What about Bob?

In summary.

Before 1988, the stories are strictly for in-person telling with a drink in hand. Since then, it’s been one long, gloriously chaotic ride — from bartending and desktop publishing to co-founding Cat’s Eye Graphics in 1993 (named, more or less, by a stray one-eyed cat who showed up hungry and persuasive), which eventually grew into a full-fledged marketing company cranking out everything from inkjet brochures to corporate annual reports, with a few emergency martinis when typos made it past the press.

After years of pivots, a stock photo site nobody remembers, and a membership community that lasted almost as long as it took to learn to spell “solopreneur,” Bob reinvented himself as BobWP. What followed was a string of podcasts (sometimes running simultaneously, because why not), ending with a 2025 rebrand that landed everything at Open Channels FM, where the conversations keep going and the personal brand slowly, gracefully fades into the background.

The changelog

pre-1988 – Those first 31 years are better left for stories, in person and over your favorite beverage.

1988 – I started some freelance design aka desktop publishing. Nothing too complicated but enough to give me the bug. I probably bartended more than I freelanced.

1993 – It happened. Judy and I had an idea for a business to start. A kind man from SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives, a nonprofit in the US) helped us get it straight.

We brainstormed a few names, but finally landed on Cat’s Eye Graphics. In some convoluted way the details of good design equates to a cat’s eyes. Or may it was their stubborn independence. Or something to do with the litter box. But as we pondered this for a few days, an odd-eyed, abandoned kitty showed up on our door step asking us to name the business after him if we give him some food. We fed him, gave him a name, but Nuz Design didn’t sound right. So we compromised and gave him a home. Plus we promised if he would continue using the litter box, we could always call it Cat’s Eye [something].

From a design shop it grew into a full fledge marketing company. Pivots and pathways bouncing off the walls. A plethora in fact. Marginal little brochures printed on an inkjet to full color corporate annual reports. Dozens of logos designed when you could make money doing it. It was all about printing a majority of those years. Including several martinis when a typo came off the final press run.

From a design shop it grew into a full fledge marketing company. Pivots and pathways bouncing off the walls. A plethora in fact. Crappy little brochures printed on an inkjet to full color corporate annual reports. Dozens of logos designed when you could make money doing it. It was all about printing a majority of those years. Including several martinis when a typo came off the final press run.

We offered it all. Design, copywriting, editing, branding, consulting, photography and marketing. Sat at many dull Chamber of Commerce functions warding off business cards. Lot’s of pro bono work that gave us anti-money deposits. But all in all, quite the experience.

1990-2005 – How about a stock photo site before there were so many, around 2003. Well, Northwest Hotshots hosted on something called Shop.com lasted about a year with minimal income.

Various other small pathways that just sounded good at night and not so much the next day.

2006 – WordPress entered my life. I dabbled and played with it. Then between 2007 and 2008 I got more serious and realized I could finally put together a decent site as opposed to my eyesore HTML and Flash sites with dancing letters forming a word.

Plus this idea of open source intrigued me as it was kind of new to me. At the same time it was a bit odd. Felt like a circle of people, holding hands and singing songs about kittens and puppies. I did come back to reality shortly after that image and decided open source was kind of cool.

2008 – Two good friends and colleagues of mine invited me to a small podcasting workshop they were doing. They told me I had the perfect voice for podcasting and knew I would be perfect for it. But a voice alone doesn’t help. I looked at the time and resources it would take and shuddered. So I told them,”let me think about it”. I ended up thinking about it for 6 years.

2010 - 2011 – So what about a membership site? Helping small business owners to get online. Naming it Savvy WordPress. And the site was focused on solopreneurs, Nine months building it with the Headway theme and Wishlist, launched it and 14 months later Judy and I looked at each other, with members in the two digits, and we both decided we didn’t want to do it. Switched off the lights and refunded members. About the same amount of time it took me to quit mistyping the word solopreneur.

I wish there was a fascinating story behind the name BobWP. All I knew is the previous several years I had been working on a personal brand. Well, I guess you could call it that. We officially closed down Cat’s Eye Marketing Group and I chose to totally focus on WordPress. And in a quick moment, it hit me. Why not just call myself BobWP.

I will have to admit this was one of the best decisions I made, even if at the time it was nothing earth-shattering or even a slight tremor. People who got it were my potential clients. And those that pronounced BobWoop quickly dismissed it. It started with design, and moved into coaching, teaching, tutorials, podcasting and a lot of odds and ends.

2014 – I simply could not stand doing design, coaching or anything with client. I dug a hole in my timeline and buried client work.

I made the decision to focus on education and blogging. Maybe I could become rich from affiliate links. Never happened. But I had been dabbling with WooCommerce since it had just come out. Having done hundreds of tutorials already on WordPress something occurred to me. Having already introduced my audience to WooCommerce, I was seeing more affiliate income coming from those tutorials. Yeah, right. Store owners had a invested into their sites and were willing to pay for stuff. Who would have thunk. And that’s when it started, again.

2014 - 2018 – Remember when I told you about my two friends who tried to talk me into starting a podcast. Sounded great, but I was trying to run a business and couldn’t see possible squeezing any more blood out of myself. So I waited… and the end result was a number of podcasts, sometimes even overlapping each other.

2014 - 2015 (13 months): WordPress Breakdown. My very first podcast. Thought I was clever with the name. Was a talking head podcast where I simply regurgitated content from my tutorial posts. Figured I could do better, someday.

2016 - 2020 : (4 years, 1 month) It hit me. This was it. An podcast on WooCommerce. Thought of the name Do the Woo. But then about 10 episodes into it I changed it to WP eCommerce Show. Some little part of my brain said I should start with the bigger picture of ecommerce and WordPress. Was a good run with about 260 episodes.

2017 - (3 months): Podcasting with BobWP. Yeah, how meta, huh. I’m guessing a lot of podcasters have done this. Guess I wrapped up what I knew then in 90 days.

some unknown date, but best forgotten – short lived, maybe 5 episodes. BobWPs Neighborhood. I can even begin to tell you about this one that kicked off similarly to Mister Rogers Neighborhood. It was kind of weird.

2017 - 2018 (11 months): I had been making money with affiliates and other stuff and figured, what about something called the BobWP Monetizer Podcast? I figured I could teach people how to do it without the bullshit. I did, I conquered and I grew tired of that one.

2018 - 2025 – The beginning of the podcast pathway that has led me to where I am today. Do the Woo had an amazing run as the name of our site and podcast. During the last 3 years of its run, we have transitioned beyond Woo while adding larger perspectives to the conversation. Although the content outlived the name as time went by, we continued to do the Woo.

2025 – The rebranding in June of ’25 brought us to Open Channels FM.

2026 – Which brings us to today. Over 33 years of running businesses and eight years plus of podcasting carry on and conversations which have leaked further into the open web and open source. So thus a new era, or another twist for myself, as I wean myself off the personal brand, BobWP.