553
then talking to the customers is much more

00:51:15.573 --> 00:51:17.515
of a formal exercise often.

00:51:17.955 --> 00:51:18.376
Like, hey,

00:51:18.395 --> 00:51:19.836
do you have twenty minutes on your

00:51:19.857 --> 00:51:21.337
calendar where you can sit down and give

00:51:21.377 --> 00:51:23.098
me formal feedback?

00:51:24.801 --> 00:51:26.102
A lot of the feedback you're listening to

00:51:26.122 --> 00:51:27.062
in customer support is,

00:51:28.022 --> 00:51:31.664
oh beep this isn't working right or like

00:51:31.683 --> 00:51:35.825
much more visceral yeah yeah yeah yeah

00:51:37.046 --> 00:51:38.466
well thank you so much Steve for coming

00:51:38.566 --> 00:51:40.127
on uh before we go I'd like to

00:51:40.187 --> 00:51:42.008
give you an opportunity to to let people

00:51:42.028 --> 00:51:43.289
know where they could find you on the

00:51:43.348 --> 00:51:45.189
internet uh and what things you're working

00:51:45.290 --> 00:51:47.030
on and and any links that you might

00:51:47.049 --> 00:51:49.370
want to share for for our our audio

00:51:49.410 --> 00:51:51.312
listeners or video viewers or whatever

00:51:52.906 --> 00:51:54.607
I would say these days that are mostly

00:51:54.687 --> 00:51:55.187
on LinkedIn.

00:51:55.526 --> 00:51:58.269
It's the most high value platform.

00:51:58.508 --> 00:52:00.629
You can find me as Steve Burge on

00:52:00.649 --> 00:52:01.609
LinkedIn.

00:52:01.729 --> 00:52:02.011
Awesome.

00:52:02.691 --> 00:52:02.950
Awesome.

00:52:03.551 --> 00:52:05.011
Well, thank you again, Steve,

00:52:05.051 --> 00:52:07.033
for coming on the show.

00:52:08.053 --> 00:52:09.294
Steve is, again,

00:52:09.493 --> 00:52:12.095
available on LinkedIn and PublishPress is

00:52:12.136 --> 00:52:14.336
publishpress.com, I believe.

00:52:15.336 --> 00:52:17.798
And yeah, go check it.

00:52:18.919 --> 00:52:19.459
Go ahead.

00:52:19.479 --> 00:52:20.439
There is a funny story there.

00:52:20.979 --> 00:52:21.060
Oh?

00:52:22.388 --> 00:52:22.488
Oh,

00:52:22.508 --> 00:52:29.031
that some enormous YouTube social

00:52:29.111 --> 00:52:33.473
influencers also decided to call their

00:52:33.513 --> 00:52:35.174
company Publish Press.

00:52:35.194 --> 00:52:36.694
Oh, cool.

00:52:36.794 --> 00:52:38.115
Are you getting a lot of free traffic?

00:52:39.376 --> 00:52:41.537
Well, entirely the wrong free traffic.

00:52:42.116 --> 00:52:44.298
And I get lots of their emails now.

00:52:46.939 --> 00:52:52.102
like i get like ndas contracts offers um

00:52:52.582 --> 00:52:58.345
and um uh recently they opened uh the

00:52:58.365 --> 00:53:01.446
youtube word is merch right merch selling

00:53:01.486 --> 00:53:04.729
merch they opened a merch store and put

00:53:04.808 --> 00:53:07.051
publishpress.com instead of their

00:53:07.091 --> 00:53:11.212
different um tld on the or the emails

00:53:11.573 --> 00:53:13.274
so i got all the customers all this

00:53:13.633 --> 00:53:15.736
merch store complaints coming through as

00:53:15.776 --> 00:53:15.955
well

00:53:17.314 --> 00:53:21.256
Well, we are publishedpress.com.

00:53:21.597 --> 00:53:23.756
The YouTube guys are Published Press and

00:53:23.796 --> 00:53:24.618
some other TLD.

00:53:26.238 --> 00:53:26.558
Well,

00:53:27.258 --> 00:53:31.200
you are the real Published Press in my

00:53:31.240 --> 00:53:33.560
mind, not those other Published Presses.

00:53:34.461 --> 00:53:35.622
Thank you again for joining.

00:53:36.122 --> 00:53:38.562
Thank everyone else who's watching or

00:53:38.702 --> 00:53:40.024
listening to this in the future.

00:53:40.763 --> 00:53:43.325
And we will see you on the internet.

00:53:43.345 --> 00:53:43.685
Thanks, Chris.